Do You Know Miss Hanako of the Toilet?

Do you know the story of Toire no Hanako-san, or Miss Hanako of the Toilet? It's a Japanese urban legend that can be found at most every elementary school here, and it goes like this: if you go to the fourth stall of a specified girl's bathroom, usually on the third floor of the school, knock three times and call out "Hanako-san, are you there?" then you'll hear her reply, "Hai" (yes). Open the stall and you'll see a shimmering figure of a girl with bobbed hair with a red skirt on standing there. It's the ghost of Hanako, a girl who committed suicide after being bullied by her classmates (ijime), who is said to haunt the girl's bathroom looking for revenge. Or in an older version, Hanako is a girl who was playing hide-and-seek in the school bathroom during the war and was killed in an American air raid because she couldn't hear the air raid siren. Hanako-san is part of a pantheon of "school ghost" stories that are well known in Japan, like Kuchisake Onna or Split-Faced Woman, a female ghost who asks you if she's beautiful before trying to devour you, and Teke-Teke, the upper torso of a female who claws her way around Japan searching for her lower half, which was severed in a train accident in Hokkaido. Anyone hearing this story will supposedly see Teke-Teke's lower half walking aimlessly around the countryside within three days. Let us know if you see anything!

Exceptions to Rules in Japanese

When you study a language like Japanese, you learn many rules that make up the grammar, like the unique particles wa and ga which verbally mark the subjects of sentences; o, which conveniently marks the object of a sentence; how to change the verb forms to add whatever meaning you want to express, and so on. But as you study, you'll learn that to every rule there's an exception. For starters, the grammatical structures used in Japanese are important, yet in real spoken Japanese, most parts of sentences are usually understood by speakers and are thus eliminated, which can create confusion in the minds of students. When addressing someone, the Japanese add -san to the ends of their names for formal speech, and for relationships that are closer, -chan for girls and -kun for boys. But there are plenty of exceptions to this neat little system, for example, calling all children with -chan regardless of sex, mothers adding -san to the names of foods in bento lunches for their kids, -kun being used with females in formal classroom or military settings, or the Japanese obsession with nicknames, with the whole country thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger as "Schwa-chan" because that's so darned cute. Bottom line, any language is complex, and the best way to cover each different facet of it is to expose yourself to plenty of input in that language. Thankfully, it's quite easy to find interesting and compelling ways to get input in Japanese, whether from manga or anime or Japanese dramas or even the PC dating-sim games we sell.

Wacky Japanese You Already Know

It's time for another installment of Wacky Japanese You Already Know, featuring Japanese words that happen to be homophones with English, like hen, a word for a female chicken which happens to mean "strange" in Japanese, or the letter "E," which is an all-purpose word for "good" or "okay" here (Romanized ii, pronounced like the letter). In American English, "honky" is an impolite word for a white person, but in Japanese, honki means "serious," e.g. honki desu ka? "Are you serious?" The word "kinky" might make you think of something creative in the bedroom, but in Japan the region of the country containing Kyoto, Osaka and Nara is designated as the Kinki Region -- there's a popular "multi-talent" duo from the region called the Kinki Kids. If you've ever seen one of the Rambo movies, you know how to say "violent" or "violence" in Japanese, since that's what it means -- rambou. When a relationship has bumps, the word for this is giku-shaku, which sounds so much like "geek shack" that you can probably just use that word. "Emo" describes a kind of music and related counter-culture style of living, but in Japanese it's...a potato (imo). And if you've ever wondered how you say "voice actor" in Japanese, it's really easy: "say you" (seiyu). Now you know some more Japanese words. Wasn't that easy?

First European Wins a Sumo Championship. Honky desu ka?

History has been made in the Sumo Wrestling world with the victory of Bulgarian wrestler Kotooshu (koh-toh-OH-shu), the first time a wrestler from Europe has won a Sumo Championship. Born Kaloyan Stefanov Mahlyanov in Bulgaria, he was a successful wrestler in his home country, but when his weight increased past 120 kg, the maximum for participating in the Olympics, he decided to try his hand at sumo wrestling instead after participating in a few bouts as a joke. He climbed the ranks in the sumo world quickly, attaining the 2nd highest level of ozeki after only 19 tournaments, the most rapid rise of a wrestler starting from the lowest rank. (There are six tournaments held each year, three in Tokyo and one each in Osaka, Nagoya and Kyushu.) His handsome good looks and relatively low weight of just 152 kg / 334 lbs -- compare that to Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki, who was a massive 264 kg / 580 lbs -- have earned him many fans, and the nickname "the David Beckham of sumo." His wrestling name of Kotooshu combines the traditional Japanese musical instrument koto with the kanji name for Europe, Oshu. The top sumo wrestlers are always quite famous in Japan, appearing on TV commercials and talk shows, and I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of this wrestler from now on. He's even won his first first sponsor: Meiji's Bulgaria brand of yogurt, which makes a lot of sense.

The Melancholy of Hayao Miyazaki

Question. Should we make this as a T-shirt? ^_^

Eye Creases and Beauty in Japan

In Japan, there are often concepts that are difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a persons eyelid when their eyes are open -- one crease is called hitoe (hee-TOE-eh), two creases is futae (fu-TAH-eh). Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with more creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese. Getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV stars and young Japanese people, and my wife likes to regularly report on which TV stars who have suddenly changed their faces. (There are even products that promise to make your eyes look larger and more "Western.") I have to admit, I'd never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here -- it was a totally alien concept to me. Another measure of beauty is having a "high nose" (hana ga takai), an important feature for anyone who wants to be considered one of the Beautiful People here; the opposite is a "low nose" (hana ga hikui). The rule is, if you can touch your chin and the tip of your nose with one extended finger without contacting your lips, you've got a "high nose." I never really thought of schnozzes as anything other than "big" or "small" before coming to Japan, but apparently there is more to a person's nose than meets the eye.

The Japanese Think You Know Everything

One of the first things you learn as a foreigner in Japan is that people here will assume you're intimately familiar with every word written in katakana, the writing system used for expressing foreign words, just by being a native speaker of English. Although the majority of foreign-loan words do come from English, many are taken from other languages, such as the medical terms that were imported from German during the early 20th century, or various everyday words like ankeeto (questionnaire, from the French d'enquete) or arubaito (part time job, from the German arbeit). I remember trying to make curry back in my bachelor days and stumbling because I didn't know what the "ruu" the instructions called for was. (I now know it's roux, the French word for cubes of curry or consomme.) This assumption that every foreigner knows everything associated with America and Europe goes beyond words, too. I was asked by the PTA of the special English school my son attends if I thought the International Baccalaureate program would be a good base for students wishing to attend university in the U.S. I'd never heard of this system, which seemed to confuse the PTA members. I was a gaijin, wasn't I? How could I not know? They were disappointed when (after doing some research) I told them the IB program, which is widely accepted in Europe and elsewhere, wasn't officially recognized by most mainstream U.S. universities the students would likely attend, since Japan considers itself an honorary European nation.

Here's my proof: Japan and Europe have the same DVD region code!

Journey to the Sea at the Center of the Earth, or, Thor's Day???

Learning a foreign language is good for reasons beyond the obvious benefit of being able to communicate and share ideas with people from other parts of the world. It can also give you unexpected insights, including the etymology of words you might miss otherwise. The name China uses for itself literally means the Kingdom at the Center of the World, which seemed overly ethnocentric to me when I heard it for the first time. Of course, the Mediterranean Sea means the exact same thing, the Sea at the Center of the Earth, something I never would have picked up on if I hadn't seen the name in kanji characters. Similarly, I'd never consciously realized the days of the week were named after the ancient gods, although it's very clear when you write the Japanese days of the week in kanji, which correspond to Moon Day, Mars Day, Mercury Day, Jupiter Day, Venus Day, etc. (The names in English have been filtered through the Germanic/Norse pantheon, for example Thursday comes from silly-sounding Thor's Day, although the system is the same.) Sometimes words can get lost in translation when they move from one language to another. Despite Japan being a pretty non-religeous country, the name for the Statue of Liberty in Japanese is jiyu no megami, or Goddess of Freedom, and the official word for the Olympic Torch translated as the Holy Fire of the Five Rings. Sounds like a magic item from a video game.

TOTO, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

If you've ever visited Japan, you've probably answered the call of nature at some point, and seen the famous TOTO logo featured on most every toilet here. If you're a wise-cracking gaijin like me, you might have been compelled to say, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Or like my son says, 等々トイレを見つけた tohtoh toire o mitsuketa, "I finally found a toilet," since tohtoh also means "finally" or "after a long time." Toto is the largest toilet maker in Japan, and the fourth largest in the world, and if you've ever enjoyed the warm feeling of having your butt carefully washed and dried by your toilet, you have these people to thank, since the "Washlet" is their invention. The company was launched in 1916 in response to the need for Western-style sanitation as Japan grew more modern, and it experienced rapid growth during the rebuilding after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Like many Japanese company names such as Kyocera ("Kyoto Ceramics"), its name is an abbreviation, in this case Toyo Toki, or Oriental Porcelain. In addition to high-tech toilets, they invented the "unit bath," an easily constructed one-piece bath, sink and toilet room common in Japanese apartments. They also had a successful line of porcelain tableware, although I for one wouldn't want to eat off porcelain plates with that TOTO logo on it.

Apparently Toto is pushing hard to get Washlets accepted in the U.S., although sales are slow so far, with 1000 or so moving each month. By comparison, they're selling a million units a year in China. Click the image below to go to their site and see a pretty amazing website that will probably get you thinking about "that happy Washlet feeling." Clean is happy!

Genshiken

One of my favorite anime/manga series is Genshiken, an exploration of the deeper aspects of anime, manga and related culture as seen through members of a university club dedicated to the Study of Modern Visual Culture. The show follows the main character Sasahara as he comes to terms with his own self as an otaku, and examines different areas of popular culture through the other club members, like Ohno the obsessive cosplayer; Tanaka, who likes costumes and plastic models; Madarame, the textbook super-obsessive Gundam fan; Kugayama, the group's first doujinshi artist; Kasukabe, who's only there because her boyfriend is a member; and Ogiue (oh-gi-OO-eh), the enigmatic yaoi-obsessed female who secretly hates otaku. One of the funniest moments in the series is the introduction of two American characters who are friends of Ohno: tall, elegant Angela, who possesses way too much knowledge of underground otaku culture, and petite Sue, who's managed to memorize the most embarrassing lines in anime and says them at inappropriate times. The reaction of the Japanese characters to the two Americans is priceless, and (as usual in this series) also very accurate: despite six years of English study in Junior High and High School, they freeze up and are almost completely unable to even try to communicate. I've occasionally had that reaction from people here, despite the fact that I was speaking fluent Japanese to them the whole time, so it was hilarious to watch.

Mechanisms Behind the Harmonious Life in Japan

I write often about how harmonious Japan appears to foreigners living here. Seen from our special position as outsiders (which is what the word gaijin really means, after all), most Japanese seem to possess joshiki, a kind of "national common sense" which keeps them generally in sync with society at large; in cases where an individual moves away from accepted norms, the phenomenon of hito no me ("the eyes of others") will usually bring him around, or at least get him to keep his penchant for [fill in any slightly anti-social but fun activity here] hidden from general view. This tendency to get along with each other doesn't just happen automatically: there are concrete mechanisms in place that help make Japanese society the happy, feel-good place it is. When I walked to school back in the U.S. I walked alone, and my primary concern was avoiding getting beaten up by a bully along the way, but in Japan, kids walk to school together in a group called a han, with the oldest child acting as hancho (remember, "head honcho") which forces kids to interact socially in positive ways. Our larger neighborhood is divided into sections called kumi, which plan various community events, establish schedules of mothers who will stand along the route kids walk to school to make sure they're safe, and publish information on designated evacuation areas in the event of a disaster. They also distribute the kairanban (kai-rahn-bahn), a circular with information on various goings-on in the community, another subtle way of building social ties since it has to be manually passed from house to house. When I married my wife in 1994, I puzzled at the small speaker wired to one wall in their living room, out of which a calm voice would occasionally sound, announcing things like an ikebana class being held in the Community Center, or the all-important-in-fire-prone-Japan reminders to make sure your kerosene heaters are turned off at 10 pm. The system eventually fell out of use and the speaker was removed when we "reformed" our house (as they say in Japan, meaning remodel), but while it as hooked up I was amazed at the benevolent 1984-esque-ness of it all.

A kairanban is a clipboard with a list of names, and when you've seen the news on the clipboard you sign your name and take it to the next family. Do they have anything like this in the U.S.? Hmm, maybe the Amish do, come to think of it.

Useful Japanese: the Honorific "O"

An interesting aspect of Japanese polite grammar is the honorific "o" that goes in front of some words to give them a higher status. Various words that are especially important in Japanese society receive this prefix, like money (okane) or relationships like mother or grandmother (okaasan, obaasan). It's interesting to notice the patterns of words that take this unique honorific. For example, words having to do with death or Buddhism tend to take it (otera = temple, okoh = Buddhist incense), yet words related to Japan's Shinto religion usually don't. English words don't take the honorific, with the exception of o-new, a slang word for something purchased recently that's very important to you. Adding the honorific "o" to words sort of "softens" it, so words related to children or babies often feature it (omaru = child's potty, omutsu = diapers, oshiri = a cute word referring to a person's rear end). An alternative reading for the "o" kanji is "go" and some words have "go" on the front instead (such as gohan, a polite word for rice or any food). Conceptually, "o" and "go" are exactly the same, since they're written with the same kanji character.

And then there's the always useful omanko, that naughtiest of all words, which takes the honorific "o." Reply in the comments if you don't know that it means.

Wasted Food in America vs. Japan

I saw a report that said Americans throw away an average of 27% of available food, an unfortunate reality in a world where not everyone has enough to eat. Being a prosperous nation, Japan has a similar problem, with a large amount of perfectly good food being disposed of instead of eaten, dispite the loud protests of members of the generation that grew up immediately after World War II, when the country knew real starvation. There are various reasons for this waste, such as unsold food being disposed of in supermarkets and convenience stores at the end of the day, food being tossed due to the expiration dates having passed, or food being left behind in a restaurant by patrons. (There's no custom of taking home a "doggie bag" in Japan and most Japanese would be horrified at the thought of asking for one.) Still, there's a big difference in the potion sizes between Japan and the U.S. with the average plate of food here probably about 25-30% smaller than in the States, and it's surprising how easy it is for foreigners living here to get used to this. Among the benefits of these smaller portions are by ability to be satisfied ordering a "child's" ice cream or frozen yogurt when visiting the States, since the size is just right.

My whole family would be happy sharing something this huge:

World War II and Japan

World War II officially ended 63 years ago with the surrender of Japan, but the legacy of the war isn't completely over. On Sunday, an unexploded bomb dropped from a B-29 was discovered in Tokyo, forcing the evacuation of 16,000 residents while the Self Defense Forces were called in to defuse it, which they did successfully. Although this was a unique reminder of the reality of the war for modern Japan, I've always wondered why tangible signs that there really was a war here are so rare today. There are a few, of course -- a really straight road in a nearby city that locals will tell you used to be the runway for the Nakajima Air Base, a playground with an old Zero fighter converted for kids to play on, and a deactivated American bomb on display in a library. Growing up in the Washington D.C. area, though, I remember visiting Arlington National Cemetery and the Iwo Jima Memorial, and I feel as if I was more aware of the war than Japanese kids growing up here, where it actually happened. There's nothing like Arlington here in Japan, no equivalent to Veteran's Day or Memorial Day -- I guess there are psychological factors at work in the minds of the Japanese that are hard for an American to fathom.

Japan is G8 Summit-Happy

Japan is preparing to host the 34th G8 Summit, to be held at beautiful Lake Toya in Hokkaido this July. One thing you learn early on about Japan is that it's extremely pleased to receive recognition from the nations of the West, and whenever events like the Nagano Olympics or the 2004 World Cup draw near, there's a flurry of construction as Japan makes itself look good for all the foreign visitors. Japan is extremely pleased to be hosting the other major nations at the summit this year, so much so that it's issuing commemorative 500 and 1000 yen coins to mark the occasion -- you'd think it was a World Expo all over again. The summit will be held in one of the most beautiful and least-spoiled parts of Japan, a decision the government no doubt made to help bring attention to the environment.

Hot Springs vs. the Beatles

Living in Japan, it's always interesting to observe the various "when worlds collide" moments that come along every once in a while. I remember back when J-List's Tomo came to work here, nine years ago. Like many Japanese who grew up in the postwar period, Tomo has always had a lot of respect for the music culture of the West, and he basically taught himsef English by translating and memorizing songs by the Stones and Led Zeppelin. I don't think he ever expected to meet an American who had done the opposite, embracing Japanese pop culture in order to learn his language, as I've done. One day we were talking about the classic 1972 song "Alone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan, which a student of mine had ironically played at her wedding, not understanding the words. I was sure was a Beatles song for some reason, and I'll never forget the look of utter shock on his face that an American could get a fact like that wrong. Ever since coming to Japan I've loved onsen, Japan's volcanic hot springs, and I've been to dozens all over the country. When Tomo told me that he almost never went to hot springs, I was equally shocked that a person could live here and not love the bathing culture as I do. It was quite an educational experience for both of us, and these days, he goes to hot springs and I know more about Gilbert O'Sullivan.

The $24,000 Melon

Visitors to Japan will encounter many strange and wonderful sights, from thousand-year-old temples and five-stories pagodas to vending machines that manage to take up less than ten inches of space along narrow Tokyo streets. While prices in Japan are often quite reasonable -- we took nine J-List staff members out for Indian Curry and naan bread to welcome a new employee today, and it only cost $100 -- the opposite is sometimes true. For example, virtually all forms of media are pricier in Japan than they are in the U.S., with music CDs still costing around $30, and a video game in a ge-sen (game center) setting you back $2. Gas is expensive, too, currently up to $6.25 a gallon or so. Then there are those mysterious honeydew melons you see in produce shops which cost a mind-blowing $60-80. Japan being Japan, there's more to this high price tag than meets the eye, and these high-end fruits are nearly always purchased as gifts for individuals who have helped you out recently, given to bosses to butter them up for larger bonuses, or exchanged between companies. The bar for ridiculously priced fruits was raised this week, when a pair of exquisite melons from Yubari, Hokkaido (the Mecca of melons in Japan) fetched an unbelievable $24,000 at auction. The high purchase price helps local melon farmers doubly because the news generated by the new price record will no doubt generate a lot of extra interest in these high-grade melons all season long.

OH! Mikey

In case you haven't seen OH! Mikey, this is my favorite episode:

Some Useful Japanese Proverbs

"Even monkeys fall from trees." This is one of the many bits of wisdom you can glean by studying Japanese kotowaza, or proverbs, which are so plentiful in Japan there are books to help you study them. This phrase is saru mo ki kara ochiru in Japanese, and it means that even experts make mistakes occasionally, and no one is perfect. Another one that comes up a lot is, "Sit on a rock for three years" (ishi no ue ni mo san-nen), which means you should stick to something for a certain time (three years) before knowing whether you like it or not, which can be good advice for young people who change their minds too easily. Or, "If you fall down seven times, get up an eighth" (nana korobi, ya-oki), meaning that you should never give up trying to attain your goals -- always come back swinging. One of my favorites, juu-nin toh-iro, which literally means "ten people, ten colors," or people are all different, so don't look at me funny for wearing this domo-kun hat, alright? Although these proverbs can be difficult to learn since they often use old or archaic grammar, pulling one out at the right moment can bring a look of astonishment to the face of a Japanese person that's pure gold for a gaijin. Most kotowaza were originally adapted from Chinese versions, but sometimes they're added from other sources, for example snippets of wisdom from the Bible or Shakespeare. There here are local versions of all the most famous English proverbs, too ("a bird in the hand" and so on).

Cultural Confusion in a Hard Rock Cafe

When you flit between the U.S. and Japan a lot, you can sometimes find yourself coming unglued culturally. I was in Tokyo yesterday on business, enjoying the best American-style cheeseburger in Japan at the Hard Rock Cafe, and when it was time to leave, I had a mini-stress attack as I tried to remember how I was supposed to pay. Should I ask for the check and pay at the table, as in the U.S., or take the receipt to the cash register near the door and pay there, as is done in Japan? I wasn't sure which custom went with which country for a moment, a fact that was no doubt exacerbated by my strange surroundings. Another area with the potential for cultural goof-ups is driving. Although it's not that difficult to learn to drive on the left (just make sure you're closer to the center of the road than your passenger, whichever country you're in), it's a constant challenge to remember which side of the car to get in, and I've gotten quite good at nonchalantly strolling around to the other side of your car after trying to get in on the wrong side. Similarly, although automobile controls are identical no matter what country you're driving in, the turn signal and windshield wiper controls are reversed between the U.S. and Japan. This increases the likelihood that I'll accidentally turn my wipers on when making a turn, usually when a group of attractive girls happens to be watching me.

Japanese Cultural Lessons from OH! Mikey

There was a bizarre Japanese TV show that was on a few years back called OH! Mikey, in which an American family moves to Tokyo and must get used to their new life in strange Japan. Since the characters are all played by mannequins who never move, well, it's one of the strangest things you can possibly imagine. Anyway, in one of the episodes, Mikey tells his mother Barbara that the teacher will be dropping by for a visit soon, which makes her sure that Mikey has done something scandalous at school. In reality, it's customary for teachers to visit the homes of their students once per school year, to observe the home environment first-hand and to talk with the parents about any concerns they might have for the new school year. It's another example of Japan being focused on the important issues of education and child-rearing, and it's something I'd like to see considered for adoption in the U.S. My daughter's home visit was today, and my wife spent an hour discussing various topics with her teacher. As usual, my daughter going to the U.S. for the summer was a minor problem, since even during summer vacation the other kids will attend various school events as well as practicing the theme to Space Battleship Yamato on brass band instruments, a rather unlikely tradition at their school. But my wife stuck to her guns, letting the teacher know that going to the U.S. to learn English and do fun things like Girl Scout Camp is equally important to our family.

The Three WA's of Japanese

Part of the challenge of studying a foreign language is learning to categorize and separate the new concepts you encounter. Take the word wa for example, which English speakers sometimes use as a term for peace or harmony, as in, "Hey man, you're messin' with my wa." The character has other meanings, too, including "peace" as well as referring to Japan itself; it can be combined with other characters to form words like heiwa (peace), washiki (Japanese-style, as in a Japanese-style toilet), or washoku (Japanese food). A completely different word wa means circle or hoop, and in the context of Japanese relationships, a group, and it's quite common to hear phrases like wa ga aru kara "I have to think of the whole circle of people" or wa ga kuzureru ("the circle of friends would suffer"). Finally, there's wa, the grammitical "topic marker" used in Japanese sentences, which marks the topic of sentences, like kore wa enpitsu desu ("this is is a pencil") or gohan wa? ("What about dinner?").

Speed Racer Thoughts

At the anime convention in New York last December, I got to meet Peter Fernandez, the voice behind the legendary Speed Racer cartoon of the 1960s (he also directed and wrote every episode). As a child, I was a card-carrying member of the generation that thrilled to the ongoing adventures of Speed and his Mach 5, the car that could jump chasms, zoom at full speed through a thick forest thanks to retractable buzz cutters, and even drive along the bottom of the ocean. The show was originally broadcast as Mach Go Go Go! in Japan, the story of young race car driver Go Mifune -- a multi-level name which represents both the English word "go!" and the number 5, which is go in Japanese -- along with his former pro wrestler father Daisuke (Pops), his girlfriend Michi (Trixie), his michivious younger brother Kurio (Spridle), chimpanzee Senpei (Chim Chim), and who could forget the mysterious Mr. X (Racer X)? Speed Racer was unique in that it was more popular outside of Japan than at home, becoming a cult favorite in English and more or less enjoying a revival in Japan because of its international popularity. Although there are plenty of of snarky cultural references to Speed Racer in our culture, it's far more common for Japanese fans of the era to profess a love of Chiki Chiki Machine Super Race, the Japanese version of the Hanna-Barbara classic Wacky Race, or show you their impression of that cute dog Ken-Ken (Muttley) laughing. As if to mark the occasion of the new Speed Racer film, our cat Su-chan just gave birth to a cute baby kitten that has an "M" on his forhead. I think I'll name him "Mach."
Oh, this is the ONLY cultural reference to Mach GoGoGo! I was able to find, after 17 years of living in Japan, a commercial featuring Aya Ueto, It is pretty awesome ^_^

Taco Heaven in Japan

Last time I mentioned that the word "taco" (tako) happens to mean something very different in Japan: octopus. The Japanese get around any confusion related to this by always referring to the Mexican version in the plural, as tacos, which takes some getting used to when you're talking about just one. Sadly, tacos and all other forms of Mexican food are almost completely absent from Japan, and the closest thing you can find are the Twisters from KFC, which aren't that bad if you keep Taco Bell sauce in your car like I do. Imagine my surprise when I went to the local home center over the weekend and saw a real live taco stand set up, selling authentic "Mexican Tortilla Tacos." Every food must adopt to meet the tastes and expectations of the locals, however, so there were some changes to the tacos. These included the option of choosing sweet chili or Italian sauce instead of salsa, and fresh cabbage and cucumbers instead of lettuce -- yum. I certainly hope the taco stand does well so we can enjoy this special treat in the future, which folks in the U.S. are able to take for granted.

What a glorious sight to a starving gaijin!

It took me a while to figure out that "avocado sauce" was guacomole

It didn't look like I quite expected, but...

it was great!

One of My Favorite Foods: Wasabi!

There are many strange and new tastes that await a foreigner who comes to live in Japan. Some, like pickled plums, chicken cartilage or the fermented soybeans called natto don't sit too well with me, although I've come to enjoy many other foods, including all manner of fish and other good things from the sea. (At my house, we regularly eat tako salad, which is fresh salad with octopus meat, served with a tangy vinaigrette). Another food I've really come to like is wasabi, an extremely spicy flavoring that adds so much to sushi and sashimi as well as soba and udon noodles. Similar to horseradish, wasabi has a very long history in Japan, and there are documents dating from the year 718 that mention it as a medicinal herb, which is interesting since wasabi is known to naturally fight infections and act as an antibiotic, for example killing the bacteria that cause ulcers. At J-List we have many interesting wasabi products, including the hit snack of the season, Wasabi Doritos, real wasabi in a tube, and a treat I personally love to much on, spicy rice crackers and peanuts called Kaki no Tane, which means "persimmon seeds" because of the shape of the rice crackers. Check them out!

Japanese Social Engine: the Eyes of Others

Last time I talked about what makes the Japanese the way they are, putting forth the theory that the strict Junior High School system is a major factor in shaping children into the adult citizens they'll become. Another of the social engines at work in Japan is called hito no me (hee-toh no meh), meaning the "eyes of others," essentially the ever-present invisible gaze of people around you. A friend of mine just built a house in Nagano, and he's enjoying having cleaner air and less people around him than when he was in Tokyo. His new neighborhood has a strict rule, however: trash must be deposited in the appropriate pick-up area between 6 and 6:30 in the morning, which means he has to get up extra early every day to put the trash out. If he were to break this rule by, say, putting his trash out the night before, he'd find himself the subject of the disapproving stares of the other people in the neighborhood, which is a lot harder to deal with than the threat of a monetary fine would be. This sensitivity to how you appear in the eyes of others is probably the primary reason Japan seems so harmonious when viewed from the outside, as gaijin see it. My sixth-grade daughter is half-Japanese, and she somehow managed to inherit my easy-going American personality. When my wife went to my daughter's class for parent participation day last week, my daughter threw her arms around her mother, to the shock of everyone in the classroom. Hugging your mother isn't really done in Japan, and certainly not in the middle of classroom full of the "eyes of others."

Earthquakes and Japan

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, a fact that I was reminded of on Thursday morning when the Kanto region (where Tokyo and Gunma are located) got a big 6.7 magnitude shake that seemed to go on for two minutes or more. A staggering 20% of all earthquakes in the world occur in Japan, a chain of islands that sits astride four different tectonic plates, and one of the major challenges to the country has been how to apply its unique engineering skills to make sure buildings and people are safe. It's a tribute to those skills that Thursday's quake resulted in only a few injuries and no deaths, although it doesn't always work out so well. The Great Hanshin Earthquake (Hanshin means "Osaka-Kobe") of 1995 occurred in a region of Japan where strong quakes were less common, and as a result of lower building standards, a staggering 6400 people lost their lives. One of the features homebuilders tout on TV commercials in Japan is how well engineered their houses are, with special spring joints that allow the homes to rock back and forth flexibly in the event of shaking.

"Haafu" (Half) Japanese, the Pinnacle of Cuteness

Wherever you're from in the world. there's a good chance that your blood contains contributions from different national groups -- maybe some German or Italian blood from this branch of the family, or perhaps a dash of Cherokee to keep things interesting. To people from the melting pot that is the United States, mixed ancestry is taken for granted, and it's quite common to talk about about where your ancestors came from with others. This is one discussion you probably won't hear in Japan, a very homogenous country where virtually everyone considers themselves to be of identical stock. The exception to this rule are individuals who are haafu, or half Japanese and half-Western, who exist in the special place between futsu (normal) Japanese and the incredible varieties of face, hair and body types seen in Westerners. To many people here, haafu seems to be the perfect blending of Japanese sensibilities and Western mystique, and there's a large group of "talents" on TV whose mixed blood helps them appeal to fans. These include popular TV announcer Crystal Takigawa, whose soft half-French appearance might subliminally lend credibility when reporting on international news; half-English JPOP singer Kaela Kimura, who got her break when she was chosen to appear in the "Have a break, have a Kit Kat" TV commercials; and of course the super-cute Leah Dizon, whose ancestry includes French, American, Chinese and Filipino. Perhaps the current pinnacle of haafu cuteness is actress Erika Sawajiri, the Algerian-French-Japanese star, who's incredible beauty has won her many fans.

The Reason Japanese Are the Way They Are: Junior High School

The question of "What makes the Japanese the way they are?" is an interesting one, and I'm certainly not the first gaijin to ponder it. While the U.S. is viewed by Japan as a "horizontal" society in which everyone is more or less equal, Japan's society is considered "vertical," with relationships that change based on relative age or status in a group. One example of this are the concepts of senpai and kohai, words that describe an upperclassman in a school or senior member of an organization, and underclassman or junior in a group, respectively. Another example is how the concept of, say, "brother" is split into separate words for older brother (oniisan) and younger brother (ototo), and it'd be difficult for the Japanese to think of the idea of a "brother" without classifying older or younger in his mind. (In the case of twins, by the way, the one that pops out first is the older brother.) My personal theory is that the the majority of Japanese social imprinting occurs in Junior High School, a unique period of three years in which students are first exposed to the strict reality of these top-down relationships for the first time. It's in Junior High that kids are forced to join clubs and engage in "club activities" with older kids, which includes greeting senpai in a loud, clear voice, showing respect at all times, and putting up with some hazing, no doubt. This period of intense social pressure seems unique to Junior High: in Elementary School, kids are still treated as kids and almost never interface with kids at other age levels, and High Schools function like a miniature version of the university system in Japan, with students choosing which school fits their study goals and academic abilities, so there's less social pressure (although there are plenty of other pressures, like college entrance exams).

This picture appears to be girls cleaning a boy's restroom in bare feet -- pretty gross. Or are they male students?

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.