Kurashi - News From Japan

Great documentary, it made me cry. I fought so hard 20 years ago to tell the story of Monsanto's crimes and especially the massive use of glyphosate (Roundup) and its links to cancer. Did my newspaper articles and blogs and consumer activism make any difference? What I tried to convey, was that all the toxicology data was on the active ingredient only, and not on the final product (Roundup) that people use. When you add the other chemicals to glyphosate, and spray that product, you get risks. Rules at national levels go with the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius rules. At such meetings I attended back then, the ignorance of what this company was pulling off was staggering. On the other hand, I was asked, "Could you make a better rule?" Unless we eat organic, this is how most of our food gets made. Australian ABC made the video, do spread the message. Now that German Bayer owns Monsanto, expect things to get better, anyone?

Novel Approach My editor Patrick Sherriff over at Tower English in Abiko helped me publish my novel on July 21, 2018. I have a lot to say about his skills as an editor, with a keen sense of sticking to his three approaches to fiction editing. Well, it helped me a lot, and his support was terrific... Here is how Patrick puts it: Character arcs. Every story is a journey. For a story to have meaning, there has to be change. Characters start out one way, they experience difficulty or, as the novelist calls it, conflict, until by the end of the story they have changed. That basic pattern — starting with a goal in mind, dealing with conflict, changing — should be present in the novel as a whole and within each scene and for every major character. You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Iinuma Masaaki is a promising young pilot from the mounta...

This is a fun movie about how Toyota got its start in the early 20th century, with a lot of details from the factory floor and how to fund such an adventure. In the 1920s, Japan was importing some 2000-4000 cars and trucks and made almost nothing domestically. GM and Ford had factories in Japan, back then. Now, the foot is firmly on the other shoe, ahem... How to get that first model A1 to go that extra mile, in 1936 or so? In my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon, I mention how young Iinuma Maasaki, the pilot of my novel, reacts to seeing one of these Toyotas in Tokyo. You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Do click that link, and go through the easy steps. His sempai and navigator, Tsukagoshi Kenji, warns him that making such vehicles would require a lot of resources, that Japan did not have. We were interrupted as a black car drove past on t...

Mateusz Urban... now wait, can that really be his name? This young Polish illustrator and painter has some cool ideas about how people in Japan ought to plan their housing... He also draws Tokyo landscapes from what I suppose are different income classes. His Tokyo at Night series is amazing too. Where do you want to live? We should all press our politicians and city planners and architects - and especially the private companies - for affordable sustainable development, and some places just get it about right. https://mateuszurbanowicz.com/ About