GeekLawyer’s Blog

Some commentators will regret Geeklawyer’s visit was accident free. Not so much as a turned ankle. More perturbing was the earthquake that shook, no rocks landed on his head and the earth moved for women around him.

Mount Fuji is  hard climb of that there is no doubt. It is some 3776 metres to the summit and Geeklawyer felt each and every damned metre. But he did, at least, make it while many don’t; those many months hillwalking in the UK paid some dividend.

Some of the difficulty was down to the rucksack load Geeklawyer chose. He had been told incorrectly that no water or food was available on the mountain, so he calculated for 24 hours of needs: lots of food & 9.5litres of fluid to combat 85 degree heat and 90% humidity - even discounting high altitude. In the end the pack was about 40 pounds all in. It turns out to have been a disastrous miscalculation and some bad information: food & water was available at the top five stations (rest huts) on the mountain: it was merely expensive. Geeklawyer has done some tough trekking but this damned near killed him: he carried the 40 pounds up about 2000 metres before deciding to give away half the pack to grateful Japanese nearby.

20 hours  of climbing later, much of it done at night so as to hit the top by dawn, as Japanese religious tradition requires, Geeklawyer arrived. The guidance reckons around 11 to 12 hours from the base of the mountain so he was a little below par, but those 20 hours includes 5 hours sleeping at station eight at 3000 metres. And, mind you, that figure is arrived at by timing Japanese grannies, who all seem to sprint up the hill carrying their own bodyweight in supplies, so not too shabby.

While up the mountain Geeklawyer even met a very sweet Australian chick who expressed the desire for Geeklawyer to keep her company on the ascent. Geeklawyer wasn’t sure what to make of this: a) a hot Australian chick, and b) one who didn’t run away screaming notwithstanding the obstacle of the life affirming ascent needed to make good an escape. Perhaps she was mad? Perhaps he should rebuff her firmly. Still, he thought, never screw someone on the way up - you may need them on the way down. She retired from the mountain with her honour and sanity intact. Not many women can say that. Thanks Ailsa.

A once in a lifetime event he can’t wait to repeat. Was the view worth the effort?

More Mount Fuji pics here.

There is only one thing about Japan that Geeklawyer does not much care for: the heat. If the sun in the Land of the Rising Sun rose just little less high it might be bearable, but by Christ it’s hot.

But Hiroshima is hot in more than one sense: the reason for Geeklawyer’s visit. On August 6th 1945, rather uncharacteristically, the US dumped a bomb very nearly on the target it was going for, a bridge, and hit the exact administrative centre of Hiroshima. This was, in Geeklawyer’s opinion, some some pretty damned good shooting from 32,000 feet; props to the Enola Gay team.

But in what was to set an historical precedent followed from Vietnam to Iraq & Afghanistan the bomb slaughtered vast numbers of innocent civilians who were then claimed to be enemy combatants: an American general pathetically claimed all the civilians killed were legitimate targets as part of the Japanese war effort: they were supposedly making nuts bolts etc, for the military. This bears the hall marks of what happens in Iraq/Afghanistan now: the SOP is for US troops to drop captured guns near civilians they kill and claim they were fired on. Really, that simply isn’t cricket, in fact it’s very naughty indeed.

In any event, regardless of the personal danger from residual radiation Geeklawyer felt morally compelled to come to Hiroshima as an act of solidarity with its suffering people. The next time some pacifist twat calls Geeklawyer a left-wing/right-wing warmonger Geeklawyer can look him in the eye and say that he deliberately soaked up ionising beta particles that would otherwise have ravaged a Japanese child. And probably a puppy too. And maybe also a lost Hello Kitty. Hell, Geeklawyer is a fucking Nuclear Hero, but where is his medal? Eh? Sold to pay someone’s welfare cheque, that’s where.

If you are in Hiroshima the Bomb Museum is well worth a visit with some pathetic and very poignant exhibits; regrettably Geeklawyer was rather appalled at the pacifist bias and the, frankly, rather over-priced t-shirts. Mass slaughter is never an excuse for losing objectivity or price gouging. A blot on an otherwise rather good visit.

Also rather dubious was the assertion that the Peace Park’s memorial flame would only be put out when the last nuclear weapon was destroyed.

This is mere braggadocio; a well aimed nuclear weapon would put this flame out easily.

Geeklawyer has been in love before. And not always with himself. Sometimes with a human female, sometimes with a technological thingy and sometimes with nothing less than an entire nation: even its sewage system & its local version of chavs.

Take Holland. Please, take it, Geeklawyer is no longer in love with it. A couple of decades ago, when Geeklawyer was a sprightly and energetic young fellow full of the love of all mankind and a noble incorruptible creed, before the malevolent hand of cynicism and bitter experience burned his soul to a crispy smoking … oh sorry, where were we? …, he ventured to Amsterdam where one could get drunk all day (UK kicking out times were in force back then), smoke dope in canal coffeeshops, smoke dope in errr, fuck pretty nice Dutch prostitutes and watch nasty porn in the company of disgusting perverts. But oh, how times change. Thanks to illegal immigration and Islamic scum, some bumping-off film producers, Holland is now in the hands of Calvinist fuck-ups. No longer is it the playground of depraved aesthetes such as Geeklawyer where innocent fun could be had defiling the weak and vulnerable. No. Now it is scanky Russian whores, Allah wailing sand-niggers and bible thumping child molesters. No more liberals like Geeklawyer.

Japan, however, is the new love. What a terrific weird place this is. Utterly utterly incomprehensible. What on earth could account for “Hello Kitty“? This has infected even the Harem. Geeklawyer spent the first two days wandering in Akihabara to get Anime and Hello Kitty stuff for the girlies. Never mind doing sightseeing. As an aside, all Anime stuff is porn! Geeklawyer found only one shop selling stuff that could be safely sent back though customs, without him being accused sending kiddy porn cartoons, thanks to fuckwittery by neo-Labour moralist headline seekers.

But, enough. On from Tokyo, Geeklawyer blazed across Japan in a Shinkansen Bullet Train from Tokyo to Kyoto, some 550 miles, in a piffling 2.5 hours. Had a British train company been responsible he would be arriving about now, 2 days later. Geeklawyer was lucky enough to arrive in Kyoto to see the famous “Gion Matsuri” festival with its huge pointy yama-boko floats. There are photos.

Geeklawyer’s Japanese has improved a fair degree to the point he can make himself sort-of understood within a very limited domain; but he still largely incomprehensible to the poor locals who, given the excessive politeness of the Japanese, swear blind he must be Japanese since he is so fluent. Ermm yea, K. When he gets home he will be suing the bitch who taught him Japanese, lazy inept joru.

On another side note Geeklawyer, having initially poo poo’d (sorry), weird techno-toilets he has had something of a shit epiphany. There is something deeply worrying about excreting electrically conductive fluids and body matter into a toilet wired up to the mains electricity. Really, 240 volts wired into a high current ring main; would you use one wired up by the Italians? No, neither would Geeklawyer: the Swiss or the Japanese, fine, but no-one else. Geeklawyer will hunt around London to see if one can be procured locally. It’ll be a party piece.