[Ryzorian]

Honestly, what is the big deal about whales? The Japanese like to eat em..so what? If they want to hunt whales in the middle of the ocean, so? Lot's of American fishing ships fish all over too, nobody raises any stink about that.

Japan gets a large amount of it's food from the sea, that's just how it is. Whales provide alot of food for the effort, makes logical sense to hunt them. No one has proven yet that whales are any more sentinent than monkeys, and people eat those too. I suppose Japan could try to have whale farms. I wonder how practical that would be?

Allthough MinMinRW, I realize Japan is Japan and it likes to keep a self identity. However, I would say it's probably more "western" in it's thought process than any other asian country and has been for a while. Some of that could be attributed to WW2 and the aftermath/occupation. Some of it was on purpose from before WW2, when the Japanese government tried to at least immulate certain "western" military aspects. This in turn lead to immulated buisiness aspects during the 50's-70's.

I think modern Japan is something of a blend of Eastern and Western ideals, perhaps 70% Eastern and 30% Western, give or take a few %. It's that blending wich has made it unique as an Asian nation. That doesn't mean anything good or bad, it just describes things as I suspect they are. Though I do think sometimes Japan tends to be self concious of this blend, perhaps even embaressed by it.

Sorry, got sidetracked from whales there.