Noble And Obvious And China Will Still Go Bananas About It

aAccording to news reports, the Abe government has decided to dispatch a force of up to 1,000 Self Defense Forces personnel to the Philippines to help in the rescue and recovery effort in the aftermath of 2013 Typhoon #30 --- a.k.a, Typhoon Haiyan, a.k.a. Typhoon Yolanda. For those who have been looking at the photographs and video footage of the disaster zones and thinking, "Isn't this humanitarian catastrophe exactly what the Japanese government and the SDF have been arguing the Osumi and the other helicopter carriers were built to handle?" you are vindicated -- the dispatch includes the Osumi, the Ise and the oiler Towada. (Link - J) As for the Chinese response to the projected presence of 1,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors either on the ground in Leyte or on ships carrying out operations inside the territorial waters of the Philippines -- well, one can imagine that the military-security folks in Beijing must be rather busy this morning -- for all the wrong reasons, one might add.Later - An earlier version of this post contained the extraordinary number of 10,000 SDF in the Philippines. Whether that was a bleary-eyed misread or an actual reading of a later corrected report, I cannot say.Apologies for the confusion.Later still - Arrghhh! Corrected the wrong place in the above. The current government plan involved 1,000 SDF. 1,000.As you were.And even later - Many thanks to reader "Brodie" who alerted me to the mistaken correction. Caught it I did before I read his email...but all corrections are always welcome ("And needed" - Editor). And yet later still - As for the obvious question, "Why is it that the MSDF helicopter carriers have not already departed for the Philippines?" one can only guess that without their blessed Security Council to gather up their attention and focus it, neither the Prime Minister, the Chief Cabinet Minister nor the Defense Minister could possibly have the mental discipline to make the connection in between the likelihood of desperate need and the dispatch of relief ships.Thankful should we be that the Liberal Democratic Party, the experienced, proactive, outward-looking party committed to wrenching Japan out of its passivity in order to transform it into a greater force for global good, is back in power.Or so we have been told, so many times...

About That Crazy Linear Motor Car Fare Number

a You may recall last month the splashy public announcement from the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central, a.k.a. JR Tokai) on the start of construction of a maglev hyperexpress rail line running through central Japan between Tokyo and Nagoya, to be completed in 2027. The superlatives were daunting:- a top running speed of over 500 kilometers per hour,- a start-to-terminus run time of 40 minutes- a construction cost of 5.5 trillion yen borne solely by JR Central (9 trillion with a proposed extension to Osaka, scheduled for 2045) - four passes above 500 meters including summit under the Japan Alps of 1200 meters (for a Tokyo comparative, that is a climb to the top of Sky Tree followed by a climb up Takao-san)- 86% of the trip through tunnels (meaning a ride similar to one on the full length of Tokyo's Marunouchi subway line, which is 90% underground)- power consumption 3 times higher per passenger than the fastest Shinkansen (not a reassuring number in the post-Fukushima Daichi electrical power provision environment)Then came the kicker: how much a ticket on the wonder train would cost. According to the plan announced on September 18, the projected cost of a one-way fare from Tokyo to Nagoya on the linear hyperexpress would be 11,480 yen, only 700 yen (7%) more than the cost for the same one-way trip on the fastest Nozomi Shinkansen train.The response to this final claim was...astonishment. (Link - J)Looking at the fare, the number of passengers in each train and the number of departures per hour, the Mainichi Shimbun foresaw the obvious danger -- that the project is designed to fail in its finances, the company's managers being confident they can extort a bailout from the government. (Link)Yesterday, in a press conference revealing more details regarding what will be in essence the world's most ridiculously speedy subway, JR Central president Yamada Yoshiomi explained the reason JR Central has projected a maglev ride fare with an unbelievably low markup of only 7% over the cost of a Shinkansen trip taking twice as long. You would think Yamada would have provided some kind of breakdown of the pricing, showing how JR Central pays off the cost of the investment and the costs of operating the line while charging so little over the currently available high speed train trip.Uh, well...he seemingly did not.The reason the newspapers are reporting Yamada gave for the incredibly small additional cost for a maglev ticket?"We can only receive about that much more [over the Shinkansen ticket price] from the customers." (Link - J)Clunk. No wait, double-clunk. You read that right: if Yamada is to be believed, the parameters for the price of a ticket are set by not by the engineers and accountants, but by JR Central's marketing department -- what the marketers feel customers might think the improvement in service is worth.One could laugh, except for anyone following the moves of JR Central's chairman Kasai Yoshiyuki, including his role as the bundler for Abe Shinzo's return to power (Link and Link), his hiring of former high-ranking U.S. officials as his salemen (Link) as a part of general dabbling in foreign policy agenda setting (Link) and his reported attempts to press national broadcaster NHK into adopting a more pro-nuclear editorial line (Link) would think twice about laughing anything involving JR Central plans.There is one determined hombre behind the company advertising that nutty price.