Month: December 2025

  • Fujisan Farewell Lights Up The Year’s End

    Fortune gave me a delightful end to 2025 with an unexpected night flight to Enoshima to see the Jewel of Shonan illumination event. We still made it home in time to farewell the year with the traditional Red and White Year-end Song Festival…at least partway, as I couldn’t be bothered and went to bed. Having been incapacitated for months due to a broken leg, I wasn’t expecting to head out, especially I only stopped using crutches on Dec. 26, gave short shrift to a cane the following day and then limped around under my own steam thereafter. But Mrs. Kangaeroo, who delights in the usually spectacular winter illumination events around…

  • Bloody Great Year To Have Been Alive In ’25

    Not much went right in 2025, but more than enough to have made it a bloody great year to have been alive. Apart from my relationships with Mrs. Kangaeroo, friends, family and dinosaurs, work provided me with an immense amount of joy. I threw everything I could at my job, and was happy to do so. But it turns out that I’m maybe not very good at it. At least that recognition provides a basis to make myself better in 2026. I don’t really have a great recollection of the year as it progressed, continuing my long-term pattern of short-term memory loss. I started the year with the aim of…

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    Tiny Tassie Town Gets A Kick Out Of Kiki

    A tiny Tasmanian town once known for its female factory has become a magnet for anime fans around the world because of its apparent connection with a witch. Ross, the town with a population of just over 400 and located just over 100 kilometers north of the Tasmanian capital of Hobart, attracts Studio Ghibli anime fans globally, particularly from Japan. The town’s bread shop is said to be the real-life inspiration for the Gütiokipänja Bakery where Kiki, the young witch titular character of Kiki’s Delivery Service, is said to base her business in the 1989 Studio Ghibli hit. The Ross Village Inn has set up an attic space to mimic…

  • How Molly Meldrum Almost Created A Japanese Juggernaut

    Ian “Molly” Meldrum, one of Australia’s most prominent figures in the popular music world, came within a whisker in 1984 of making a then rising Japanese band reach superstardom while using Down Under as a launching pad to hit the top. Sandii and the Sunsetz had become only the second-ever Japanese act to reach the Top 10 in Australia with their 1983 hit, Sticky Music, but they were about to get kicked out of the country in disgrace. Meldrum, probably one of the world’s best-known rock journalists despite being notorious for poor elocution, stepped in and asked for help on behalf of the band, whose members had overstayed their visas…

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    Old Coot’s ‘Memories’ Of Imperial Palace’s Black Swans Were All A Bit Cuckoo

    Japan is often held up as a potential source of a black swan event in the financial world, but much closer to home, I have had a decades-long “memory” of black swans in Tokyo. But it looks like my recollections of the graceful birds symbolic of the state of Western Australia were more than a bit cuckoo. My mind is convinced that there used to be at least a pair of black swans living the Imperial Palace moat in Tokyo in the 1990s, but no amount of searching has been unable to unearth any evidence, and I have no proof myself. I could have sworn I saw them, especially as…

  • Event Approvals, Grants On Offer For 50th Anniversary Of Japan-Australia Friendship Treaty

    Japan and Australia are offering grants and approval for certain events to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Japan and Australia in 2026. The governments of both countries and the Australia-Japan Foundation are taking all sorts of steps for broad exchange between Japan and Australia, with the active participation of local governments, businesses, private organizations, and others. The countries will recognize events as 50th anniversary events if they meet all of the following criteria: Approved events may identify themselves as Anniversary Events for the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Japan and…

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    The Japan-Australia Link As A Fallen Star Became A Black Hole

    Japan has become pretty much synonymous with high quality construction, but that didn’t prove to be in what was supposed to be a star project in Melbourne but ended up being more of a black hole. The 120-meter-high Melbourne Star Ferris wheel was supposed to be a boon for tourism in Australia’s largest city, as well as a strong leap forward for Sanoyas, an Osaka-based shipbuilding company looking to expand into the amusement park business. The Melbourne Star was plagued from the outset. It was supposed to open in 2006, but didn’t start taking customers until two years later. It ran for just 40 days when it was shut down…

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    Monkeying Around With Shared Kobe Steel(e)s

    Of the many commonalities shared by Australia and Japan, perhaps one of the quirkier ones is that both countries are home to a Kobe Steele known for monkeying around. Australia’s Kobe Steele founded the Orangutan Foundation International Australia (OFI Australia), and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2021 for her services to conservation and the environment. Japan’s Kobe Steel Ltd., meanwhile, monkeyed around in a far less noble way, falsifying inspection and quality data on steel, aluminium and copper products for years, affecting hundreds of customers and resulting in billions of yen in fines after causing one of Japan’s most significant industrial quality scandals in recent…

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    Have A Very Merry Mad Max Xmas!

    It was with great delight that I learned overnight that Christmas in Japan in 2025 will have a tinge of Aussie about it. And my enthusiasm was in no way quelled by the fact that this merely meant a screening of Mad Max. With a message of “Merry Mad Max,” National broadcaster NHK‘s Premium Cinema channel will celebrate the festive season with a screening of the Aussie classic propelled to worldwide success on the back of becoming a hit in Japan when it was released here in 1979. Mad Max is Australia’s most successful film franchise and Japan played a huge role in it becoming that way, as we have…