Friday 13 July 2007

Boycott UniQlo

why?!

WELL! Recently, and sporadically, I been trying a hand at volunteering, which has been fascinating, met some really interesting people. my friend annalisa, started soup kitchening.....not sure how she found out about it, but I wanted to join in. Unfortunately, I have my chat class on saturdays, so my time available to help is limited.

Anyway, I ended up having a very interesting discussion with the other volunteers over lunch (a late lunch... we work through til 3pm...and they start at 1030am...) about the (blatent) racism in Japan and the existence of what tantamounts to slave labour in rural areas. Illegal immigrants are shipped in (mainly from North Korea and China) and forced to work in sweat shops, under harsh conditions, little or no social amenities for them or their children (the children are denied access to local schools), and often find out too late that they have no civil rights.

Apparently gifu is rife with this which happens to be where UNIQLO manufacture their ridiculously cheap clothing. It's not only UniQlo who 'employ' these immigrants, a lot of other factories also keep these people, and the government turns a blind eye, they purposely DON'T look so that they can't see what's going on. Similar to monitoring pollution. If you know somewhere there is alot of pollution you don't record enviromental data there... You can see the resentment against the foreigners, as they are accused of taking local peoples jobs and increasing crime (does it soudn familar yet?). This leads to posters being put up in LOCAL Kobans (police box - which are on every street corner in Tokyo) having signs in them saying:

'If you see a dodgy chinese person, and you think they are taking your job, call this number: .....'

the Japanese language is subtle.

About the racism: there is some more mainstream racism, which stems from the hatred of foreigners, and despite the fact that some of the Koreans and Chinese communities have been living and born in Japan for 3-4 generations, they are still not able to claim japanese citizenship [you can apply for british citizenship after 10 years of residence] they can't vote (so i'm told), they have no say, they are treated as a lower caste. people will happily talk to them like a normal citizen (they look and act japanese) but as soon as they find out about their non-japanese roots they get a different reaction. If you ask me this is stupid. very VERY stupid. It is HOWEVER, happening more outside of the cities. All the Japanese people I am in contact with are much more open minded and NOT racist at all, but there is a lot of company policy against foreigners... For example; if you want to apply for a job here and you're not Japanese, you will have a hard time; as a lot of my lab members are finding out. You are often belittled at job interviews with a purposefully highest politeness level of spoken japanese; which is very very rarely used, so that it is difficult to understand. You are also explained that you will not have the same rights as the Japanese employees; you can be fired at anytime with out much as a weeks warning, you are considered a part-time employee. Why? companies and the government only want rich foreigners to come and stay here to bouy up the economy.

Anyway, michelle, one of the people who works for Second Harvest, was telling me about a conference that she went to where people basically shared information on the racism and hardship of non-japanese...kinda like an action group thing; there was one lady, who is of Korean decendence, 4th generation in japan and has experienced this racism forst hand through out her life, she told of how she had been treated as a half human all her life because of her Korean roots. So, she was particularly outraged when a politician running for election (I think local/prefecture) and was ranting on about how they should get rid of the foreigners, they are dodgy, they create crime, they are the cause of our social ills (nothing to do with us exploiting them and not giving them any social structure or educational system after importing them on mass here...thus they have nothing better to do...NO not our fault at all - yeah...everyone forgets about social engineering until it's too late... too busy being greedy) anyway, after rallying people to send all these foreigners BACK to their 'home' countries....even those who have been here for generations. the Korean lady was not only angry that this guy was trying to get rid of people like her, but more importantly that she knew that he himself was a Korean decendant. claims which he and his campaign team repeatedly denied. i mean, how could someone want to get rid of people just like himself? enraged at the betrayal, she ousted him publically on radio. they later found the politician had hanged himself at home with a suicide note. Did she feel bad that he died? very plainly, no.

Small Flies Farm

Just a quick photo of our combustibles bin in our lab....

"Small Flies Farm; Be careful, do not disturb them. (high rate of growth)"

We'd been watchin the small fruit flies amass around our lovely, decomposting, combustibles bin for a while now, but we hadn't really gotten to the stage of doing anything about it. Then yesterday, Kawano and Ramin strode past me; with an air of determination and purpose holding a cannister each. They very announced that they were going to 'Deal with fly situation'.

However, I don't think Seda was very impressed and so she put a sign on the bin...

Saturday 7 July 2007

Sushi USB memory...

Yes, I know, I haven't written in a while... sorry...I'll be better honest...


I have a little lab trip into the wonders of a place called Gifu, a short trip to Nagano, and a adventure into the rainy Japanese countryside to tell you all about. But first, you get a picture I took in Yodabashi (one of those ~huge~ electronic meccas) today



Yes. They do actually sell USB memory in the shape of full scale, 3D sushi.

How utterly cool is that?!