しゅうかんてきな生活１：鳥、春ネズミ

しゅうかんてきに、イギリス人は冬ときにイギリスの小さい動物の死亡に対して守りたい。そうするために、鳥と小さい動物に食べ物をやる。例えば、この事で、鳥に食べ物をやる：

普通に、豚しぼうやナツなどやる。冬中なら、お湯もやる。

（この鳥テーベルはお父さんの友達のにわにある）。

そして、いろな野生動物に食べ物をやる。たとえば、田舎にすんだら、狐やアナグマなど食べ物をやる。私のお父さんの友達はちょっと街の近くに住むので、この動物が見えないが、春ネズミが見える！だから、にわの中には小さい春ネズミのお皿。




これだ！
小さい春ネズミをこれから食べていることの想像ができますか？かわいい！

イギリスの田舎３：猫、トゲイラクサ

お父さんの家の近くで、この猫を見つけた：









そして、このてんけいてきなイメージを見つけた：












上のほうにはトゲイラクサ、英語で「stinging nettle」と言われた。この直物をふれるとひりひりさせる。痛い！下のほうは「dock leaf」という直物。この直物を刺されたところをこすったらすぐ直る。不思議だけどいつも効きます。不思議な事実は。。。この２つの直物はいつも一緒に植わってる。もしグゼンにトゲイラクサに刺されたら、１００％確率に「dock leaf」がすぐ見つかる。大丈夫ですよ！！！でも、この事実は不思議である。。。

イギリスの田舎２：街

デヴォン州の街の写真である。

ロンドンと日本の関係１：服店

オクスフォード道でこの写真をとった。ちゃんと見たら、なにが見える？ユニクロ！！！

ユニクロの店が多い！オクスフォード道で２つの大きい店がある。近くのリージェント道で、もう２つがある。ユニクロはロンドンでおしゃれである！！！！びっくりした！このユニクロのはんたいに（この写真なら、私の後ろに）は。。。は。。。無印！！！この会社もたくさん支店がロンドンで成り立った。

日本のきほん服は、ロンドンでおしゃれ！！！

そして、これはロンドンで買ったフレンチコネクションのシャーツである。せんたく情報は日本語である！なぜロンドンでフレンチコネクションという服は日本語情報がある？

分からない！

イギリスの食べ物３：貝の漬け物！！

貝の漬け物だ！ビーチで発見した。これは人気の夏の食べ物である。

普通に、貝は：ザルガイ、イガイ、アサリ；エビとイカも食べる。

味はすっぱいと塩と思うけど、私はこれがあまり好きじゃないので、ちょっと味忘れてしまった。イギリスに来たら、食べてみてね。。。

イギリスの花見

イギリスの春は日本の春よりさむいだから、桜は日本より長く残る。１ヶ月くらいに残るので、落とす前に木の葉っぱが起こる。この写真は５月５日にとったのに、花と葉っぱが一緒に見える。

この日に、道に運転する間に、桜が落としていた。（この事象は日本語で特別な表現だが。。。日本語で何ですか？だれかコメントで教えてもらいますか？）

（写真における人は私のお父さんです）

イギリスの食べ物２：パイ、マシュ、うなぎ

デヴォン州でこの店をみた。小さい言葉は "Pies, Mash and Eels" という。これはしゅうかんてきなイギリスのレストランである：パイ、マシュポテトとうなぎレストラン。ロンドンでもこのレストランみたいな店で食べられる。

おいしいかおいしくないかどうかまだ分からない。エマさんがマシュポテトが大好きだから、エマさんが来たあとで、一緒に食べに行くかもしれない。。。

イギリス食べ物１：パースティ

これは「コーニシュパースティ」というパイである。「コーニシュ」の意味は Cornwall （コーヌワル）州で発生された意味である。有名な西南イギリスの食べ物である。






パースティの中には、いろな味がする：

• 豚
• チーズとネギ
• 野菜
• じゃがいも

が普通である。上の写真のパースティはチーズとネギである。下の写真のパースティはりんごとクロイチゴである。

森の音

デヴォン州の森の音である。

ビール１

イギリスビールはあたたかくてアワがなくて飲まれている。イギリスの飲み場所は「Pub」（パッブ）といわれる。特製ビールを売るパッブが多い。デヴォンでこの２つのビールの種類を買った。上のほうのビールはとなりの「コーンワル州」で作られている。下のほうのビールの名前は日本語で「カワウソビール」である。デヴォン産ビールである。

私は、イギリスビールがおいしくて、パッブによってちがう特製ビールが買える文化が楽しい。イギリスにいる間、たくさんいろなビールをのんでみる！！！

ティンモス

デヴォン州

デヴォン州はイギリスの西南のほうにある、いなかが多いところである。私のお父さんの家は「ニュートンアッボッと」と言う街にある。しょうがないけど、お父さんの家はトレーラーハウスである。

デヴォン州はみどりが多い州である。歴史的に、有名な国王「アーサー王」がここで生まれて、近くの州に住んだ。私は、子供ときに、ここととなりの州、「サマセット、ウィルトシャー」に住んでいた。

この時、私は２日間だけにここに泊まった。そして、こわい街ロンドンに行くべきだった。。。

イギリス到着

５月４日にイギリスに着いた。ちょくせつに、Devon　「デヴォン州」にバスで行った。お父さんはデボンに住むので、２日間にこの州で留った。

飛行機は大丈夫だった。となりの女性は、ニュージーランドに引っ越す予定だが、最後の引っ越し準備をするためにイギリスに行った。あの女性はイギリスについて私にたくさん悪い事を言った。はんざいが多いし、生活が高いし、人がぶれいだし、せいふが悪いし。。。waaaaaa!! イギリスようこそではなかった！！

ヒースローのターミナル３に着いた。建物はとてもきたなかった！安っぽいだった！カーペットが解れさせた！！会社員がこわそうだった！ようこそではなかった！

そして、バスでデボンに行った。７時なのに、日がまだ入れなかった。バスからのけしきがとてもきれいだったので、この旅はとてもおもしろかった。１１時にデヴォンのニュートンアッボットに着いて、４年ぶりでお父さんと会った。

イギリスのようこそは。。。？

The Daily Wanker 2008 review of bars: Matsue and Tottori

Should one ever by accident find oneself in Matsue, rest assured that one of the first things you will need is a drink and some good food. So here is a review of some of the better bars in that benighted town, and in nearby Tottori (where the food is better).

kumakichi: located in kyomise, this Japanese Inn (izakaya) provides food and drink in a convivial, highly Japanese environment. Like most of the bars in Matsue it has no English language on the menu, and the menu has no pictures, so you really need to go with someone who can read. But there are too things you can eat without the menu - walk up to the bar and you will see a plate of what look like deep-fried fish skeletons. These are "karei karaage", deep-fried flounder, and absolutely no better is available anywhere in Japan. They look like the most horrific thing you have ever eaten but they are unsurpassedly delicious, and quite an experience. You eat the whole thing, by the way - head, fins, tail, everything. Do it with your hands, breaking the bones into pieces and crunching them down. The bar also has an excellent set of sashimi, and I thoroughly recommend the kawahagi if you go in winter. The kawahagi sashimi comes with a little piece of liver, which tastes for all the world like some kind of savoury cream. Crazy! The staff here are really friendly and it has its own brands of shochu (Japanese liqueur, a bit like whisky and made from wheat, rice or sweet potatoes) and sake. The food is universally excellent, and the atmosphere the cheeful, rowdy atmosphere of a typical Japanese Inn.

kagetsu: an izakaya near kumakichi in higashi hon machi, kagetsu looks from the outside like a wood-walled fortress. Inside it is superbly appointed in traditional Japanese style, with a fine curving bar downstairs and private rooms upstairs. There is a kind of curved aesthetic to the whole thing, as it is on a street-corner, so between the private booths and the open tables upstairs they have a little zen-garden curving around the tables, and curving windows overlooking the street. The food here is excellent, particularly the sashimi and salads. Once for a starter they served us a plate with a tiny, whole crab on it, roasted whole in honey. One had to eat the whole thing - legs, head, shell, the lot. Their selection of Japanese alcohols is excellent, with Plum wines and sakes and Sho chus from regions all over Japan, laid out by taste and style. The staff are friendly and accomodating, and the service inobtrusive. The service here puts a premium on Japanese style decoration, and regional foods and drinks.

foods inn, rise inn: two branches of the same restaurant, one near the university and aimed more at the university scene, one in the city and aimed at business people. These too are izakaya with a wide selection of foreign ("ethnic") foods to choose from, including Thai and European. Foods Inn definitely has a Handsome Boy hiring policy, while Rise Inn maintains an excellent cocktail menu. Once we had the all you can drink option at Rise Inn, and discovered that their all you can drink menu includes White Ladies and Martinis. I drank White Ladies for 2 hours, and got rather hammered. The decor at both restaurants is good and the staff friendly, but it is more businesslike than the other izakaya mentioned here. Fortunately the menu includes some pictures, but again no english.

Sign: Sign provides a bit of a cross between a restaurant and bar environment, with upstairs more like a bar. They provide Italian and Asian-style food, including excellent pasta, and bar-style drinks and coffee. The upstairs bar is decorated like a kind of lounge/bar, so there are many couches including couple couches facing the window, for privacy while flirting. Screens protect the customers from seeing the bar, so one feels one is in a loungeroom. The staff are a little busy and standoffish, but for large groups it is the best way to have a low-key evening of eating and drinking, and it is extremely convenient to the station.

Bihaiv: perhaps meant to say Beehive, is a macrobiotic restaurant near Sign which provides vegetarian and meat dishes, alcohol and hippy foods. It is decorated like a Spanish bar, very small and cosy. I cannot remember if the menu has English, but one staff member lived in NZ and has excellent English. They make some fine sake cocktails here, and the fake-meat food is great. Good for a hearty meal.

Bar EAD: the nicest way to have a relaxed drinking experience in Matsue, Bar EAD overlooks the lake near the older bridge, Ohashi. It is close to kumakichi and kagetsu for cheaper, after dinner drinks. The drinks are not sophisticated and it only serves finger food, but the staff are cheerful and inobtrusive, and the feeling is again that of a lounge bar. The view is excellent, providing a vista of the shoreline and the lake, with a stretch of river between. Always a good way to finish the night.

Cafe EAD: opposite bar EAD, cafe EAD is open only for half the week, from perhaps midday to 10pm. It serves food, wine and beer, and cakes and coffee. It is a tiny cafe, set in an old sake brewing shop, with 2 tables downstairs and 2 tables upstairs plus a couch. The decor is kitsch second-hand 50s and 60s stuff, battered wood and strange posters, just like an inner-urban cafe anywhere else in the world. The staff are very sweet and kind, and you can make friends with them pretty easily. Both levels have a view of the river and lake, but not as spectacular as from Bar EAD. The curry lunch is cheap and good.

Alibi: a cafe/bar near the University which provides excellent cheap lunch and dinner sets, and a range of simple cocktails, beer and wines. It plays jazz, has a couch and a couple of tables, and is waited upon by the most handsome men in existence (according to the Delightful Miss E, whose tastes we may recall are quite suspect). The staff are kind and friendly, the food is good and the atmosphere that of an unhurried lounge. An excellent way to end a hard day of "study".

Blue Crow: A food and cocktail bar across the road from Alibi, Blue Crow has minimal decorations but an excellent cocktail menu. Not only does it include its own creations on the menu, but the back page of the menu gives a list of suggested words you can throw at the waiters to get a unique taste. These include "first love", "snow", "spring", "rain", "sweat"(?), etc. It's a fine experience to come here with friends and try to guess the ingredients of the barman's first love. Mostly, it would seem, they are sweet and slightly purple.

In Tottori, my most frequently visited places are:

fuchan ramen: next to Tottori station, an excellent spot for a huge helping of karaage at lunch time. The ebi karaage (deep-fried prawn) for a mere 650 yen will keep you going for 2 days. A classic ramen restaurant, with a cheerful and welcoming obachan to draw you in.

luz restaurant: an izakaya on the main entertainment street, little more than a nook in the wall with an excellent range of foreign foods, including south east asian, and regional Japanese alcohol. The staff are friendly, it has a singing bird and a very cute toilet.

cafe chocolate: the food and drinks are ordinary, but Mr. Hiroki maintains that the bargirl is the most beautiful and sexy woman on the Earth. "She is perfect!" On hondori from Tottori station.

bar DNA: a bar with 80s disco style decor, popular with foreigners in Tottori but (due to the unique nature of Tottori foreigners) not a toilet. It runs regular night clubs, although at times it is simply open for a night of drinking and 80s music. If you want to meet a foreigner who has done more than anyone else to forge the unique foreign community of Tottori, visit DNA and ask for Stephen. He used to run the incomparable Viva Shiva restaurant, source of the best homus in Western Japan. Sadly that has now closed so he can focus on DNA - so make it worth his while and pay him a visit.

murthi: a South-East Asian style South East Asian restaurant between the International House and the big shopping centre (Jusco? Saty?) in North Tottori. It has a big projector for playing music videos, cane armchairs, friendly and welcoming staff, and good south east asian food. The Pad Thai is excellent. Also, a hippy shop is attached. Well worth a visit if you are staying at the Kaikan, or if you have a car.

These are the places I have mostly frequented over the last 2 years, though in Tottori particulary you can drop in pretty much anywhere and be guaranteed cheap, excellent food. For a culinary tour of Japan par excellence, I recommend the San In coast at any time of the year.

Job-seeking in Japan

The Delightful Miss E and I have watched this year as some of our younger friends attempt to find work at companies now that their university careers are in their last year. As I mentioned when discussing Japanese universities, for most Japanese people university is a ticket to a job in a company, and their whole education focusses on getting them successfully to "shushoku", job hunting at the end of their university life.

Getting a job through shushoku means becoming a company man or woman, working hard but getting paid overtime and bonusses, yearly pay rises, and a career path. These jobs used to be much more the province of men and women, but as the pool of jobs has decreased the number of women taking them has increased. The assumption is that once one has joined such a company one will stay with it, and adopt the "job-for-life" model of Japanese fame. It is a tough but ultimately financially rewarding pathway through life, and most people who go to university plan to take this path.

For most of these people, however, work after leaving university will not involve any special tasks related to their study. So the exceptionally short Miss K, who recently took up work with Nissan, is doing some kind of management job in a factory or shop in Hokkaido, even though she did her undergraduate studies in Agriculture, including with stints to do experiments in Mexico and China. For these people the application process is easier, since they can apply to any company they think has good conditions. However, for people like the Unflappable ChikaChan, or the endlessly happy Miss H in Tottori, the process is considerably more difficult. Chikachan wanted to pursue a career in design and art, having specialised in art in her degree; and Miss H, undaunted as ever by having failed to enter a specialist course for perfumers in Shizuoka university, wants to try and find a job in a perfume or cosmetics company even though she has done a general food science degree. For these women, the application process is restricted to trawling through specialist companies, as Miss H has been doing for the last 6 months.

So what are the stages of this application process?

• Attend an information night, probably in one of the big cities, where one can register ones interest
• Take the online personality test (?)
• Submit a proper application form and cover letter, if the online personality test was successful
• Attend a group interview at the company offices in one of the big cities
• If successful, return to the company office to give a presentation
• If this is successful, return to the company office to give another presentation to the President
• Receive the job

That's right, for a starting graduate job with a wage of maybe $25-28000 a year, Miss H has to make 4 trips to Osaka or Tokyo and undergo 3 interviews, 4 if there is a personal interview at any point. Should she take a job, she will then spend the first years of her work being shuffled through different offices and positions in the company, perhaps learning the ropes of different departments, before finally being given some kind of elevated responsibility. It is not unusual for company employees in Japan to spend 5 or 10 years being transferred regularly (sometimes with 2 weeks' notice) around the country.

There are other types of jobs (such as one in marketing recently snared by the Stunningly Handsome Mr. Hiroki) which require less intensive application processes, and are run by small local companies. But these do not come with the long-term security and benefits of the big companies. For example, my Japanese Teacher, Professor F, is married to a man who works for the Shadow of the Mountains Overall Combined Bank. He is paid overtime for every hour he works, and until recently worked until 10pm most nights. While it may be true that many Japanese work long hours, the company staff are paid for those hours, while staff in smaller local companies work shorter hours, but get no paid overtime. They also have less job security, and are less likely to receive bonusses. This system of distinction between company staff and everyone else is starting to create strains in Japanese society, and is receiving a great deal of criticism at present. The worst part of it all that I can see, though, is that while Miss H and Chikachan have had to jump through all those hoops to get their basic company job, the companies have been making record profits, but the starting wage remains stuck in the same bracket it was in the early 90s. The big companies have used the collapse of Japan's bubble economy as an excuse for 10 years of continuous cost-cutting and wage restraint, while forcing their new staff to jump through more and more hoops to get a chance at the shrinking slice of this pie.

Sound familiar to anyone?

Bullying and Quality in Japanese Universities

My experience of Japanese universities is restricted to only 2, Tottori and Shimane, but by being in the system for 2 years I have got something of an insight into how the system works and what it achieves. A few comments are in order.

Bullying: As observed in various private communications, my reason for leaving my PhD was largely bullying by my supervisor. The bullying took a mostly classic, universal form: yelling, insulting, deriding students to other students (and in some instances, saying bad things about me to friends of the Delightful Miss E!), publicly humiliating students, isolating me, and trying to control my personal life. Not all of these had happened to me (yet), but were targeted at younger students in our lab and would inevitably have crept on to me. The uniquely Japanese element of the bullying was the use of a particularly degrading form of language, usually reserved for pets and small children, which is specifically intended to enforce the relative power differences between student and supervisor. Aside from this, however, the bullying was of the classic sort one observes in Australian university supervisors all the time (and of the sort which has been directed against me before in Australia). Some of my friends have asked me if the bullying was an integral part of Japanese University life, and I can honestly say I don't think it is. I checked my supervisor's behaviour against that of other teachers, and they behave very differently. They are kinder, they use different language, they don't intrude on their students' personal lives as much, and they are supportive in public rather than humiliating. They certainly don't adopt the cultural nuance which my supervisor took, described as "samurai manner". His bullying was not some kind of locally accpetable cultural manner, either - he had a reputation as a strange teacher, and he also has a reputation for aggressiveness and rudeness amongst the students. His behaviour in one seminar, in particular, embarrassed and discomfited the other teachers, so I think we can safely say his style was quite unique.

Like all bullies though he is at heart a weak and pathetic man, and I dealt with him accordingly. But day-in day-out preparing for confrontation is emotionally draining and creates a fair amount of tension, so I am glad to be rid of it. Particuarly when I was preparing to give an all-Japanese presentation at a two-bit conference in Tokyo - a conference I knew he had only organised for me after he discovered I was going on holiday to Australia, in order to force my early return - the pressure became way too much. My Japanese was sadly not up to the task, and I had no guidelines or information about the conference or the proper Japanese presentation style. It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate me in front of an audience of my "superiors", using the one method he knew was guaranteed to work - my language. He also was explicitly breaking an agreement we had for me to present in English this year and Japanese next. Obviously one cannot take on this kind of duplicity and bloody-mindedness for too long without wilting. But aside from the particular language-related elements, none of it seemed to be specific to his cultural origins. Anyone who has had as much bad luck with academic supervisors as I have knows that bullying of this sort is hardly specific to the Japanese.

However, there is a specific element of Japanese life which makes this harder to deal with. The university uses the "sensei system" for providing education to PhDs and 4th year students, and it is the backbone of their graduate system. It is set up to give almost complete power and control to the professors, and makes bullying very easy to do. Under the sensei system, one presents seminars to ones supervisor (sensei) every week as a form of education, and the sensei has near complete control over ones educational path and the content of ones studies. If ones sensei is a bully, or incompetent, or both, ones study will suffer. The sensei system not only grants the teacher great power, though - it is supported by the entire University system, and external means of assessment are minimal, as are external means of support or redress. Even yesterday, the day I left Matsue, I was receiving phone calls from the International Student Office pressuring me to change the contents of my resignation letter, in which I wrote I had "irreconcilable differences with my supervisor". Nobody at any level wants to interfere with the rights, authority or power of the supervisors, and they reign unimpeded over their students. In the case of some of my friends this has been fine, since their teachers are skilled mathematicians and good teachers. But in my case, and that of my other laboratory members...

Quality: I did not know this when I came to Matsue, but Shimane University is ranked second lowest in all of Japan's universities. I moved from a Masters Degree at the world's 31st ranked university to a PhD outside of the top 1000. Not such a good decision! The library is very small with many of its specialist books set aside for exclusive use in particular laboratories, and although there is a lot of money for equipment at one of the specialist labs here (geology), most of the normal facilities are lacking. There is no community amongst teachers, either - no seminars at faculty or department level, no staff lunches, no communal meeting place. All social life happens at the level of the laboratory. This ensures that bullying is not noticed by laboratory outsiders, and also ensures that poor-quality teaching is not noticed. It also ensures that everything one learns comes from senior figures inside one's own research group - there is no "corridor learning", no professional interchange of any sort that one does not seek out on a 1-to-1 basis. Even senior professors are afflicted by this problem, failing to learn anything about the activities of people in even closely-related areas without seeking it out on a personal basis.

Shimane University is, like a lot of Universities in Japan, on the edge of business failure. Japan has too many universities even for a society with a growing youth demographic, let alone an ageing society, and enrolment rates are plummeting. As this happens, third-tier universities seek to expand their pool of students by lowering entrance requirements, with the result that many of the students at Shimane University are really incapable of any form of organised study beyond High School. Students also expect that University study should be easier than school, and spend much of their University lives either bludging, working in part-time jobs or looking for full-time work in their last year. University life is a period of freedom before the company life, and universities are seen largely as a way to get a job in a company, not to learn a discipline. As a consequence, I am told that Japanese universities frequently provide no guidance on fields of study, and students do not have to choose majors/sub-majors along a particular educational path as I did. They pick and choose whatever they want to learn, because they know they will never be working in their technical field unless they continue studying past masters level. Shimane University is also pretty lazy with its pre-requisites and its assessments. Pressure to pass students is hardly unheard of in Australia, but in Shimane University it is so strong that I have personally passed a subject without meeting any assessment requirements because none were set.

Language has also for me been a problem, since for example there are very few statistics texts in English in the library and they are almost all sequestered away in individual laboratories. But why would English-language texts be sequestered away in a Japanese university? This points at a larger problem for Japanese universities - many technical texts are only available in English, and many of the best ones especially. One of my junior students in my lab told me there is only one basic Japanese-language book on the statistics programming language S and its corresponding software package S-Plus. The library appears to be funded only for general books, so specific texts and graduate texts go into the labs of individual teachers, not into the library. This is another educational consequence of the sensei system, I suspect, but it has profound problems for a non-Japanese speaker, or anyone working in a discipline like computational statistics which is not hugely popular in Japan. For example, one of the students in my lab had to write a program (for assessment) to complete a Cox Proportional Hazards Regression calculation explicitly using the Newton-Raphson method, handling ties. There is no information in Japanese for him to do this, and because his sensei doesn't do computational stats, he sent the student in question away to read an English text - though the student cannot read or speak English. Interestingly the Maths Department has a specialist library which is quite extensive, but it is uncatalogued, no-one uses it, no-one told me about it, I cannot borrow from it, and I don't have a key. I think this shows how much people keep their study within their own laboratories - even their perfectly well stocked library is unused, because being unrelated to a particular laboratory it is not funded and not supported.

Finally, the University system in Japan is suffering what I consider to be the long-term effects of running a fee paying, strictly user-pays system with limited public funds. Even though a University education is essential to get a company job, and even though science and technology is the bedrock of Japan's economic success, there is no student support system and limited public funds for professors. A mathematician in Japan can expect to spend a year looking for their first job after they leave their PhD, and their first job may not be a proper research job or a postdoc. The only form of student support available for living expenses is a loan, so almost every Japanese student has to get a part-time job or live off their parents' money. There is no student union and no compulsory subscriptions beyond tuition fees, so there are very few public facilities at the University. The sports clubs are entirely voluntary, their equipment falling apart and the grounds crumbling. The gym is absolutely terrible, because students cannot afford membership fees and there is no union to support renovations or staff. The university relies so much on student fees that even entrance examinations form a significant revenue source - some second tier universities used to take 10% of their annual income from entrance exams before the population of 18 year olds shrank, and they are having to revise their entire business model to account for the 10-fold reduction in income from this source. It is a testimony to the willpower, goodwill and community-spirit of Japanese young people that any kind of sense of community exists on campus at all, and most of it is powered by the voluntary effort of hard-working club members.

All of this obviously spells a serious problem for Japan's university system, and in time I think it will - like Japan's agriculture sector - have to go through a serious period of adjustment. My prediction is that Shimane University will collapse and be absorbed into Tottori University (which is vastly superior) sometime in the next 20 years, along perhaps with some technical colleges and prefectural universities in Yonago and Hamada, to form the "University of the San In coast", based in Tottori. Unless Japan reforms its agricultural sector significantly, this will have long-term implications for the economic prospects of a small rural town like Matsue.

And in the short term, it had terminal consequences for my pursuit of a PhD in mathematics. It hasn't helped my respect for academia or academics either. So for now I shall return to a real job, and try to forget all about the unsavoury personal relations I had to endure for the last 6 months of my time in Matsue...

The Daily Wanker 2008 review of international government services

The Daily Wanker presents again, by popular acclaim, a transantional comparison of government services. For this year's comparison we took upon ourselves the task of obtaining a British Passport. In order to complicate the process, we assumed that our prior passport had expired, but had been lost (it may actually be in a box in Australia, but who knows). Being Wankers, we assumed the number of the lost passport and its expiry date were forgotten. To complicate the process, we applied for the passport in Japan; and of course, being Wankers we were born in New Zealand and have a current Australian passport, but are eligible for a UK passport by descent. Travel had to occur within 3 weeks, so we needed to test the efficiency and speed of the various departments contacted. Below is our review of the various departments involved. Except where otherwise stated, staff were of the same nationality as the nation in which the office was located. Each service is rated out of 5 for politeness, and 5 for efficiency/correctness. Because English deparatments were assessed, the rating could range from negative infinity (obviously, poor) to 5 (best).

UK Visa Information Service, Osaka: Being a Wanker, I initially rang this service to find out what documents I needed, but they don't actually handle passport applications. Nonetheless, they charged me $8 per phone call to ask a question, and gave me wrong information about a topic they aren't meant to handle. They never once told me to contact the embassy.

• Politeness: 0 (being nice to me doesn't make up for charging me to answer questions!)
• Correctness: -10000

The British Consulate, Tokyo: The obvious first contact point for my passport, sadly I didn't use them immediately. Their telephone service was excellent but much of what they told me was, unfortunately, incorrect. Also, they were extremely officious, requiring that the letter of the law be followed. In combination, this led them to tell me that I was ineligible to receive a UK passport because my prior passport was lost, and in order to get one I had to report my prior passport lost, even though I don't know when or where I lost it, or anything about it, and I don't live in the country where it was lost.

• Politeness: 4 (they did that annoying thing where they kept interrupting me)
• Correctness: - 100000000

The British Consulate, Adelaide: In amongst their mistakes, the consulate general in Osaka told me that the Adelaide consulate could witness my Mother's birth certificate. This, it turned out, was wrong, and when I questioned its wrongness in this phone call the staff at the other end offered very bluntly to "read the law" to me, and started ranting about overseas missions.

• Politeness: 0
• Correctness: 5

The Department of Immigration Passport Infoline, UK: The woman who answered this phone was possibly the rudest, most abrasive and unpleasant creature I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. From her first question "The nature of your inquiry!" (notice the lack of question mark) to her final question "Can't you just fly back to Australia and get the old passport?", her manner was beyond the pale. I recommend a re-education camp for this girl. Also everything she "told" me was wrong.

• Politeness: negative infinity (no, I cannot "just" fly back to Australia to get a lost passport)
• Correctness: negative infinity (subsequent checks will reveal my lost passport is irrelevant)

Matsue Police Station: surprisingly, there is no way that the Matsue police can accept a lost passport report for a passport lost overseas. Who knew? But they were very apologetic, and even offered to give me their number so the embassy could ring them to confirm this obvious fact.

• Politeness: 5
• Correctness: 5

Adelaide Central police station: It turns out upon speaking to the Adelaide Central Police Station that they will take a report for a passport lost 10years ago, provided that I say I looked for it last week (nudge nudge) and can give the correct passport number. Also they can do it over the phone. But they cannot give me a police report, even though the passport office think this is mandatory, because police reports are only available under Freedom of Information. They give a report number, which the passport office subsequently told me (contrary to the information on the application form) that this is insufficient.

• Politeness: 3 (the officer was really nice to me, but I had to do some bowing and scraping first)
• Correctness: 5 (and thank god for that, too!)

So how did all this resolve itself in the end? The British Consulate General in Australia has different information on its webpage to the consulate general in Japan (handy that), stating clearly that there is no need to worry about lost passports if they have expired. After pointing this out to the Embassy, they "checked" with the passport processing officer, and revised my application. The passport finally arrived in time.

I think we can see a pattern here, in terms of whose service is more accurate, whose is more polite, and whose is just shit. May I add for posperity that I had for the first time in my life the experience of actually changing a public service worker's interpretation of the law, and that the public service worker in question was Japanese...? An interesting achievement. If only the British Immigration Department could take a leaf from that book. In the meantime, I shall rate said department with a negative infinity for politeness (for their staff's behaviour and their stupid rules, and for thinking a visa to the UK is worth 55000 yen) and a negative infinity for correctness (nothing they told me was even near correct).

The Daily Wanker has spoken! Surely now heads will roll...