For journalists used to the smooth diplomatic hum of the global conference circuit, covering the poisonous annual meetings of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is akin to being slapped in the face with a slab of week-old minke bacon.
Government representatives from across the world fill expensive, tax-funded conference halls and tear verbal strips off each other in language that is stunningly, almost comically, undiplomatic.
"Barbaric," "cruel" and "imperialist" are part of the standard lexicon of insults traded by delegates with elephantine memories for slights scored decades before. Top of the list of slights came on June 30, 1979, when antiwhaling protesters in London chanted "murderers" and "barbarians" at seemingly stunned Japanese bureaucrats and splashed them with red paint -- an experience burned deep into the collective cortex of the Japanese Fisheries Agency (FA) to this day.