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The most expensive crash ever? Via Japan Probe comes the news that 14 luxury sports cars were involved in a recent pile up. This will have been expensive. The crash took place as the cars were cruising along at (what for a supercar is) the rather sedate pace of about 90mph. This will have been embarassing.
My Japanese isn’t up to much but the video seems to suggest that the pile-up took place on the ‘China Road’. I cannot help feeling there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
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Thankfully the guard rail is ok
Yes Patrick.
The only good thing to say about Japan is that they have not indulged in as much “monetary expansion” (creating money from NOTHING) as Britain and the United States have.
But they (for many years) have refused to allow their bankrupt banks to go bankrupt – i.e. refused to allow markets to clear of malinvestments.
And they (since the 1970s – the key change came in 1972/3 at least I am told so) have had a Welfare State that is out of control (perhaps not so out of control as ours – but still terrible).
And, like Russia, no political party in Japan is interested in rolling back any of these schems – on the contrary they wish expand them (after all more government spending on health, education and welfare will get one a pat on the back from the international elite – just as throwing, freshly created, money at banks does).
So Japan is indeed the land of the SETTING sun.
As for China……
Chinese power is undeniable and growing.
And the intentions of the regime are deeply nasty (a mixture of Han Chinese ethnic nationalism and an inherited lust for power from Mao – without, any more, even a real grounding in Marxism, just a lust for power for the sake of it). Whereas the Japanese governement, after World War II, had no hostile intent.
The future will be “interesting”.
Ouch. I feel real sympathy for the guys whose prides and joy got smashed up. On the other hand, isn’t there a rule about two seconds?
>Chinese power is undeniable and growing.
On the other hand, the Chinese have indulged in a truly massive and frightening monetary expansion, one that from some points of view makes the others look small. The unwinding of this is going to be interesting.
Well, if “Clarkson-hater of Tunbridge Wells” wants to make the object of their hatred cry, I think they’d only need to show him this; there’s some very rare and expensive metal (430, F40…) which won’t be going anywhere under its own power, again. It reminds me of the time someone ran into the back of my Aston.
That said, I’m amazed that, doing a mere 90, so many of these cars managed to run into eachother; there’s no indication (I don’t speak Japanese, although I noted that in the commentary, the Japanese for “sports car” sounds like “sports car”) of what the weather was like, but some of these guys must have been driving “outside the envelope”…
It isn’t the speed, it is the time interval. They were probably driving in a tight pack. Somebody clipped a guard rail. If you look at the video, you’ll see the center guard rail is maybe four feet from the travel lane, hardly Nürburgring. Imagine a horse race, the horses traveling maybe 35 miles per hour. And yet, if the lead horse falls . . .
The Japanese have referred to various regions of Japan as “countries” for ages. Like the name of the island “Shikoku” or “four countries.”
“Chugoku” just means “middle country” and has long been used to refer to what are now 5 prefectures in western Honshu.
There used to be a clear distinction because China was referred to as the “middle kingdom” which used a different character and was pronounced “Chuka.”
When I was living in Japan you’d sometimes still see it on signs for Chinese restaurants, advertising “Chuka ryori” or chinese cuisine.
But sometime after WWII when China was obviously no longer a kingdom and never would be again they substituted the kanji character “country” for “kingdom” and now it’s spelled and pronounced the same as the term for the region in Japan.
Wow, that must create some confusion! Or maybe not. There’s a region of England known as Holland, after all.
Blog and learn!
It can and sometimes does create confusion. After all, it’s pronounced the same. Usually you can distinguish between homophones in writing, but in this case they use the same kanji.
Sometimes, perhaps usually, it’s clear from context whether you’re referring to a region of Japan or China. Like in this news report. Sometimes not, which is why a lot of chinese restaurants still refer to their cuisine using the old name for China, “middle kingdom.” They don’t care about the official naming convention of the Japanese government, they want to make it clear that they don’t serve regional dishes from western Honshu.
Apparently the chugoku region of Japan has other nicknames, so sometimes people or companies use those instead to make it clear they’re not talking about China.
Mr Jennings – I note your comment with interest.
I have heard this before – but, with Chinese figures being untrustworthy, I have never been sure.