平成29年12月18日 = (18 DEC 2017)

(McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantoms of US Navy Fighter Squadron 151 fly echelon formation over Mt. Fuji. Photo USN).
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= This week’s poem:

Naval Station Great Lakes

You stand the watch, hour after hour,
Tired and bored, but alert
Making decisions, wielding power,
Over mostly trivial things — your feet hurt,
Along with your back, while time
Ticks away, never to be retrieved,
Until you are properly relieved…
Afterwards, burden gone, you
Go outside to have a smoke,
Marlboro menthol in your hand,
Feel like the punch line of a joke…
At least you get to sit, instead of stand.

{ From my Blog: https://carllafong.blogspot.jp ;}

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= 5 Things Going On Lately:

(1) Chinese fighter jets have flown over the Tsushima Strait between Japan’s Kyushu island and the Korean Peninsula for the first time ever. According to the Japanese Defense Ministry’s Joint Staff Office, two SU-30 fighter jets, two H-6 bombers and another aircraft of the Chinese military flew back and forth between the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan through the strait on Monday (18 DEC). The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) scrambled its fighter jets against them, the ministry said, adding the Chinese warplanes did not enter Japanese skies. China’s air force announced that the flights were conducted as part of its annual operation plan without violating international law and targeting any specific country. The air force also insisted that the Sea of Japan is not Japan’s sea, expressing eagerness to continue flying its aircraft over the sea. (Jiji Press)

* COMMENT: I guess the last sentence would seem to be the most ominous…

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(2) The Japanese government has reaffirmed its policy of enhancing its coast guard by obtaining new patrol vessels and aircraft. The relevant ministers met at the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday (18 DEC) to discuss the matter as they finalize the budget plan for fiscal 2019. They decided to go on building patrol vessels that can carry helicopters, as well as a large survey ship and new aircraft. At the meeting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed that maritime security conditions remain critical. He was referring to the intrusions of Chinese patrol boats into Japanese territorial waters as well as the illegal operation of foreign fishing boats in Japan’s exclusive economic zone. Abe also noted that it is difficult to predict what North Korea will do in the Sea of Japan. He cited the many wooden boats suspected of being from the North that have drifted ashore on the Japanese coast. He also stressed the importance of cooperating with other countries that share Japan’s values, such as maritime order under the rule of law, in order to realize Japan’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy.” (NHK News)

* COMMENT: Japan Coast Guard (JCG) is stretched real thin, and the need for this government initiative/program seems totally obvious, required, and maybe should have happened earlier…

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(3) Tokyo-based space venture company “ispace” has announced a plan to put its own lander on the moon by around the end of 2020 to search for water and other resources. Moon landings have been carried out in the past by the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch its SLIM moon investigation lander around fiscal 2020, but it is possible that the ispace craft could get to the moon first. A total of about 10.1 billion yen from 11 bodies including the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and the Development Bank of Japan is being invested in the ispace project. This is said to be the largest ever investment in a venture company in Japan at the technological development stage. Under the project, at around the end of 2019, the company will send a lander measuring about 2 meters tall that can carry items weighing a total of 30 kilograms into orbit around the moon. Then, at around the end of 2020, it will put another lander on the moon, which will deploy a small rover to travel on the surface. The moon is believed to have a large amount of water, and it is hoped that this could be used to produce oxygen and hydrogen fuel through electrolysis. The company is also participating in the international Google Lunar XPRIZE project, in which privately funded companies are competing to successfully place a probe on the moon’s surface. For the XPRIZE mission, ispace plans to have an exploration vehicle travel on the moon’s surface by the end of March 2018, but will use an Indian rocket and landing craft for this. (Mainichi Shimbun)

* COMMENT: Gotta love the power & dynamism of the private sector…

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(4) Pope Francis warned Japan on Monday (18 DEC) over a culture of “excessive” competitiveness in schooling and the workplace as well as an obsession with consumerism. “In order to succeed one can end up doing bad things, like trampling on others on the way up,” he said in a video conference with students in Tokyo. He said he saw “several problems” in Japanese society, such as “excessive competition, competitiveness, consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption and more consumption.” “It can harm you and take away your strength,” he said, blaming an “excessive meritocracy” as well. The Japanese education system is built around highly competitive and rigorous testing, with students put under intense pressure to succeed — pressures that continue once they graduate and enter the workplace. It also has a punishing work culture, with long working hours being blamed for hundreds of deaths due to strokes, heart attacks and suicides every year. The Argentine pontiff told the students of Sophia University that Japan was nonetheless “a great country, which I admire … and of course I’d love to visit.” “The Japanese are a people I love very much,” he said, adding that they were “a working people, with a great capacity for religion, a people that have suffered a lot. (Yomiuri Shimbun)

* COMMENT: Wow … Japan gets called-out by the Vatican. Although, I didn’t see a much coverage of this in the local media — like a tree falling in the forest where there is no one to hear, did it really make any noise?

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(5) The U.S. military has told the prefectural government of Okinawa, southernmost Japan, that it will resume flights by the U.S. Marine Corps’ CH-53E helicopters shortly, following an accident involving one of the large transport aircraft last week, it was learned Monday (18 DEC). The U.S. side found that the latest accident was caused by human error, informed sources said. In the accident, which occurred on Wednesday, a window section of a CH-53E helicopter fell onto the playground of an elementary school adjacent to the Marine Corps’ Futenma air station in Ginowan in Okinawa. The object was about 90 centimeters square and weighed 7.7 kilograms. Soon after the accident, the Okinawa prefectural government asked the U.S. military to carry out thorough emergency checks on all types of U.S. military planes in the prefecture, which hosts the bulk of U.S. military installations in Japan, and suspend their flights during such inspections. After the U.S. military decided to resume flights of the CH-53Es less than a week after the accident, Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga told reporters at the prefectural government office that the move is outrageous. “The U.S. military is not a good neighbor,” Onaga added. (Jiji Press)

* COMMENT: TFOAs caused by poor aviation maintenance are wrong & indefensible — local anger is totally understandable (just imagine if it was your kid’s school where it happened.) However, a couple of things… (1) If you look at old-time (1950’s) pictures of Futenma/Ginowan, there were no people living around the air base (so, those who chose to move-in/build near an airfield, had to know there was some risk involved); and, (2) there has been an ongoing bilateral governmental effort, since 1996, to move the air base to a less encroached/safer location, which the Okinawan government, for 21 years, has kept from happening…

Copyright 2017 Carl LaFong
www.vicsocotra.com