Look what I found in the paper



It's a whaling festival. With a concert, quiz, whale products, whale goods, whale books, etc. It'll be good times. The best thing though is the picture of the ship. Written on the side in big block letters: RESEARCH

yeah research is how they get away with whaling. they are allowed to take a certain number of whales of certain species under the guise of "research", in the order of thousands of whales, which are then sold for food in japan.

I have no idea who's eating the whale. I haven't met a single person here who likes it

good point. a lot of people question that too.

i remember when I was an exchange student in wakayama, there was a group pushing the public schools to put whale meat into the school lunches. Get them hooked early I guess


What part of Japan do you live in?

Some of my older students were telling me that when they were in school their school lunches were whale. I'm sure they'd love to do that again.

I'm in Kagoshima. aka The ass end of Japan

I lived in Kagoshima for a while. Close to the city hall and the "tenmongaku?" (the big outside shopping arcade downtown). The summer is really nasty there. Especially when you've got ash from sakurajima raining down on you

Cool! When were you living here? Maybe I know some people that knew you. Tenmonkan. Yeah, the ash sucks! But it's not been too bad recently. The summers are stupidly humid, but the beaches are beautiful, so I can live with it.

Anyways, I took a few pictures of the festival if anyone wants to see


The ship. Japan's biggest whaling boat


They gave away free Whale Soup. I was literally the last person to get it. How does it taste? Surprisingly bland


There were a lot of people there. I had to wait an hour in line to get on the ship


Where most of the whale is cut up


Heh


Surprisingly they had a booth about Greenpeace and the "Sea Shepherd Terrorists"


According to the super happy whale sign the 9th of every month is whale day. Don't forget


Where the magic happens

Humid? try living in Hong Kong....aaaaiiiiyyyyyaaaaahhhhh

whaling is so unnecessary as is Shark fin soup here. Nobody likes the actual shark fin (I had it once at a wedding), it is loaded w/ pork, chicken mushroom etc. to mask the taste of the nasty shark fin. I don't get it at all.

Like Native Americans and Buffalo, ... nothing goes to waste, huh?

I supposed you can't get whale sushi here in the US, huh?

the nisshin maru is demonised here. everyone knows the name of that slaughter factory. it's very interesting to see the other side

I love how "Research" and "Laboratory" are spelled out in English. Don't they realize that makes it all the more suspect?

what really gets to me is how hard they seem to have to work to get people eating it- giving away soup and such. they're doing something which is internationally abhorred, and it yet doesn't seem as if the citizens are really jumping out of their skins with hunger for whale meat. what gives?

I fail to see why everyone is so opposed to fishing for whales. How is a whale any different than any other type of seafood? Why do you consider it to be abhorrent? Please excuse my ignorance.

well, i said it was internationally abhorred, not that i personally found it abhorrent.

anyway, they're pulling threatened species out of the water. perhaps if the whales were more plentiful there would be less of a problem with it.

That diagram didn't mention where the dork goes, though it came close.

i found it interesting that they somehow make ham out of it.

They have a proverb here, that goes something like "There's nothing to throw away from a whale except its voice"



Probably because people really like whales. There's a magical quality to them. The big reason Australians are protesting so much (I think anyway) is because they're taking the whales pretty close to Australia. The whale tourism industry is of course not too happy about it. Also the way they get the whales isn't exactly rainbows and puppydogs.
Personally I have no problem with it, as long as the whale numbers aren't endangered. But how they call it "Research" and expect us to swallow it is pretty insulting to our intelligence

I think I may have cooled on wanting to live in Japan.

because it is frekin inhumane (see vid) and them buggers are damn smart.

How any sane person can torture like that is beyond me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IUeliO_Jtg