you are worth 7.5k and are "available to trade"
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I think I'll sell the blog and use the cash for a trip to Turkey.

Ever since the reactions of the Japanese public a year ago I've thought a lot about this. At that time I was incensed by the "unfeeling" response of the Japanese, but the more I thought about it the more I began to feel that it is a very mature and responsible reaction (not counting Koizumi's ulterior motivations, which I don't respect). If you allow for the fact that anyone who goes to Iraq knowing how dangerous and unstable the situation is, especially someone without any training or good reason for being there other than altruism, then they should expect that awful things are very likely to happen. It is simply stupid to assume that your innocence is any reason to expect to be immune from the terrible reality of the situation. Why should people here anguish over, pay for, put up with the political upheaval, and then endure the spotlight here just because some dreamer privately decides to go to Iraq and try to change things? I understand the motivation... I, too, often thought of trying to do something for Iraq... but to what avail? What could I do but get in the way? And what of the burden of worry I would put my family and friends through? I think it is the very sense of caring very much for these misguided individuals that makes the Japanese react this way. I don't think caring for someone always means agreeing with what that person does; sometimes when they do something stupid it is necessary to get angry.

What does make me angry is that the Japanese government hasn't made any effort to organize a true resistance to what the Americans and Brits have done. Surely there is better way to put to practical use the anger and frustration that most Japanese have toward the war. Instead you have individuals who most likely anguish over the war, stepping into a situation for which they are completely unprepared and completely vulnerable. If my brother went to Iraq to do some good, I would privately admire his bravery and idealism, but I would also be deeply hurt and angry that he had put himself in danger. I just don't subscribe to all this "heroism" bullshit. Why is caring for the Iraqis more important than caring about your family members?

Now Turkey is one place I really want to go mountain climbing! (besides visiting lots of cultural sites and towns!)

I agree that to characterize the Japanese response to the hostage crisis as "unfeeling" would be simplistic and unfair, as would characterizing the response of the city of Liverpool to the killing of Kenneth Bigley as "sentimental."

But you could possibly argue that a mix of the two responses would be better than either of them alone.

I think a major difference in the responses is attitudes to government and individual vs. state. The people of Liverpool assumed the onus was on the British government to sort out the situation, especially since, as it was thought, their presence in Iraq had somehow caused Bigley's situation. In the case of the latest hostage from Japan, his family have actually apologized to the government.

In the Japan case, I think I'd like to see as much criticism directed at the government for being in Iraq as at the guy for being in Iraq. And similarly, in the England case, I'd like to see criticism directed at Bigley for being there as well as the government.

But this Japan case is not as clear cut as the case of the previous Japanese hostages who were there to volunteer. In this case, the guy was a contractor, there for his own purposes. (This probably influenced his family's statement.)

What annoyed me about last year's response to the hostage crisis was the damage it did to the spirit of volunteerism that had been created in Japan after the Kobe Earthquake. Nobody praised those hostages for putting their life on the line to help non-Japanese others, over even tempered their criticism with praise for their motivations. Instead, they criticized them for inconveniencing the Japanese government.

I understand what you're saying about it being a kind of caring, but I still see parts of the response that were somehow knee-jerk (with a pro-government bias and not compassionate to the individuals and their motivation for being there), just as parts of the response to Kenneth Bigley's situation were knee-jerk (with an anti-government bias and not realistic about the role of the government and the difficulties it faced).