First 100 Readers of This Blog Win Free Airfare for Two to Japan - No Hidden Catches! No Gimmicks! No Basis in Reality Whatsoever Either...*

"And, if you believe that..." the story goes...


"Dear winner! Congratulations! You've won $10,000!" At first you are surprised. Your heart skips a beat, then you read the fine print. It says,

"This could be you if you purchase over $250 of "Sports, Bikinis, Barbecue and Hiking Boots" magazine subscriptions over the next 6 months. As one lucky winner will...." Blah, blah, blah....

How many times has this happened to you? 

Your dreams dashed. Of course, it was too good to be true.


You know, in Japan, there is an old saying, "There's nothing scarier than something for free!"


Well you might remember a few months back the campaign announced in the Japanese media and all over the world about 10,000 people winning free airfare to Japan in a Japanese Government Tourism Bureau effort to support flagging numbers of tourists to Japan after the March Fukushima nuclear accident? Well the Japanese government was just kidding about the free vacation... (I reckon that you can deduce that I not the most dependable travel agent in the world either... Chuckle!)

Well, thank god I didn't write about that campaign when it was going on. Why? At the time, I thought something was fishy. Just like you thought something was fishy when you clicked to read this blogpost. Let me pat myself on the back and say that, in October of last year, at the time they announced this foolishness, my first thoughts were that the idea was waste of money; shouldn't we be spending that money on helping the people of Tohoku? What about the Fukushima disaster? And, with our finances in such disorder, where are we going to get this money from in the first place? I also thought, "Who's stupid idea was this?" 


Of course it is/was a stupid idea. A very stupid idea (too good to be true for anyone who "won" - and it was)... (No problem for the government idiots who thought of this... They aren't spending their own money. Why not?)  


But besides the practical concerns, think about the ineptitude: Talk about a BS contest! Imagine winning only to be told, "Oh yes, Mr. Something-or-other, congratulations but we were only kidding about the million dollars!"


The Wall Street Journal reports in Dream For Free Flights To Japan Over (article quotes highlighted in yellow, my snide remarks follow):


Back in October, Japan's national tourism agency floated a plan that seemed an ideal remedy to boost flagging visitor numbers in the wake of the March 11 disasters. 


What!? "..a plan that seemed an ideal remedy?!" What are the these people at Wall Street Journal smoking? Oh, yeah, I forgot. The Wall Street Journal are a bunch of big government wankers too. 


Free flights to Japan in 2012. A full 10,000 of them. 


Over flowing with cynicism: Cheap skates! I knew it! "Why stop at 10,000?" I said at the meeting, "Let's make it 100,000! No! A million, ten million! Free babies, bento and Banzai too!"


Now, as the country crunches through the detail of tight budget numbers for next year, the hope many had for visiting Japan in 2012 has evaporated into a pipe dream: There won't be any free flights next year, period. 


Well, duh. There ain't no Sanity Claus either.


The budget for them has not been approved. Whatever tourism authorities thought a good idea, Japan simply can't afford it, the government's budget planners have concluded. 


Evidence that more government planing will make our lives better!


The Tokyo-based Japan Tourism Agency didn't sugar-coat the decision in a statement on its website late Dec. 26: "The project titled 'Fly to Japan!' (to offer flight tickets to 10,000 foreigners with high potential to communicate Japan's attractions), which had been covered in a number of media in autumn this year, was not approved as a governmental draft budget of FY 2012."  


How about not sugar-coating a message to the Einsteins in the Japan Tourism Agency on their website by writing something like, "You're fired!"


Regular readers of this blog will know that I am extremely skeptical of any pronouncements by the Japanese government (or any government for that matter) and, at the time of this campaign's announcement, I remember thinking, "These clowns have a debt that is over 225% of GDP and now the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster to contend with. Where in the hell are they going to get the money to pay for this?"


Funny that.


Now, what do we who live in Japan and pay taxes for have to show for this idiocy? Well, I haven't any figures, but I know we spent lots of money on promotional items like posters, TV ads, and advertising in publications all over the world (besides the silly posters advertising this campaign that were hung in my local bar in Tokyo - go figure!) so we dumped at least a few hundred thousand dollars on that. Small change, right? No problem. Then, on top of that, we got this bad promotion (or good depending on how you look at it). 


These types of dumb government planned promotions are always a boondoggle. Let me recall a few for you that I remember:


In 1979, at the height of the trade wars with the USA, the Japanese government made stickers and posters and placed them all over Japan's train stations and in taxis. The stickers and posters said, "Import Now!" (as if the average Japanese housewife reads English and/or has any say as to whether or not pots and pans and textiles and steel are imported into Japan from the United States or not.  


Which is much like this campaign that I've seen at my local pub recently. The posters say, "Visit Japan!" I think, "Wow! What a brilliant idea! Promote visiting Japan to people who are already here! Saves them the airfare! Brilliant!"

This poster hangs in my favorite restaurant ... in Tokyo!

The next campaign that I remember Japan spending an exorbitant amount of money on was the Yokoso Japan campaign. Japan must have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this campaign making videos that were shown (and viewed) a few hundred times on the Internet and seen on American and European TV at times like 5:00 am on a Sunday morning. In fact, I hosted the one about Hiroshima (even though I don't live there!). Uh, don't expect me to show you that one, it was embarrassing (many of the English subtitles were spelled incorrectly and lots of other problems):

Oh well, I suppose we can console ourselves by saying, "At least they tried..." I wish they'd try with their money and not mine next time. People might think I am complaining about the incompetent government, and I am. But, at least in canceling this dumb campaign, they made the right decision. Why in the hell should I have to pay for Joe Six-pack to visit Japan? Does he pay for me to go on vacation to his country?




*That's tue: This contest is a farce and not real... Just like the vacation to Japan contest was also. Sorry.

Winners, Losers, Sports, Kids, and Adult Children: Taking Lemons and Making Lemonade

A young and talented writer I know had entered a essay contest. The winners were to be awarded a cash prize, the sum of which was to be divided up amongst the top five contestants. My writer friend was hoping that he could win part of that cash to visit Japan and extend his studies.

LIke I said, he is a talented writer and, in spite of very heavy and fierce competition, he placed fifth amongst thousands of contestants. 


Well done!

He was thrilled. Well, thrilled, that is, of course, until after the winners were announced with a tiny minor detail change: Due to budget cuts, the top five winners wouldn't share the prize money, only the top two winners would share in the prize money. 

Naturally he was disappointed. The contest organizers had broken a promise.


My friend wrote to me about his disappointment and this is what I wrote back:

Dear Peter,

Fifth place is excellent and you have nothing to be sad about. Sure, the prize part of the deal didn't turn out as you were promised, but take that as a lesson in life too... Often times things do not turn out as expected.

It seems to me that we learn these lessons well when we are entering the transition world from school to supposedly gainful employment.

Let me tell you about my own experience that your story reminds me of. But first, some background....


When I was a child we were pretty poor. 

As a child in the sixties I lived with my mom and dad and two brothers. I don't know how my mom made do. My father was merely a low paid US marine sergeant, who was always away from home as the Vietnam War was in full swing. We didn't have much yet my mother was somehow able to always give us enough and, while we didn't feast like kings, we had enough to eat. 


Like I said, my father was rarely home so I was raised by dear old mom.


As I got older, I realized how clever my mother was. She was smart and adroit enough at finances to turn my father's meager salary into buying a house and flipping it over to a bigger house each time on three separate occasions.

Even to this day, I am amazed when I think about how well my mother was able to make do with a very limited amount of resources. Anyhow, as you can guess most of my very early formative years were spent being raised by my mom.


But I digress....

When I got older and graduated from school, I got a high paying job. I was so thankful for that and have always tried to remember where I came from and who I am. It is for this reason that I have always felt that I should "give back" to society. I wanted to help kids and especially those who didn't share time with their fathers.

I started coaching 8 year olds in basketball and soccer... Most of those kids came from broken homes and I wanted to help them have fun and do sports and not be such a dorky kid that couldn't do three push-ups like me.

If you've ever coached a kids sports team, then you'll know how really smelly the entire league operation can be. Basically, it seems to me that a bunch of dads get together and make the league. Then, they have "trials" whereby the dads who set the league up take the pick of the best and most athletic kids and start the league from there.

The non-athletic kids (mostly the ones who came from broken homes and didn't have a dad around to teach them how to throw or catch a ball like yours truly) were left off the teams. Then, the local city youth department would hunt down people to volunteer as coach. There was always a shortage of coaches so there were always a few hundred kids left off of teams with no chance to play.


Pretty pathetic when you stop to think about it, eh?

That also meant that people like me got the kids who were to be on a team that was a punching bag for the teams coached by the dads who had already taken the most athletic kids...

So much for teaching kids about "Sportsmanship."

If these parents really were interested in Sportsmanship and fair play, they make the team selection random and by drawing. Of course, their own child should be on dad's team... But the entire purpose and rationale of a city run youth sports department (that is funded with our taxes) is to allow all kids a chance to play. Not a select few.

Anyway, one year, I started coaching 8-year-olds in basketball with my best friend Jeff. Jeff and I were both in our early 20s. Most dads were in their 40s or 50s. Jeff and I had brothers and, through that life experience, we knew that to get good at sports, the best way to teach kids was to have them play with older, bigger, stronger and faster kids.

So we played basketball with them. Our kids, through this coaching style, got really good, really fast. We took a bunch of mediocre athletic kids and turned them into a powerhouse team. 

Halfway through the season, we played the best team. They were undefeated (and coached by a dad who started the league so they had all the best kids). We had already lost two games but when we played them, we defeated them by one point in a tough and tight battle.

We were ecstatic. The kids were exhausted. The league and other coaches were in disbelief.

Anyhow, in that basketball league, the rules at the start of the season were that the top 4 teams played off for the championships at the end of the season.  By some miracle our team finished 4th and was to only team to beat the #1 team in the league.

They had only suffered one defeat, from us. We were sure we could beat them again in the playoffs and pull off a championship.

It was not to be, though.

What did the dads running the league do? They changed the rules before the last game of regular season so that only the top 2 teams played off. We were pissed off. We were ripped off. They lied to us.

Of course the top team, the one we had beaten, went on to win the championship. Pretty sh*tty, eh?

Those kids were great players and they won the championship. But their fathers were a bunch of losers.

Many kids sports leagues are a similarly disgusting affair. They are a reflection of what's wrong with our society and many organizations, people and clubs.

Nevertheless, we were happy about the experience and, after the final game, we had a pizza party for the kids. 


There, one of the least athletic kids came up to me and he said, "Coach Mike. You are the best coach I have ever had and I will never ever forget you. Thank you."


It brought a tear to my eye. It still does.


So to my writer friend who has his victory taken away, to my kids that I coached and to you, dear reader, who has sometimes had what was promised taken away, let me say, 


Fear not! You have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of. Sometimes life hands you lemons... But the truly wonderful and successful people take those and make lemonade. Winners take these experiences and use them to improve.


With each effort, the victory is just one step closer. Keep on at it and your day will come just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.


For Peter Dyloco