Being Prepared For An Accident

I recently returned from a holiday and was allocated to one of the rows with an emergency exit. It’s not the first time that I have had this experience and many people like to be in this row as there is usually additional leg room to ensure that, in the case of an emergency, it’s…

“Japanese Disaster Narratives of the Early Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change” available now

While Japan has had a long history of disaster movies, there was a period during the late twentieth century, at a time when the genre had regained popularity in Hollywood, that few were being made. However, from the start of the twenty-first century there has been a new wave of disaster movies. Building upon my…

What Caused the JL123 Crash?

When I first started conducting research about the JL123 crash (also known as JAL123), I had no intentions of looking at the cause of the crash at all. As far as I was concerned, it was a known fact: following an accident in 1978, the rear pressure bulkhead was damaged, incorrectly repaired, and this led…

Plane Crash Recreated: JAL123/Japan

Further to my post about the TV series “Plane Crash Recreated” being shown on PBS America in the UK, this post covers one of the episodes – JAL123/Japan. There are two reasons for doing a separate post on this episode (my comments on the other episodes are in the original post). First, I have been…

Plane Crash Recreated

There are many different documentary one-off programmes and series that deal with plane crashes. Some of the series have gone on for many seasons. It’s clearly a popular form of disaster narrative. Beyond any entertainment aspect, there’s also, naturally, the potential for them to be educational, to help inform the public, and, by extension, to…

Post 524 – Remembering The Victims of the JL123 Plane Crash

This is blog post number 524. For many I suspect that there is no particular significance of this number. But like 123 and 520, I will always associate it with JL123, Japan’s and the aviation world’s Titanic, which has been one of my research areas since 2007. 524 is the official number of crew and…

Post 520 – Remembering The Victims of the JL123 Plane Crash

This is blog post number 520. For many I suspect that there is no particular significance of this number. But like 123, I will always associate it with JL123, Japan’s and the aviation world’s Titanic, which has been one of my research areas since 2007. 520 is the official number of victims on board JL123….

Shintaro Ishihara (1932-2022)

I woke up to the new this morning (1 February 2022) that Shintaro Ishihara had died. Ishihara is probably best known as being a member of the LDP, Governor of Tokyo (1999 to 2012), and author of the book “The Japan That Can Say ‘No’”. He had also been a novelist before going into politics…

Boeing 747 Model – Owning a part of an actual B747

The Boeing 747 (B747) “Jumbo Jet” is my favourite passenger plane. I love its shape – it’s not too “perfect” like Concorde – and I love what it symbolised to me in terms of leaving Europe for the first time and many more times after that. Of course, there is a darker side to the…

Remembering the Great Hanshin Earthquake

Today (17 January) is the anniversary of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake – also known as the Hanshin Awaji Daishinsai (Great Earthquake) or Kobe earthquake (阪神・淡路大震災). On that day I was in Sheffield, in the first year of doing my PhD – but it could have been very different. A little over 24 months earlier,…

Favourite Photos: Doai Station

On some days I just do a short post that primarily revolves around a favourite photo without much accompanying text. This picture was taken during a trip to Doai station in 2011. The main reason for my visits to Doai stems from Contents Tourism connected to my research about the JL123 crash and the novel/dramatization…

Blogging and Social Media: Impact and Reach

Today I will yet again be giving a training session to post-graduate research students and early career researchers about writing blogs. I have run this session (or a similar one) a number of times now – not only to those at Cardiff University, but also to students on an MA programme at the School of…