The Basis for Japanese Food Culture: Soybeans

You probably don't think of soybeans as being vital to culture, but in Japan, the lowly soybean is the most important national crop after rice. Soybeans began being cultivated in China 4000 years ago and found their way to Japan through Siberia soon after. Today many of the traditional foods of Japan are made from soybeans, including tofu, or soybean curd, which tastes a lot better than its English name sounds; miso soup, how I start my morning every day; and natto, the fermented soybeans that foreigners usually shun because of the way it smells. Soybeans are the base for soy sauce, a flavoring used more often than salt in Japanese kitchens, and they're also used to cast out "devils" (actually fathers wearing cardboard devil masks) on a special day in February called Setsubun. Another popular way to eat soybeans is as edamame, lit. "twig bean," which are boiled soybeans in their pods that are great for munching on over a beer, and healthier than anything else you could choose, too. The way the soybeans pop out of their pods when you give them a squeeze is especially fun, and there are compulsive people here who love nothing more than to order an extra large bowl of edamame and pop all the seeds out. If this sounds appealing to you, check out the Endless Edamame Keychains we've gotten in stock today -- they're great fun to play with all day long!

Zipang... Cipangu... Giapan...

The name of Japan in its own language is nihon or nippon, alternate readings of kanji characters that mean "origin of the sun," a name given it by China, written 日本. The two names are interchangeable, with nihon being used in everyday speech and nippon used in more formal situations, for example by lawmakers or the straight-laced newscasters on NHK, Japan's version of the BBC. The first Westerners heard of Japan was through Marco Polo, who wrote about a strange country 1500 miles to the East of China called Cipangu, a place of great wealth where both temples and average homes were made of gold, and where the people were very polite, although they had a strange custom of eating human flesh. The modern name of Japan has been filtered through many other languages, including traders in Malaysia   (who called it Jepang), Manchuria (Zeppen), and the Portuguese (Iapan), and first appearing in English as Giapan. For some reason, the Japanese have focused on the version Zipang as a cool, retro early word for their country, and this name is commonly found in books, video games, an anime and manga series, and computer CPU cooler.

(The anime Zipang is really good, by the way, a kind of Final Countdown in which a present-day Japanese ship is sent back to World War II...I recommend it a lot.)

The Funniest Man in Miyazaki Prefecture

Japan has been undergoing a "Miyazaki Prefecture Boom," lately, thanks to its governor, former TV comedian Sonomanma Higashi, a discovery of director/comedian Takeshi Kitano, who appeared on Takeshi's Castle for years. The TV comic gave up his career as a "talent" to run for governor of this rural prefecture last year, winning despite having no backing from any political party. Since taking office, he's shaken things up quite a bit, using his celebrity status to shed light on the wasteful construction projects that plague rural Japan and trading in his official governor's vehicle for a hybrid. Now, his face adorns dozens of products that contain ingredients from the prefecture, and it seems you can't go into a shop without seeing his face smiling up at you. Miyazaki is located in the southeast corner of the southernmost island of Kyushu, one of the early centers of Japanese civilization due to its proximity to China and the Korean Peninsula, and it's famous for mangoes, the off-season training camp for the Tokyo Giants, and a sprawling resort called SEAGAIA, which recreated a tropical beach under an 85 acre dome, although it was closed last year due to the inability of the operators to make a profit.

Japan is a Small Country

Japan is a small country, which has to fit about half the population of the U.S. into an area just 1/25th the size. This makes it important for people to use less space, and you can see many ways in which the Japanese go about doing this in their cities. First of all, many businesses such as family restaurants or electronics retailers are built up high, with the ground level clear for cars to park, which saves a lot of space. Houses with business built into them are quite common in Japan, like Seven-Eleven convenience stores with apartments above for the manager to live in, or my own house, which contains the small liquor shop that my wife's family has operated for fifty years. Gas stations need to save space, too, and many have their pumps located in the roof, with hoses that can be dropped down from above, allowing for more space for cars waiting to be refueled. For parking a lot of cars in a small area, the Japanese have automated car storage systems that will whisk your car away and store it while you shop, then return it to you when you insert your parking stub. There's even a version of this for bicycles that has just gone online, which can store 9400 bicycles in a small underground space. Of course, building up always gives you more room with work with, but it's not always possible to do that in earthquake-prone Japan, which puts extra pressure on engineers to come up with ways of doing more with less space.

All About Japanese Females

Being a healthy male, I'm naturally fascinated with the opposite sex, and I find the subject of Japanese females to be an especially complex and interesting one. Over the years I've known many Japanese females, from students I taught English to, to girls I dated, and of course my wife, and while each of them is unique, I have noticed some patterns. Japanese females are often very concerned with how they appear to others, wanting to be chanto shiteru (roughly translatable "doing things properly, as they should be doing") in all things, and when it comes time to, say, split a lunch bill, out come the calculators so they can accurately compute the amount that each person must pay. Often, Japanese girls feel the need to cultivate a certain kawaii character about themselves, and it's not that difficult to find a girl in her high teens or twenties who thinks its cute to hold her coat sleeves in her hands to make herself look "super deformed," to refer to herself in the third person or to spontaneously channel a "catgirl" without warning. (As you can see from looking at Colonel Sanders wearing a maid costume, there's no natural upper limit to what can be made "cute" in Japan.) While there are exceptions, most Japanese girls are extremely slender, and I've known grown women here who, when visiting the U.S., need to shop at Gap Kids if they want to find their size. Thanks to eating rice three times a day, Japanese females are constipated more often than not, and spend great quantities of money on exotic Chinese herbal remedies, when all they need to do is eat a little less rice. I could go on, but I wouln't want to ruin the mystique of Japanese women for anyone, and besides, they confuse me, too. At J-List we've got a wacky line of T-shirts, polo shirts and hats that say "Now Accepting Applications for a Japanese Girlfriend" in kanji, and based on its ongoing popularity, I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one fascinated by the enigma of Japanese women.

Old and New Things in Japan

It's always interesting to compare the differences between Japan and the rest of the world. In America, many products like Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Wrigley's gum and Tootsie Rolls have been around for over a century, some since the Civil War, and they continue to dominate in their respective categories decade after decade. Japanese consumers, however, seem to favor new products when they shop, forcing manufacturers to come up with fresh ideas at a faster pace. While there are some solid Japanese standbys that never change -- Original Pocky, or Peko-chan Milky Candy -- any visit to a Japanese conbini (convenience store) is sure you bring you into contact with a dozen or so products you've never seen before, like the brand-new Fanta Furu-Furu Shaker, a can of orange Fanta with gelatin in the can that makes it rather difficult to drink. The Japanese beer industry is another example: even in the small-town liquor store that my wife's parents operate, I constantly see new twists on Japanese beer being sold, like beer formulated for ladies, or beer with dietary fiber added, or beer that tries to appear "green" and somehow friendly to nature. I've been told that this is because the Japanese themselves have short attention spans, and move onto the next big thing rather quickly. While it's always nice to find an innovative new flavor of Kit Kat or a new twist on Doritos, it's also good to have a core of old favorites that never change.

Japan's Newest Internet Trend

Like most countries, the keitai (mobile phone) has become a huge part of life in Japan, and for the younger generation, cell phones seem to be supplanting the personal computer as the primary Internet device of choice. The newest trend is young people using their phones to access sites called purofu (i.e. "prof," from the English word profile, which looks very similar to "blog" when rendered in katakana), centralized services that allow people to create profiles for themselves showing their pictures, specifying their age and location, and listing their favorite music, movies or food. These purofu services are sort of like guestbooks optimized to display on cell phones, where people can search for keywords then leave comments or links and have random, meandering discussions, creating a way for lonely Japanese young people to make friends. No one knows exactly how many users of these services there are in Japan, but conservative estimates start at 1 million or more. The new Internet services aren't without problems, however, some of which came to light last week when a 17-year-old student attacked a 14-year-old in Chiba Prefecture with a metal baseball bat for writing insults on his profile page.

Sushi

Sushi is the delicious raw fish on rice eaten in Japan, and it's so popular here that we have to plan carefully when we want to go eat it, to avoid having to wait an hour to get into the restaurant. By definition, sushi is raw fish on vinegared rice, with the vinegar originally added to keep the sushi from going bad back in the days when there was no refrigeration. Although the standard cut fish perched atop a pressed piece of rice (called nigiri-zushi or hand-pressed sushi) is the most famous type, there are many other varieties, including gunkan-maki or "battleship roll" with seaweed around the outside of the rice; maki-zushi or rolled sushi; and one of my favorites, chirashi-zushi or "scattered sushi" with different kinds of fish sitting on rice, which you mix together then eat. Certain types of sushi actually contain no fish, yet are still considered sushi, including cucumber rolls and the favorite of kids throughout Japan, tamago or scrambled egg sushi. Although Japanese eat a lot of raw things from the sea, the same cannot be said of the Chinese. I've got an American friend who has a Chinese wife, and whenever we eat dinner with them I rub my hands together in anticipation, knowing that she'll give me all her sushi and sashimi.

Oops, talking about food again, and getting hungry...

Law and the Courts in Japan

Although you probably don't know much about how the law functions in Japan, most Japanese have at least a basic idea of how the courts operate in the States, thanks to the many kaigai dorama or "overseas dramas" that are shown here. As a general rule, the law and lawyers don't play a large part in people's lives in Japan, which seems to be partially for cultural reasons and partially due to people just having a little more common sense and courtesy when dealing with each other. Awards for civil lawsuits are based on actual, provable damages, which makes it very hard for a plaintiff to get an unreasonably large judgment; in addition, lawyers' fees are based on the damages sought by plaintiffs, rather than damages actually awarded, which eliminates a lot of potential for greed. On the criminal side, prosecutors currently enjoy a mind-boggling 99% conviction rate, nearly always after a defendant makes a signed confession. There are some difficult cultural elements involved here, but the conviction rate is so high in part because prosecutors only bring cases for which they have solid evidence. Big changes are coming for the legal profession though, as Japan prepares to introduce a trial-by-jury system in which citizens will act as "lay judges" and determine the the outcome of cases. Personally, I don't think it will fly: between the tendency of Japanese to be overly group-oriented and come to agreement for the wrong reasons, the occasional amano-jaku, the kind of "absolute contrarian" that refuses to do things that are popular that I talked about recently, which in the case or something like a jury trial could really cause problems for the justice system here.

The History of Golden Week

Japan is in the middle of Golden Week, a semi-accidental grouping of holidays which gives everyone a break from normal their school or work lives. The name Golden Week was coined in 1951 when an executive at the Daiei Movie Company noticed a spike in ticket sales around these holidays, so his company started a campaign advertise the holiday week as a great time to go see a movie, in the same way that "golden time" is the best time to watch television (although we call it "prime time"). While everyone uses this label today, Japan's public broadcasting network NHK stoically refuses, preferring the term "period of consecutive holidays" as the name Golden Week is ostensibly an advertising term for a private industry. Golden Week is a major economic event both for leisure-oriented businesses inside Japan as well as for areas popular with Japanese tourists, like Hawaii, Guam and California, but the fact that several of this year's holidays fall on Saturdays may mean fewer leisure-travelers. In case you're curious, the holidays that make up Golden Week are Showa Day on April 29, the birthday of the former Emperor; Constitution Day on May 3, to commemorate Japan's postwar constitution; Green Day on May 4, a day for appreciating plants and growing things; and Children's Day on May 5, which is traditionally a day to celebrate boy children by flying carp-shaped kites which represent the boys swimming up the stream of life. Happy Golden Week, everyone!

Major Types of Bento

Bento is the famous boxed lunch consumed millions of times daily across Japan, and fast becoming a sensation all over the world. As a rule, bento lunches in Japan are almost always comprised of a quantity of rice along with meat, fish, vegetables or other foods that go well with the rice, which is collectively called okazu, the "main course." Although there are endless varieties of bento you can create, there are several well-defined categories that I'll tell you about. The most basic type of bento there is is probably noriben, white rice with nori seaweed over the rice, which you can easily make at home. Another is toriben, essentially chicken with teriyaki sauce over rice, although one of the great mysteries of Japan is that no one seems to use the word teriyaki here. I love jubako, the "stackable" bento that comes on two or three levels, and you never know what the next section will contain until you open it -- it's quite fun. When my mother-in-law was growing up in the 50s, her family didn't have much money, so she had to eat hinomaru bento, or "Circle of the Sun" boxed lunch, which is a big section of white rice with a small, round ume-boshi (pickled Japanese plum) in the center, like the Japanese flag. In general, the kind of bento lunch most men would love to eat is called aisai bento, literally "loving wife lunch," the word for the delicious hand-made lunch a man's wife will make for him. If a married man is eating bento and a Japanese person passes by, there's a 77% chance they'll smirk and make a comment about how jealous they are that you're eating aisai bento and they're not.

Spirited Away and Japanese Values

One of my favorite movies is Spirited Away, a beautiful feature film by Hayao Miyazaki with a fabulous soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi. It's the story of Chihiro, an average, somewhat spoiled Japanese girl who finds herself "spirited away" to a another world inhabited by all manner of gods and spirits, not unlike a girl named Alice who walked through a looking glass. In order to save her parents, who have become pigs, she must work at an abura-ya (an old word for a public bathhouse) frequented by various odd creatures from the spirit world. I like the movie because of the many important Japanese values that are demonstrated as Chihiro goes on her strange journey, such as the Shinto belief that there are kami (spirits) in natural objects such as rivers which we should show respect for rather than harm. Chihiro grows a great deal during the film, for example learning that good things will come to those who are industrious and work hard, a message Mr. Miyazaki no doubt wanted to send to the current generation of young viewers in the hopes that they take it to heart. Perhaps the most important thing is that she learns how to show thanks when someone does something for her, and communicate this thanks loudly and clearly as a good Japanese girl should. If you haven't seen the film, please do, it's really a special one.

Ramen as a Leading Economic Indicator in Japan

I took the kids out for ramen last night, and while we were waiting for our gyoza dumplings to be fried up, I realized something interesting: I'd been coming to that restaurant for a decade and a half, since back when my wife and I were dating, and for all that time, the prices had never gone up. It seemed incredible to me, so I glanced at the menu to be sure, but the Miso Corn Ramen was still 600 yen, and the gyoza was still 300 yen for a plate of five pieces. This is the general rule in Japan, a country which for some reason sees very little inflation in the prices of everyday goods, perhaps due to government involvement in various aspects of the economy for "stability" purposes, or for other reasons we gaijin can't fathom. Now, of course, the price of oil is finally causing some prices to inch up faster than the snail's pace they normally move at, and when the Nissin Food Company announced they'd be raising the prices of their instant noodles, it was treated as big sky-is-falling news, despite the fact that it was a small increase, and the first in no less than seventeen years. Today at lunch the cashier at the croquette shop we stopped at apologized in a meek voice that they'd been forced to raise their prices slightly, and I told her it was okay.

I hate GOT to stop writing about food in the evenings. I get so hungry...

Trains in Japan

One of the best aspects about living in Japan are trains, an incredibly convenient way of getting around cities. Within just a few months of living in Japan I was hooked on the convenience of trains, and found myself paying attention to things like, where the best place to board the train is if I want to be at the top of the stairs when I arrive at my destination. Japan is a very precise country that likes to be on time, and this is reflected in its rail system, in which trains are never late except in the occasional cases of "bodily injury accidents," the code word for someone committing suicide by jumping onto the train tracks. Today happens to be the third anniversary of the terrible train derailment at Amagasaki, near Osaka, in which a commuter train jumped its tracks while rounding a sharp curve and slammed into an apartment building. The crash came about because the driver was trying to make up time and avoid being late for the next scheduled stop, and he'd pushed the train up to 108 kph despite the speed limit for that section of the line being a mere 70 kph. With 106 passengers killed including the driver, it was Japan's worst rail accident in three decades.

Funny Words in Japanese

One of the first things you do when learning a foreign language is, of course, to investigate all the "naughty" words. But this usually isn't too exciting in the case of Japanese, as the language lacks the satisfying range of curse words and anatomical references you find in English. Most of the "bad" words aren't even that bad, with the "s" word (which is kuso in case you were curious) used regularly on Japanese children's shows, and the average insults being along the lines of baka! "Stupid!" or sashimi yaro! "You cold fish without rice!" (Actually that last one was a joke.) Instead of focusing on the naughty words, some students instead find themselves giggling over words that sound "goofy" to the English ear for one reason or another. One such word I encountered early on was the word for "sometimes," toki-doki, written using the kanji for "time" twice. The word sounded so similar to "okee-dokee" that I couldn't stop using it in every sentence, to the great annoyance of my Japanese friends. Some other Japanese words that stood out because of the way they sound included haha, which means "my mother"; ware-ware (WAH-reh WAH-reh), a formal word meaning "we"; doki-doki, the sound of your heart beating in anticipation of something; and mokkori, which is defined as the sound something makes when it protrudes or sticks out suddenly (i.e. pitching a tent).

Please Do Not Smoke Unless You Really Have To

Today I ate soba noodles for lunch, and I was amused at a sign I saw above my head, which said narubeku kin'en, translatable as "No Smoking As Possible, Please." I found it quite amusing for the restaurant owners to ask customers not to smoke "if they can possibly avoid it." Although smoking rates have been falling in recent years, the Japanese do smoke quite a lot, with 41% of males and 12% of females currently lighting up, which compares to 27% and 24% in the U.K. and 24% and 18% in the U.S., respectively. Tobacco was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese during the 16th Century, and it took hold quickly, with a traditional pipe called a kiseru very popular throughout the Edo Period. Today cigarettes enjoy a rather unique status, since the Japanese Ministry of Finance is the majority stockholder in the country's largest tobacco company, and regional economies get 50% of the taxes collected on cigarettes by law. One area where the industry here has shown vision has been preempting some of the negative feelings about cigarettes by promoting good smoking manners, as with the "Ah! Delight" and "Smokin' Clean" campaigns that show smokers being considerate of others. Japan often seems custom-built to confound Westerners, and it's interesting that a country that smokes as much as it does still manages to enjoy long life spans, something that generally goes against expectations in the West.

Image of Foreigners in Japan

When Japanese think of foreigners, they think of overly tall, blonde Americans or Europeans with huge feet, trying to find their way to the right subway line. Even though some of us aren't that tall (I'm only 5'9"), they apologize for having such small cars when you sit in the passenger seat, and likewise apologize for living in such a tiny hovel when you visit them at home, whether or not their house is really that small. It's also assumed that every foreigner will speak English, and it's not uncommon to be told "sorry, I can't understand!" by a Japanese person even though you're speaking to them in their native language. In actuality, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan are not Westerners, but are from both Koreas, Brazil, Peru, and China. Officially, 1.5% of Japan's population are resident foreigners, although that number doesn't take into account people who are here illegally, so the number is probably higher. Isesaki, the city we live in, has a much higher foreign population (3%) than average due to a lot of factories based here, which means a lot more choices when you want to eat ethnic. One of our favorite restaurants is a Peruvian place that serves the most heavenly pollo a la brasa.

My Favorite Word: Amanojaku

I've written before about how, while studying Japanese, it's easy to find yourself latching on to words or kanji characters as being especially kakko ii, a word that means "good style" or "cool," and one word I've always liked is amano-jaku, pronounced "Amano Jack." Originally the name of a shape-shifting Shinto/Buddhist deity known for tempting mortals into doing naughty things, today the term applies to anyone who is extremely contrarian in nature, and who avoids doing things that are popular simply because they're popular. For example, I've never in my life seen the movie Top Gun, because back when it was in the theatres it was so popular that I felt pushed away by that, unable to watch a movie that everyone was raving about so much, and in this the term definitely applies to me, and to anyone who hates being trendy. The opposite of an amano-jaku is mii-haa (like Me! Ha!), someone who loves popular things because they're popular, which happens all too often in Japan's group-oriented society.

What is a Freeter?

A lot has changed in the 17 years that I've lived in Japan. I arrived here in 1991, also known as Heisei 3, being the third year of the current Emperor's reign. Although this sounds really cool if you imagine it in Star Wars terms, with the Emperor sitting in a high-backed chair or something, in reality the Japanese Emperor doesn't do that much. Back then, the Tokyo land bubble, which saw the value of Japan's capital climb higher than that of the entire USA, had just burst, but the economy was still humming along fairly well. Back in those days, it was a given that most young people entering the workforce would take a full-time job with a large company where they'd enjoy de-facto lifetime employment. Well, for males, anyway -- in those days, as now, the majority of women chose to quit their jobs within a few years after getting married, often despite spending years on their educations beforehand. After the roller coaster ride of the past decade and a half, however, many things have changed: for example the staff of J-List find themselves working in a company founded by an American, with a highly competent female (my wife) as company president. Today no one expects to be able to work at the same company throughout their career, making Japan a little more like traditional economies in the West. Perhaps in response to this general change in thinking, a sizeable class of young people who choose not to bother with full-time employment at all has appeared. They're called "Freeters," people between the ages of 15 and 34 who live at home and who are happy to bounce between part-time jobs without beginning a formal career. In order to spur the economy, the government is trying to come up with ways to get more young people to see the benefits of working full-time, including stability, opportunities for personal growth and higher income. Personally, I've long thought that Japan should institute a draft of persons between the ages of 18-20, as countries like South Korea and Switzerland do, to give Japan's youth some purpose and toughen them up for the challenges that await them in life. Young people in Japan are extremely heiwa-boke, a word that literally means "soft in the head from too much peace," and maybe serving a couple years in the Self-Defense Forces would do them some good.

Akihabara Update

Akihabara is the area of Tokyo famous for its electronics shops, and you can find whatever you're looking for there, whether it's the newest computer gadget or fifteen-year-old software for your Sega Mega Drive game console. Akiba is also the "Mecca" of otaku culture in the world, with hundreds of doujinshi shops, maid cafes and other companies selling products of interest to Japan's booming otaku generation. Take a stroll down the main street on a Sunday -- they close the whole street down since there's so much foot traffic -- and you'll see a spectacle like no other, with thousands of fans laughing, shopping or dancing while cosplaying their favorite anime characters, including more than a few males dressed up like female characters. Lately some less-than-savory elements have been showing up at Akiba, including up-and-coming bikini idols providing some, ahem, "fan service" for passersby with camera phones to increase their popularity, which tends to tarnish the area's image as a fun playground for nerdy types. As the fans get rowdier, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have been increasing their patrols in the region, walking around and making grim faces at fans who look like they're about to start a "guerilla live" or sudden performance of anime karaoke along the side of the street. They've been checking the belongings of otaku shoppers, too, ostensibly to make sure they don't have any knives, which seems silly, given the extremely innocuous nature of most otaku types -- most of us wouldn't hurt a fly outside of a video game. There've been a lot of theories put forth about the crackdown on geekish activities, including that it's a lot safer to mess with the "A-boys" then, say, yakuza gangsters over in Kabuki-cho.

Innovative Uses for Vending Machines in Japan

Japan leads the world in many important areas, including sporting more vending machines than any other country in the world, with one operating machine for every 23 citizens. While there are vending machines that sell everyday items you'd expect to find, like canned drinks or Pocky, it's not hard to find machines offering frozen ice cream or 5 kg bags of rice, as well as machines that sell cigarettes and beer when you slide your drivers' license in for verification. The other day I was walking around our city trying to find a shop that would give me change for a 10,000 yen note, but I wasn't having any luck since there were no regular shops near where I was. I happened to walk past our city's Passport Center, the place where Japanese citizens in our city go to order a passport, so I ducked inside to ask if they could make change for me. The lady at the counter just shrungged, gesturing to a vending machine that stood behind me, and I knew I was out of luck: the Passport Center, like many businesses, used a vending machine that dispensed tickets that could be traded for the various services they offered. This allowed the office staff to completely avoid dealing with cash, which no doubt made their operations safer and more efficient, since all the cash was stored safely inside the ticket vending machine, which could only be opened by the armored car drivers who came to empty it every day. You also find these ticket vending machines at restaurants quite often: just insert your 500 yen, hit the button for "curry rice," and give that ticket to the waitress, who never needs to touch money herself.

Japanese Health Insurance Hell 2008

As a group, the Japanese are fortunate enough to enjoy extremely long lifespans, with the current average being 78.5 years for men and 85.5 years for women. There are many reasons for this longevity, including a healthier diet, an extremely safe society, and a tendency to build lifelong relationships that provide important support in later years. (My mother-in-law is still close friends with women she went to elementary school with six decades ago, something that's unthinkable to me.) Another reason Japanese live a long time is the health care system here, in which private institutions provide health services according to highly structured price schedules imposed by the National Health Insurance System. Currently Japan is going through "Health Insurance Hell" as various changes that kicked in April 1st continue to cause mass confusion. For starters, Japan used to offer free healthcare to everyone over the age of 75, but this has changed, and under the new system, some elderly users must pay a monthly premium. It's not clear which groups this applies to, however, and it's feared that the new system, which makes people pay more for health insurance the more often they use medical services, will keep sick people from going to the hospital. In addition, the government saw fit to change the Health Insurance Card from a large booklet to a paper-thin card, which is easily lost or thrown away by elderly Japanese.

Understanding Japanese History through Science Fiction

If you read a lot of science fiction novels, as I have, one vehicle you'll find writers using is the idea of a "great renaming" in which familiar place names are changed, usually to denote much time passing or a period of great upheaval. (For example, 5,000 years after the original Dune novel, the planet Arrakis becomes known as Rakis.) It sounds very cool and science-fictioney, and yet a "great renaming" is exactly what happened in Japan during the Meiji Reformation, when the old system of feudal domains (han) was retired in favor of a modern prefectural system with all new names. As a result, virtually every region of Japan has two names associated with it, its current one (for example, Gunma Prefecture, where J-List is based), and its old name (which is Joshu-no-kuni). The archaic names aren't official anymore, yet they're still used quite often, for example an udon restaurant might advertise "authentic Joshu noodles" to make customers associate their food with something old-fashioned and tasty. Sometimes the use of the archaic names seems to be custom-made to confuse foreigners living here. For example, the freeway that goes from Tokyo to Niigata is the Kan-etsu Freeway, which makes use of the kanji for the old name of Niigata (Echigo), something that almost no poor gaijin would be likely to know.

What Shall We Do About Summer?

My family is going through our annual "what are we going to do about summer?" decision-making process, trying to make plans for our kids to go to the U.S. Figuring out what to do with kids during summer vacation is a challenge for any parent, I'm sure, but in our case it's extra difficult due to various cultural and scheduling differences between Japan and America. First of all, summer vacation is very short in Japan, being only six weeks long, so the time we have to work with is quite limited. We like to find activities for our kids that will help them maintain their English skills, like Girl Scout Camp for my daughter and various science-related camps for my son, but choosing the right program is never easy. While I think summer should be a time for kids to relax and have new experiences at a leisurely pace, my wife always goes into kyoiku mama ("education mother") mode, insisting that anything we choose for the kids to do have serious academic value. While the idea of doing homework over the summer break is totally alien to American children, kids in Japan aren't so lucky. In addition to everything else, we've got to factor in about 20-30 hours for the mountain of homework my kids will have to work through before school starts in September.

Capitalism and Delicious Sauce called "Sauce"

Japan is a great place, and I like it a lot. The people are kind and honest, and every day is a learning experience for me, both in terms of language as well as the wider world of Japanese culture around me. Japan is a free-market country in which products can be introduced into the marketplace to create value for smart companies with good ideas, the investors who provide capital to the companies, and the consumers who get the benefits of having innovative products to choose from. However, there are some areas in which Japanese-style capitalism doesn't always function in the way that a Westerner might expect. First of all, many companies must deal with competition from an unexpected source, the Japanese government itself, which chooses to involve itself in a wide range of businesses including operating Japan's horse racing industry and a government-subsidized provider of life insurance (Kanpo) -- they even ran Japan's largest tobacco company until it was privatized in the 1980s. Last year, an investment group called Steel Partners tried to engineer a U.S.-style takeover of Bull-Dog Sauce Company, the makers of that heavenly tonkatsu sauce that's usually usually called "sauce" in Japanese. While I'm all in favor of my favorite condiment company not being bought out in a hostile merger, there is the small issue of companies being owned by the actual shareholders, and not the management of the company, who seemed bent on preserving their own positions above all else as they fought off the takeover bid. Japan is a wonderfully litigation-free country, which is certainly a good thing all around. However there are times when a functional democracy might just need a few lawyers, for example if the management of a company did something that actually harmed the investors, yet in Japan concepts like shareholder lawsuits are completely unheard of.

Coffee Jelly Time!

Starbucks Japan has a new product for the coming summer season: the Coffee Jelly Frapachino, which is a coffee frap with chilled coffee-flavored gelatin at the bottom. Although coffee jelly ("jello" to our American readers) is probably up there fermented soybeans (natto), puffer fish (fugu) and pickled squid intestines (shiokara) as something you wouldn't expect to find gaijin eating, it's actually really good and easily one of my favorite desserts in the summer. It's sold in every convenience store or supermarket , usually in the form of little plastic cups that come with a separate container of sweetened milk that you add to your coffee jelly before eating it, just like you'd do to a cup of black coffee. There are many ways to eat coffee jelly, including pouring the milk over the pristinely shaped gelatin then digging in with your spoon, but I prefer to mix my coffee jelly up first then add the milk, letting it seep everywhere before I eat it.

The History of Bento

Bento are the amazing boxed lunches from Japan that are both delicious to eat and pleasing to look at, and since J-List has brought so much bento goodness to customers all over the world, I thought I'd write about the history a bit. The origin of rice in a portable box for easy carrying began in the Heian Period (794-1185), when people would pack rice that had been cooked then dried again as well as onigiri (rice balls) for journeys. The emergence of the ornate stackable bento box (jubako) came later as a way for nobles to enjoy a beautiful meal while drinking tea and viewing the cherry blossoms in the Spring. During the Edo Period (1603-1868), a popular form of boxed lunch called maku-no-uchi bento or "between-the-acts" boxed lunch appeared, which was eaten by playgoers during intermissions at public performances, or (according to another theory) by aficionados of sumo wrestling, who would wolf down the lunches in between bouts. With the coming of trains to Japan, people needed a convenient way of taking their lunch with them, which was the beginning of ekiben or train station bento, which has blossomed into a huge industry unto itself, with each region of Japan creating bento lunches you can only buy there, making even something as commonplace as lunch something special.

 

Religion in Japan

The subject of religion in Japan is a complex one. The two main religious traditions here are Buddhism, which was introduced through the Korean Peninsula along with the kanji writing system in the 6th century; and Shinto, the naturalistic original religion of Japan which sees kami, gods or spirits, in trees, rivers and mountains. Anywhere between 63-96% of Japanese report themselves as being Buddhist, with around 3% and 1% for Shinto and Christianity, respectively. Exact numbers are difficult to pin down, though, since there's no subject more "about" (an English word the Japanese use to mean nebulous or imprecise) than religion here. Although someone's family may belong to one religion or another, nearly everyone mixes themes regularly over the course of their lives, generally turning to Shinto or Christianity for life-affirming ceremonies like weddings or baby namings and Buddhism for funerals and ceremonies that pay respect to family members who have gone on. It's quite a mish-mash, really, but somehow each group is able to coexist alongside the others without friction. If you ever have a question about religeon in Japan, feel free to ask a Japanese person about it, but be prepared for a less than satisfactory answer, as Japanese rarely think deeply about their own country and culture in the way that foreigners fascinated by the country do. One of the great achievements of modern Japanese society is that they've managed to completely separate religion from politics, and when election time rolls around, the question of what religious background a certain candidate might have isn't contemplated in the slightest. (A possible exception to this might be members of the New Komeito Party, which is affiliated with the "evangelical" Buddhist movement, Sokka Gakkai, and whose members are presumably a member of that religeon.)

On Superstitions and Lucky Days

One thing that surprised me about the Japanese was how superstitious many people here are, and there are many superstitions here that seem odd to foreigners, such as, don't cut your fingernails at night or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, don't whistle at night or snakes will come and get you, and so on. Many of these beliefs come from Japan's unique flavor of Buddhism, which seems to be very death-oriented -- for example, it's bad luck to sleep with your head to the north (kita makura), as dead people about to be cremated are laid with their heads to the north. In this vein, there's a complex system of lucky and unlucky days according to a Buddhist calendar, with six different days that cycle throughout the month. It's good luck to get married or start construction on your home or take delivery of a car on the luckiest day (called Taian), but if you were to get married on the unlucky day (called Butsumetsu), you'd probably end up divorced and unhappy. The six days, and their kanji meanings, are Sensho ("win first"), Tomobiki ("take away with"), Senpu ("lose first"), Butsumetsu ("Buddha's Death"), Taian ("Great Calm"), and Shakkou ("Red Mouth"). Supposedly, it's lucky to do things in the morning on Sensho, but it's unlucky to do anything in the morning on Senpu -- wait til the afternoon instead on that day. Never have a funeral on Tomobiki, as the soul of the deceased will be taken away instead of staying near his loved ones, while Butsumetsu is a general unlucky day, and virtually all Japanese avoid doing important things on this day. Today (the 14th) is Taian by the way -- I hope everyone enjoys good luck today!

Is it Possible for Someone to Forget their Native Language?

Is it possible for a person to forget their native language? You wouldn't think so, but during my years of living in Japan, I've definitely noticed my skills at English changing in alarming ways. The first to go were my college-level reading skills, something I realized with a shock while thumbing through a graduate school catalog less than a year after graduating from SDSU and coming to Japan to teach English as a Second Language. Teaching ESL is especially challenging since you're surrounded with students who speak very simple English, and in order to make yourself understood you find yourself talking more slowly, perhaps, or pronouncing the "t" sound in "party" more than a native speaker would. When you go for months or years without hearing English vocabulary words above the Junior High School level, the brain can have real difficulties pulling difficult words like "irreplaceable" or "gynecologist" out on short notice. But it's really shocking when you make an actual mistake, which happened to me once when my family and I were in the U.S. In Japanese the words for splinter (a sliver of wood) and thorn (the prickly things on a rosebush) are the same, toge (TOH-gay), and once, when my daughter got a splinter in her foot, I got the two words confused in my head. When my mother heard me asking to help get the "thorn" out of my daughter's foot with tweezers she looked at me funny.

How Japan Deals with War: Anime?

Japan's defeat in World War II was a huge emotional blow to the country which is still felt today. Although more than sixty years have passed, the subject of the war is still in many ways "taboo," and not discussed very often outside of certain specific situations. (Kind of reminds me of growing up in the 1970s and asking what that Vietnam War thing was all about...no one seemed to want to tell me.) One interesting mechanism the Japanese have evolved to allow them to deal with the subject of war has been an unlikely one: animation. While the traditional image of a "soldier" used to be tied to black and white photographs from the historical Pacific War, this has changed somewhat after three decades of popular culture in which the idea of "war" was more likely to be defined in sci-fi terms, such as the One Year War of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, in which spacenoids living in orbital colonies fight for independence from Earth. While it's not generally possible for Japanese to wax romantic about the real war, which they lost, you can probably find fans within a certain age range who could tell you about the First Battle of Jaburo between Char Aznable-lead Zeon forces and the Federation in great detail, or a Space Battleship Yamato fan who can get misty-eyed about the Battle of Saturn, when dozens of Andromeda-class battleships were destroyed by the Comet Empire. If you asked Japanese who they considered the most respected "military heroes" of the country were, you might find some who would answer Amuro Rei or Bright Noah or Captain Okita/Captain Avatar, the legendary characters from these war-oriented anime series. It's not unlike the original Star Trek, which was able to tell stories about race relations and other difficult topics that couldn't be discussed in the 1960s unless they were disguised as science fiction tales far off into the future.

Words are Interesting Things

Like Cherry Blossoms in the Spring, words are fleeting things, and it can be surprising how their meanings change when they're imported into other languages. Many of the English words the Japanese use don't match up perfectly with their Japanese counterparts. When I had to replace a cooling fan in one of our Macs, I went to the local computer store ("Power Up Computing Life") and asked for a fan, using the English word, guessing correctly that the modern electronic concept of a fan would be covered by the English word. Other concepts that we use the word "fan" for go by very different names in Japanese, such as senpuuki (an electric fan), uchiwa (a fan you use to fan yourself, non-folding) and sensu (a traditional folding Chinese style fan). There are some other English words that the Japanese use, but only in limited ways. If there's a girl you're secretly in love with, a Japanese might advise you to "attack" her (meaning, go and win her love). The English word "camouflage" often refers to a gay man and woman marrying to hide this fact from others. And the English word "propose" is used in Japan only to mean a proposal of marriage, which certainly presents the potential for confusion in international work settings.

Space Invaders

I happened to see that this month marks the 30th anniversary of the venerable "Invader Game," what Space Invaders is called in Japan. This was one of the most influential video games ever released, with many innovative features for its era, including being the first game to introduce the element of competition by recording the day's high scores. For me personally, Space Invaders represents no less than the point in history when just about everything cool started to come from Japan. While the Golden Age of coin-operated video games would still see plenty of innovative releases from American companies over the next few years, it wouldn't take long for icons like Mario, Link and friends to win the hearts of gamers everywhere, for the first time creating a generation that looked to Japan as a major source of its popular culture of choice. Japanese influence would continue to be felt everywhere, starting with the tired lineup of after-school cartoons which were really ready for a smack-down, through the world of American comic books, and all the way to Hollywood. Now, it's almost impossible to separate the ways in which Japan has influenced the world we live in, and to me, it all started with that simple, fun Invader Game.

Fixating on Japanese Phrases and Kanji

One interesting side effect of studying a foreign language like Japanese is finding yourself naturally fixating on various aspects of the language as kakko ii, or "cool." While learning Japanese I found myself liking certain phrases or kanji, like the flowing character for hashiru (to run), which is quite fun to write, or the mystery of the word ku-no-ichi, written with three kana characters from the kanji for woman and meaning "femal e ninja." In Japanese there are quite a few four-character compound words imported from China centuries ago, which are interesting because they express highly poetic ideas, like jinba-ittai, a slogan adopted by Mazda which means "man and horse as one." If you watch anime, you already know some of these kanji-based idioms, such as ikki tousen, which literally means "one knight who is a match for 1000 enemies," i.e., really strong; or tenchi muyo, written with the characters for heaven + earth + no need, although its meaning is somewhat less elegant, since it's what they print on boxes to represent "this end up." One of these compound words I found myself drawn to during my studies was issho kenmei (ee-SHO ken-may), written with characters that mean "to put one's only life on the line," which in everyday use means to try very hard, to do something with all one's might. It encapsulates the Japanese ethic of working hard, whether it's beating your rival team at sports, studying hard and getting into a good university, or showing diligence to your boss and coworkers at work. Perhaps the most famous symbol of being issho kenmei about something is the traditional Japanese hachimaki headbands, which are worn by anyone who is fired up with passion for something, for example high school students studying for their university entrance exams, new employees in a company opening ceremony, volunteers at a political rally, and so on. We just happen to have a great selection of these traditional headbands -- check them out now!

Linguistics Land Mines in English and Japanese

If English is your native language, call up our parents and thank them now, because you've got it good. Japanese students learning English face an uphill battle on several fronts, not the least of which being the complex range of sounds they have to master if they want to be understood by anyone. Linguistically speaking, there are twelve vowels in most dialects of American English, with sounds like the schwa and the way New Yorkers pronounce "coffee" counting as separate vowels. One way Japanese learners can differentiate the various sounds in their minds is by memorizing "minimal pairs," sets of words that sound similar, such as walk and work, close and clothes, or election and, well, you know, that other word. I remember wondering why some of my former students would go out of their way to use "will not" as opposed to "won't" -- it turned out that they lacked confidence that the word wouldn't be mis-heard as want. There are pairs of words in Japanese that manage to give foreigners trouble too, and just about every expat living in Japan can tell about the time they really screwed up by using the wrong word in a delicate situation. Some of these tricky word pairs include kirei (kee-REY), meaning "pretty" or "clean," which is easily confused with kirai (ki-RAI), meaning "hated," as well as kawaii (KAH-WAH-ee), which means "cute," and kowai (ko-WA-ee), meaning "scary."

Japan and Brazil: the Emperor Comes to our Prefecture

The Emperor of Japan made a visit to our fine prefecture of Gunma on Monday, stopping by a community of Brazilian-Japanese citizens who worked at a large Sanyo plant. He was there with his wife, Gunma-born Empress Michiko, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of immigration between Japan and Brazil, when a ship from Kobe departed with 791 Japanese farmers in search of a better life there. During the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Japanese resettled in Brazil and neighboring countries, and many of their descendents have returned to Japan, forming one of the largest ethnic groups here. The town of Oizumi, about 30 km from J-List, has the highest official foreign population in the country (10%), although everyone knows that the real number about double that when people without valid visas are taken into account. It was quite a special event to have the Emperor in our neck of the woods, so naturally everyone dropped what they were doing to go try to get a glimpse of him, causing huge traffic jams everywhere.

Japanese Memory Tricks

Quick, what's the square root of five? I have no idea, but my wife knows: it's 2.2360679. How about the Periodic Table of Elements? My wife can recite the first dozen or so. Do you know what year the Kamakura Bakufu, the first military government in Japan, was established? She tells me that it was the year 1192. This isn't because she's especially smart -- like all Japanese she has a tendency to be self-effacing and regularly calls herself baka, or stupid. No, the reason she knows these tidbits of knowledge is because of the way Japanese memorize some forms of information, by converting it into easily learned phrases, which is called goro-awase. Through a mechanism few gaijin can really understand, numbers are easily mapped to syllables in Japanese, for example the "ee" sound can stand for ichi (one), and "yo" or "shi" for the number four, and "o" for zero. To conjure up the square root of five in the example above, my wife needs only to remember a phrase meaning "at the base of Mt. Fuji, a parrot cries" (Fuji-sanroku ni ohmu naku). Back in the late 1980s, the U.S. was going through a period of serious Japan envy, when just about everything from the country seemed to be perfect, especially the much-vaunted education system, and at least a small reason the Japanese were beating us on international standardized tests was because of these little mnemonic tricks. Of course, breaking information down into easy-to-digest chunks or memorizing by association are great ways to study more effectively. If you're looking for some innovative ways to learn Japanese, be sure to view our study pages for some good ideas.

The FUN Way to Learn Japanese

There are many approaches to learning a foreign language -- the Army Method (stress on learning through memorization), the Grammar Translation Method (learning a language by parsing its grammar), the Communicative Method (leaning by speaking and listening in the target language), and the Natural Approach (trying to replicate the steps that children go through when they learn a language). Then there's the "get attention" method, which I'll label the Social Feedback Method to give it a proper name. Basically, you learn whatever vocabulary and phrases that will make you the life of the party among your target linguistic group, be it fun ways to begin conversations with attractive Japanese girls or memorizing interesting phrases that will amuse people around you, like esoteric proverbs they don't expect foreigners to know. I have a friend who worked his way across Asia using this method, learning just enough of the local languages to be social and have fun with his hosts, and it seems to have worked very well for him. Bottom line, when you study a foreign language, make sure to keep your eye on the "fun" aspects of that language.

The Progenitors of the Otaku

The word otaku is a formal term meaning "you" or "your family" which acquired its alternate meaning of "obsessed fanboy" after a magazine article critical of the rising underground culture of anime and doujinshi (fan-created comics) first used the term in 1983. While the most common forms of otaku are fans who are devoted to anime and manga, there's no limit to the varieties of popular culture that can be encompassed with this word, and I've known karaoke otaku who sing for hours on end, a perfume otaku with more than 100 bottles in her collection, and an R/C otaku in our neighborhood who's been flying his airplanes in a nearby field every Sunday for a decade now. Still, although we otaku have a lot of fun with our anime figures and our life-sized anime hug pillows, the true progenitors of fanatical hobby culture would have to be the railroad fans, generally called densha mania in Japanese, a term for anyone with a deep interest in railroad culture and who enjoy taking pictures of or riding on different trains. Japan's history with railfans is long, with the first magazines for the genre appearing in the 1920s, although the hobby really took off in the 1960s and 70s as people acquired more time for leisure. One of the most famous rail aficionados is children's author Kenji Miyazawa, who brought his imagination and love of trains together in his famous story Night of Galactic Railroad, a tale about a train that flies through space.

The last word on otaku, the awesome anime Genshiken, about a college anime and visual culture club. I cannot recommend it enough. 

Ryoma Sakamoto, the Che Guevara of Japan

Over the weekend I took my son up to the mountains for some quality onsen (volcanic hot springs) bathing, one of my favorite activities in Japan. As I've written before, virtually all public baths and hot springs here have signs saying that customers with tattoos are not allowed in, which is done to promote a "family friendly" atmosphere and keep scary yakuza gangsters away. Of course people with casual tattoos on their bodies regularly ignore these signs, which was the case with a man I happened to see who had a really awesome tattoo on his arm: the face of Ryoma Sakamoto. One of the "founding fathers" of modern Japan, Ryoma was a samurai from the small Japanese island of Shikoku who embraced the slogan sonno joi (Respect the Emperor and Expel the Foreign Barbarians), rallying around the Emperor, who had been a figurehead of Japanese rule for most of the past 2000 years, and against the Tokugawa military government. Fearing that any battle that resulted in a large loss of life among Japanese soldiers would see Japan colonized by foreign powers, he made a master plan to force the Shogun to surrender power by bringing the the rival clans of Satsuma and Choshu (modern day Kagoshima and Yamaguchi) together in a military alliance. Although he was fighting against the influence of the U.S. and Britain on his country, he readily adopted Western technology, carrying a Smith and Wesson revolver and wearing boots as opposed to normal samurai footwear, popularizing both. Sadly, Ryoma was assassinated by members of the Shinsengumi, a group of pro-Tokugawa samurai, a month after achieving his victory. Today Ryoma is a very popular figure in modern Japan, a combination of Che Guevara and George Washington rolled into one. And certainly worthy of a tattoo.

How Japanese Sound Word (onomatopoeia) Can Change a Gaijin

One of the surprising things about living in a country like Japan is, is how you can get used to the local giseigo, literally "mimic-voice words," also known as onomatopoeia. To English speakers, dogs go "bark" of "woof" and cats "meow," but of course these are different in Japanese, where a small dog makes sounds like kyan kyan but a larger dog sounds like wan wan, and cats say nya nya. A rooster may cock-a-doodle-doo in English, but in Japanese he makes the sound keko-koko, and while the Japanese manga called Gao! might sound odd to you, everyone here understands it as a dinosaur or a lion roaring. The extent to which you can become accustomed to this differerent system of sound words is amazing, proving that the brain really can accept and adapt to anything.

Patriotism, Japan Style and Kimigayo

I've written before about how the question of "patriotism" in modern Japan is a tricky one. In the U.S. we have many opportunities to show our patriotic spirit, enjoying hot dogs and fireworks on the Fourth of July or saying "oo" and "ah" as we take in an air show at a nearby military base. However, it's quite difficult for the average Japanese person to enjoy this experience. The sad fact is that many of the traditional symbols of the country, from the Japanese flag on up, are often associated either with Japan's wartime past or with modern-day right-wing extremists who drive around in speaker cars playing World War II songs like idiots. The official national anthem is another sticky spot. Written in 1880, Kimigayo (warning: sound link) is a brief, solemn anthem based on a poem from the Nara Period which calls for the Emperor's reign to last for eight thousands years, until the pebbles grow into boulders with moss growing off of them. Although that sounds very militaristic to us today, it was originally written as a Japanese version of God Save the Queen, and nothing more. Recently the government has been trying to force teachers to sing the song during school events, but there's been a lot of opposition to this on the grounds of protecting freedom of expression. What would you do to bring a reasonable sense of patriotism to Japanese young people?

Duality in Japan: Shrine Water and KFC

When you live in a place as different from the U.S. or Europe as Japan is, you have to get used to some changes, and something that I kept noticing back when I first arrived here was the great "duality" the country kept presenting me with. This tendency for things to divide into two contradicting halves goes beyond the obvious mix of old-and-new, of highly advanced electronics co-existing beside an old guy who drives around in a truck selling stone-baked sweet potatoes on the road, or drinking water from a centuries-old Shinto shrine to wash down the KFC you just had for lunch. One source of this perceived duality is the kanji writing system used by the Japanese, which usually has two readings or each character, the original Chinese one (the on reading) and the Japanese one (the kun reading). As a general rule, characters appearing by themselves will use the Japanese reading, for example words like ki (tree) or mizu (water), but compound words will use the more complex Chinese one, e.g. mokusei (wood + produce = made of wood) or suido (water + road = water pipe). This neat little system goes out the window when it comes to writing names for places or people, though, making it nearly impossible to accurately pin down the correct way to pronounce a kanji name without getting it wrong at least once. Since there are two answers to "how do I read this kanji?" and neither one is entirely wrong, it can all make your brain feel like it's being pulled in two different directions.

The Honesty You Find in Japan

One of the nice things about living in Japan is the honesty and integrity people generally possess. A couple weeks ago, some friends and I went to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo to drink in the bar from Lost in Translation, intending to try the whiskey that Bill Murray's character advertised in the film. We accidentally ordered the wrong drink, choosing a $29-per-glass high-end whiskey, but our waiter steered us to the actual drink used in the film, which was only $19 per glass. This impressed me since he could have said nothing and gotten a larger bar tab. When fast hikari fiber (fiber optic) Internet finally came to our part of the city, I was so overjoyed I was ready to sign up for the most expensive dedicated line they had. Instead of selling me the costlier service, the NTT salesman talked me out of it, telling me that the standard shared line would be more than fast enough for us -- and he was right. Then there was the time I was shopping for a Minolta camera, the old kind with the silly pre-programmed cards that enabled certain camera effects. I was ready to buy a bunch of these optional cards with the camera, but the salesman at the store shook his head, telling me that they weren't worth the money, losing an additional sale but certainly gaining my trust.

Mitsukoshi, the 400+ Year Old Department Store, and Other Happy News

It's a day for congratulations in Japan. The mega department store chains Mitsukoshi and Isetan are getting married, formally tying the knot in a merger that should see a combined sales of the two store chains reach $15 billion this year. The news appeals to my history-challenged American brain because Mitsukoshi has been around since 1673, when Takatoshi Mitsui opened a kimono shop in Edo (Tokyo). He brought many innovations to the business world back in those days, introducing the first customer-friendly retail shop with pre-made products sold at clearly labeled prices, an improvement over the then-common custom of making products in a customer's home after an order was received. His lowly shop would eventually blossom into the Mitsui zaibatsu (business conglomerate), involved in everything from shipping to to mining and founding Japan's first private bank -- not bad. There's some other happy news in Japan today: in Sapporo a chimpanzee named Gacha has given birth to a baby chimp. The surprising thing is Gacha's advanced age: 41 years old, or over 70 in chimpanzee years. Mother and child are reportedly doing fine.

On the Japanese Custom of Taking Responsibility

One concept you encounter quite a lot in Japan is sekinin (seh-kee-neen), meaning responsibility or duty. While the James Clavell cliches of Japanese who are bound by the bushido-esque code of honor aren't very accurate when applied to the country today, I have noticed that the idea of sekinin o toru, or taking responsibility for something, does seem to be an important aspect of the Japanese character. This can take many forms, with one of the most visible being the way students take responsibility for cleaning their own classrooms, including the toilets. Virtually all cleaning in Japanese schools is done by the students, who must learn to either take pride in their cleaning skills or study in a dirty classroom. The idea of sekinin is important in a business environment, too, and when some new job presents itself to us at here at J-List, I'm always interested in the way our Japanese staff divides the work into logical sections and assigns different parts to each person, so everyone knows who's in charge of what. Having a person's name associated with a job is one way to create a sense of pride, and in restaurants it's common to see a little clipboard hanging in the restroom indicating which employee has last cleaned, so everyone knows who is or isn't doing his job properly if there's a problem. I often wonder whether some of these little innovations might not be imported back to the West?

Japanese PTA Hell

My wife is having a challenging time right now. Our daughter starts the sixth grade in April, and by unwritten tradition parents are expected to join the school's PTA leadership for a year and do various things for the school and the community at large. These include organizing the kids walking to school into groups (called han) and choosing a group leader (called hancho, where we get the word Head Honcho from) who will be responsible for the group, especially the new crop of first graders who will walk to school with the bigger kids. The PTA also signs up neighborhood parents into "flag waving brigades," who position themselves at street corners along the routes the kids walk to school and make sure the children get to school safely each morning. My wife is in charge of creating materials to be distributed to all parents of elementary school kids in our part of the city, which involves compiling Excel documents with the names of new teachers so parents can have information on the changes for the new school year. She has several assistants, but they're not much help: as a rule, many Japanese are often happy with lower levels of technical skill than you'd generally find in the U.S., and none of the housewives in the group has a computer or knows what Excel is, making a lot of extra work for her.

The Season of the Sakura has come to Japan

The Season of the Sakura has come to Japan, and all throughout the country cherry trees are exploding like beautiful fireworks. One of my favorite Japanese traditions is hanami or flower viewing, which usually involves spreading a tarp under the cherry trees and having a party with your friends, drinking lots of beer and sake while the petals fall all around you. Flower viewing has been popular in Japan since the beginning of its written history, with the first hanami recorded in the Nara period (710-784), although the word initially applied to viewing of ume or plum flowers, which are also pretty. (Flower viewing is also mentioned in the Tale of Genji.) Because the window for cherry blossom season is so narrow -- in another week the sakura will have been scattered to the four winds -- it can be difficult for people living outside Japan to plan a visit, as unseasonably colder or warmer weather can move cherry blossom viewing season up or down in the calendar. Fortunately, Japan is oriented quite vertically, so if the cherry blossom season has ended in the Tokyo area, for example, you can travel farther north and catch the flowers at their best in some other part of the country. If you're not lucky enough to be in Japan during this time of year, maybe you can still enjoy Japanese cherry blossoms, as many cities (Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Vancouver) have great spots for viewing sakura, too.

Political Deadlock in Japan: Lower Gas Prices? Oh Please, God...

The two major political parties in Japan are the ruling Liberal Democrat Party, which is conservative and friendly to big business as well as the millions of the country's small farmers; and the Democratic Party of Japan, the primary opposition group, which might be called the "anti-LDP" since they seem to exist primarily to oppose anything the ruling party puts forth, whether it's a good idea for the country or not. Now the DPJ has -- for the first time since I came to Japan as far as I can recall -- done something meaningful in the political stage, which may result in a break at the pump for drivers here. Unable to to change the law that requires that 100% of automobile and gasoline taxes be used for building of roads, regardless of whether or not more roads are needed, they were at least able to block a law renewing the "temporary" higher gasoline tax that's been in place for 30+ years. The result is that the price of gasoline may be dropping by around 25 cents a liter, from its current price of around $1.50 per liter (or $5.80 a gallon, ack). The Japanese economy is quite addicted to public works, though, and a lot of politicians are voicing concerns that the economies of rural areas will suffer if the gas tax rate isn't reinstated, so the LDP plans to return the tax rate at the end of April using its two-thirds majority, meaning that our lower gas prices might only last a month. It's funny that at no time does the subject of increasing the efficiency of government or finding ways to do a little more with a little less, enter the political debate. It's considered sho ga nai -- "it can't be helped" -- that the government will waste a certain amount of public resources and build a certain amount of roads that no one will use, and no one can do anything about it.

The Special Relationship Gaijin Have With McDonald's

Like most other expats living in Japan, I've got a special relationship with...McDonald's. Back when I was getting used to life here, it was a place to go where things were familiar and you didn't need to stress out about what to order or what social rules to worry about while eating it. Although it's probably no one's favorite dining destination, it's at least well within the comfort zone. Plus, the company does do a few things right here, like offering salads as an option in place of french fries, and 100% orange juice rather than the orange-colored sugar water they sell to kids in the States. During the time I've been in Japan, McDonald's has reflected the larger economy in interesting ways, for example leading the charge to cut prices during the period of deflation in the early 2000's, and struggling to manage the BSE scare with images of parents enjoying quality time with their kids over a hamburger. For the past year or so, the company has been winning big with its "Mega Mac" offering, essentially a Big Mag with four patties, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago before the shift in eating habits. During limited product trials, the Mega Mac sold millions of units, and is will soon be added as a permanent menu item. While this is good for the company, who saw profits soar, I'm certainly concerned about the future health of consumers here. On the other hand, writing about this subject has made me so hungry I could really go for a Mega McTeriyaki Burger, which the company is also introducing.

More Instant Japanese Words from English Ones

Last time I talked about words in English that happen to have meaning in Japanese, too. We keep coming up with more of these odd linguistic coincidences at the J-List office: some others include include hen which means "strange" in Japanese; "you know me" which is a cup for drinking green tea (yunomi); "come on" which sounds like the word for a family crest (kamon); "safe," similar to the word for "government" (seifu); and "she knew" which is Japanese for "to die." Another such English word that's close in pronunciation to a Japanese one is the letter "E", which sounds like the word ii ("ee"), the most common way to express "good" or "okay." If you want to compliment someone on the quality of something or show your liking for something, you can throw out the letter "E" and it will probably be understood, thanks to the Japanese custom of omitting the subject whenever possible. (Note: food that tastes good uses a different word, oishii). But the Japanese language is nothing if not vague, and the word ii often carries the opposite meaning. If someone offers you coffee, for example, or the convenience store clerk asks if you want your bento warmed in the microwave, replying with ii will usually mean something close to "No, I'm fine." When dealing with marketers, it's important to make sure you don't answer them in vague terms, as they'll be happy to to misunderstand you and sign you up for a year's supply of salmon from Hokkaido.

The Story of the "Homeless Junior High School Student"

Do you know the story of the "homeless junior high school student"? When Hiroshi Tamura was was just ten, his mother died of an illness, which was a terrible shock to his family. A bigger surprise was in store five years later, however, when Hiroshi and his older brother and sister arrived home to find their house repossessed. Their father appeared soon after, explaining the situation: the family was penniless and had lost everything. "So we'll all go our separate ways now. Family, dismissed!" Determined not to drop out of school, he moved to a nearby park where he lived, sleeping on a sliding board for several months, eating rice when he could get it and cardboard boxes when he couldn't and washing himself with rain water. Through hard work, he was eventually able to graduate from high schoo, and now he's part of a successful Japanese comedian duo called Kirin. When he mentioned his sad experiences on the air once, an editor saw it and suggested he write a book about it. Homuresu Chugakusei became a huge hit, selling more than 2 million copies in Japan and spawning a movie deal. The story of a young person who's able to be thankful for something that we all take for granted -- the availability of hot water -- really struck a chord with modern Japanese readers.

My Scary Yakuza Experience in Kyoto

I'll tell you about the scariest thing to happen to be since coming to Japan. I'm a big fan of public baths and hot springs, and I learned early on that you can travel around Japan cheaply by staying at "saunas," which are 24-hour public baths that also offer traditional saunas as well as a communal room for customers to sleep in. They're cheap, costing around $30 to stay in the heart of a large city, and it can be fun to strike up conversations with the other patrons, who are often so surprised to see a gaijin in a place like that that they'll buy you a beer. All public baths, hot springs and saunas post signs that forbid customers with tattoos from entering, which is intended to keep yakuza (Japanese mafia) out of family-friendly establishments. The first time I went to Kyoto, I thought it'd be fun to stay in a sauna, but I hadn't realized at the time that Kyoto is a hotbed of these yakuza types, and the sauna I'd decided to stay at was filled to the brim with scary-looking gangsters with full-body tattoos and various scars all over their bodies. I tried to make the best of the situation, pretending not to notice the scary looks I was getting while I took in my surroundings. It was easy to pick out which man was the oyabun (yakuza boss), since he was the one getting his back washed vigorously by his underlings (kobun), who fell over themselves to do anything he wanted. Incidentally, if you have a tattoo you can still come to Japan: the signs aren't directed at you, and non-yakuza Japanese with tattoos just ignore the rule, too. (Incidentally, J-List stocks several cool magazines of Japanese tattoos if you're interested.)

Amaze Your Friends with Instant Japanese!

Languages overlap each other in interesting ways, and it's always fun to observe these accidental similarities, like how casa means "house" in Spanish but "umbrella" in Japanese. It's even possible to pick up some useful phrases by focusing on the words you already know, not unlike the way "Don't touch my moustache" happens to sound similar to doh-itashimashite, or "you're welcome" in Japanese. Here are some ready-to-use phrases of Japanese that happen to sound like English words you already know:

Cheek show!	Damn! (chikusho)
Psycho!	That's great! (saiko)
Bimbo	Poor, no money (binbo)
Ohio	Good morning (ohayo)
Show you	soy sauce (shoyu)
Oh, you	hot water (o-yu)
Never never	sticky (like natto, fermented soybeans)
"E"	good, ok (ii)
Cow	buy (kau)

Amaze your friends!

Spring Vacation! Time to Think About Serious Studying

Spring vacation is finally here, and all through Japan children are getting ready to enjoy a well deserved two week holiday. This year is special for our family, because my son will be entering Junior High School in April, which is a big change. First of all, all Junior High students are compelled to join a school club like baseball club, karate club, art club and so on, and engage in bukatsu ("club activities") for several hours a day. My son likes music and has decided to join the school's wind orchestra club, which will be practicing into the evening three days a week. After spending time with club members, many students will then go to juku, evening school where students study for 2-3 more hours. While a lot of students attend these night schools because their friends are there, those who want to go to a good university start their power-studying at this time, attending a night school until 10 pm or so then coming home for a spot of dinner before studying even more. We're having a family debate right now over which course we want to pursue for my son. My wife is sure he'll need to attend night school every evening just to keep up with his studies and to prepare for his upcoming entrance exams for high school, since there's a lot of competition for the school he wants to go to. I'm of the opinion that family should come before cramming useless knowledge into the brain for a test that's three years off, but that's just me...

(This is an ad for a juku that promises to get you into your university of choice.)

I'm Sorry Dave

Couldn't have said it better...

More about "Enryo" as a Window into Japanese Society

I talked recently about the concept of enryo, one of the most important aspects of social relationships in Japan. It literally means "to refrain from [doing]" and describes the tendency of Japanese people to be reserved around others, especially people they don't know well. If I had to pick, I'd say it's probably the single most important "ingredient X" that makes Japanese who they are. If you've ever noticed a Japanese person avoiding stating their own preferences or opinions without seeing what others think first, or watched a Japanese athlete make a very modest comment about a big win, you've seen enryo in action. You can also observe this phenomenon at a karaoke box, where groups can rent a private room and sing together. The first 15-30 minutes of a karaoke session usually involves shy Japanese people saying "no, you sing first!" "oh no, after you" without anyone jumping in, except for gaijin who don't know any better as they belt out "You wa shock!" (the opening from the Fist of the North Star theme song). While showing constraint and consideration for others certainly has its place, especially in a country with half the population of the U.S. crammed into an area 1/25 the size, it can be annoying, too. First of all, too much politeness is the "kiss of death" when it comes to making friends, and it seems the only way to make friends here is to willfully ignore some of the rules about what you should or shouldn't do in certain situations. Also, the Japanese can take the concept of hesitation too far. I had a Japanese friend in the U.S. who lived with us for a while, and he was trying so hard not to inconvenience us he had quite the opposite effect. We'd ask what he'd like for breakfast, and he'd say, "Oh, I'm not hungry. I'm still full from dinner last night."

Drinking in Tokyo Report

I had fun over the weekend, heading into Tokyo to go drinking with some friends. We hit the "Lost in Translation" bar at the Park Hyatt to soak up the atmosphere of the city from a high altitude, then went down in the trenches for some serious pub crawling. Although there's no shortage of drinking districts in Tokyo, with Roppongi, Shibuya, and Ginza all offering their own particular charms, we decided to visit Shinjuku's east side and see what trouble we could get into. I don't know how New Yorkers cut loose on a Saturday night, but I was amazed to see the incredible number of people roaming around the streets with us in Shinjuku -- there had to have been 50,000 or more walking around us, letting off the steam that had accumulated over the week. I took my friends into the Kabuki-cho region of the city, just about the only place in Tokyo were you might not feel safe, and it was fun to check out the neon gaudiness then leave for someplace more pleasant. One of the great benefits of cities that use trains as much as Tokyo does is the ability for large numbers of people to get around without driving, especially good when so many are inebriated. I introduced my friends to my favorite Japanese drinks, the Lemon Sour and Grapefruit Sour, essentially shochu in a glass with soda water and a fresh lemon or grapefruit that you squeeze to get juice to flavor the drink. The next day I did some sightseeing around Tokyo with my friends, doing normal Tokyo things like taking pictures of Goth-Loli cosplayers at the traditional Meiji Shrine. It was fun, but I was reminded of another aspect of living in Tokyo: you have to walk everywhere, running up and down stairs and rushing to catch trains before they depart.

And here are some pictures of my trip to Tokyo:

This is Hachiko, the most famous dog in Japan. Like, ever.

At the California Bar in Tokyo. Nice place.

"For relaxing times, make it Suntory time."

A view of the lights. The building on the right is Tokyo City Hall. I wished I had had my Blade Runner soundtrack on my iPhone.

This is a Lemon Sour. I would so lover for these to become popular in the U.S.

Entertaining pretty Japanese girls near us.

Store my Ducks!

This is Meiji Shrine.

And these are the Gothic Lolitas we met there.