Government Stimulus, or, How To Take Six Months To Distribute $120 To People

Japan's export-driven economy is in the doldrums because of the recession, but don't worry -- the Japanese government is ready to help again, this time with its new "fixed-amount stimulus package" for all taxpayers, including legally registered gaijin like me (yay). Although the paltry $120 per adult doesn't go very far, families also get $200 per child, so the overall amount wasn't too bad. Since elderly Japanese are notoriously susceptible to "it's me, it's me"-type frauds in which a stranger calls up pretending to be a son or grandson in dire need of a quick $30,000 to get out of some trouble, the government is running advertisements warning people about the potential for stimulus-related shenanigans. "No one from the government will ever ask to borrow your ATM card or bank passbook, or require that you surrender any private personal information," say the ads. I hope they're effective, but considering that there were more than 17,000 reported cases of bank fraud last year, I'm sure some people will get duped.

The Japanese government is taking steps to guard against stimulus-related fraud.

Golden Week 2009

It's nearly time for Japan's Golden Week, a semi-accidental clustering of holidays that usually fall near each other, which the Japanese government has latched onto as a great way to stimulate the economy, since people are theoretically spending more money when doing leisure activities with family than while at work. The holidays are Showa Day on April 29, the birthday of the old Emperor; Constitution Day on May 3, commemorating Japan's postwar constitution; Green Day on May 4, a day to celebrate nature; and Children's Day on May 5. While Golden Week is a nice break from the daily grind, it's all but useless as a holiday, since the other 126,999,999 Japanese in the country also have the week off, and trying to drive anywhere is a fool's errand. This year will be especially insane thanks to a new economic stimulus plan enacted by the Japanese government which lets people drive anywhere on Japan's highways for a flat rate of $10, a big reduction from the $25 it used to take me to drive 100 km into Tokyo, or the cool $130 I'd have to part with to take a trip to, say, Osaka. The only thing worse than leaving the Tokyo area during Golden Week is coming back, and the "return rush" traffic jam that happens the day before the holidays are over is not something I want to contemplate.

The rush to return to Tokyo after Golden Week is terrible to even think about.

The J-List Website is Back Up

First, we had server issue that made it impossible to access the site for several hours -- very sorry for the inconvenience. The problem has been taken care of, and J-List is up and ready to serve you now! Since it was a DDOS attack, we had to block certain IP ranges, mostly in Korea and Russia, where these bad computers seem to be located. If you find that you can't access the site for any reason, contact us and we'll fix it for you.

Keigo, or Polite Japanese

In Japanese, there's a whole subset of polite language called keigo which can be quite a challenge for foreigners to learn, since we don't have anything like "exalting" and "humble" verb forms for raising up the person you're speaking to while lowering yourself in comparison to them. I recently had instance to write an email to a certain company in Japanese, and to make sure I hadn't made any serious mistakes -- I'm sure there's nothing more amusing to Japanese people than foreigners screwing up their language -- I asked Yasu to check the email. He made quite a few changes, making the overall tone of the letter more formal and catching some of the little things I'd missed, but before I sent it out, I found myself replacing some of the extremely polite and accurate language he'd added with what I'd originally written. I think that gaijin have a certain reputation as being passionate and emotional, and I wanted to preserve some of that spirit in my email, even if it meant the Japanese I was writing wasn't as "proper" as it should have been. One important part of learning this strange and wonderful language is developing a personal balance between the various aspects of it.

The use of polite language between human beings is an interesting side of Japan.

My Favorite Food: Yaki-Manju

My wife bought me a great present the other day: a book featuring all the places to buy yaki-manju in our prefecture. A traditional food that's essentially balls of bread on wooden skewers cooked over charcoal while being painted with a sauce of miso and brown sugar, yaki-manju is one of my favorite foods, but since young Japanese are generally not interested in taking over these family businesses, more and more shops close every year -- something the our prefectural government is trying to stop by publishing the guidebook. I intend to spend the next few weekends zooming around discovering some of these great shops, since the owners are always so happy to talk with a foreigner. Other things Gunma is famous for include mountains, a really firm gelatinous food called konjac or Devil's Tongue, strong winds in the winter, and strong-willed women all year round.

Note that Yaki-Manju dosn't have the sweet beans inside that foreigners usually dislike (but which I have also come to appreciate).

You can buy yaki-manju at really cool-looking old shops like this.

The Newest Keyword in Japan is Konkatsu, or "Marriage Activities"

Japan is a fast-moving place, and you never know what new boom is just around the corner. One year, women might be flocking to fortune-tellers who promise to divine the future based their blood type, then it might be educational quiz shows in which famous TV personalities sit in "class" and answer questions about various subjects, then get graded as if they were students. One word that's on people's lips a lot these days is konkatsu, meaning "marriage-related activities," i.e. the various things that women and men do to to find the right person to marry. The idea comes from a book called The Age of Konkatsu which argues that people should put as much effort into finding the right marriage partner as they do in finding employment. As a result of this "marriage boom," a lot of single Japanese are thinking about the best way to find Mr. or Ms. Right, and are using the various services that exist for this purpose, such as omiai (formal arranged meeting) introduction companies and even various online services. Considering Japan's low birthrate -- currently the lowest in the world at 1.34 children born per female, compared with 2.1 in the U.S. -- I certainly am happy about this new trend, and wish everyone many happy babies.

Be sure and check the title of the book this girl is reading:

Japan is currently having a boom in konkatsu or "marriage activities."

Twitter in Japan

I've started using Twitter, the famous "micro-blogging" tool that lets you make short observations and send them out in real-time. I like it because the conversations you can have with people on the other side of the world are fascinating, and it's a useful way of trading information back and forth on the fly. For example, if I'm writing about English words the Japanese use that are based on British terms and want to check some facts before I push out an update, I've got several hundred really cool people who are happy to shoot me a quick reply when I post a question. Twitter is also starting to catch on with Japanese users, too, who probably appreciate its simpler learning curve compared with sites like Facebook or Mixi.jp (there isn't one). Although Japanese users have the same 140 character limit as the rest of us, they've actually got a big advantage: because of the way kanji compresses a lot of meaning into a single (two-byte) character, you can fit a lot more information into the same space, allowing them to express themselves more freely. As a test, I googled a Japanese translation of the famous "To be or not to be" scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet to see how much of it would fit into one tweet. Nearly half of it made it in, all the way up to "...and by a sleep to say we'd end..." If you'd like to follow me on Twitter and read my random thoughts, by all means please do!

Twitter is slowly building popularity with Japanese fans, who type confusing things like "wwww" to mean laughter.

Sale Reminder!

Remember that right now J-List is having a great "Fiscal Year is Ending" sale, in which we'll give you a $5 gift certificate code for every $100 you spend on the site, since we'd much rather sell the many amazing bento, toy, traditional, snack and other items we've got in stock to you rather than count it on inventory day. This means you've got an excuse to add another few items to your cart if you're just under the next $100 level, and save money. The gift coupons will be issued as your order is processed, and never expire -- you can use them any time.

The Future in Capsule Hotels?

When humans one day live in space, I'm sure we'll make use of the experience Japan has gained with fitting people into smaller spaces. Since Japan has a little less than half the population of the U.S. crammed into an area the size of California, they've come up with some interesting ways of making do with less elbow room, such as constructing restaurants up off the ground so that cars can park underneath or building businesses with homes attached, like my own house with its small liquor shop built into the ground floor. Another example is the classic 4 1/2 tatami sized apartment that serves as standard living quarters for poor college students in Tokyo, which can be surprisingly livable thanks to well designed storage compartments and a fold-down loft area for sleeping. Another famous example of fitting a lot of people into a small space can be seen in Japan's capsule hotels, honeycomb-like capsules that contain everything you need including TV, clock, and a plug to power your laptop, quite a bargain at around $30 a night even in the heart of Tokyo. Now a new company is experimenting with the capsule hotel concept, creating luxurious "First Class Capsules" that are more like very small hotel rooms, offering a place to stretch out in privacy while still keeping the cost low, around $48 per night.

A new company is experimenting with "first class" capsule hotels.

That 100% Authentic Real Gaijin Feeling

Over the weekend I went up to Karuizawa, the charming town in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture that serves as a popular getaway for Tokyoites (and appears in quite a few anime series). While walking by an Italian gelato shop I was surprised to see a real live Italian young man, who greeted me with a very authentic-sounding buongiorno as he handed out a sample of green tea flavored gelato, something I'm pretty sure they don't have in Italy. It was an innovative idea by the shop owner to beat the recession: get an Italian to greet customers and get them into the store, and it certainly seemed to be working. There are certain times that Japanese just expect a "real" foreigner and aren't happy with anything less. A visit by "Santa-san" will certainly be appreciated by children if it's a real gaijin in the Santa suit rather than a Japanese person, and if you didn't see a real Indian chef preparing your naan in the tandoori oven you wouldn't feel like you were eating authentic Indian curry. Western-style weddings are quite popular in Japan, and no wedding would be complete without a real gaijin minister to perform the ceremony, accented-Japanese and all, and this is actually a lucrative side-job for several English teachers I know. The ultimate spot to see real live foreigners in Japan, though, would have to be Tokyo Disneyland, where a small army of performers from various countries fill roles like Alice in Wonderland while the Japanese visitors fawn and snap photos.

Sometimes there's no substitute for a real-live gaijin.

The 2009 J-List Mail Server Is Broken Sale, or the J-List End of Fiscal Year Sale If You Like

J-List has been having some issues with our mail server, making it difficult for some customers to receive our little cultural postcards from Japan. We're getting a new mail server built, but in the meantime we thought we'd have a sale! J-List's end-of-fiscal-year is approaching, so we're doing like Japanese companies do and having a special sales event, since we'd much rather sell our cool anime and other products to you rather than count it at inventory time. During this event, we'll send you a gift code (store credit) worth $5 for every $100 you spend for your next purchase, with both actual purchase price and shipping used for the calculation. It gives you a good excuse to throw an extra few Kit Kats or a case of your favorite Japanese gum to your cart if you're only a few dollars under the next $100 amount. The gift codes never expire and can be used any time.

Fast Food, Japan Style

Another good option if you're trying to eat in a hurry is to hit a konbini, or convenience store, where you can find anything from healthy onigiri to ready-to-eat bento lunches and even salads. My own favorite fast food would have to be gyudon, or beef bowl, basically a bowl of rice with steamed beef and onions on top, with raw egg poured over it, if you like. Recently there's been a trend of beef bowl restaurants emulating McDonald's and their giant-sized Mega Mac by offering extremely large portions with 3x the normal amount of beef piled on. They seem to be quite popular with customers.

The most popular fast food in Japan is gyudon (beef bowl).

Maria-sama is Watching My Daughter?

My daughter continues her adventures in junior high school, a place of learning and Japanese-style character building. Because her school is Christian, I know that the next few years will be interesting not only for my little girl but for my Buddhist wife, who knows as little of the history and background of Christianity as I know of the Nichiren or Shingon schools. It's funny how we take cultural knowledge for granted, for example being able to identify that this motif or that style of architecture is Catholic or Protestant, but my wife has no such background to draw from. Another big change in our home is that my wife now makes bento for our daughter every morning, and she's having great fun thinking of interesting ways to make the lunch more delicious and fun to eat, writing messages like ganbatte! ("Study hard and make us proud!") in nori, and so on.

Actually, the school isn't Catholic school or even all-girls.

What Year Is It in Japan?

Do you know what year it is? I often don't, thanks to the Japanese custom of counting years according to the reign of the Emperor in power. The current era of Heisei ("Achieving Peace") started in 1989, when Emperor Akihito ascended to the throne, making this year Heisei 21. Heisei is the fourth era since Japan became a "modern" nation; the others were Meiji ("Enlightened Rule," 1868-1912), when Japan began to emulate the West for the first time; Taisho ("Great Righteousness," 1912-1926), which saw a terrible earthquake that killed 140,000; and the long and eventful Showa ("Brilliant Harmony," 1926-1989), a time of war, rebuilding and eventually, toilets that wash your butt for you. When you live in Japan for a while, you naturally come to memorize certain events in the Japanese era system: for example I was born in Showa 43, I came to Japan in Heisei 3, and started J-List in Heisei 9. Japanese Emperors are always referred to by their era name in Japan, e.g. Emperor Showa for Hirohito, Emperor Heisei for the current Akihito, and it's quite common for Japanese to have no idea what their Emperor's name is. Akihito is 125th in the longest unbroken monarchy in the world, and he recently celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary to his wife Michiko (who comes from our prefecture of Gunma).

Congratulations to Emperor Akihito and his wife on 50 years of marriage!

Beautiful Koinobori Flying in the Sky

May 5 is Children's Day, a special time for celebrating boy children that's part of the Golden Week holidays. On this day families will proudly display a samurai battle helmet called a kabuto as they eat a special meal of rolled sushi, then the boys in the family will take a bath with sword-shaped iris flowers to make them strong in the future. Over the next few weeks, families with boy children will fly huge kites made to look like fish swimming upstream when the wind blows, called Koinobori or Upstream Swimming Carp, essentially a traditionally painted windsock which signifies a boy's journey through life. Our prefecture is quite famous for displays of these flying fish banners, and if you go for a drive you'll see dozens of them filling the sky with brilliant colors. As usual, things in Japan have a tendency to be quite old: the custom of flying carp-shaped banners started with samurai families in the Edo Period (1603-1868), while celebrating boy children on May 5 goes all the way back to the 6th century A.D.

Beautiful carp streamers, flying in the sky in our prefecture.

Anzen Daiichi Japan

Japan is a country that's very focused on safety, and there are many mechanisms in place to keep people from getting injured. For example, when a building is constructed, it's wrapped in a cloth covering that protects people walking below from being hurt by a falling hammer, which looks to my eye like they've grown the building by incubating it in a giant cocoon. Whenever there's roadwork to be done, there'll be several men with flashlights whose job it is to guide the cars around the construction, which probably isn't a profession I've thought about much back home. Since Japan is such a safe place, I imagine it was quite a surprise when a giant crane suddenly toppled over in the middle of Tokyo yesterday afternoon, bringing a 104-ton metal boom crashing down across a busy Tokyo street. Six people were injured, including two men who were trapped in a truck that was hit squarely by the falling crane, but happily no one was killed.

Fortunately the crane didn't claim any lives when it toppled.

Junior High School in Japan

My daughter has started junior high school, which is a big step in Japan, a kind of medium point between childhood and adult society. Junior high is when Japanese when first come into contact with the harshness of the real world, learning the importance of respectfully greeting your senpai (upperclassmen), getting used to wearing a school uniform everyday, and following many more rules than ever before. Bukatsu, or club activities, are very important in junior high, and all the clubs at my daughter's school are actively trying to recruit her, just like they do in anime. She has to choose one carefully, however, since many of the clubs like gymnastics and brass band take pride in practicing every day during summer vacation, which would make it difficult for her to go to the U.S. One reason we chose a private junior high for our daughter was our conviction that she'd have trouble getting used to school life at a standard Japanese public school, with straight-laced teachers who'd likely not understand her special situation as a haafu, possibly even yelling at her for dying her hair brown when it's her natural color. English is another reason we went with a private school, since junior high is the realm of "this is a pen" and "I am a boy" and we knew that our daughter would be bored at best, and might potentially have friction with teachers who were self-conscious about their own poor pronunciation of the language.

Junior high introduces students to some of the drearier aspects of Japanese society.

Chopsticks

Although Japanese kitchens are well stocked with spoons, forks and knives, most meals in Japan are eaten with chopsticks. Children usually learn to use chopsticks around the age of 4, when they start attending preschool, and this is quite possibly the first of many adjustments to the larger group culture that children have in their school lives. Every foreigner living in Japan knows the anguish of being told by a Japanese person hashi ga jozu ("you use chopsticks very well"). While one popular response is to compliment the speaker on their use of a knife and fork, I've found you can have more fun telling them okagesama de (oh-KA-gay sah-mah deh). This is a complex phrase which literally means "Yes, thanks to you," almost as if you had leaned how to use chopsticks from the person even though you've never met them before. The phrase is a useful way of showing Japanese-style humility whenever someone compliments you on something, and since few would expect a gaijin to know it, it's fun to see their surprised expressions. Incidentally, we have many chopsticks in stock on the site, including several types of training chopsticks that can help you if you're still learning how to use them.

Incidentally, it took my son a couple years to realize that chopsticks had nothing to do with Chapstick that you put on your lips.

Chopsticks are the most common way to eat in Japan.

Japan's Cultural Ties to China

One interesting aspect of Japan is its closer cultural relationship to its nearby neighbor, China, the ultimate origin of practically all major art, science and architecture in Asia and in many ways the "mother culture" of Japan itself (fertilizer in frozen gyoza aside). Many of the foods the Japanese eat every day originally came from China, like those steamed meat buns called nikuman which have been around for more than 2,000 years. The characters that the Japanese use to write with come from China, too, which gives the two countries a special relationship, since Japanese and Chinese can read about 30% of each other's language right out of the box. One of the most famous stories in China is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (aka Sangokushi), a historical novel written in the 14th century that's very popular among Japanese boys, who read it in manga form and play video games based on the historical battles. The high-budget film Red Cliff part II is showing in Japan right now, and my son is a huge fan, hooked as he is on all things Sangokushi. Because the movie is shown in Chinese with Japanese subtitles, it's not the most accessible film for an American like me, but I look forward to finding a version with English that I can watch.

The Chinese tale of Sangokushi is very popular in Japan in general, and in my household in particular.

What's in a word? A maid by any other name...

Words carry different meanings to different people. For example, the most common word for steamed white rice in Japanese is gohan, yet I've noticed that whenever you're eating at a Western-style restaurant like Denny's, it will always be called by its English name, rice (raisu). Another word that the Japanese have imported from English with a slightly altered nuance is "propose," which refers only to a proposal of marriage, and I'm sure that somewhere, a Japanese woman has gotten the wrong idea when listening to a business proposal from a male colleague. One of my favorite characters from Lucky Star is Patty, a female otaku from America who learned Japanese from anime and manga, resulting in her speaking the language very strangely, to say the least. In her official "image song" there's a section where she berates her classmates for mixing up the Japanese word kaseifu (what a normal maid who cleans your house is known as) and the English word maid, which carries connotations of a super-kawaii servant who will cheerfully fulfill your every request. "A kaseifu is someone that's convenient to have around. A maid is someone who can make you feel happy inside forever!" On the surface the two words mean the same thing, and yet they're totally different.

A maid is a person who can make you feel happy inside, as long as you use the English term.