Japan as a Functional Western Democracy

On the whole, Japan is pretty functional as a Western-style democracy. Politicians make laws which are executed by the nation's army of komuin, public employees who function as a British-style bureaucracy that provides the actual "body" of the government. There is corruption, of course, but it's limited to comparatively rare cases involving high-ranking politicians, never on an individual level, and it's taken for granted that every person you interact with during the course of the day will be honest. This is quite different from countries like India, where (I'm told) the speed that the phone company installs your phone line is proportional to the size of the bribe you paid the clerk. Still, not everything is perfect in Japan. Although the number of (largely wasteful) public works projects was reduced significantly during the era of Prime Minister Koizumi, Japan still spends $71 billion a year on roads, bridges, dams, etc. Another problem are the constant streams of hakomono, essentially "pork barrel project in a box," conceived by politicians so their friends who own construction companies can make money. A textbook example of this was the plan by our city's mayor (who lives next door to us, by a really strange coincidence) to build a second Ferris Wheel in our city, despite the fact that we already have a perfect good one. Happily, that wasteful project got national media attention and the project was withdrawn

How Japan has Changed for Foreigners

Japan has really changed for the better over the past decade and a half in terms of how easy it is for a gaijin to live here. When I arrived in Heisei 3, the third year of the reign of Emperor Akihito (i.e. 1991), it was quite difficult to find a bit of "home" -- when I'd get homesick, I'd go and eat Egg McMuffins at McDonald's, just about the only thing that was exactly the same as it was back in the States. Slowly, Japan opened up and let just about any product in, and now consumers have a lot more choice, from Doritos to Subway sandwich shops to AM/PM Mini Marts. The Internet has obviously helped improve the lives of foreigners living here, allowing expats like me to do things they could never do before, like buy books from Amazon or log into a SlingBox and catch the Superbowl live. There's been one setback for Americans living outside their home country, however: last year the United States Post Office stopped offering surface mail service for packages going out of the U.S., meaning that my mother can't throw some Thanksgiving goodies into a seamail box and send them to me. It's been quite an inconvenience -- now she has to send the items by airmail or else call shipping companies like Yamato for container shipping quotes. (Note that seamail shipping into the U.S. is still going strong, and you can choose it as an option when purchasing from J-List as long as you're not in a hurry for the items.)

Being Sign in Japan, and How to Make Tamago-Zake

It's funny how being sick makes you revert to what you know best. I've got the flu that's been going around the J-List office, so yesterday I headed home early, took some of the various U.S. cold medicines I stock, and laid down to rest. For dinner I wanted noting other than good old Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, which we'd brought back with us from our last trip. (The Japanese don't know what Chicken Noodle Soup is, the only soups they eat here being miso and corn potage.) When Japanese get sick, they naturally turn to their own cultural remedies. Supposedly, it's common to broil a leek (which they insist on calling a "long onion") until its soft, folding it inside a tenugui (a traditional hand towel), then they wrap that around their neck and go to bed. Then there's shoga-yu, which is hot water with grated fresh ginger in it and a little honey to improve the taste. The most famous folk remedy is probably tamago-zake, or egg and sake. To prepare it, put one cup of sake in a pan with a beaten egg, and heat it until just before boiling. Stir in some sugar if you like, the drink it back, and you'll be feeling better in no time. Or so they tell me anyway.

Valentine's Day in Japan 2008

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and all throughout Japan men are looking forward to receiving the gift of chocolate from females around them, in keeping with the local custom of women giving chocolate to men. There are two kinds of chocolate a man can receive, the most common being giri choco or "obligation chocolate," which females might give to males they work with or to teachers or male relatives because they feel it's expected of them. A lot of this is the result of good marketing, since virtually every convenience store in the country is decked out with decorations reminding shoppers that February 14th is around the corner. The best kind of chocolate is honmei choco, "true heart chocolate" that's given to a loved one, and all across Japan men will be looking forward to eating hand-made chocolates, cakes or other treats from our wives, daughters or girlfriends who want to show their love and appreciation.

Incidentally, since there's giri choco I thought I'd be cute and ask if they made ninjo choco as well. You've never seen such anime-like expressions of confusion on the J-List staff...

Tricks You Can Do with a Lemon and Chopsticks

The Japanese, of course, use chopsticks at almost every meal, whether they're eating rice, noodles, fish or meat. (Certain foods like curry rice or steak, of course, call for Western cutlery). Chopsticks are very easy to use: you just hold one stick between your middle finger and thumb, then hold the second with your forefinger and thumb so that you can create a "scissor" action that allows you to pick up food. With practice, it's very easy to pluck the last grain of rice from the bottom of your bowl when eating. The use of chopsticks is taught to children at around the age of three, and it's common for parents to want to make sure their kids learn to use them properly before they start preschool, making chopstick use one of the first forms of pressure children are subjected to in Japanese society. In Japan there's exactly "one" correct way to do things, a concept that extends to the holding of chopsticks as well, and it's common for conversations over beers at an izakaya restaurant to turn to how strangely one of the people at the table is holding their chopsticks. To me, the ultimate test of how good you are at using chopsticks is being able to wring the juice from a slice of lemon without getting any on your hands. Just slide the chopsticks into either end of the lemon slice and twist in opposite directions, extracting the lemon juice. Incidentally, J-List stocks many kinds of chopsticks from Japan, including ones with rough patches at the ends (to make them easier to eat with), and we even have a great line of "training chopsticks" for beginners.

All About Factories and Other Cool Things

You never know what will become the next interesting mini-boom in a place like Japan. Over the past few years, many Japanese have decided that the coolest thing is...factories? Amazingly, the strange industrial beauty of factories and other dark places like electric power plants does have a certain charm, and there have been a string of popular photobooks dedicated to capturing these eerie places. There's a variety show on TV that features objects being made in factories while famous TV personalities try to guess what's being manufactured, writing their answers on digital screens that are later revealed so the audience can laugh at all the wrong answers. It's quite fascinating to watch nylon fibers being spun and coated in plastic that turns out to be a fire house, or watch as long rods of steel are fed into a machine which clips pieces off and stamps them into pachinko balls. I was also fascinated to see how Mitsubishi makes pencils -- I couldn't take my eyes off the bizarre stream of wood as it was shaped and wrapped around the graphite leads.

Signs that Japan is Getting Older

Japan is getting older, and it's interesting to see the way society evolves and changes. Even during the 16 years I've been in Japan, I've noticed quite a change in way products are marketed, with a lot of companies embracing the coming market for services for the elderly. It seems every third TV commercial on daytime television is for companies selling products to older Japanese, including ways to remodel your house and make it "barrier free," a term the Japanese have coined meaning a living space that's free of stairs and other obstacles that make it hard for mobility-challenged people to live. Diapers for adults are also advertised openly on TV, as are hair-loss products aimed not just at men, but women. Insurance companies like Zurich and AFLAC have found a profitable business in Japan selling supplemental insurance to elderly Japanese who worry about being hospitalized and not having enough insurance to cover the costs. Then there's the I-Pot service that home electronics maker Zojirushi operates, which is essentially an electric pot for boiling water that's linked wirelessly to the Internet, which can be configured to send you an email every time your elderly mother makes a pot of green tea, to reassure you that she's okay. Aww, that's nice.

One Way of Understanding Japan's Culture: Kata (Form)

One way of approaching an understanding of Japan is through the word kata, which means "form" and describes the many aspects of life in Japan that follow a specific, pre-determined structure which society at large has agreed on ahead of time. Without a doubt, the Japanese are a people who like to follow fixed forms in many aspects of their lives, and it can be amazing how naturally people fall in step in these situations. I was reminded of this a week ago when the brass band that my son performs in at his school participated in a recital along with ten other elementary schools, an event that required everyone to be completely in sync with each other. First, there is a "greeting" speech by the chairman of the organization that put on the event, followed by comments from other high-ranking members. Then the performances came, perfectly executed by each school's band, as the audience clapped. Finally, the nice lady who was most responsible for making the whole recital come together received the largest bouquet of flowers I've seen in my life from her students, which seemed spontaneous but was also part of the overall form of the event. You see this tendency to closely adhere to pre-approved forms in many different settings, from weddings and funerals to the way the average Japanese person interacts with teachers, doctors and anyone else they want to show respect to. Incidentally, Nintendo sells a trivia game for the DS platform here in Japan to help players learn the "common sense" associated with these events and avoid embarrassment -- that's pretty smart.

(You can see my son way in the back with his Bass Clarinet that's as big as he us)

Reflections on Beef Bowl and Japanese Culture

Over the weekend I took my son out for a bowl of gyudon, steamed beef over rice, the most popular form of fast food in Japan. The restaurant was crowded, so I added my name to the list, writing "Peter" in the katakana writing system that's generally used for foreign names and loan words, and sat down to wait. "Everyone else wrote their last name," my son observed. "Why did you write your first name?" This was an interesting question, and I didn't have an answer for him right away. Ostensibly, names in Japan are written in family name, given name order, so someone named Taro Yamada in English would be Yamada Taro in Japanese. But by unwritten rule, Westerners nearly always continue to use their name in the same order as they do back home. When I was a teacher, I was universally known as "Peter-sensei" by my students, never "Payne-sensei" as you'd expect. I'm pretty sure this is done unconsciously -- the Japanese staff at J-List, who are used to me asking them difficult questions when I'm posting an update, all said they'd never noticed this phenomenon -- and probably because English teachers are supposed to be as "fun" as possible. Having my students use my first name certainly did seem to bring them a little closer to me, so it was never a problem. While Japanese never use English name order for themselves while in Japan, it's not uncommon for TV "talents" (comedians, actors etc.) to choose stage names that sound more like English. When the Los Angeles-born son of legendary martial arts film star Sho Kosugi started his own career on TV here, he debuted using the name of "Kane Kosugi" (in English word order) which underscored his American-ness and the fact that he could speak English fluently, and added a bit of spice to his appeal with fans.

Site Improvement Announcement

We're happy to announce some new features on the site. In the upper left hand corner of the J-List and JBOX.com websites you can see the new Account button which takes you do a series of screens that lets update any aspect of your account information, including changing your password or email address. You can review your order history over the past six months, too, a feature that we've wanted to bring you for a long time. In addition, we're launching a new service that let you know what the current status of your order right in the order history screen. For example, when our staff process your order and starts the packing process, the status will be reflected on the order history for that order, and when, say, a shipping label is printed, that will be posted too. The system is still "beta" but we think it will provide a lot of useful feedback for you, making it easy to see what the current state of your order is. Enjoy the new features, and as always, your feedback is very welcome!

Fun with Japanese Numbers

"You've been in Japan too long when you're speaking English with your gaijin friends, but all references to money are in Japanese." This is a funny phenomenon, but true: even when speaking English, foreigners living in Japan will tend to use Japanese for numbers and yen money amounts. The reason is that the Sino-Japanese numeric system, which came from China, is clunky when converting to the Arabic numeric system. The number system revolves around the unit 10,000 (man, pronounced mahn), rather than 1,000; thus, the number 10,000 is 1 man (ichi mahn、一万), 20,000 yen is 2 man (ni mahn、二万), 100,000 is 10 man (juu mahn、十万) and so on. The conversion from one numeric system to the other is just frustrating enough that most foreigners will be happy to leave their numbers in Japanese, if the person they're talking with understands the words. If you think it's difficult learning to think in units of 10,000, you should try doing math with the kanji-based numbers that come after man, which are oku (億、equal to 100 million), cho (兆、1 trillion) and kei (10 quadrillion, which is so high that I never bothered to learn the kanji for it).

One Small Problem with Japan: Concrete and Asphalt

Japan is a great place, and I love living here. The country is beautiful, the culture always new and fascinating, and the people are very kind. One of the drawbacks to life in Japan, however, is the abundance of concrete and asphalt around me. Roads seem to criss-cross every inch of Japan, even high in the mountains in the center of the country, and it's common for the Japanese government to cover the sides of mountains in concrete to guard against falling rocks, so you can't even see the mountain you're currently driving on. Virtually every river in the country has been extensively "engineered" to guard against dangerous floods, which can make them look quite unnatural, with reinforced concrete slopes on both sides. We have a "vacation mansion" up in the mountains around Karuizawa, which sounds really cool until you learn that the word "mansion" in Japan means an apartment that is owned as opposed to being rented. As we were driving home one weekend, I caught a really nice view of Mt. Asama, a large volcano that's erupted several times over the last century. It was spectacular, with steam coming out of the top and everything, but I was having a terrible time snapping a picture of the mountain without getting a power line in the picture. Kind of lame.

Thoughts on the Japanese fascination with Europe and the U.S.

Just as many in the U.S. and Europe have a fascination with all things Japanesque, the Japanese have their own fixation with the West. A lot of this comes from Japan's unique history: for 250 years it was a "closed country," and it was punishable by death for anyone to leave Japan or for foreign barbarians to enter. The only exception was Dejima, a tiny artificial island in Nagasaki Bay, where the Dutch were permitted a trading colony. When Commodore Perry sailed into Yokosuka Bay and forced the Shogun to open his doors to trade, it was a culture shock for Japan that was not entirely unlike what we'd feel if UFOs suddenly landed at the United Nations. As the Japanese fervently studied the West they gained great respect for its accomplishments, which can take some pretty interesting forms today. For some reason Manekin Pis, that statue of a boy peeing in Belgium, is extremely famous in Japan, and there was even a punk band that named themselves the Piss Kids in homage to this, translating from the Japanese name of the statue. The story of Anne Frank is also extremely well known here in Japan (you can read it in manga form), as are stories like Anne of Green Gables. The Japanese have expressed their fascination with the city of Paris by building a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower (Tokyo Tower) and a miniature version of the Palace of Versailles, erected as a residence for the Crown Prince. And don't get me started on the copy of the Statue of Liberty in Odaiba, across the bay from Tokyo. It's all quite silly.

Sony Life Insurance? Panasonic Home? Kanebo Gum?

One thing you get used to when you live in Japan is companies selling products that are, well, unexpected from the point of view of a Westerner. Dell makes computers and Ford makes cars, but if Ford started making computers we'd all wonder what was in their drinking water. But it's quite common for Japanese companies to enter a wide range of businesses under the same brand, a concept I was introduced to at the age of five when I saw a commercial for Yamaha lawnmowers, and wondered how the company could also make the electric organ we owned at the time. You know Sony for their home electronics, but in Japan, Sony is also famous for life insurance, online banking, high-end make-up products, as well as being the licensor for Thomas the Tank Engine products. Building homes is big business in Japan, and companies like Panasonic and Toyota own companies that build homes under those brands -- there's even a builder called TBS Housing, operated by the Tokyo Broadcasting System, of all people. Mitsubishi is famous for their cars, but they're also busy making trains and home electronics and selling securities, and they are the leading manufacturer of pencils in Japan. Oh, and make up company Kanebo also markets chewing gum and medicine under the same brand. Weird, eh?

Rising Divorce Culture in Japan?

It's often said that Japan's society follows a decade or so behind the U.S., and looking at such areas as the adoption of laws about smoking in public places or child safety seats in cars, that statement seems to be pretty accurate. Sadly, Japan's divorce rate has also followed this trend, and the number of couples calling it quits is higher than ever. Currently there are 2.3 divorces per thousand people in Japan, compared with around 3.6 for the U.S, 2.2 for Canada, and 2.8 for the U.K. These numbers sound pretty much in line with the rest of the world, except when you consider that just a generation ago Japan's divorce-per-thousand was under 1. The social pressures that have been driving the increase are many, including less economic reliance on the husband by women and a decrease of stigmas about being batsu-ichi, or "one strike out," a common slang for someone who has been divorced once. A big trend is the rise in jukunen rikon, or "middle-aged divorce," when couples find their marriage can't survive the husband retiring and hanging around the wife and her friends all day (the term for such husbands is nure-ochiba, noo-reh-OH-chi-bah, a wet leaf that sticks to your shoe and won't come off, no matter how hard you shake it). This trend has been aided by recent laws making it easier for women to claim half their husband's pension if they were together for a certain number of years, which has lead to many books and articles advising women on the best "divorce strategy."

Gyoza Troubles in Japan

Japan is in an uproar right now over a food poisoning scare involving frozen dumplings called gyoza -- you may know them by their North American name of "potstickers" -- imported from China. The dumplings were tainted with toxic pesticides which made dozens of consumers sick, including a five year old girl who nearly died. The Japanese are a very group-oriented people, and when there's a general movement in one direction others are willing to follow, and right now everyone is falling over themselves to avoid all frozen foods, even products that weren't made in China. The ruckus is making itself felt in Japan's business world, too: a proposed three-way merger between mammoth Japan Tobacco and two smaller makers of frozen foods is in danger of being called off because JT was the company that distributed the problem dumplings. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the period after 9/11, when Japanese tourists stayed away from Hawaii in droves out of fear of terrorists, quite a silly thing to think, all things considered. Poison aside, gyoza is one of my all-time favorite foods in the world, and I love to obsess over the ratio of soy sauce, vinegar and spicy sesame oil that I dip them into before eating them. While the food poisoning scare has hurt makers of frozen foods, supermarkets and Yokohama's Chinatown distract, business was booming at our local ramen-and-gyoza shop when we went there last night. The "Master" (what you call the owner of any kind of small shop in Japan) seems to be doing a very brisk business right now, with many families coming to eat food they can trust.

My Favorite Japanese Food, "Nabe"

It's winter in Japan right now, the season for one of my favorite dishes, nabe (NAH-beh). The word means "pot" and refers to any kind of food you make in a big open pot and eat with everyone gathered around, conversing while taking things out (boiled meat, fish, tofu, vegetables, etc.). There are many varieties of nabe, from spicy Kimchee Nabe (as they are wont to do, the Japanese have adopted the national food of Korea as one of their own) to the famous Chanko Nabe from Nagasaki that sumo wrestlers eat. Another famous variety of nabe food is Sukiyaki, one of my all-time favorite dishes. Aside from being delicious and a great way to warm up in the colder months, nabe is the ultimate "social food" which makes for great conversation, since everyone sits around the pot to take food out of it rather than eating from their own plate. It also allows uniquely Japanese concepts like enryo, the tendency for people hesitate when taking, say, the last piece of tofu before asking of anyone else would like it, to work in the group. (We do have some great bilingual books on how to make Japanese food like nabe, although most are out of stock due to their popularity. You can backorder any of them and we'll send the when they come in.)

Thoughts on Japanese Politics

The U.S. Presidential race is on, with the various candidates debating the issues publicly as they jockey for votes on Super Tuesday. With American politics being followed internationally -- I've gotten into some fascinating discussions with friends from Australia, Canada and the U.K., who all understood U.S. politics a lot better than I understood theirs -- the issues being discussed in the U.S. right now are probably familiar to many around the world. Japanese politics, on the other hand, are a little more subtle, so I thought I'd talk about that subject today. There are three major political parties in Japan: the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the country almost continuously since the end of the war; the Democratic Party of Japan, which currently controls one of the country's two legislative houses; and the New Komeito Party, which still has unofficial ties to the Sokka Gakkai religion, the closest thing to "Evangelical Buddhism" there is here. It's hard to define what being conservative and liberal might mean in the context of Japan, but for the most part conservatives are pro-business, favor close ties with the U.S. even if it means having to take part in overseas conflicts that most Japanese citizens are against, support rural farmers in exchange for their political support, resist pressure over Yasukuni Shrine, oh, and they naturally revere the Emperor. On the other side of the fence are mavericks like Tokyo Mayor Shintaro Ishihara, who literally wrote the book on Japan saying "no" to outside pressure from the U.S. and who has run Tokyo well even if he steps on the toes of some commercial interests. (There are some flavors of socialism, including a Japan Communist Party, but they have so little traction with voters it's almost funny.) Currently there's a spat going on inside the ruling coalition over how funds collected from taxes on gasoline should be used. Under the current law, automobile-related taxes may be used only for building of roads, despite the fact that there are plenty of perfectly fine roads already made. Conservative members of the legislation are fighting tooth-and-nail to ensure that every yen of road taxes be used for more roads, even if it means projects people won't benefit from, while their opponents push for either a lowering of gasoline taxes or loosening of restrictions on what the money can be spent on.

Different Kinds of "Green Tea" from Japan: Ryoku-cha, Matcha, and Beyond

Although coffee and Western tea are popular in Japan, many prefer the wide variety of Asian teas that would likely be perceived as "green tea" to most Westerners. The word for tea in Japanese is cha, and like many concepts that are especially important to every day life here, the word usually gets the "honorific" prefix o, making ocha. Popular varieties of tea enjoyed regularly include ryoku-cha, a slightly weak green tea; mugi-cha, a pleasant-tasting tea made from barley that's enjoyed in the hot summer; or genmai-cha, tea with roasted grains of unhulled rice in it. Oolong-cha, a dark refreshing tea from China, is perhaps the best-selling bottled beverage in Japan; it's nice because it cuts through oil, washing down anything greasy you've eaten, and the Chinese use it to clean the fingers while eating. Coca-Cola became the leading drink maker in the Japanese beverage market by being very smart about local tastes, and their popular Sokenbi-cha, which blends many different types of tea, is one of the top-selling bottled teas on the market. The other type of green tea is matcha, a bitter tea made from powder, used in the Japanese tea ceremony and is also a popular flavoring for ice cream and traditional sweets. The best matcha tea comes from Uji, a town a few kilometers outside of Kyoto, and this year's Matcha Kit Kat goes out of its way to advertise Uji Matcha on its box.

Japanese People think Americans Know Every English Word Ever Made

Before I started J-List, I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) to a wide range of Japanese students, including kids, OLs (female company employees) and even some elderly learners. Because I spoke Japanese, my services were quite in demand, since of course the first thing you look for in an English teacher is that he be fluent in Japanese -- kind of makes you understand why they aren't better at English than they are. For a while I had a weekly class teaching some retired women, and we had a lot of fun, with them telling me all the things that Americans seem to be interested in when they come to Japan, like what part of the city was bombed during World War II. During one lesson one of the ladies was telling me about the various charities she was involved in, including the local Rotary Club and UNESCO. "I'm also a Soroptimist," she proudly told me. This word was unfamiliar to me, so I asked her what it meant, and I'll never forget the look of shock on her face. How could I, a native speaker of English, not know this word? Didn't every speaker of English know every word? Getting over her surprise, she explained about the Soroptimist Society, an international organization that works to improve the lives of women around the world, which is also active in Japan. This tendency of Japanese to assume that every English speaker knows every word in the language happens with doctors, too, who spend years amassing knowledge of medical conditions in English then want to try them out on foreigners they encounter.