I feel like trying to get them to do something is like herding cats. Even when things turn out better than I expect (as they fortunately did this evening) I still feel all the grumpier for having to deal with them in the interim. Better to deal with people one-on-one.
On the way home from Shibuya I was reading Moby-Dick.. I was struck by the quoted descriptions of how sperm whales were known among sailors to slam into whaling ships and sink them. The tale told by Owen Chase of the blind and haunting fury of the battering whale cannot fail to strike a chord in any sympathetic reader's heart. Perhaps Moby-Dick, even though it went unread by several generations, contributed something to the popular Western mythology of the whale that sparked Greenpeace to go to lengths for its protection far beyond what they would do for sharks or codfish.
In Japan, of course, whales are a nuisance and their protection gets in the way of the fundamental importance of human survival. Actually, it seems like most animals have that unsympathetic nuisance status-- perhaps the idea of a pet or favorite animal is not native to Japan. (Certainly they had no equivalent to Black Beauty in the prewar period.) Japanese pet stores are horrific places. The animals are kept in empty glass boxes with only a small window out on the world. I actually did not want to go inside the one in Shinjuku, so I can't give you pictures.
In Japan, the natural world can sometimes blend happily into the world of men. Deer roam the streets in Nara, and monkeys are all over the place in the Kyoto suburbs. But sometimes...
...there's nobody here but us chickens.
