LONDON -- Every year on my annual visit to Tokyo I spend at least one evening drinking sake in a small bar in Shibuya. And every year after I have finished eating one of the dishes the mama-san has put in front of me, while I am talking, there will be a big cheer and a lot of laughter. Yet again I have been tricked into eating whale meat. And every year I wonder why the Japanese are so weak at public relations and unable to attract the respect on the international stage that they believe they deserve. Very odd.
Listening to a Japanese senior politician recently saying that as long as one Japanese consumer wants to eat whale meat the Japanese will continue to kill whales to supply that need makes you wonder if he appreciates how ridiculous he sounds. Very odd.
And doesn't the senior Japanese bureaucrat at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) realize how silly it makes him and Japan seem when he claims a great political and moral victory when he has bought enough votes to ensure a minor victory -- a majority of one for a vote on an intention to return to commercial whaling "sometime in the future"? Very odd.