TSA Admits to Security Theater

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.  -- Benjamin Franklin

That quote has been repeated so many times over the past decade that it now sounds trite and tired.

Over that decade the government has taken away our right to privacy, our freedom of movement, our right against unreasonable search and seizures, and eight billion dollars worth of our labors (and thus, our lives) each year -- all in the name of "safety from terrorists."

Well it turns out that leaked internal documents reveal that the TSA knows it doesn't prevent any terrorism.  That is right: all of those rights that have been forfeited by the American people in the name of safety were lost for nought.  Just as Benjamin Franklin warned, we are left with neither liberty nor safety.

Yes We Could've

It has been a sad ten years for the American people and it is shaping up to be a sad ten more.

Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay.  As despicable as it is that the United States government ever operated the facility, the fact that it is still open with 171 prisoners held without trial is a sad testament to the morality (or impotence) of our leaders, our politicians, and our people.

This isn't a simple matter of inheriting a bad legacy from the previous administration.  By passing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, authorizing the arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial of terrorism suspects, Congress recently demonstrated a renewed commitment to the policies that led to the creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison in the first place.

We the people

...apparently flunked our high school government classes.

As you probably know, the Obama administration has set up a "We the people" section on the White House web site so as to solicit petitions from the American people. While there are a few well thought-out petitions, the majority just serve to demonstrate that many Americans have no idea how our federal government is designed to work nor what the function of the Executive branch is. For example:

• Amend the Constitution, making the Internet an unalienable right. Newsflash: the president does not have the power to add amendments to the constitution. Not even close. Petition for it all you want, he can't make this happen.
• Void the voting results that took place in Nicaragua this past Sunday 06 of November due to fraud by the FSLN. Seriously? He's the President of the United States. When did Nicaragua become a state?
• Legalize Mixed Martial Arts in New York. The President doesn't pass laws, much less state laws. You too are barking up the wrong tree.
• Re-establish and maintain the separation between investment banks and commercial banks. I'm 100% for the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act...but the President doesn't pass laws. You need to petition your Congress-critters to get this done, not the Obama administration.
• Bar courts and lawmakers from a "second-class religion" status for minority religions like Wicca and NeoPaganism. He's the President, not Dictator; he can neither tell courts nor lawmakers what to do. Have you not heard of the separation of powers?
  
• Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening. See above. I imagine it is hard to respond to petitions demanding the President to do things he has no legal power to do. Well, respond with something other than "/facepalm", that is.

I'm sure some of the authors of the above petitions would try and defend their misdirected efforts at government participation by pointing out that neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives offers a similar venue for soliciting petitions. That is true, and it is unfortunate. But that doesn't change the fact that the White House cannot act on many of the petitions. And, when some staffer writes a lengthy explanation of what the Executive branch has been doing to try and support your cause, it is doubly unfortunate that you don't seem to comprehend that it is all that he can do to support your cause.

If you want to change the laws, you need to write your Congressman. It isn't the President's job to get your Congressman to vote the way you want.

The "Keep Houses Unaffordable" Initiative

In a misguided attempt to prop up the "values" of homes, the Federal Government is giving free money to people who bought houses they couldn't afford by extending low- or zero-interest loans with an option to not repay the loan. There are two separate programs: the HUD Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program and the Treasury's Hardest Hit Fund.

As a responsible family that did not overextend ourselves to by a house that we couldn't afford, this is just a slap in the face. I don't begrudge people who bought homes and have now fallen on hard times...although the possibility of job-loss is supposed to factor into the calculation of how much house you can afford. No, I'm irritated because these programs are feel-good attempts to prop up the still-overpriced housing market so that banks don't have to recognize the true value of their mortgage-backed assets. You see, as a lender, banks should care about the borrowers ability to repay. So long as the government is willing to step in and pay when borrowers can't, it just reinforces bad lending practices.

Meanwhile, keeping home prices high is in no way good for us little people. It doesn't help people to have the burden of a home they can't afford hanging like an albatross around their necks. It doesn't help young families (such as my own) buy their first home...in fact, it actively obstructs that. Unless income rises to the point that homes are no longer ridiculously overpriced, which -- with real wages falling for 40 years -- doesn't seem likely, it does nothing to make homes more affordable. And affordability is the real problem with the housing market.

The Robber Barons of the 21st Century

I guess this is old news for subscribers of Rolling Stone, but I just ran across this excellent article they published in 2009 regarding the role the Goldman Sachs plays in the U.S. economy. In contrast to the random sound bites that fill so much of our media, it is well-researched article that it well worth the long read. Here is a link directly to the print version so you don't have to click through the 8 pages.

If, after reading that article, you are left with any doubt regarding Goldman Sachs' rigging of the U.S. economy in favor of themselves (not even their investors...just the bankers!), here is a current article from the Wall Street Journal chronicling their manipulation of the aluminum commodities market.

Folks, deregulation has gone too far. Over the last 25 years, Goldman Sachs has spearheaded the dismantling of the protections put in place in the wake of the Great Depression and look where it has gotten us.

Update 2011/07/04:

The Wall Street Journal has replaced their article with a partial snippet. Here are a few more articles on Goldman Sachs' manipulation of the aluminum commodities market.

I can haz free house?

In case anyone was wondering, I'd like a free house. Shoot, I'm not greedy, I'd settle for just not paying rent for a couple of years. Oh, and some free money too. Thanks!

It is hard being rich

As Republican Representative Sean Duffy reminds us, it is hard to live on almost 200 grand a year:


I guess that is why the ultra-rich need to pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us...it must be tough at the top.

More TSA lunacy

As if the TSA's gratuitous strip-searches at the airport weren't enough, they've branched out into train travel too. You know, in case someone gets the bright idea of highjacking a train and running it into a skyscraper. But seriously, groping people as they get off the train? What could the logic possibly be? Certainly not safety: the trip had already concluded incident-free.

We are paying perverts to do nothing of value.

So this is what it has come to? The American taxpayer shells out 8.1 billion dollars a year to get felt up by strangers while our lawmakers fight to kill Big Bird to save 451 million dollars. I'd like to actually meet the people who think paying perverts to feel up law-abiding people after they demonstratively proved they are no threat is a better use of our tax dollars than, well, anything.

Dear Amtrak

Dear Amtrak,

A bus is not a train. If I wanted to take a bus, I'd go to greyhound.com and plan my trip. But I didn't; I went to amtrak.com because I wanted to plan a train trip. To that end, I want:

1. A list of actual train stations, not bus terminals
2. A map of train routes and their transfer points
3. An option on your trip planner to not include bus routes

Look, I'm not stupid; I realize you can't stop in every city. But I don't expect you to. If I'm planning a cruise, I can go to carnival.com, and they provide me a list of departure ports to choose from. They don't claim to service Omaha, Nebraska and, when I choose Omaha, offer a trip that includes a bus to New Orleans. But that is exactly what your retarded web site does when I try to plan a train trip.

So, please Amtrak, don't make it so damn hard to use your service. With the TSA intent on ogling and fondling our wives and children, you've got a great chance to win the business of concerned middle-class citizens. President Obama even threw you a bone in his State of the Union address. But here's a newsflash: while train travel can compensate for being slow by being nostalgic, bus travel is slow, uncomfortable, and generally un-cool.

So quit hiding behind the transport of last resort, the bus, and take a page from the cruise lines: some of us are as interested in the trip as we are in the destination.

Where are the protesters?

I'm waiting with baited breath to see whether there will be any protests over the airport nudey scanners and TSA groping this Thanksgiving holiday. I mean, we all remember the riots over universal health care, right?

If the government putting their nose in our personal business rankled people, surely the government putting their hands in our privates will unleash true rage.

Surely people will be up-in-arms over the TSA taking naked pictures of them and keeping the good ones for fun. Surely people will be angry that their wives and daughters are being felt up by convicted sex offenders. Surely people will be rabid over the loss of their 4th amendment rights.

Given the public shows of anger and disgust -- the public backlash -- in town hall meetings regarding something as mundane as health care, I expect the protests against the government's full assault of our privacy and dignity to be something to see. I can't wait.

Update 2010/11/24:

Well, the busiest travel day of the year has passed without any notable protests. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

In other news: Subversion still sucks

OK, I've had 4 months to get used to Subversion now. And it is growing on me. Or perhaps it is Stockholm Syndrome. But there are still a lot of annoyances.

After being bashed as a "troll" by one of Subversion's authors after daring to suggest it wasn't all ponies and rainbows, I thought I would check to see if others where sharing my pain transitioning from CVS to Subversion.

Not surprisingly, I did. I found a wonderful summary of all the frustrations I've been experiencing, thoughtfully compiled by no less than David O'Brien of the FreeBSD community.

I would add to his list, as my friend John pointed out in comments to my previous post, that it is really annoying to have to depend on external tools (ironically, CVS) to see commits across branches.

Experiences with Clipper

While I was away in Japan, Caltrain and the other Bay-Area transit agencies teamed up to introduce the Translink Clipper payment system. I was excited at the prospect of an easy-to-use IC-card payment system like the Suica system I enjoyed using in Tokyo, and I was tired of having to buy new 8-ride tickets every few days, so I got a Clipper card and tried it out.

The card is easy enough to use, but the experience refilling my balance on the card has been less than stellar. I'm not about to tie my Clipper card to my credit card account, effectively turning it into a backdoor for a thief to clean me out (the "autoload" feature they push on their website). I was hoping to be able to refill it manually using an automated machine, just like I always did with my Suica card.

It turns out that there are a whopping 7 "Add Value" machines in the entire Bay Area: two in San Rafael, one in Sausalito, one in Oakland, two in downtown San Francisco, and one on the freaking Golden Gate Bridge (I guess for the toll-booth workers?). Fortunately, for those of us whose commute doesn't include one of those 7 locations, you can also add to your Clipper card balance at most Walgreens locations.

And here is where my experience with Clipper takes a nose-dive. First, not all Walgreens locations are equipped to add money to your Clipper card balance. There is, however, a map of the locations on the Clipper website. Unfortunately for me, the Walgreens one block from my office in San Mateo is not on the list and, when asked in person, I received the same look one would expect had I asked them if sold live Jabberwockies.

So, each time I need to refill the balance on my card, I hop in the car and drive two miles to the Walgreens nearest my home. Two miles isn't particularly far, but it does feel a little odd to have to drive somewhere so I can pay for public transportation. Anyway, I only have to do it once every couple of weeks, so it isn't a big deal; just a minor annoyance.

What is more annoying about the experience is that apparently only managers have the specialized training necessary to work the Clipper card "add value" device they keep behind the counter. So the poor checkout clerk has to page for the manager who, after finishing his dooby, mosies up to the front counter and fumbles with the machine until (hopefully) it actually has the balance on it I paid for. This past time, my wife and I had to repeatedly tell other customers that they might want to get in the other line because we were going to be a while. Ten minutes in fact.

The good news is that, with the name change from Translink to Clipper, it looks like they have added an option to refill your card balance online. I'm planning on trying that the next time I need to update my balance. I might miss the biweekly visit to the bloodshot-eyed Walgreens manager, though.

Crappy Code Hopscotch

I'm officially coining the term "crappy code hopscotch" to refer to the stupid games you have to play to workaround crappy code. I guess it could equally well refer to that feeling of being surprised by the effects of crappy code in any otherwise simple task, which might not be altogether unlike the feeling of unpleasant surprise you would get if someone were to throw a pile of dog poo in your hopscotch square.

The term popped into my head today while doing some MySQL wrangling; I was testing a stored function that called LOWER() on the results of CONCAT_WS(). Sounds simple enough: lower-case the result of concatenating strings with a separator. Check this output from MySQL 5.1:

mysql> SELECT LOWER(CONCAT_WS(' ', 'MySQL', 'scores', 'a', 0));
+--------------------------------------------------+
| LOWER(CONCAT_WS(' ', 'MySQL', 'scores', 'a', 0)) |
+--------------------------------------------------+
| MySQL scores a 0                                 |
+--------------------------------------------------+

Silent lower-case fail.

The problem, it seems, is that CONCAT_WS() doesn't convert the numeric argument to a string, but rather decides to convert *all* of the parameters to BINARY types and, as a result, returns a BINARY value. To it's credit, at least LOWER() is documented as being a no-op on BINARY values, hence the useless output shown above. What amazed me is that not just the undocumented, unintuitive behavior of CONCAT_WS() but that MySQL did not emit a single warning when LOWER() returned a value without, you know, lower-casing it.

So out of nowhere, I find myself playing crappy code hopscotch. I can explicitly either cast the numeric argument to CONCAT_WS() to a string or else let CONCAT_WS() return a BINARY value and explicitly convert that back to a string before passing it to LOWER().

Two crappy boxes to pick from and I got to put my foot in one of them.

Subversion sucks

While I was away in Tokyo, NTTMCL switched from CVS to Subversion for their version control system. Perhaps it is just that I'm too accustomed to CVS's eccentricities, but so far I have to say the Subversion sucks. While I'm sitting here waiting for the checkout of one of our heavily-branched repositories to complete (45 minutes and counting!), I took the opportunity to read a little about how much more wonderful Subversion is than CVS.

So far, the best I've come up with is that Subversion is newer, therefore it is better. Yay. With subversion, I just get the delight of knowing I'm playing with a fresh(er) turd.

Sure, CVS sucks too. What bothers me about Subversion is that it sucks at least as much as CVS without giving anything in return. At least with CVS, I can tag a release or create a branch without having to make a whole other copy of the repository (on each developer's machine, no less!). At least with CVS, I can diff and merge files between branches or tags without developing a Repetitive Strain Injury. At least with CVS, the repo files are text so I can recover when it screws up. At least with CVS, I don't have to run a friggin' web server just to do revision control.

So, yeah, maybe I'm just an old fogey. Or maybe Subversion sucks so much, it actually makes me long for CVS. Wouldn't that be sad.

The Value of a Comfortable Office

As I sat at my desk sweating in the dead of winter, I got to thinking about how people's comfortable working temperature must be cultural. Offices are hot in Japan. In the summer, their CoolBiz campaign has businesses setting the thermostats to 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 degrees Fahrenheit). I just checked, it is winter and the thermostat in my office is reading 30 degrees (86 degrees Fahrenheit). In contrast, offices in the U.S. have traditionally been regulated to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

I know my productivity suffers when I'm uncomfortable. It suffers doubly when I can only type with one hand because I'm fanning myself with the other. But is this just because of differences in cultural sensitivity to heat?

Out of curiosity, I did a quick search and found this interesting opinion piece written by Professor Shin-ichi Tanabe of Waseda University. Some of the interesting points in his opinion piece are:

• A guidebook recently published by the Federation of European Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Associations (REHVA) reports that 21.8°C is the optimal room temperature to foster intellectual productivity.

  
  21.8°C is a little over 71 degrees Fahrenheit...almost exactly what offices in the U.S. set their temperatures too. Perhaps we have a hint why U.S. and European workers are the most productive in the world?



• ...28°C seems a little too high for a room temperature setting in summer. The most comfortable temperature when sleeping naked is 29°C. People burn more calories in the workplace than at home where they are more relaxed, and however casually they may dress, they are still not naked in the workplace.

  
  While there are studies showing some variance in comfortable working temperatures depending on culture and gender, it would seem that 28°C can't be comfortable for anyone.



• Raising the cooling temperature of a standard building in Tokyo from 25°C to 28°C could increase energy efficiency by 15%, which is equivalent to saving ¥72 per square meter of office space during the COOLBIZ campaign. On the other hand, the resulting decrease in working efficiency could cause a loss of 13,000 yen per square meter of office space.

  
  What kind of company loses 13,000 yen to save 72 yen? A Japanese company, apparently.
  

Moral Majority

Here I was wishing that more of my fellow Americans would step up and agree that a reasonable baseline of health care should be guaranteed for all of our fellow citizens.

And then I learned about the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. Go ahead, click the link and read about what happened to this poor lady while she worked in Iraq. I'm not going to repeat it here because it makes me sick.

In response, Senator Al Franken offered an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would ban federal funds to companies that forbid employees from suing for rape.

Not surprisingly, the amendment was added, but it is a sad day that such an amendment is even necessary.

If that was all there was to the story, it would merely be depressing. No, to make things truly sickening you would need to know that 30 Senators voted against the amendment. 30 Senators voted to prevent gang-rape victims from suing their coworkers.

If you would like to know your Senators' stance on defending rape, you can find a list of the 30 pro-rape Senators along with their contact information here. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that that they are all men.

So now I feel pretty foolish. Here I was hoping my fellow Americans would be Good Samaritans and agree universal health care is a good thing, but apparently we can't even agree rape is wrong.

Who Would Jesus Insure?

I'm not a religious man, but I do believe in doing the right thing.
Any way you look at it, I cannot see how anyone could argue that offering health care to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. is morally wrong. So why would someone be opposed to such a proposal?

Two of the more common arguments are:
1) The government would run a public health care option incompetently, squandering money and providing sub-par health care coverage.
2) The government would run a public health care program so well that it would put commercial health care companies out of business.

Proponents suggest a third option:
3) The government program would compliment and co-exist with existing commercial offerings.

I'll contend that argument #1 is obviously false. The "public option" being proposed is intended to provide a baseline level of coverage. In other words, it is intended to cap the lower-bound of coverage options. It does not preclude anyone choosing a private health care option. It does not restrict the maximum level of coverage. As such, it can only raise the level of coverage for those currently most poorly served. One would be a fool to choose the public option if a better private option were available; if no better option is available, the public option cannot be inferior to something that does not exist.

Which only leaves the cost component of argument #1. I would like to see the government run the public option in an efficient way, but if it takes an inefficient organization to provide a baseline level of health care to people who have no better option, than that is simply the cost of doing the right thing. There is no moral high ground in putting money before the health of another human being.

As for argument #2, I cannot see the future so I have no way of guessing whether this is true or false. My gut instinct is that it is false. But, if the government were to be capable of running a program so efficiently that we all received better service at lower cost for all possible treatments, I fail to see the problem. Opposing a public option for fear that it will do a better job that corporate options is analogous to corporate welfare for the less-efficient companies. I do not see the moral high ground is putting the health of companies before the health of citizens.

So our possible outcomes are:
#2 is true - we all get better coverage, albeit from a government-run program.
#3 is true - the public option provides a baseline level of coverage but people/companies can still buy health insurance from private providers for a superior level of coverage.

A number of people seem afraid of a single-payer system, as would result if argument #2 were true. However, I emphasize that the only way for #2 to yield a single-payer system is if that single-payer were superior in the marketplace than all other options. If the government were outlawing the competition, that might be a legitimate concern, but there is currently no proposal to do any such thing. As such, gloomy talk of a single-payer system forcing us to endure inferior service to our current corporate plans is nonsense. The only single-payer system on the table is one so superior (and unlikely to happen) that complaining about it seems neurotic.

In summary, there is small but unlikely possibility that everyone in America gets such superior health care that corporate insurers cannot compete. The expected outcome is that every American is guaranteed a minimum level of health care and those of us fortunate enough to be able to afford better health care can still purchase it just as we do today.

Personally, I do not care what happens to my individual health care package. But I firmly believe that ensuring every man, woman, and child in America has access to at least basic health care is the right thing to do. And I am deeply ashamed that a small but vocal contingent of my fellow Americans so despises their fellow man that they want no part in it.

Sniffle Season

It's fall and the sound of snot is already filling my workplace.

Living in a city the size of Tokyo, you encounter a lot of people on a daily basis. And frankly, people are pretty dirty. It probably doesn't help that there is no custom to cover one's mouth when they cough or sneeze here. I've seen people pick their nose on the train and then immediately re-grab a pole or strap too. As a result, I make it policy to not touch anything.

I'm not ragging on Tokyo here. Frankly, I was appalled at how dirty San Francisco was when I first moved there. I later came to understand it was an "enlightened dirty", something you have to develop an appreciation for. Tokyo, being a far larger city than San Francisco, is correspondingly more enlightened.

So, with the H1N1 virus looming large in the headlines, my workplace has instituted policies including putting hand sanitizers at all of the entrances to "prevent carrying the virus in". We have also been instructed to stay at home if we are running a fever or otherwise suspect we may have contracted swine flu.

Now there is something that has always puzzled me: if you are feeling sick, why would you go into work to get all of your coworkers sick too? This was a complaint I've been harboring for years. Some fool thinks their work is so important that they come into the office and get 5 other people sick. If those five people have any sense, they'll stay at home to prevent further spreading illness, thereby reducing productivity 500% more than if the first person had just stayed home in the first place! But people don't think that way. They think just about their own deadlines or how to make themselves look better to their boss. It is the tragedy of the commons: in trying to sustain their own productivity, the productivity of the company as a whole -- or even the economy as a whole -- takes a hit. In their effort to wring half of their usual productivity in between bouts of coughing or sneezing, they risk spreading their funk to five, ten, a hundred others.

Please stop.

That said, the life of a Japanese salary man is pretty competitive. It is my experience that paid sick days are unheard of -- if you take a day off work, that comes out of your vacation time. Worse, if you take a day off, you "fall behind" your peers. You lose brownie points with your boss. When it comes times for promotion, it is Brownie Point Redemption Day and no one wants to be denied entrance to the pearly gates of management for another year of salary man purgatory.

Which explains why there are so many sick people on the train during the morning commute and why there are so many sick people in my office.

I had one coworker not come in today because H1N1 has been spreading around his daughter's elementary school and apparently made it back to his house. But in my giant open-plan office of 150+ people, there are at least ten more here and sniffling today. And fall is just starting.

I'm actually pretty concerned about coming down with H1N1 myself before the winter is over. It isn't that I'm so much worried about the illness itself -- like the SARS scare of a few years ago, it sounds like H1N1 is more bark than bite. What I'm concerned about is all of the bureaucracy that I would need to deal with. You see, my company has actually instituted a special policy just for H1N1 allowing us to stay home without consuming vacation days if we get a letter from the doctor proving we have H1N1. However, we can only come back to work once we have another letter from the doctor saying we're cured.

I never liked going to the doctor in the U.S., I really don't like doing it in a foreign country. Twice. For a disease they can't cure, no less.

That said, this seems like a nice safe policy to protect the company from H1N1-infected workers thinking they are so important that they need to come in anyway. They are telling us to stay home; even allowing us a special paid leave to do so.

I don't think it'll work, though, for all the same reasons workers always come in to spread their virus-infested cough spew. They should always stay home when the alternative is to risk getting everyone else sick too. But they need the brownie points. It is much easier to put on a mask and just pretend it is a cold than it is to deal with the doctor visits and company bureaucracy. And if they come in, they get the face time and bonus "perseverance" points that managers remember.

My forecast: a train-full of H1N1-carriers dutifully trudging into work, snorting and sniffling all the way. Shoot, come to think of it, even if they were clinic-bound, they'd be on the train sharing their germs.

Racism in Japan

I generally try to keep myself upbeat and try to maintain a positive outlook, but the racism in Japan really wears me down. The "帰れ(go home)", "死ね(die)", and host of other comments muttered in passing or said behind my back have really dampened my excitement about living in Japan. While less blatant, the rampant tendency for strangers to clear their throats or spit when they become aware of my presence suggests the racism runs pretty deep.

In hindsight, learning Japanese may have been a mistake; if you can't understand the language, you don't know when people are making rude comments.

Even as a white male, I do my best to not draw attention to myself. I've seen the looks of distrust and fear my fellow commuters give to foreigners of middle-eastern or African decent on the train. I can only imagine the death by the thousand cuts that everyday life in Japan must be for them.

My poor 5'2" wife isn't immune either. She's fed up with the way little old ladies stare at her and awkwardly avoid her like she was some sort of circus freak.

My coworkers often ask me why my wife and I don't go out and see more of Japan on the weekend. Frankly, at the end of a grueling work week, I don't have any urge to stand on the train some more. But more important, the last thing either of us wants is our weekend spoiled by bigots. Just going to the store can be emotionally draining. Trying to rent a room in the country can be outright impossible (70% x 37.8% = ~26.5% of hotels surveyed illegally refuse to serve foreigners; they cite "language barriers" -- apparently confusing nationality with language ability).

The almost-daily little hints, most of which seems trivially minor in isolation, add up to a roar of "you're not welcome here".

Before we came to Japan, we were familiar with the complaints many foreigners living in Japan have. The comment sections of many popular news sites aimed for expatiates living in Japan are filled with disillusionment. I always figured it was because the people hadn't taken the effort to learn the language, or had unreasonable expectations, or were being obnoxious in public...it had to be something they were doing wrong. Maybe it was; maybe I've made the same mistakes.

Since coming to Japan, I have come to appreciate Dave Aldwinckle's complaints and the hard work he has been doing to try and bring the injustices in Japan into the forefront. Whenever I get worked up enough about something that I want to bitch about it on my own blog, I just need to go hit his debito.org to commiserate.

When I was sitting in the comfort of the U.S.A., Debito's stories seem farfetched and, frankly, unbelievable. More than once I thought he was making a mountain out of a molehill. However, I now realize that he doesn't have to go digging to find examples of racism, discrimination, injustice, and hypocracy...it turns out there is just a lot of material to pull from here in Japan.

Unfortunately, while brave individuals like Debito are trying to recitify the situation, apologists still abound. Guides for foreigners coming to Japan are filled with such insightful advice as:

NOTE: At certain points through this and other articles we note that in some cases foreigners may be refused entry to particular hotels or rental of accommodation. This is not intended to imply any form of prejudice; it is merely a statement of the facts. Almost exclusively this is due to the very low number of foreigners in Japan, and general ignorance among the Japanese regarding foreigners. Smile, persevere, and try to be a good ambassador not just for your own country but for all non-Japanese in general.

(taken from http://educationjapan.org/jguide/accommodation.html)

That's right, denying you access to shops just because you are a foreigner isn't any form for prejudice. Nope. People may be ignorant and racist, but if there is one they are not: they are not prejudiced. So just suck it up and deal.

The implicit message: "no one wants you here and if you don't like it, well go home."

Anyway, I don't want to give the wrong impression: I've met a lot of nice people in Japan (and Japanese living overseas). If it weren't for the great folks I have (and have had) the pleasure to work with, I probably wouldn't still be here. That said, I am looking forward to going home. Honestly, many people I have met seem to have no comprehension of how intolerant their countrymen are or, as the quote above demonstrates, don't even recognize actions as being discriminatory in the first place.

So until I can go home, I guess I'll have to continue to find solice on Debito's blog.

The Gay Chikan

Japan has a particular problem with gropers on trains. So bad, in fact, that 2/3 of all women in their 20s and 30s report having been molested or groped on the train. Considering that most women pass through their 20s and 30s at some point in their life, I imagine it is safe to assume that almost every women has been groped at one point or another.

To alleviate the problem of gropers, or chikan as they are known in Japanese, many train operators in Japan have implemented women-only cars to segregate the perpetrators from their potential victims. The chikan are still there, but now they have no choice but to keep their hands to themselves. In theory. In practice, the women-only cars are overcrowded (perhaps a further testament to how pervasive the groping problem is) and the pervert-to-woman ratio in the normal cars is inflated.

I don't know what the solution is, but I can sympathize with the plight of Japanese women.

'Cause I'll be damned if I haven't been felt-up by the same (male) chikan three times now. This morning was the third incident and he was about to receive the brunt of a year of pent-up stress in the form of all the beating this scraggly nerd could muster. But reason got the better of me and a gruff throat-clear and repositioning of my bag was enough to get him to back off. You see, the reality of the situation is:

1. I've never fought anyone in my life. I'm a wuss. At 5'10 and 140lbs I've probably got 6 inches of height and 30lbs in my favor, but still, I've never kicked anyone's ass in my life. Frankly, I don't really know where to start. I'd be flailing there in my nerd rage kicking and screaming like an idiot.
2. He has good plausible deniability. The trains are crowded; he was reading a book with one hand while feeling around for my package with the other. Now I know there was enough room that he didn't need to stand awkwardly close to me and position himself so his free arm was a close as possible, and I know that his free hand was not simply resting by his side but rather working its way my direction. But once I confront him, all that goes out the window. The train moves on and there I am, in my broken Japanese, trying to explain that this sicko was purposefully grabbing my crotch. It is just his word against mine. Gay chikans don't seem to get much coverage here...surely I'll just be seen as a confused foreigner.
   
3. Had I beaten the shi*t out of him, I'd be the criminal. Honestly, this is probably true in the U.S. too. After all, feeling a guy up on a train may be a crime, but so is assaulting someone. It doesn't help that the popular image going around Japan the past few years is that most criminals are foreigners. Let's play pretend and say that I somehow managed to inflict severe injury on that pervert. If you are the police officer confronted with a bloodied and beaten Japanese man and an incomprehensible foreigner, who would you handcuff and haul off to jail? Yeah. I don't want to go to prison in Japan.
   

So all I could do was try to deter the guy. Luckily, he got the message but I don't really know what I can do if the pervert persists.

As a bit of history, I mentioned this was the 3rd time this guy has groped me. The first time, the train was really pretty full and, frankly, I was in denial at the time. It is pretty common for your hands to get pinned in awkward positions on a full train and he was being just subtle enough that it took me a while to figure out that it wasn't accidental. I was pissed, but thoroughly at a loss of what to do about it. That was almost a year ago.

The 2nd time, it was really obvious what he was up to. The train wasn't particularly crowded, but when he got on he positioned himself awkwardly close to me and turned such that his hand was next to my crotch. Within seconds he was feeling around while feigning reading a book. I turned to avoid him but he kept at it until I gave him a stern look and a gruff grunt. At which point he actually walked away and stood somewhere else in the train. That was about 8 months ago.

And then there was today. I had actually forgotten about this creep, but as soon as I saw him positioned awkwardly in front of me I knew what he was up to. I was channelling all of my pent-up frustration and anger to serve him up the best beating I could, but I knew I shouldn't. Luckily, clearing my throat was enough to tell him to go away and, like the previous time, he walked away and rode the rest of the way to Shinjuku at a safe distance from me. But god damn I was pissed. Pissed at this guy for repeatedly targeting me and pissed at the system for making it so hard to stop this jerk once and for all.

And this is exactly what almost every woman in Japan is forced to put up with.

At least a woman can grab his hand and call out "chikan" and have people believe her (at least in theory, this translation of a guide for woman on how to deal with chikans speaks volumes on the Japanese attitude toward the problem). But, seriously, I don't think I'm going to get the same support when I try to drag that gay chikan off the train. And, for some reason, I don't foresee the women-only car concept being extended to solve the gay chikan problem too.