So I started writing this in my head yesterday. Camping was great, had loads of fun and did some amazing things but... but before I get into that there's something else.
See, Japan is a country that has a lot of it's stuff together. I mean that: low crime rate, long life expectancy, successful schooling, a general middle class feel to the place.
And then there's things where I think: Damn, Japan is way more messed up than the UK. I saw it yesterday.
But first, some background information.
Now, everyone's heard of the military-industrial-complex, the fact that in America there's so much money to be made from war and such close links between the government and the companies that make weapons that, hell, there's got to be a conspiracy, right? Well, I don't believe in the conspiracy, but I do believe that people will look after themselves first and than can lead them to making some pretty bad decisions that have global impacts, but that's another story.
Japan doesn't have a military-industrial-complex; it has an industrial-industrial-complex. People in the UK moan about out budget debt, but that's nothing on Japan: Japan 's debt is 120 odd percent of its GDP a year; it used to be 150%, so it's gotten better, but the numbers can be hazy at times. I don't even know when Japan last had a balanced budget. Putting it in perspective, the UK owes 68% of it's GDP in debt, so we're ahead of Japan. But the big money lenders out there view Japan as a serial borrower: Japan's always got money it always makes the minimum payments... let's keep giving them money!
Where's all the money go? Well, Japan being the stable country that it is, it has a huge bureaucracy. Massive, with the two biggest players being the Finance Ministry, who control what government departments get the money and the Construction Ministry, which builds stuff. Now, every government department has got to spend all its money every year as that way it won't get less money next year, which is a sort of inflation which can cause a country to get badly into debt, just like Japan. Lots of lots of departments (and there's loads of civil servants in Japan, and they all have pensions and great perks and it's a job for life) that are designed to spend money, and you've got to be successful at the spending money bit, or you're just not doing your job properly, are you?
Anyway, one of the main ways that Japan spends money is in building stuff. Building stuff is great because it creates jobs, which means happy workers who pay tax and spend their money on things and vote for the correct ruling party in elections; so the Construction ministry is well engaged in spending money and they do love to spend it: bridges to nowhere, artificial islands, the whole works.
Just such a shame that their royally destroying their environment. They love to cement in the sides of mountains, they love to cement in the seas. They love to build stuff that just isn't needed.
When we were out walking yesterday we came across this place:
Nice, huh? We thought so. A little hotel/cafe thing by a beach. Struck me as a little odd that the path down to the beach was so over grown.
And then we walked down to the beach and we saw it:
Yeah, devastation. From the pictures in the brochure it was a hell of a nice beach too, but all gone. What are they building? Well, it's a fishing port. Even though there's at least two within 5 miles of this spot, the government's building another one, tearing up a beautiful beach in the process.
Criminal isn't the word.
And that poor girl running that hotel has just lost her unique selling point. The beach itself is gone for a mile, getting turned into road out of the fishing port, there's a man made island that's been built for some reason too, with a bridge across to it. Dunno why.
This part we were walking on is a sort of a natural causeway that creates an inland sea, real beautiful and, further up on the other side of the cause way... more building works. This is the side facing the inland sea, by the way. And what are they making? Flood defences. Flood and tidal waves defences.
On an inland sea.
Let's not point out that those things already exist naturally, humm?
So depressing.
Hum, haven't actually spoken about the camping. Just so pissed about the casual destruction of the environment, a destruction that a lot of people just ignore and which is bound up in the way the government runs the country. Money has got to be spent, it's good to spend it on building stuff, so let's cut the top of a mountain and dump it in the sea!
So depressing.
Anyway, fishing tomorrow.
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