"Wii" Want You To See the J-List Team, and Know Our Prefecture

Want to see the J-List team? We've updated the About J-List page to show all of our current staff, as well as some nice images from our home prefecture of Gunma to help you understand the kind of place we live in. We think that being able to see the Japanese and American staff members you'll interact with when you order from our site will add a new dimension and help bring you closer to J-List. "Wii" think you'll like the new page!

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that America is a country of idealists while Japanese are generally pragmatists. In many areas of society, Americans seem to reach for the stars, trying to attain great goals like total equality between the sexes and different races, holding down taxes down while guiding democracy all over the world, including Iraq. Japanese, on the other hand, seem to have a national joshiki, a "common sense" that all Japanese tend to share, which tends towards more realistic goals. While there are laws against sexual discrimination or harassment in the workplace, the roles of men and women are more clearly defined in Japan. For a family to be happy, the husband should be the daikoku-bashira (lit. "big black pillar") that supports the house financially, and so, the number of women who desire high-paying careers is much lower here than in the West. Kids should go to school to receive an education that makes them feel that they're a part of the larger society, and so there is no homeschooling in Japan. The ultimate pragmatic slogan in Japan is one you can hear quite often: sho ga nai, or "it can't be helped, so I guess I'll just do nothing." To be honest, it's kind of refreshing living in a society that admits that there are things beyond its ability to change. What do you think?

Oh, and if you find you don't have enough common sense, there's a DS game to help you out. Just ten minutes a day!

My First Impressions on Japan, Incl. "Fancy Shop" and "Viking"

You never forget your first impressions of something. Although it was seventeen years ago, I still vividly remember my arrival in Japan, and how strange everything looked to me. Beyond the obvious "my, what a lot of Japanese people there are here!" thoughts that sprang into my mind or thinking that every house was a beautiful temple just because it had ornate kawara roof tiles on it, I remember not being able to take my eyes off the many vending machine I saw all around me, which were so clean and brightly lit. I'd prepared myself for difficulties in using Japanese to communicate, but I didn't bet on my English coming up short -- and yet there seemed to be all kinds of English words that I couldn't understand, like "fancy shop," which I now know is a shop that sells cute things like Sanrio toys and stationery; or "viking," which has come to mean an all-you-can-eat buffet. But just like the Japanese proverb sumeba, miyako translatable as "if you live in a place, it will eventually become like the capital city to you" -- or "home is where you hang your hat," as we gaijin say -- people can adapt to anything. Before I knew it, I'd not only gotten used to thinking of my strange life in Japan as "normal," I'd even experience reverse culture shock when I went back to the States.

Japan's Food Problem and a Possible Solution?

Last time I talked about some of the interesting discussions I've seen on Japanese TV shows, even about subjects that one might think would be difficult to debate openly. One of the topics on the "If I Were Prime Minister" show recently was whether Japan should try to be more self-sufficient in light of the food poisoning scare involving frozen Chinese gyoza dumplings that had been tainted with fertilizer. Although everyone thinks of Japan as an industrial powerhouse, its economy is quite geared towards agriculture, with fields squeezing out a crop of rice and of wheat per field per year, or growing other things like grapes or sweet potatoes or those delightful apple-pears. However, with a population half the size of the U.S. crammed into 1/25th the area, it's pretty much impossible for Japan to feed itself. The country is only able to produce 39% of its own food as measured in calories, and thus relies heavily on imports from the U.S., Australia, China and so on. Japan is so dependent on outside countries for its food that trends on the other side of the world can easily affect it, like Canada and Brazil moving away from producing soybeans and towards growing crops for biofuel, which hurts Japan's traditional foods like tofu, natto and miso soup. And yet, Japan's agricultural system is still built around small units, "mom and pop" farms in which the husband often works a normal job to make ends meet, or extremely small companies often operating with limited resources -- basically, the exact opposite of the mammoth agro-business firms you find in the U.S. It occurred to me that one answer to Japan's food quandary might be to take steps to allow more land to be managed by larger companies who would bring greater efficiency and increase production. For some cultural reason that is incomprehensible to me, this doesn't seem like a solution that has occurred to the Japanese, which of course might be for the better, of course, in the end.

Are You a "Going My Way" Person?

One of my favorite words of Japanese is actually wasei eigo or "made-in-Japan English." It's the phrase "going my way," and it refers to people who live life in their one way without being overly concerned with society all around them, free to ignore social rules as they choose. As with the word "my pace," it's used as a fixed phrase no matter what the subject is, which makes for some strange sentences like, "That person over there is really 'going my way.'" Another word that changes when imported into Japanese is "free." While the term most often has to do with absense of cost in English, in Japanese it's more about freedom of choice, so a "free ticket" here would be a ticket that let you go on any attraction rather than one that didn't cost you anything. A shirt that says "free size" will supposedly fit anyone (although large gaijin like me know better), and when a Japanese person goes to sell something at a flea market, in his mind he's really going to a "free market" where anything can be bought or sold freely. Are you an "about" person? The Japanese use this English preposition as an adjective meaning vague or imprecise. Messing up English can be fun!

Open Discussion on Japanese Television, with Bakusho Mondai

I've often been impressed with the open nature of discussion I've seen on Japanese television, with several shows that really present opinions to viewers in innovative ways. One is a show called If I Were Prime Minister, which features the popular comedian Hikari Ota of the comedy duo Bakusho Mondai as he throws out topics to a panel of guests that include actors, writers and real sitting politicians. They never pull punches as they lambaste a panel of Finance Ministry employees over the lost pension payment scandal (while letting the employees tell their side of the issue), or call in doctors to discuss issues like the rise in hospital deaths due to doctor error. Considering what a peaceful country Japan is, you'd think that it'd be difficult to have a real public debate over the issue of whether Japan should Japan arm itself with nuclear weapons in response to threats from North Korea, yet that episode was lively, with all participants expressing their views despite the special nature of the topic in a country that's experienced two atomic bombings. Another show that's quite interesting is Live Debate Until Morning, a late-night show in which top-ranking politicians and members of the current cabinet will gather to discuss issues on live television until 4 am while millions watch. Since the show is so popular, every major politician makes sure to be included, and smaller parties are all invited to participate in the discussions, which keeps things from begin pulled unfairly in any one direction.

 

All About "Mascot Characters" in Japan, and Nara's Ugly Buddha

One thing about the Japanese: they love kawaii, or cute, and this often takes the form of "mascot characters" who promote everything from sporting events to public television and even Japan's military. They have mascots in the U.S., too, of course -- I remember doing my homework while sitting on the grass next to the statue of Monty Montezuma at SDSU -- but the Japanese really take it to a new level. One area where you often see these cute characters is government-affiliated organizations, which use them to soften their image with their constituents. Some publically-created mascots include Narita-chan, the official character of the Narita International Airport, the Noppon Brothers, who raise awareness of Tokyo Tower, and the cute uniform-wearing horse characters that are the public face of the Gunma Prefectural Police. Companies often create cute characters to help sell their products, like Kyoro-chan, the little round bird that's been promoting Morinaga's Choco Ball line of tasty snacks for forty years. Sometimes making cute characters to promote your cause can have the opposite effect, which the city of Nara found out recently. As part of an upcoming $95 million celebration commemorating the founding of Japan's first capital 1300 years ago, the city commissioned a new character that's basically a cross between a deer and an image of Buddha, since Nara is famous for these two things (the city is home to the largest bronze status of Buddha in Japan). But there've been widespread complaints that the character is ugly and an insult to Buddhists, as well as a big waste of taxpayer money. What do you think?

What Color "Randoseru" (School Backpack) Are You?

In the U.S., "back to school" season is in August, when parents prepare for the start of the new school year in September, buying new shoes and notebooks and clothes for their kids. In Japan, the school year has always started in April, seemingly timed to coincide with the cherry blossom season, and right now parents are bustling as they try to get everything ready in time. Education is taken very seriously in Japan, and in the case of new first graders, families will go all-out to make sure the child gets off on the right foot. First, every student must have a a desk to do his or her homework at, and there's a huge industry of companies selling stylish and functional study desks for kids, which include features such as a plastic sheet with images from the latest popular anime series printed on it, which can be removed later when the child is older. Another important choice is what kind of school backpack to buy. School backpacks are called randoseru, from the Dutch word ranzel, and they're extremely well made hard leather backpacks designed to hold everything the student needs over six years of elementary school. Right now stores are filled with an array of smart-looking school backpacks for parents to buy for their children, and every year manufacturers seem to offer them in a wider array of interesting colors. This move to offer more color choices is somewhat odd, since for 99% of children you see walking to school, the color of a randoseru is black for boys, red for girls, with almost no exceptions. A lot of this is cultural -- in a country where not standing out is extremely important, the idea of being the only kid with an orange or sky blue or yellow backpack would be quite unthinkable.

Employment at Japanese Companies is Down

I caught a report on TV the other day about a unique problem Japanese companies are facing. It seems that the best young employees aren't that interested in working for companies like Honda, Mitsubishi and Sony, and instead are looking to join Google, Nike, Nokia or Microsoft if they can. These are gaishikei or "foreign capital" companies, a term which is loaded with images of open, flexible corporate culture where individuality and fresh ideas are encouraged rather than hammered down like the proverbial "standing nail." While working for a Japanese company offers more stability and less fear of sudden risutora (layoffs, from the word "restructure"), young people today prefer to work in an environment where they can make a more active contribution and distinguish themselves. The trend is supposedly happening in China, too, where U.S. firms like Motorola and Intel and are proving better at winning top applicants than Japanese companies. One job-seeker interviewed said, "I have the impression that in U.S. and European companies, I might be fortunate enough to have an idea of mine accepted and turned into a product, allowing me to see the fruits of my hard work. But this would be difficult in a Japanese organization." It's a long-term crisis for Japanese companies, I'd say: the kind of bold energy that led to game-changing ideas like YouTube or even Toys R Us just couldn't have emerged from inside Japan, since so many industries are dominated by large, hide-bound companies. There's another reason Japanese might prefer to work for foreign-based companies: being able to say that you work at BMW or Intel is extremely kakko ii (kah-ko EE, cool), and anyone with a career with a well-known foreign company will surely become popular with members of the opposite sex.

Robots in Japan and Lego MindStorms Soccer

The Japanese have a long history with robots, going all the way back to karakuri ningyo, mechanical dolls that mimic human movements and do things like serve tea and bow to guests, which date back to the 18th century. (If William Gibson is reading this, there's a steampunk book idea here, I just know it.) Today, robots play a relatively large part in daily life here, from assembling cars to acting as robotic pets to occasionally saving Tokyo from attacking aliens. Universities and companies in Japan invest heavily in the development of new kinds of robots, like the famous Asimo who can walk up and down stairs or a female robot that struts in a sexy manner to get your attention, with the the Holy Grail being to create a robot that can take care of Japan's aging citizens. On Sunday I spent the day at the Robocup Junior Championship, where ten teams did battle with soccer-playing robots based on the Lego MindStorms platform, zooming around a game field searching for a ball that they could "see" with a light sensor and figuring out the best way to propel it into the goal. It was very exciting -- the final match came down to one team of robots using the current NXT generation of MindStorms and a team using the older RCX series, which has stronger motors. In the end, the older generation prevailed, but my son's team did well enough to get invited to the regional championships in Tokyo -- he was thrilled.

Douglas MacArthur and the Japanese part II

Speaking of MacArthur, here's an ad for a Takarazuka production about him that I saw. Bet you've never imaged anything like this ^_^ Takarazuka is the all-female production company started in response to Kabuki being all male.

On the Endless Road Construction in Japan

I went to the dentist the other day to get my teeth checked. Normally, it's a ten minute drive, but I ran into no less than five teams of men digging up the road between the J-List office and my destination. It's all part of living in Japan, of course: the end-of-year road work, when government agencies hurry to use up their budgets before the Japanese fiscal year ends March 31. Japan is a country that's addicted to construction, and by law all car- and gasoline-related taxes must be used to build roads and only roads, even if there are other priorities. As a result, March always marks a huge increase in road work throughout the country, despite there being no actual benefit to anyone. Because roads are usually more narrow in Japan than in the U.S., it's common for construction areas to employ one or two "road guides" whose job it is to guide cars safely around the site, holding a flashlight to indicate whether it's okay to go or if you need to wait for a car coming from the opposite direction to go past. The only thing you can say about roads in Japan is that they are well maintained -- I do believe I've never hit a single pothole on a Japanese road.

Little Mis-Pronounciations of English in Japanese

The Japanese, of course, use a lot of English in their daily lives, even if serves mainly as a decoration, like a businessman showing his intelligence by peppering his speech with haughty-sounding katakana words like "compliance" "collaboration" or "initiative," the reverse version of American businessmen using trendy Japanese buzzwords. But because the Japanese have a limited phonetic range compared to English, and because words have been brought in over a space of many years, English words are sometimes imported "wrong," at least as far as my Californian-American English ear is concerned. The other day I asked my wife to get some yogurt from the refrigerator for me, specifying that I wanted the "Bio Yogurt" that was there. Since I was speaking Japanese, I said the word "bio" with its Japanese pronunciation of "be-oh," and this gave me a little shiver of weirdness since it's not said that way in my native tongue. Some other English words that are often changed compared to American English include "micro," which is pronounced "mii-cro" about half the time; energy, which sounds like "eh-neh-ru-GEE" with a hard "G"; and cocoa and aloe, both of which get their final silent syllables pronounced. There's nothing for it but to get used to these alternate pronunciations, and it's really not that hard -- before I know it I'm talking funny in English.

Douglas MacArthur and the Japanese

You probably don't think about Douglass MacArthur very much, but to the Japanese, he's quite a figure. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific, he battled the Japanese throughout the region, and his was the hand that officially received the surrender on the USS Missouri, ending the war. But to the Japanese, it was in the postwar period that MacArthur did great things, guiding the rebuilding of Japan as a "kind and loving father" to the nation, not entirely different from the Founding Fathers of the Meiji Restoration 78 years before. He brought in many democratic reforms, writing a new anti-war constitution. He broke up the zaibatsu conglomerates and redistributed five million acres of land to individual farmers, which no doubt helped contribute to Japan's healthy middle class today. More than anything, I think that MacArthur knew the importance of not "stepping on the face" of the Japanese, to borrow a phrase from their language. They were defeated, but the General took care to protect the Imperial Family from responsibility for the war, which was an important symbol to the people. I can find no evidence of "Abu Ghraib" like events during the Occupation, possibly thanks to the policy of choosing soldiers who had not fought in the Pacific theater, and thus had no special grudges. A lot of the plans he implemented were undone after the Occupation ended, such as the ban on all forms of martial arts and Kabuki plays, but the important changes stuck. The generation growing up after the war ended has the most reverence for the man. When I asked my wife's mother what her impression of him was, she practically gushed. "It's because of MacArthur that Japan is here today."

History Lesson on the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu

One concept you get used to when living in Japan is the ubiquitity of certain famous companies in many different industries. Take Mitsubishi, for example, a sprawling conglomorate of companies (keiretsu) that engages in everything from building cars to shipping to operating nuclear power plants and Japan's largest bank. (They also built the Zero during World War II.) The history of Mitsubishi began in 1870, when Iwasaki Yataro founded a trading company that would become Mitsubishi Shokai, a large shipping and trading interest, which soon diversified into coal mining, banking, insurance and military procurement. The name of the company comes from mitsu (three) and hishi (water chestnut), which is shaped like a diamond, and the famous logo is based on Yataro's family crest. The company grew quickly, eventually becoming one of the "big three" zaibatsu, along with Sumitomo and Mitsui, which wielded so much economic power that they could influence the political direction of the entire country. After World War II, all of the old zaibatsu were broken up for their role in the conflict, but all survive today as loose groups of associated companies.

On Traditional "Sento" (Public Baths) and Street Fighter II

If you ever come to Japan, you really should be sure to sample the bathing culture here. Although onsen (natural volcanic hot springs) are more famous, bathing was traditionally done in public baths known as sento, a word which literally means a place you can take a bath for a sen, an old coin equal to 1/100 of a yen, although they cost about 400 yen now. Sento have been around for centuries, with the first opened inside Edo Castle in 1591, and these traditional bathing places have been depicted in ukiyoe art for centuries. In more modern times, sento bring up images of the Showa Period, when most Japanese didn't have baths in their homes, and the picture of young apartment-dwellers walking to the sento with their bath kits under their arm is a classic one from the postwar era. Sento are famous for the extensively detailed Japanese art on the walls for customers to enjoy, as well for these yellow buckets that advertise a headache medicine called Kerorin; a glimpse of these buckets is enough to make most any Japanese person extremely natsukashii (NOTS-ka-shee), or nostalgic. Two of the most famous Japanese public baths in popular culture outside of Japan include the E. Honda level from Street Fighter II and the baths seen in Hayao Miyazaki's fim Spirited Away.

 

Understanding Kanji: The Basics

The Japanese writing system is based on kanji, the pictographs evolved by the Chinese starting around 2500 B.C., and China serves a similar role to Asia as Rome does in the West as the primary basis of writing and culture. Although learning to read kanji is a challenge for Westerners, it's actually quite a logical when you get used to it. First, the simplest characters are stylized representations of everyday objects, like mountain (yama) or rice field (tanbo), both of which look so much like what they mean you might be able to guess them just by looking. One of the most famous kanji characters in the West is naka (also read chu), which means "inside" or "middle" and can be seen on the costume of the Greatest American Hero and in the film Red Dragon, as well as in the name for China itself ("the country at the center of the world"). Kanji is composed of "radicals," essentially characters within characters which help to organize things. For example, the kanji for "to say" (iu) looks like a stack of books, and many kanji with similar cognative meanings, such as to read (yomu) or language (go) feature this character on the left half. In the Chinese speaking world there are two standards for characters, Traditional (used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and Simplified (used in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia). Since kanji have been used in Japan since the 6th century B.C., Japan uses the former, with the result being that I can probably read a menu with little problem in Hong Kong (although I couldn't prounce anything correctly), but I'd be quite lost in China proper.

Aizuchi, the Japanese Tradition of Saying "yes" All the Time

Leave it to Japan to turn concepts as simple as "yes" and "no" into something more complex than it needs to be. But because of the differences in language and culture, sometimes even these simple ideas can cause confusion. "Yes" in Japanese is hai, and in addition to affirming a statement or question, it's also used to let the person whose talking to you know you're listening attentively. This is called aizuchi, words of agreement that a Japanese will say while listening to another person. It's not uncommon for gaijin to assume that a person saying hai...hai or so desu ne (yes, that's so) to us is actually agreeing with what we're saying, when in fact the opposite may well be true. A classic example of this this tradition to insert words of agreement in the middle of what someone else is saying are folk songs in which one singer sings the lines of the song, interrupted by a chorus of shamisen-playing background singers who shout out their agreement to what the first singer has just said. I learned soon after arriving in Japan that to not give this verbal feedback to someone who's talking to you can be rude, and they're likely to stop what they're talking about and ask, "Are you listening to me?"

The Pachinko + Speed Racer Connection

Japan's Pachinko industry continues to innovate in interesting ways as it tries to appeal to new kinds of customers, and the current trend of tying new machines to famous anime series seems to be going strong. The latest offering is a Speed Racer Pachinko game no doubt designed to capitalize on the upcoming film by the Wachowski Brothers. The game goes beyond traditional Pachinko by adding video game elements on an LCD screen, urging the customer to keep playing so he can finish the current race and displaying new screens of art as the player shoots the metal balls into the machine. There are several game types, including a special "Battle Reach" mode that lets the Mach 5 do some of its signature tricks when you play well. Personally, I love the marriage of anime with pachinko, even though I'm not exactly a fan of the game itself, as it gives popular manga-ka a chance to update their characters, like the gorgeous redesign of the Galaxy Express 999 universe by Leiji Matsumoto. Other pachinko machines with interesting themes you can find in Japan include the 70s anime classic A Dog of Flanders (watch poor Nello and Patrasche ascend to heaven with angels all around them as you play), the Korean drama Winter Sonata, and that campy classic Knight Rider, which was such a hit in Japan back in the 80s.

Car Names: Naked, Every, Sunny Bluebird, and "That's"

Although Japan is famous for its extensive rail network, allowing people living in large cities like Tokyo to get by without owning a car at all, most families in less urbanized areas do own automobiles. Some of the cars sold here have names that sound extremely strange to gaijin, like the Daihatsu Move Latte I saw driving on the road the other day. Would you be caught dead in a car called Naked? What about an Every, or Sunny Bluebird, or maybe a Thanks Chariot? Or the Honda That's -- I'm not kidding, "That's" is the name of the thing. Or maybe a Life Dunk, which I guess is supposed to make you think of the most excellent game of basketball you ever played. Although drivers perceive English to be very kakko ii (cool), it's increasingly common for car companies to mine languages like Spanish or Italian for car names, which gives us such interesting cars as Demio (Spanish for "of mine"), the Familia S-Wagon ("family sporty wagon") or the Spacio ("space"). One of the few names derived from a Japanese word is the Toyota Camry, which comes from kanmuri meaning "crown," part of the company's strange fixation with this word. Other cars in this series include the Corona (Spanish for "crown"), the Corolla (Latin for "small crown") and their current flagship luxury model in Japan, the Crown Royal Saloon.

(This is the Honda Vamos. I just love that name.)