An interview with Peter Bethune, shortly before his trial for boarding the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2.

‘Our interview takes place on the 10th floor. Bethune is brought into an interview room and we are separated by a glass wall, speaking through a grille. A burly guard sits directly behind Bethune, and a woman sits at a lectern next to him transcribing everything he says. We have exactly 12 minutes.
‘‘The media portrayed me as a terrorist, so . . . I had a hood over me, like I’m a psychopathic killer,’’ Bethune says. ‘‘It was the most bizarre experience. The ironic thing is that I went to a lot of trouble to get caught, and they’re worried I’m going to try and escape.’’’

“In Perigord and Piedmont they hunt for truffles. In Botswana and the Congo they dig for diamonds. But in Vietnam, it’s carbonised tree trunks that can make a person fabulously wealthy.

“Finding one good tree can set a person up for life,” says Yohei Yamada of Yamada Matsu Koboku, a 200-year-old store in Kyoto that buys the trunks, cuts them up and sells the chips at up to ¥30,000 ($400) a gram.

If you’re thinking you’d rather have an iPod than a thimble’s worth of wood, that’s because you don’t practise kodo, the Japanese art of incense.”

“Online dating minus ugly people is the premise behind Beautifulpeople.net, described by a spokesperson as ‘an elite online social networking tool for beautiful people.’”

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