Yuki in Crazyland?

Yuki - Fugainaiya

My dear lord. This girl makes Bjork look sane. This is a track released for the anime 'Honey & Clover', though the video has little relevance to it. More like Alice in Wonderland. Yuki turns up at the end, drumming on a cat... Just watch it.

I hope they let me back in the country

Whale, anyone?

I was out with friends last Saturday night, a bit drunk (getting moreso, celebrating the victory ground out by the All Blacks over Australia), and being a bit adventurous in the food I ate. You may say "Tim, you've been in Japan collectively over 14 months now, surely you've eaten mostly everything they have to offer. What have you been doing, hiding under a rock and chewing moss?". To which I may well reply "how did you know?", but I may also point out that the Japanese really do have some nutso stuff on their menus, and everywhere's got its own speciality, so good luck munching your way through the jist of their cuisine. That could actually be fun: a Japanese food scavenger hunt. Quick, check the fermented beans off the list, we're off to find fish sperm!
Anyway, in our midst was a guy I hadn't met, Joran, who happened to be from Norway. And being Norwegian, he didn't just enjoy your everyday seafood; nay, he was partial to the 'other fish'. The big fullas. The ones we put a lot of effort into saving. Well, our side of the world does.

Now, I'm a fairly green kinda guy; 90% of what Jeanette and Nandor have to say makes perfect sense to me (apart from the wacky baccy. Find me an environmentally friendly reason for that one). And Greenpeace sure as hell have got their heads screwed on better than the majority of any political groups. But I still said to myself: I need some evidence that the opposition aren't completely insane. I need to know what Moby Dick tastes like. FYI, that's a literary reference, not a homoerotic one.

So, we ordered some whale sashimi. It looks pretty guilty to be honest: deep red, which sparked up great imagery that we always get in the news, with Greenpeace boats trying in vain to stop the massive corporate ships from dragging a semi-living whale carcass up the gangway, whilst it loses more blood than you thought it actually contained, like some kind of black hole of claret. The meat looks stained from the kill, but other than that, it pretty much resembles standard raw fish. And the taste is fairly non-offensive too. With sashimi you tend to use a variety of soy to dip it in, and all flavour is essentially drowned out by this. What do whales taste like? Pretty similar to tuna, especially when they're both coated in soy sauce.

So do I feel ethically bereft? A little. My whale experience left me with a great sense of "Oh, OK." Not "Ohhh, OK" where you've sussed it all out, but more like "Oh, OK..." where its just another piece in the puzzle. Whale doesn't taste bad, but it sure doesn't leave me gagging for more, especially as the price puts it more expensive than beef here. As far as political stance goes, I'm still pretty anti-whaling. But more than anti-whaling, I'm anti the whole whingy and cunning process by which the issue is handled. The moratorium is there for a reason: whales were being killed at a rate they couldn't handle. I don't care about tradition, I'm more concerned about extinction. But in the same sense, I don't have overly amazing affinity towards whales.

Finger lickin' good!

They don't snuggle me when I'm sleeping, and though they impress the hell out of me, I'm not going to loan a minke my car late at night. All the time and money that goes into meetings and arguments about whether it should be legal should be being spent on research, to figure out exactly how many dead whales is too many, and what rate of capture is 'sustainable'. Neither side has anywhere near enough evidence to support their cases. Meanwhile, I'm going to stick to "fishblocks". Damn, this one was salty.

This Binary Universe

Check this out. BT's newest album in the works. I get goosebumps.