Kurashi - News From Japan

 In April 2023 I held a lecture about the 1937 flight from Tokyo to London, and to my great surprise, the grandson of Tsukagoshi Kenji (the navigator) was there. Turns out he has a connection to Ito City, Shizuoka, and noticed the poster about my lecture.    His name is Tsukagoshi Yuji, and he was kind enough to agree to write a foreword to the Second Edition of my book. Many thanks also to Alan Graham who helped with the edit, and Patrick Sherriff who published it on Tower English. The Second Edition is now available on Amazon , both as a Paperback and as a eBook. Please order, rate and comment!  

My 2021 essay book U No Me Taka No Me is now available on Amazon - Click on Read More - How to order - Thanks everyone, please share and comment. Tell all your Japanese friends. Much appreciated.   マーティンの鵜の目鷹の目 -世界の消費者運動の旅から(発行:日本消費者連盟) by マーティン・フリッド , 日本消費者連盟 ¥1,430 著者のマーティン・フリッドさんはスウェーデン生まれ。ヨーロッパの消費者運動に関わった後、約20年前に来日し、現在は日消連の運営委員として、海外向けニュースレター「Japan Resources」の発行などに携わっています。プライベートでは野菜作りや陶芸を楽しみ、埼玉県飯能市での田舎暮らしを満喫しています。 そんなマーティンさんの魅力が目一杯詰まったのが本書「マーティンの鵜の目鷹の目」。人びとの日常によりそいながら軽妙なユーモアを交えて食、環境、エネルギー、社会のあり方、政治、経済を考えます。   ＜もくじ＞ 第 1 章 ラムサール条約から TPP へ 2012 年～ 2014 年 第 2 章 アメリカの食を変えたブロガー 2015 年 第 3 章 野菜を育てる 2016 年 第 4 章 きれいな空気は人権 2017 年 第 5 章 英語で発信する効用 2018 年 第 6 章 悪魔と食事をする時は… 2019 年 第 7 章 アーモンドとミツバチ 2020 年 【解説】世界の消費者運動の今 世界の消費者運動の歴史と課題　天笠啓祐 アジアの消費者運動と連帯する　纐纈美千世 「はじめに」から 1988年8月に、わたしは日本へやって来ました。はじめて口にしたお寿司やお刺身のおいしさは忘れられません。ご飯、味噌汁。日本の食べ物は世界一おいしいと感動しました。煮物やおひたし、漬け物など、日本にはすばらしい伝統食がたくさんあります。しかし、日本は食料自給率がことのほか低く、「地産地消」が崩れてしまっています。食への不安、環境問題やエネルギー問題や貿易問題など、消費者の側からのエッセーが必要です...

  My new book has been published! マーティン・フリッド (著)   世界中の消費者が同じ課題を抱え、悩み、たたかっている。スウェーデンに生まれ、ヨーロッパ、そして日本の消費者運動の現場を歩いてきた著者が、人びとの日常によりそいながら軽妙なユーモアを交えて食、環境、エネルギー、社会のあり方、政治、経済を考えます。   https://nishoren.net/new-information/14177 Consumers all over the world are facing similar problems, worries, and struggles. In this book, the author, who was born in Sweden and has walked the frontlines of consumer movements in Europe ...

  新書「鵜の目鷹の目」 https://peatix.com/event/1804945/view  新書「鵜の目鷹の目」の著者、マーティン・フリッドさんと対談します！マーティンさんは日本在住のスウェーデン人でずっと前からの仕事仲間です。はじめてマーティンさんと知り合ったのは、日本で開かれた食品安全の国際会議の通訳をしていた時です。マーティンは、日本消費者連盟で仕事をすることになりました。そして今月、同連盟で毎月書いているエッセーを本にまとめて出版しました。     このイベントでは、スウェーデン人のレーナ・リンダル（ホスト）と日本にお住まいのスウェーデン人のマーティン・フリッドさん（ゲスト）が日本語で対談をします。    話題の中心は新書「鵜の目鷹の目」、そしてその内容に関係した消費者のこと、日本の生活のこと、スウェーデンの生活のこと、などなどです。   　マーティン・フリッド 　　（Martin Frid） 最後に質問をする機会もあります。 本の詳細、注文については出版社「社会評論社」のページへどうぞ。 https://www.shahyo.com/ (本の紹介ページはこれからです。） マーティンさんが活動している団体、日本消費者連盟を紹介するページへどうぞ。 日本消費者連盟 日本消費者連盟フェイスブックページ チャンネル日消連（YouTube） マーティンさんの2009年の本も参考に： 「ニッポン食安全ランキング５５５」 このイベントはオンラインで開催し、「ZOOM」を使います。 ご問い合わせ先：lena@linkandlearn.se https://linkandlearn.se/home/japanese Read more ...

How we learnt about living in a galaxy, and finding out that there are many more out there.

If you love music, do learn how to read a musical score. My father spent a lot of time with me when I was a kid, working through the musical score. This is what a conductor has in front of him, be it a small chorus or a symphony orchestra. It all starts with the musical score. The director has to read it all, page after page. We just hear the magic. Here is a track that you may know, by Jean Sibelius. This music is familiar to British television viewers as the theme of the world's longest-running TV programme (1957-present), BBC and the The Sky at Night.

Today, I went to the Aviation Museum in Tokorozawa, Saitama prefecture, to give them a copy of my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon. I bet they were a bit surprised. I had not called ahead, which I should have done, and I have no calling card (meishi) to explain the details of my endeavor. 所沢航空発祥記念館 Tokorozawa Aviation Museum They kindly accepted my book for their library, and we had a lot of laughs. I suggested that they do a more thorough and large exhibition of the 1937 flight. I also mentioned that at Croydon in London, they had a proper display of the arrival, with lots of photos and more, while here in Japan, there is no such thing. Click here, and you can purchase my novel Kamikaze to Croydon on Amazon Iinuma Masaaki is a promising young pilot from the mountains of Nagano, Japan, who only has thoughts of flying for the Morning Sun newspaper. When he learns of a prize for the first aviator to fly from Tokyo to London in under 100 hours, he knows he has the will to...

1931: The first pilot to fly across the Pacific was Clyde Pangborn, and here is a great documentary on Youtube (only about 500 views, how about it). Great film clips from back in the early 1930s. He is remembered in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan, and in Washington State, U.S. For their accomplishment, Pangborn and Herndon were awarded the the White Medal of Merit of the Imperial Aeronautical Society by Consul General Kensuke Horinouchi. The presentation took place at the Japanese consulate on 21 November 1931. The United States National Aeronautic Association awarded the two men its 1931 National Harmony Trophy. And here is a novel that tells the story. One Chance for Glory by Edward (Ted) Heikell and Robert (Bob) Heikel, both from Washington State, U.S. Synopsis Pangborn flew 4500 miles over water in a Single Engine Land airplane, jettisoned his landing gear into the ocean to save drag, climbed outside at 17,000 feet in the frigid ai...

Quiz time - we all know the name of Charles Lindbergh flying from the US to Europe in 1927. Many other flight records were as important, but who did the first flight across the Pacific Ocean? What sets Lindbergh's record apart is that it was a solo flight. Not particularly useful, but in that day an age, it caught the attention of the general public and the media. More realistically, a pilot needed a navigator, as in my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon. Breaking the record and flying from Japan to Europe in just four days in 1937 could not be done solo. American Wiley Post and Harold Gatty did the first round-the-world flight in 1930, after the German Graf Zeppelin, piloted by Hugo Eckener had pioneered that particular feat (including a landing in Japan). Canadian pilot Harald Bromly was the first to make a serious attempt at the Pacific, but failed when starting from Tacoma, Washington State, U.S. ''I find it difficult to convince many persons that this proposed flight...

If you have ever been to Tokyo, you must have taken the Yamanote Line around town. Here are the melodies for the different stations. Sometimes, when I have an hour to spare, I take the Yamanote Line one way around, but I do hate the recent all-video trains. Let's keep the stress level down, shall we. Please, less ads, more train pleasure. Still, the JR East Yamanote Line has to be the best service around.

The wonderful things that happen. Or not. In 1991, Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu was invited by American director Jim Jarmusch to write the original music for his film "Night on Earth", but his finished work was subsequently rejected by the director. The supposedly lost music by Takemitsu was aptly titled “L.A., New York, Paris, Rome, Helsinki” - five cities featured in Jarmusch’s film.

Amazing images from April, 1937 as the Kamikaze-go landed at Croydon, London. From my new friends at the HCAT Archives, Peter Skinner and Ian Forsyth. Record breaking flight from Tokyo. Can you spot Tsukagoshi climbing out of the airplane in the first picture? That's the easy one. Finding Iinuma in the last image may be more difficult, what with all the London policemen escorting him. He smiles a lot, holding on to a bunch of flowers, and is rather sun burnt from the long flight over the desert. Don't you think he was the happiest man on earth, that day. It inspired my wish to write about his long flight from Japan to Europe. And you can order my novel about it here, Kamikaze to Croydon . Bonus image: I took this photo of Iinuma Masaaki's pilot licence at his museum in Nagano:

First time I heard of this guy and his great story. Harry Ohara was born in Japan, studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, went to British India and worked for a newspaper. When war broke out, he joined the British Army. Later he flew after having started as a mechanic. Kyodo notes that he is thought to be the Royal Air Force's first - and only - Japanese pilot: O'Hara applied to become a pilot at exactly the right time, according to RAF Museum curator Peter Devitt. A portrait of an intense looking O'Hara stands out among the heroes -- the only Asian among the portraits -- that decorate the wall at the RAF Museum. More details at the Great War London blog , that notes (correctly) that he must have been flying for the Royal Flight Corps, not the RAF (RAF was formed on 1 April 1918): In March 1917, O’Hara transferred to the RFC as a 2nd-class air mechanic (the basic rank for RFC men – equivalent to his rank of private in the Middlesex Regiment).  He was soon ...

If you have read my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon, you know that our two Japanese flyers went straight from Karachi to Basra. Their Mitsubishi Ki-15 had that much power. Out in the desert, there were many other established aerodromes or airfields, but what were conditions there and what did they actually look like? 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. Here is an excerpt: Our altitude was again near 3,000 metres, which the Ki-15 seemed to find most agreeable, no matter what the conditions were. We had Iran on our right, and there was Arabia proper and Oman, according to the new maps. Tsukagoshi read the names. We reached Musandam and the Strait of Hormuz, which was just 54 kilometres wide. I clearly recalled all we had back a few months ago was a terrible old chart, with no elevations indicated, and Charles Lindbergh’s new maps were such a revelation...

Update: And wrong I was. It was President Truman who had to deal with General MacArthur, as Pandamonium kindly points out in the comments.  Original post: Great video of the project to save the Columbine II and get it to fly again in 2018: ...Because this is the plane that took President-elect (correct me if I'm wrong) Dwight D. Eisenhower to South Korea in 1952, in order to stop General MacArthur, who was proposing atomic bombs all over the border inside Communist China,  Later in 1955, Eisenhower was promoting much the same as the New Look , a policy to expand American nuclear weapons, now against the Soviet Union. Image (left) from Ladies Love Taildragger s (Kurashi loves blog names like that!) Known as the Columbine II , this beautiful aircraft, a Lockheed Constellation, was the very first "Air Force One" and now it has been restored and flies again. From Warfare History Network : After World War II, Eisenhower went on to serve two terms as Pres...

Back when flying was a luxury, or at least a lot more comfortable than today (except for the smoking!). The destinations were a lot more exotic too... The Stratocruiser was flying from the US to Honolulu, Wake Island, and arrived at Haneda in Tokyo. Pan Am started flying DC4s to Japan in 1947 and the B-377 was introduced in 1949. 10 years later in 1959, they introduced the B-707 jets which were much faster than the old propeller planes. Here is a longer promotional film about the Stratocruiser, with some interesting history about the civilian mail services that started flying in the late 1920s.

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...

Swedish Draken fighter. How we managed to stay neutral during the Cold War. Read more about my visit this summer, to the F10 Royal Air Force Museum here . And more from 2018: "Not an eye is dry" watching this unique formation of Swedish-built aircraft, including the Tunnan, Draken, Viggen and Gripen.