Only been back once but I was basically a tourist. Japan consume a LOT of fish and whales fall into that food group as far as they are concerned. The whaling they do is for meat sales but is granted under a scientific premise. They basically count pregnant cows, visible pod sizes and actually count the fish in the stomach. They hope to show enough evidence to allow comercial whaling again. I would support it but I would need to see some very convincing statistics. Afterall, noone complains about the 85 million tonnes of fish that are caught each year, even knowing that nearly 1/3 of all fish caught is for cat food (seriously).