Do you want to know one thing that I don’t miss at all about Japan? It was something that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t missing until the other night when I was out and happened to pass by a group of slovenly teenagers seemingly doing all they could to look “cool.” Their clothes were baggy, their hair was shaggy and in each of their grubby mitts was a cigarette. At that moment, I realized that it had been ages since my nose had been assaulted by the acrid stench of cigarette smoke—an ever-present nuisance in Japan—and I didn’t miss it one bit. In fact, I was absolutely overjoyed to be free of it (well, at least until that particular moment).

Back to the teenagers, though. The fact that they seemed to be consciously attempting to direct their exhalations into the faces of passers-by was abhorrent enough; however, when I saw each of them proceed one by one to flick their butts onto the street, I could only thing of one thing:

That’s right, Japan Tobacco’s beautiful Smoking Manners campaign! And guess what? They’ve added 30 new ads to their website! The focus of these latest additions seems to be the importance of carrying portable ashtrays and the admonitions against littering in general. Somewhat mundane subject matter, perhaps, but their playful designs and esoteric charm definitely shine through.

Click here to go to the Smoking Manners gallery (the new entries are on the second page).

One day in the advertising department of Japanese pharmaceutical company Hisamitsu:

Advertising Executive: “Have you come up with any ideas for advertising the new Salonpas easy stick-on transdermal patches?”
Indentured Underling: “Well, I gave it a lot of thought. . .”
AE: “And . . .”
IU: “And, yeah, I was thinking that we should do something that makes the patches seem exciting.”
AE: “That sounds good. What do you have in mind?”
IU: “Well, I was thinking of something like, ‘Let’s stick it on!’, you know, ‘Harou!’”
AE: “That’s a fantastic idea! Tell me more!”
IU: “Well, I was thinking about it and — isn’t it sort of funny how ‘harou’ kind of sounds like ‘hello’?”
AE: “Haha, you’re right! That is funny!”
IU: “Right, so I was thinking that we could work around that, you know? Hire a foreigner and—”
AE: “Wait just a minute! We can’t go around featuring foreigners in our commercials! We’re not selling cars here, you know! Our products are for Japanese people! Everyone knows that Japanese and foreigners are physiologically completely different! If we start showing foreigners using our products, the public is going to think that our products are made for foreigners and not for them! Our sales will plummet! My god, man, use your head!”
IU: “Sir, I’m terribly sorry! There is absolutely no excuse for my utter stupidity. Shall I go commit ritual suicide now for the great shame that I have brought upon myself and our beloved Hisamitsu?”
AE: “No, not yet. First, you must help finalize this idea for the commercial.”
IU: “Yes, sir.”
AE: “Let’s see. . . how about instead of a foreigner (*shakes head in disbelief*), we get a well-known Japanese talent and put him in a silly suit with a blond wig and a huge fake nose—”
IU: “Sir, that is an excellent idea!”
AE: “I know it is, that’s why I thought of it! Anyhow, he’ll come on screen, act all crazy and speak really weirdly accented Japanese and yell ‘Hello!’ a couple of times while introducing our easy stick-on Salonpas patches. Yes, that will do quite well.”
IU: “Sir, if I may say so, I am truly in awe of your brilliance.”
AE: “Thank you. However, rather than simply marveling at my astounding and, frankly, unparalleled genius, I would prefer that you also try using your own worthless puddle of a brain to think up some ideas of your own.”
IU: “I’m sorry, sir.”
AE: “‘I’m sorry’ is nothing but words! I want to see action! Go out there and make me the best gosh-darned ‘Harou!’ commercial the world has ever seen!”
IU: “Yes, sir! I will give every effort that my poor, feeble mind is capable of giving!”
AE: “Good. Oh, and on your way out, please call in my secretary. It’s time for her to earn her ‘weekly bonus,’ if you know what I mean. Heh heh.”
IU: “Yes, sir!”

Four months later. . .

Click image above to view the ad [MPG, 777KB]

Yeah, yeah, you’ve read it all before — “Japanese TV commercials have sexy girls in bikinis in them, hyuck hyuck.” However, before I finally drop this topic for good, I’d like to present a poll on the matter. Well, not a true poll — unfortunately, I’m a bit too stupid to figure out how to get the poll plugin to display properly — so let’s just call it a question for you to ponder.

Instructions: Carefully review the following two examples of babes-in-bikinis-based advertising currently airing on Japanese television and answer the multiple choice question below.

Advertisement #1
Commercial for Marui department stores’ summer swimwear sale

Click image above to view [AVI, 6.1MB]

Advertisement #2
Commercial for part-time job placement agency Mobaito.com

Click image above to view [WMV, 6.6MB]

Don’t forget to use a #2 pencil!

Generally speaking, Japanese television doesn’t do much for me. Sure, there are a few programs that I find mildly entertaining, but one can only watch so many shows about cooking and/or eating food, silly trivia and mundane, formulaic dramas. However, the one merit that Japanese TV has over, say, American TV, is the possibility of encountering random, sheer draw-dropping absurdity while casually flipping through the channels.

A case in point is something I stumbled upon last Wednesday night: a contest on a comedy variety program called Haneru no Tobira (Hanetobi for short). Basically, the game involves five Japanese comedians in a kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt sushi) restaurant in Roppongi, an area in Tokyo known for its high concentration of foreign residents. Why Roppongi? Well, according to most Japanese people, it’s a universally-known fact that the Japanese invented chopsticks and people of other nationalities are inherently incapable of mastering their proper usage (resulting in every non-Japanese person being asked “Can you use chopsticks?” at least once per conversation with every single Japanese person they ever meet). Thus, in order to achieve absolute authenticity, the contestants in the game each came costumed to represent members of different foreign nations. Let’s meet them!

THE AMERICAN

Tsukaji Muga as Tsukageorge

_

THE INDIAN

Itakura Toshiyuki as Itachai

_

THE CHINA GIRL

Abukawa Mihoko as Abuchan

_

THE RUSSIAN

Akiyama Ryuji as Akibachof

_

THE MEXICAN

Kajiwara Yuta as Kajikaras

Wow, there’s nothing quite like offensive racial caricatures to get things off to a good start, eh?

The game began with all of the contestants taking a seat along the counter in front of the sushi chef, played by fellow comedian Nishino Akihiro, and engaging in witty banter on the sole topic of their foreignness, complete with exaggerated body language and heavily-accented Japanese.

Once the sheer hilarity of the fact that they were dressed as foreigners had died down a little, the game got off to a start. Small plates of sushi and other food items (e.g., a whole raw squid, a slice of honeydew melon, etc.) were sent around on the conveyor belt one-by-one, and the object of the game was for each contestant to use chopsticks to scoop each item up off of the plate and into his/her mouth without dropping it before the plate passed them by.

The only catch that the contestants were required to use their chopsticks in — say it ain’t so! — the proper form (i.e., grasping the top chopstick like a pencil).

One by one, each contestant did their best to pick up each item and put it into their mouths without incident. Those who succeeded were rewarded with the succulent taste of the whichever delicacy they managed to grab.

Those who failed, however, were greeted by unpleasant visitors: two ripped Japanese guys looking to mete out some fierce punishment! (Look familiar?)

Yep, at this particular kaiten-zushi joint, customers who fail to pick up their food from the revolving conveyor belt must face some revolving of their own.

As you can see, inadequate chopstick-handling is not without its consequences.

By the end of the game, whichever contestant managed to escape being spun around at the hands of the Chopstick Etiquette Enforcers was declared the winner. In this particular episode, it was the Chinese girl. Go figure.

Now, while it’s easy to imagine non-Japanese people who happened to view this program getting all up in arms with indignation over the stereotpyical portrayal of foreigners (I know I did at first), one thing worth noting is that the program is actually making fun of Japanese people’s inability to use chopsticks properly. The ironic truth of the matter is that many Japanese themselves people don’t hold their chopsticks “correctly;” most simply continue to use whatever method they found easiest as a child without regard for the proper form. In fact, the topic of how people hold their chopsticks pops up in conversations with surprising regularity here (at least among some of the dull people I work with, who always seem to bring it up after “o-hashi jouzu“-ing me for the gazillionth time in the many years we’ve known each other).

There’s certainly no denying the fact that the Japanese comedians dressing up like ethnic caricatures is nothing short of an old-time minstrel show, but for what it’s worth, it’s not like similar things haven’t been shown on TV in the West. I suppose some issues to consider are the nature of the humor as well as how it is received by the intended audience.

Hanetobi airs Wednesdays at 7:57p.m. on Fuji TV.

After last Saturday’s post about nihonjinron and the comments that followed, it was quite amusing to see this week’s Crisscross Japan PopVox, in which eight Japanese folks were asked what they think of Japan’s notably lackluster performance in the Word Cup thus far. One 19-year-old female respondent calling herself P-Chan offered this gem of a possible explanation:

I’m not sure why but the national team doesn’t know how to be aggressive or put on pressure in a game. Maybe it’s because of our ethnicity as an agricultural people. Physically we are small.

One can often hear the “Japan-is-a-small-agricultural-country” mentioned as the reasoning behind just about any possible shortcoming of Japanese society. Soccer team isn’t doing well? “We are a nation of small farmers.” Defeated in WWII? “We are a peaceful farming nation.” Increasing crime and weakening social fabric? “Western influences are destroying our small, harmonious nation.” Am I exaggerating a bit? Yes, but I’m not pulling it out of my ass completely. Click here to read someone else’s rant on the matter over at Japan Reference.

It seems that I left out a prime example of babes-in-bikinis-based advertising in my earlier post on the matter. Just the other night on TV I caught an ad for Japanese skincare giant Kao’s Sofina Perfect UV brand sunscreen featuring South Korean model Youna prancing around on the beach wearing — you guessed it — a black sequinned bikini.

The ad has apparently been running since April, but I guess lately I’ve been slacking on my duty to seek out commercials on Japanese television featuring women in revealing outfits and write about them on the internet. For shame.

Based on the similar ads for Allie and Anessa sunscreens, can you guess how this one ends??

To see Youna in the Sofina Perfect UV ad, click here [AVI, 2.0MB] or here [YouTube].

I didn’t mention it in the Zuiikin English post, but one of the videos contained a great little nugget of nihonjinron that’s definitely worth noting. The video in question — which Claytonian has already duly pointed out — is apparently the final episode of the series and the producers, in response to requests from non-Japanese viewers, decided to devote it to teaching Japanese phrases instead of English (sadly, they also replaced the Zuiikin Gals with three freaky Caucasian geezers).

To anyone who can’t be bothered to watch the video, here’s a quote from the introduction to the lesson, which was narrated over scenes of a toned Japanese guy doing various exercises:

First of all, our muslces and those of the Japanese are basically built differently. For example, their constant bowing and tendency to maintain a low posture results in well-developed lower back muslces. Squatting on the floor instead of sitting on chairs developed different leg muslces. So, by teaching such muscles Japanese, you, too, can begin speaking perfect Japanese.

Nihonjinron isn’t something that I hear people spouting off on a regular basis, but every so often during conversation I do encounter statements such as “You foreigners are so tall because traditionally you were hunters, but we Japanese were traditionally farmers and so we are short because we we were always bent over rice fields,” “You can’t truly appreciate the taste of sushi because foreigners have different taste buds than Japanese,” and so on. Of course, rational argument and evidence to the contrary do nothing to diminish people’s belief in such nonsensical notions, so all I can do is just roll my eyes and change the subject.

On trips to Shibuya on separate occasions over the past two weekends, two visitors from abroad — my friend Josh and Judy’s mother — both commented on a particular billboard currently on display on the side of Tokyu department store. The billboard in question, which I had hitherto paid little notice, is an advertisement for Unilever’s Dove brand featuring a group of Japanese women in their underwear.

“Old news, chump,” I hear you say. Yes, Dove has been running their “Campaign for Real Beauty” in the States for over a year now, and although I read about the hubbub that it caused at the time, as far as I know it didn’t make its way over to these shores until recently.

For those who may not be familiar with Dove’s campaign, it was originally launched with a series of ads featuring “regular” woman of varying sizes and ethnicities cheerfully posing in plain white underwear (it has since expanded in scope, apparently). According to Dove’s website:

For too long, beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes. Women have told us it’s time to change all that. Dove agrees. We believe real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages. That is why Dove is launching the Campaign for Real Beauty.

Dove’s global Campaign for Real Beauty aims to change the status quo and offer in its place a broader, healthier, more democratic view of beauty. A view of beauty that all women can own and enjoy everyday.

Here is a picture of one such ad shown in the US:

As you can see, there are women of different sizes, shapes and colors. One of them even has a prominent tattoo. Of course, not all ethnicities are represented (where’s the love for the Asian fatties?), and the women aren’t that big given today’s widespread obesity, but it’s an interesting campaign that brings attention important issues such as body image, ideals of feminine beauty as portrayed in the media, and so on.

Now let’s take a look an ad from Dove Japan’s “Real Beauty” campaign:

Hmmm… Women of different sizes? No. Shapes? No. Colors? No (unless you count the towels they’re holding, anyhow). As far as I can tell, the only obvious differences between the seven women are their hairstyles. And I can’t even imagine what sort of sick, misogynistic individual would even for a moment consider those women to be anything other than thin. They may not be models, as Dove purports, but they’re certainly not representative of the average Japanese woman (as much we might wish they were).

To be fair to Dove, though, the focus of the Japanese campaign is a teensy bit different than that of the American one. Rather than “Real women have real curves,” the Japanese slogan is (roughly) “I won’t hide my skin anymore.” The intended message, obviously, is that Japanese women should feel proud of their appearance and have confidence in themselves, even if they don’t conform to society’s image of beauty.

Of course, it seems that Unilever Japan did their market research and realized that if they came out with a campaign in featuring “fuller-figured” women, they would be immediately labeled as the brand for fatso’s and would thereupon lose any hope of appealing to fickle, extremely brand-conscious Japanese consumers. So, rather than “real women,” the Japanese public gets “women who are not models, but who are thinner and more attractive than 95% of the female population.” Interesting, to say the least.

With the last of the cherry blossoms having long since fluttered down to the earth, bringing to a close the glorious hanami season and thus signifying the end of the symbolic representation of the transient beauty and ephemeral nature of life or some such nonsense, it appears that summer is well on its way to Japan.

At least that’s the impression I’m getting from the commercials on TV these days. That’s right, the summer advertisement season has begun. Generally speaking, Japanese summer-themed commercials usually tend to feature one or more of the following components: 1) the shrill drone of cicadas, 2) people frolicking on eye-pleasing, non-concrete-lined beaches, and 3) women in revealing two-piece bathing suits.

Please allow me to focus on the third item today (as if there was any doubt that I wouldn’t). Although TV ads featuring women in provocative outfits or poses tend to draw a lot of controversy in the States (”OMG, she’s, like, eating a hamburger in a bathing suit!!1“), in Japan, no one seems to bat an eye at such blatant displays of sexual imagery utilized in attempt to sell goods. In light of the imminent arrival of summer (once that pesky rainy season passes, that is), I thought I would share some babes-in-bikinis-based commercials currently airing on TV to those people not fortunate enough to have access to Japanese broadcast television and all it has to offer. Behold!

Anessa Sunscreen
Japanese cosmestic giant Shiseido’s recent commercial for Anessa sunscreen has been getting quite a bit of attention among geeks on the internet, both Japanese and foreign. The ad features popular CanCam model Ebihara Yuri (aka “Ebi-chan”) taking a shower, diving into a pool of water and basically just enjoying being wet while wearing a bikini, culminating in her removal of the top piece of said garment. I believe the intended message to women consumers is “be sure to put sunscreen on your baps” or something like that.

To see Ebihara Yuri in the Anessa ad, click here [WMV, 6.4MB] or here [YouTube].

Kirin Lemon Soft Drink
What better way to advertise Kirin’s lemon-flavored carbonated beverage than by showing Urban Agency model Brenda in a bikini splashing about under a stream of water. The quick cuts and gratuitous close-ups really help impress upon the consumer the refreshing flavor of the drink and the fact that it has 27% less sugar. I honestly can’t even begin to describe how thirsty it has made me.

To see Brenda in the Kirin Lemon ad, click here [WMV, 1.2MB] or here [YouTube].

Allie Sunscreen
Cosmetic maker Kanebo’s new commercial for their Allie sunscreen features current advertising It Girl, CanCam model Yamada Yu, enjoying an afternoon on a yacht and partaking in various activities, including going for a swim, toweling off and then applying the advertised product to her glistening body. Similar to the Anessa ad, it closes with Yamada sans her bikini top, indicating to me that this iconic image must surely help sell sunscreen to women. . . right?

To see Yamada Yu in the Allie ad, click here [WMV, 3.4MB] or here [YouTube].

Canada Dry Ginger Ale
Although not summer-themed, Yamada Yu is also currently starring in a TV spot for Canada Dry Ginger Ale, which I believe is at least worth an honorable mention. The ad features Yadama in a glittery gold gown (yikes!) from which the sequins begin to rapidly flutter away before her entire body suddenly explodes in a burst of bubbles. This one also made me thirsty.

To see Yamada Yu in the Allie ad, click here [WMV, 2.8MB] or here [YouTube].

So there you have it: further proof that the commercials are perhaps the most entertaining aspect of Japanese TV (at least to us ignoble lechers, anyhow). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go buy a carbonated beverage to quench my thirst and some sunscreen for the missus.

- - - - - - -

UPDATE: More swimsuits for sales

From today’s Mainichi Daily News:

School girl hit in head with hard object while walking home

KASUKABE, Saitama — A high school girl was hit in the head with a hard object by a man as she was walking home on Thursday night, police said.

The 15-year-old student was coming home from school alone in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, when a man approached her from behind at about 8:35 p.m. and hit her in the head as she entered the compound of an apartment complex.

She suffered injuries that will require two weeks to heal.

“I was hit with a hard object,” officers quoted the girl as saying.

Wow, talk about lazy reporting. All that’s missing is:

Doctors who treated the girl reported that her injuries were consistent with being hit in the head with a hard object.

And possibly:

Police have announced that they will undertake a thorough search of the area in the vicinity of the attack for hard objects. They also stated that, if apprehended, the assailant would be charged with using a hard object to hit someone in the head.

Unfortunately, the Japanese version of the article isn’t much better, although it does mention that the man ran away after the attack.

Talk about a scoop!

I’ve been a bit busy lately and now that the weather is getting warmer I’ve been spending a lot of what little free time I have outdoors, so my apologies for the dearth of posts this month. Since it’s late and my brain doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me at the moment, rather than write a proper new post, I thought I’d revisit and follow up on a few posts from the past. So, in no particular order or relevance, here are some updates:

Jesus & the Gosperats
Just as announced, Bubble Aota’s sacrilegious new single, Jesus, was released last Wednesday (a video of her performing the song can be found here). On that same day, the Gosperats — the Japanese soul group composed of members of the former 80s groups Gospellers and Rats&Star — also released their self-titled debut album. The group is perhaps best known for the unique appearance of its members, namely the fact that they perform in blackface.

Yes, despite it being 21st century, this kind of thing still flies in Japan with nary a whimper of protest. To capitalize on the clearly untapped market for ethnic tribute bands, I’m thinking of starting a rival group called Tojo’s Troubadours, which will feature five white guys in yellowface with eyes taped back who sing about ninjas, geishas and robots. Whaddya think??

“I’m soakin’ in your onsen of love~”

Take that, ya old bag!
Last week, the Nara District Court sentenced noisy whackjob Miyoko Kawahara to one year in prison for “inflicting injury” on her neighbor via a three-year barrage of nearly non-stop aural assault. I’d love to see this case result in legislation against the widespread noise pollution that plagues nearly every inch of Japan, but sadly I know that would never happen. For now I’ll just have to stick with my personal grass-roots effort of flashing my bits to every offender I encounter.

Ah, DS Lite, my evasive friend
The Nintendo DS Lite is still next to impossible to get in Tokyo. I’ve heard reports of electronics stores out in the boondocks with shelves full of the little buggers, but here in the city the only place where they can reliably be found is on the Yahoo! Japan Auctions site, where they’re still going for over ¥20,000 apiece. With Nintendo’s latest game releases (including a J/E dictionary with the ability to look up kanji by inputting them with the stylus), I’ve actually been considering getting a DS Lite, but due to the fact that I’m an unrepentant tightwad, I absolutely refuse to pay anything above the list price. Oh well, it’s not like I have time these days to play it anyway.

The return of Cool (Biz)
With the arrival of spring, retailers throughout Japan have put Warm Biz to rest and now light blue Cool Biz displays can be found in department stores and clothing shops everywhere. My company finally got around to fixing the broken air conditioning in our office last October, so hopefully I’ll be able to make it through this summer without ending each day in a puddle of my own perspiration.

Well, that’s it for now. . . time to hit the hay. Be sure to tune in next time for even more pointless, incoherent drivel!

I love how pretty much everything in Japan comes with helpful illustrations. Everywhere you go, there are pictures of cutesy characters warning you about various dangers in your midst, everything from closing elevator doors to molesters on the prowl.

Recently, I came across this fire prevention billboard for the Takanawa Fire Station:

I have no idea who the orange alien fella on the right is, but the message is clear:

Battered shrimp + Flame = Fried Shrimp or OMG the house done caught fire!! ?

Cigarette + Flame = Smoking or OMG the house done caught fire!! ?

Great stuff.

Last night when I got home from work, Judy was watching Zubari Iuwayo! (I’m Gonna Say It Straight!), a variety TV show featuring comedy duo Cream Stew (Ueda Shinya & Teppei Arita), pop singer Takizawa “Takky” Hideaki and author/fortune teller/evil wretched hag Hosoki Kazuko.

I don’t usually watch the show because it is literally impossible for me to sit through more than 10 seconds of “Hosoki-sensei”’s self-righteous claptrap before I am overcome by a violent urge to throttle her fat neck whilst simultaneously stabbing her in the face with some sort of pointy object. The program usually features celebrity guests who, after a brief introduction by the Cream Stew boys, are thrust before Hosoki to face her sanctimonious wrath, usually meandering rants involving an odd mix of piano- backed inspirational encouragement and fiery condemnations, most notably “You will go to hell!,” if guests dare question her advice.

However, on last night’s episode, the producers had invited into the studio 50 NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) youths — young adults who refuse to enter the workforce and instead live a life free from responsibility on their parents’ dime — to face off against the imperious crone herself in a confrontation that had explosive potential. Also in the studio were 50 shakai-jin (or ‘members of society’) — average job-holding, tax-paying folks — in order to discover the differences in mindsets between the two groups. Throughout the course of the show, questions were posed to both groups and the responses were tallied and discussed.

I jotted down a few of the questions and thought I would post them, as they are somewhat insightful into the state of Japanese society today. Here are few of them:

I actually laughed out loud when these results came on the screen. The shiftless layabouts who have been declared a bane of Japanese society are in fact much happier than the Average Taro, two-thirds of whom are apparently displeased with the state of their existence. Of course, Japanese people are indoctrinated from childhood to believe that life is suffering and that honor is derived from persevering through misery rather than trying to overcome it, so I suppose it’s not exactly a shocking revelation.

I was actually a bit surprised by this one. Maybe it’s because I come from a land of lazy, responsibility- shirking miscreants who aspire to become prosperous through as little effort as possible, but my first thought was “Who wouldn’t want to earn money through very little effort??” Although the majority of the shakai-sha sided with the NEETs on this one, it was interesting to note that almost a third of them actually preferred to make money through gruelling exertion and hard work. I suppose this is admirable in a way, but I can’t help but wonder whether baseless obligation to maintaining the image of “the hardworking Japanese” and clouded the honesty of those respondents.

As you can see, the responses here were nearly opposites from one another. While the working folks were primarily worried about job stress, the NEETs were mainly concerned about their poor diets (it’s a well-known fact that many of them subsist entirely on conbini bentos ). For me, the only interesting thing about this particular topic was that they introduced one of the NEET girls who secures most of her victuals by finding guys on the internet to take her out for free meals. Apparently there are websites out there for lonely men to meet impoverished women who willing to keep them company for the duration of a meal as long as they don’t have to pay for anything — on the condition, of course, that there will be no hanky-panky. I honestly don’t know what this world is coming to. . . (although I suppose it is a less deleterious form of prostitution).

Not surprisingly, both groups admitted to having experienced failure in their past. The shakai-jin once again related tales of disheartening hardship at work, while the first NEET girl they spoke to offered this pathetic account of her own experience of failure:

“I, like, tried to get a job at Don Quijote [a K-Mart-like discount store chain], but they told me that, like, I couldn’t work there with my dyed hair and facial piercings. . . I guess that’s kind of a failure, right?”

When the show neared its end, I was anticipating a typical Hosoki-style vehement harangue, but after only a few sharply-worded comments about how the NEETs are members of the human race and must have a spirit and a drive to do something with their lives, the soft piano music began playing and she embarked on an uplifting speech about how each and every one of them has positive qualities and talents and that they can make something of themselves — all they have to do is try.

Yes, I nearly vomited from watching that and was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of shouting and crying.

In the end, they did one last poll of the NEETs with the question “Will you go and look for a job tomorrow?” The results: 37 out of 50 said yes, revealing that they’re not necessarily inherently bad people, they’re just in need of guidance. It’s a shame, then, that not once was the topic of parents’ failure to instill any sense of values in their children addressed. Yep, in what some would argue is typical Japanese fashion, the problem was dealt with purely on the surface level, while the real, underlying issues — inadequate parenting, oppressive societal pressure, lack of support for social health issues, etc. — were conveniently ignored. Way to go!

I was walking in Ginza a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon a curious sight:

Tables were set up along the sidewalk and a group was offering free stress tests to anyone who was interested. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest was indeed high; a crowd had gathered around the tables and people were patiently awaiting their turn.

I suspected that something fishy was going on; there had to be an ulterior motive. And sure enough, there was:

It all became clear: The folks giving the tests were Scientologists and those stress testing machines were actually E-meters, the useless device favored by whackjobs for evaluating their level of whackjobbery.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. These days people don’t seem to shut up about how stressed out they are (yes, I realize the irony of me saying such a thing), and Japanese folks are particularly notorious for this. You can literally see them beaming with pride when they make categorical and oft-repeated statements such as “We Japanese are hardworkers,” “We Japanese are always busy,” “We Japanese have a strong, fighting warrior spirit, unlike you fat, lazy American scum who just love to sit around on your fat asses, being fat. Fatso!!”

In addition, Japanese people are generally quite trusting and tend to be a bit less cyincal and a bit more gullible than their Western counterparts. Combine these two factors and you’ve got a population ripe for the picking by con men and scam artists (religious or otherwise) looking to take advantage of the unsuspecting and make a quick buck.

Well, after getting several nasty looks by the Scientologists for taking photos of their racket selfless service to public, I continued on my way. I suppose an upside to being a cynical and apathetic bastard is that it’s relatively easy to avoid getting caught up in silly things like cults, schemes, politicking or even human relationships, for that matter. Yes, being lukewarm about nearly everything certainly has its advantages.

Saw this last night in the drug store down the street from my apartment:

It might be a little difficult to discern, but here’s the deal: On the top shelf, individual refill packages of Dove body wash are priced at ¥298 each; on the bottom shelf, special two-package sets are available at a price of ¥598 each — ¥2 more than the cost of purchasing two individual packages(!).

Apparently, in Japan, there are instances where buying in bulk is actually more expensive than buying items individually.

Shop in Japan and watch your savings grow!

With the wedding now just over a fortnight away, Judy and I have been scrambling to get everything ready in time. All of the main arrangements have been made, but there are still about a million loose ends to tie up before we hop on the plane in two weeks’ time.

With a “to do” list about 10 pages long, I haven’t had much time to even think about this site, much to my great regret. I’m hoping to put up a few more posts before we leave, but realistically, I’m not sure how that’s going to pan out. Anyway, I’ll do my best.

For today, I thought I’d put up another Smoking Manners sign that I discovered on the platform of Gotanda station a couple of weeks ago. It’s not as poetic or esoteric as the others, but this is one ad to which I wish more Japanese people would take notice.

Personally, I don’t understand the appeal of smoking whilst urinating and/or defecating, but it seems to be quite a common practice around these parts. Telltale cigarette burns can be found on the toilets/walls/floors of just about every public restroom, and many even have ashtrays or similar receptacles available for those wishing to have a puff while pinching one out.

The unpleasant result, of course, is that bathrooms commonly reek of stale cigarette smoke to the extent that one’s eyes burn and it becomes difficult to breathe. That said, however, I suppose one has to consider whether the cigarette smell might actually be somewhat more favorable to what would likely be there otherwise: the overwhelming stench of poo from all of the unsightly splatter surrounding the average squat toilet. But then again, perhaps if people focused more on doing their business instead of trying to get in a few more hits of nicotine, they might be able to get all of their “output” into the proper destination in the first place.

Japan’s cultural obsession with cute characters is known the whole world over. From popular icons like Hello Kitty and Gloomy Bear to lesser-known but equally ubiquitous corporate mascots, the general attitude seems to be: if you want people to look at something, stick a cutesy face on it.

During my recent visit to the hospital for some x-rays, I happened to spot of an example of this that really pushed the limits in terms of the kawaii-ification of something otherwise exceptionally mundane. Meet Stomach-kun:

Okay, I made the name up, but this is a real character found on an instructional poster for a barium x-ray exam (for those lucky bastards allowed to drink the stuff instead of having it forced up their nose). Now, I’ve seen lovable, doe-eyed characters in product instruction manuals, rubbish disposal guidelines and even insurance forms, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed this phenomenon extended to something so patently un-cute. But heck, who says internal organs don’t deserve to be adequately represented in kawaii culture? Now that I know how cute my digestive system can be, I feel much more inclined to take better care of it. I don’t want poor Stomach-kun to suffer!

I find myself perpetually amused by the level of cluelessness demonstrated by middle-aged men in Japan. Clueless geezers can be found in every country, of course, but societal factors in Japan seem to leave the average middle-aged guy in a position in which the majority of his needs are met by those below him in the hierarchy (his wife, children, underlings at work, etc.), with little need to expend any effort on his part, resulting in an awfully high concentration of grown men completely incapable of completing the most basic of tasks. This phenomenon isn’t something that only punk-on-a-lark foreigners such as myself gripe about, either; in fact, characterizations of stereotypical oyaji featuring the requisite cheap suit, thick glass and bad comb-over, have a long tradition in Japanese comedy routines and on television.

I bring this up today as reference to an amusing incident that took place in my office this afternoon. The bucho (department manager) got up from his desk and walked over to the corner of the office where the coffee maker and electric kettle sit and lamented out loud the fact that there was no tea and that he didn’t know how to prepare any. Immediately, the youngest guy in the office jumped up from his seat and offered to put more water in the kettle, to which the bucho responded with the a mere grunt and went back to his desk.

About 30 minutes later, the bucho once again got up and went over to the corner, at which point paused and said, “Oh, I see you didn’t make me any.” The young guy raced over to the corner and apologized for the fact that although he had put water into the kettle to boil, he had failed to thereafter prepare a cup of tea for the bucho. The bucho, however, responded, “I don’t want tea, I want coffee,” prompting chuckles from other people in the office who had heard him not half an hour earlier explicitly ask for tea. Now, this young guy can be a bit cheeky and has a good rapport with the bucho, so he quickly pointed out that the he had indeed asked for tea.

The bucho, never one to admit a mistake, came back with this gem of an oyaji-ism: “When have you ever seen me drink tea, you idiot?! I want coffee!”

The confusion cleared, the young guy then went about preparing a fresh pot of coffee while the bucho went out to the balcony for a cigarette.

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And with that, I have wasted three minutes of your time. Thank you for playing, please come again.

If the slight reduction in the amount of sweat that rolls down the back of my legs as I make my way to work each morning wasn’t indication enough, this past week I encountered irrefutable evidence that autumn has finally made its long-awaited arrival to this otherwise still-sweltering land.

Yes, Kirin’s Akiaji is back on store shelves nationwide in a newly-designed fanciful autumn leaf-decorated can. Mere words simply cannot describe the true significance of this blessed occasion, so let me instead imbibe this luscious amber liquid until the point where stringing a sentence together becomes altogether impossible. As may be easily ascertainable from the quality of what has been written thus far, utter incoherence is not far away.

If anyone is interested in seeing the television commercial for Akiaji that is has been airing as of late, just click below! [ASF, 593KB]

From the Fabricated News Dept.:

Japanese Gov’t to Abandon ‘Cool Biz’ in Favor of Sweaters, Long Underwear

TOKYO - Following a rash of reports of complaints and lawsuits stemming from the failed “Cool Biz” campaign, which aimed to reduce energy consumption by encouraging business people to forego suit jackets and neckties, the Environment Ministry announced on Monday that it was summarily abandoning the summertime initiative, and would launch a new campaign for the autumn and winter months, dubbed “Warm Biz,” on October 1.

Environment Minister Yuriko Koike announces the termination of the “Cool Biz” campaign.

“It is regrettable that the ‘Cool Biz’ campaign, which held considerable promise for the reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, must be terminated at this time due to the failure by certain individuals to exercise proper moral judgment and self-control,” stated Environment Minister Yuriko Koike. “As pleased as I am that central government offices were able to successfully reduce electricity usage by 0.5% during the months of June and July, the increasing uninhibited exposure of bare skin — especially by the middle-aged male population — led to the creation of uncomfortable working environments nationwide.”

Both the public and private sectors saw a sharp increase in the number of indecency and sexual harassment complaints following the introduction of the “Cool Biz” campaign in June, leading many firms to abruptly discontinue the initiative and reinstate previous strict company guidelines for employee dress. Toshihiro Tanaka, president of a Tokyo-based architectural firm, said that although the campaign initially got off to a good start, “As the weeks went by, employees became more and more relaxed in their choice of clothing,” resulting in several instances of disciplinary action against those who took their casual attire too far. “There’s a difference between not wearing a necktie and not wearing pants.”

Even some women in Japan have gone as far as to work topless for the sake of keeping cool.

Hitomi Sato, a 28-year-old office assistant told of similar circumstances at the Yokohama Internet services company where she works. “At first, the men in my office started wearing short-sleeved dress shirts, then it was T-shirts, and eventually they just started going without shirts altogether,” she said with frustration. “After a while, they began to pressure us women to start doing the same; I didn’t think it was appropriate, but several of my female coworkers had no problem with going topless in the office.”

Under the Environment Ministry’s new “Warm Biz” campaign to be introduced in October, office workers will be encouraged to wear layers of clothing including long underwear, sweaters and headwear in order to reduce the use of heaters, especially electric and kerosene space heaters, which are used widely throughout Japan due to a lack of proper insulation and adequate heating systems in most of the country’s commercial and residential buildings. The Japanese government is confident that the new campaign will be far less problematic than its predecessor and is optimistic that it will lead to a significant reduction in energy consumption.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi models an example of “Warm Biz” attire to show his support for the new campaign.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who was once a strong and vocal proponent of “Cool Biz,” told reports at an outdoor press conference Tuesday that he fully supports the new campaign and will faithfully follow the new dress code recommendations. “You can expect to see me dressed like this every day in a few months,” he joked, while visibly perspiring in head-to-toe heavy winter attire, including a down jacket, gloves and snow boots. “Yes, as soon as the first of October arrives, all of my Cabinet ministers and I will bundle up in thick wool knits and flannel-lined trousers, regardless of the actual temperature outside, in order to demonstrate Japan’s strong commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.”

Following the press conference, Koizumi was rushed to the University of Tokyo Hospital where he received treatment for severe dehydration and heat stroke. He is expected to be discharged and return to official duties next week.

At lunchtime today, I headed out to get something to eat and happened to come across a homeless man peeing on the street near my office. Of course, that in itself is hardly worth mentioning; one can find homeless men peeing on streets in every city of the world. What struck me about the situation this afternoon was the realization that it was the very first time that I had seen a public urinator in Japan who was actually homeless. Up until today, in the nearly weekly occurrence of seeing old men relieving themselves on sidewalks and in doorways in plain view of everyone passing by, all of the perpetrators have been relatively normal-looking guys!

The practice of public urination is called tachishoben in Japanese (literally: “standing urination”) and seems to be the unofficial pastime among the nation’s sizable population of sleazy old men. While the activity is frowned-upon by the general populace, not once in any instance of witnessing men openly spatter the contents of their bladders on the street have I ever seen someone admonish the offenders, let alone offer a disapproving “tsk” in the direction of the individual with his penis in his hand, unabashedly directing the stream of his urine towards a nearby surface.

Now, while it is obviously an objectionable practice, I don’t wish to condemn tachishoben — (what man among us is innocent of ever covertly dampening a darkened alley during an evening spent partaking in spirituous refreshment?) — I am merely undertaking a therapeutic exercise in writing about my unsettling experience in order to cleanse my psyche of any lingering detrimental effects of the memory of being presented with the sight of crusty homeless man penis while on my way to satiate my hunger with a mid-day collation.

Of course, the only thing worse than observing the flagrant depravity of a public urinator is to bear witness to the wanton turpitude of his reprobate cohort, the public masturbator. While I personally have yet to encounter this detestable creature, Judy, alas, has not been so fortunate. An occasion about two years ago saw her fleeing in a panic after happening upon a gentlemen “hard at work,” so to speak, on the side of the road at six o’clock in the morning on a fine winter’s day. Oddly enough, he was standing astride a bicycle at the time. . . .

Sushi, with its aesthetic fusion of exotic tradition and simple sophistication, may be considered to be the quintessence of Japanese cuisine.

These days, it seems as though nearly everyone has at least heard of sushi and many have even enjoyed first-hand its culinary delights. However, how much do people outside of Japan really know about this paragon of haute Japanese fare? Click the image below for a rare opportunity to learn everything you could ever possibly hope to know about the time-honored practice of visiting a sushi restaurant in Japan, courtesy of a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek instructional video entitled The Japanese Tradition: Sushi.

(Japanese with English subtitles; WMV, 30.4MB)
A torrent of this video is also available here.

Naruhodo, samurai no kuni desu ne.

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UPDATE: For anyone who might be interested, The Japanese Tradition: Dogeza can be found here.

The life of a Japanese salaryman is rough. You’re expected to dedicate your very existence to your company and toil away all of your waking hours for a mere pittance, with little appreciation or satisfaction gained in return. You’re also endlessly exhausted, and thus never hesitate to try to grab a few winks at any opportunity.

A little over a year ago after I first set this site up, I wrote a post about a comment made on a television program (about Harry Potter of all things) on which one of the show’s guests used the word gaijin, a rather controversial Japanese word for “foreigner”. Not feeling like opening up that particular can of worms at the time, I wrote the following:

Although I won’t go into depth about my thoughts on the word gaijin at this time, I’ll just say that it’s a discriminatory term and there’s really no need for it to be used when their are several other inoffensive alternatives. While some may argue that gaijin is simply an abbreviation of gaikokujin (foreign national), the true meaning is quite simply “outsider” and carries derogatory connotations. Despite this, many Japanese people continue to use the word freely despite knowing that many non-Japanese people find it offensive.

I received an email recently from a Japanese person asking me to elaborate on my opinion of the word. After procrastinating for a while, I finally stayed up late one night and tried to write out my thoughts on the matter. Well, today I figured I’d go ahead and put that email out there for public consumption, essentially just for the heck of it, since I can’t imagine that anyone would especially care to hear about what some suburbanite punk on a lark has to say about a particular word in a language that he can barely speak.

Anyhow, the email (slightly edited) is below. I apologize in advance for the length; regular readers should know by now how long-winded I can be at times.

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My basic view about the terms gaijin and even gaikokujin is that they are both highly overused. Not only are they used in instances when people’s names and nationalities are already known, but also when nationality has no relevance to the situation at hand. For example, I have heard Japanese people talk about their “gaijin friend” or “gaijin neighbor,” when there are other much more appropriate (not to mention more specific) descriptors that can be used, such as “my friend, Paul,” “my neighbor from Canada,” etc. Also, I have had experiences in shops when I am referred to as “gaijin-san” by the staff, rather than “okyaku-sama,” as all of the other [Japanese] customers are called. The word “gaijin” singles people out for not being part of the “group” (i.e., Japanese), and in most instances, there’s no need to do so. A friend is a friend and a customer is a customer, regardless of their nationality or appearance.

Another issue I have with the word gaijin is that it is used to indiscriminately clump together groups of people who otherwise have no relation whatsoever, other than the fact that they happen not to have been born in Japan to Japanese parents. As a result, people with different ethnic backgrounds who don’t share a common culture or even speak the same language are often considered one in the same by some Japanese people.

Even worse, many Japanese people often tend to assume that everyone they consider to be “gaijin” all share the same characteristics, behavioral tendencies, likes and dislikes, etc. For example, I would imagine that every foreigner in Japan has at time or another heard statements such as, “Gaijin eat bread, not rice,” and “Gaijin are very loud,” as well as been on the receiving end of questions such as, “Can gaijin eat sushi?” and “What do gaijin think of Japan?” Similar statements and questions are often said/asked about “gaikoku” (foreign countries), as if all countries outside of Japan are identical [I like to refer to it as the The Magical Kingdom of Gaikoku]: “Gaikoku is very dangerous,” “Gaikoku don’t have four seasons like Japan does,” “Do you have cars in gaikoku?,” etc. (Yes, all of those are actual statements/questions that I have heard spoken by supposedly educated Japanese people here in Japan).

In my opinion, what makes words like “foreign” problematic is that they emphasize non-membership. For example, if I mention that a friend of mine is Brazilian, it expresses that she belongs to the Brazilian group; however, if I only say that she is “foreign,” it expresses that she doesn’t belong to any group, which may give the impression that she is somehow less significant than a member of a group.

Many people argue that gaijin is merely an abbreviation of gaikokujin, the official word for foreign national. However, if one examines the history of the term, one would learn that long before the arrival of visitors from other countries to Japanese shores, gaijin was used to refer to other Japanese people from different regions or villages. In this regard, the meaning of the word is a literal reading of the kanji characters — “outside person” — and has inherent exclusionary and somewhat disrespectful connotations.

Also, as I mentioned previously, it is not a necessary word — there are countless other more specific and more appropriate words that can be used in its place according to the context, such as, “John,” “the British guy,” “the guy in the gray sweater,” “the friend I made when I studied abroad in university,” etc. Although there are a few words to express the concept of gaijin/gaikokujin in English — foreigner, alien, etc. — in my experience, they are rarely used outside of situations relating to official immigration matters. In fact, outside of such circumstances, I hardly ever used these words before coming to Japan.

I think that the most compelling argument against the use of the word gaijin is that regardless of whether some Japanese or non-Japanese people disagree, many people do in fact consider the word to be offensive. Because of this alone, it seems only proper to try to avoid using it.

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Well, that’s my imbecilic rant on the word gaijin. As you can see, it was neither well thought-out nor particularly coherent.

Just for the sake of clarification: I’m not some sort of neo-colonialist rabid anti-Japanese crackpot. I love living here and hold in high regard all of the people that I’ve been fortunate to get to know here. As a non-Japanese person living in Japan, gaijin is a word that I hear with relative frequency, and thus the issue surrounding the use of the word is something to which I have given a considerable amount of thought (well, I meant to, anyhow).

By the way, I doubt I’ll be sinking to such depths again to actually write another pseudo-serious post any time in the near future. I’ll try to put up some new high-quality low-brow content in the coming days. In the meantime, here are a few hardly relevant links:

* Gaijin glasses
* Gaijin newscaster disguise
* Some might argue that we bring it upon ourselves

Earlier this week, Japundit reported that Miyoko Kawahara, the 58-year-old Nara woman who harassed her 64-year-old neighbor with incessant shouting and loud music day and night for nearly three years, recently pleaded not guilty to the charges of inflicting violence and injury on her neighbor.

Trouble started when Kawahara developed a grudge against her neighbor in 1989 after the older woman’s family moved in but did not come over to greet her, as is often the custom in Japan. A light that was reportedly too bright, a car that was parked the wrong way, and other incidents Kawahara perceived as slights added fuel to the feud over the years, apparently driving Kawahara over the edge and firmly into the realm of battydom.

Kawahara’s antics really have to be seen to fully appreciate her utter insanity. A video (WMV, 16MB) can be downloaded by clicking below. Enjoy!

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By the way, for anyone who is unfamiliar with Japundit, I highly recommend checking out their site. Quality content, frequent updates, and a big ol’ rising sun logo. What more could anyone possibly want?

One would think that the world’s adults would see it as their rudimentary duty to keep the minds of their children pure and free from hatred, malice and all other forms of prejudice that have plagued humanity since time immemorial. Sadly, this is not the case in any part of the world, as we all know too well.

Case in point: These drawings made by South Korean school children that depict strong anti-Japanese sentiment. Certainly amusing on the one hand (especially the one with the rabbit plopping out a smelly Japan-shaped turd), but also terribly saddening on the other. There is definitely a long history of past aggression against the Korean peninsula at the hands of the Japanese, in addition to the current conflicts over Dokdo/Takeshima island, Japanese textbooks and Yasukuni shrine, but I suppose that it would be foolishly idealistic to wish that people would have some perspective to realize that relatively trivial issues such as these are no excuse for polluting the minds of innocent children.

Oh well. . . at least it’s good to know that artistic creativity is still alive and well; some of the drawings reveal quite a bit of talent.

. .

With their intrinsic convenience and relative affordability, it’s no surprise that cell phones are beyond ubiquitous in Japan. From teenagers who accessorize them with a bulky array of straps and trinkets to middle-aged men who clip them to their shirt pockets or wear them proudly around their necks, cell phones have become so integrated into society that it seems strange for a person not to own one.

Nearly all keitai models released within the past few years have come equipped with an email option, which many people (including myself) tend to rely on nearly exclusively for communicating with friends, since one can send an email to any address for a mere fraction of the per-minute cost to use the phone to actually make a call. However, the huge number of subscribers nationwide combined with an incredibly annoying junk mail problem (requiring frequent address changes) has resulted in the tendency for people to select extremely long and convoluted email addresses, usually comprised of a combination of elements such as their nickname, birth date, random cutesy English word, kaomoji verticons, dimensions of their genitalia, etc.

Anyhow, this is all background information for a conversation I had recently with a friend after exchanging keitai email addresses. The friend’s name is Sachiko, and thus, following the formula outlined above, the address she had chosen was the following:

A clever little portmanteau there, no?

After taking nearly a full minute to write it out, she admitted that the address was tad long even by most standards, and therefore she had shortened it when she set up a web-based email account a few weeks ago. When I enquired as to just how she had shortened it, she wrote down the address as follows:

You know those times when something so unintentionally hilarious happens, that without warning you instantaneously let loose a loud guffaw while a few droplets of urine escape into your underpants? Well, that’s exactly what happened at that moment.

With a quizzical expression, she asked what was so funny and I was thereupon obliged to give a brief impromptu lesson on the variety and versatility of English slang, all the while stifling giggles like a schoolboy on the first day of sex ed. Upon discovering that her email address was likely to give the impression that she is one of the HOT YOUNG SLUTS!!1 that, if spam mail content is any indication, apparently make up the vast majority of the people on the internet (and are just gagging to meet a hot stud like me), Sachiko’s face turned bright red, she thanked me for the explanation and informed me that she would be no doubt changing her address post-haste.

Talk cultural exchange at its best, eh?. Maybe now she’ll be able to see the humor in this.

This past week, the Japanese government kicked off its new “Cool Biz” campaign to encourage central government officials to shed their suit jackets and neckties during the summer months. The campaign, launched this past Wednesday, was designed to help employees work comfortably following new air conditioning restrictions put in place to reduce electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions to aid in the fight against global warming.

Despite strong support from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the public response to the campaign thus far has been somewhat lukewarm, especially among the more traditionalist members of the population. Most Japanese businessmen feel that suits and ties should be worn at all times — even during the hot and humid summer months — and that casual business attire reeks of unprofessionalism and poor manners. In addition, many still carry bad memories from the fashion nightmare that was the short-sleeved suit, which arrived on the scene following the 1979 oil crisis and was promoted heavily by former Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata.

While I definitely agree that it’s beyond ridiculous to have to wear suits during the stifling Japanese summer, unfortunately I don’t see the “Cool Biz” campaign gaining widespread support, especially in the private sector. In a society rooted firmly in ceremony and tradition, in which every member must wear a uniform (literal or symbolic) to identify their status in order for social interaction to be possible, it’s going to take more than a government initiative to get people to change. I would imagine that even if the ozone layer depleted to the point that the sun’s rays literally scorched the earth, Japanese business men still would not leave their post-apocalyptic subterranean dwellings without first donning navy blue jackets and paisley neckties over their radiation suits.

In my office today, the thermostat was set at a cool 22°C (72°F) and all employees (myself included) were wearing suits and ties as usual, as we will be for the rest of the summer. Even if we underlings were to take it upon ourselves to dress in a manner appropriate for the heat, a swift admonishment from our superiors would no doubt follow, and all of our ludicrous notions of comfort and a perspirationless-free work environment would be immediately abandoned.

I swear, it would likely take an act of almighty Godzilla himself — the total destruction of all formal business attire in Japan (perhaps through collaboration with Mothra) — to get Japanese salarymen to even consider changing their dress habits. Oh well, at least they look passably presentable most of the time; I suppose that’s all that matters (to them).

Last week, my company installed a time card reader in the office where I work, effectively allowing The Man to monitor my every move (those goddamned fascists!). Lame jokes aside, the introduction of the use of time cards has allowed me to bear witness to a certain curious behavior that I had seen in previous offices here in Japan, but had completely forgotten about: people getting up out of their desks at the official end of working hours, swiping their time cards, and then sitting back down and continuing on with their work.

You see, ever since I’ve been working here, the powers that be in the upper echelons of my company have been trying to reduce the sheer amount of overtime that is racked up each month. The continued stagnation of the Japanese economy has left nearly all firms looking for ways to reduce costs, and with labor costs being most companies’ largest expenses, they are the primary target. However, the catch is that while employers are eager to reduce the amount of overtime wages they pay, they don’t want their employees to actually work any less.

The result is what is known as saabisu zangyo — “service” or voluntary unpaid overtime. Japanese law forbids companies from not giving compensation for overtime work, however despite the fact that the average employee works anywhere from 2-5 hours of overtime each day, companies don’t want to have to pay for it. Thus, the employees, demonstrating their fierce loyalty to the company and reflecting the comprehensive conditioning they underwent during their formative years, take it upon themselves to limit their documented work hours, all the while working far beyond the conditions stated in their contracts. It may sound utterly ridiculous to the average Westerner, but to the employee of a Japanese company, the benefits of such behavior (being seen as a team player, a higher likelihood of promotion, good comradery with colleagues, etc.) far outweigh the downsides (less contact with family members, increased stress, reduced personal time, etc.).

Of course, none of this actually applies to me, since I’m only a keiyaku shain (contract employee) and thus my contract is similar to that of a manager (i.e., the work must get done no matter what), meaning that all of my overtime is saabisu. However, the positive side of my situation is that I exist somewhat outside of the standard company organization, so unlike everyone else, I don’t have to dedicate my entire life to the company. It sure would be nice to get paid for the full amount of work that I do, but on the other hand, I have a life outside the office, which is more than I can say for most of my colleagues.

Anyhow, it’s the end of the week and I’m beat. Too much zangyo, once again. To anyone who’s interested in reading more, here’s an article about unpaid overtime in Japan, as well as one about what it’s like as a foreigner to work for a Japanese company. Fun stuff.

Love food? Love naked women? Well, if you’re looking to combine the two for an exceptionally titillating dining experience, don’t go to China:

China’s State Administration of Industry and Commerce issued a notice this weekend banning meals served on naked bodies, officially canceling the service offered by a restaurant in southwestern China that served sushi on unclothed female university students, a Beijing newspaper reported Sunday. [LINK]

The practice of eating raw fish off the body of an unclad woman is called nyotaimori in Japanese, and despite the fact that it’s apparently a rich Japanese tradition, opportunities to partake in this lovely cultural marvel are now quite scarce. I certainly haven’t had the good fortune of dining off the succulent bare flesh of a ravishing young nymph — actually, the closest I’ve ever come has been dining on the succulent bear flesh of a ravaging young cub (*rimshot*). Most likely, just like no-pan shabu-shabu, the few remaining establishments have gone underground, and one must have the contacts and the moolah (both of which I am sorely lacking) to indulge in their services.

Here’s one of the few articles about nyotaimori that I could find in English (although I imagine most of it is blatantly made up), and here’s a Japanese site with a veritible shopping list of what one needs to partake in such a feast as well as some diagrams detailing how to aesthetically arrange the food on a woman’s body.

It’s a shame that the Chinese government had to go and ruin all the fun. “Insults people’s moral quality,” blah blah blah. I honestly don’t see the harm, as long as all parties are willing participants and proper hygiene is observed. Stupid commies.

If there is any one thing for which Japan can be said to be the most abundant nation in the world, it is surely old people. No matter where you go in this country — from the busiest train station in Tokyo to the smallest village in the most remote countryside — you are bound to see droves of elderly citizens wearily shuffling about, their hunched frames and bow legs a harrowing reminder of what inevitably lies in store for all of us (well, those of us who subsist on a substandard diet, anyhow).

Naturally, as people age and their bodies wither and their minds deteriorate, many often come to require assistance from professional caregivers. The challenge therein lies in the fact that most people eager to establish a career in geriatric support services have little practical experience with the responsibilities involved, such as touching weird old people skin, listening to stories about life in the days before the invention of the automobile, and cleaning up “accidents.”

Thankfully, Sakamoto Model, one of Japan’s leading providers of medical training equipment, has a unique product that allows individuals studying to be caregivers the opportunity for hands-on experience without having to interact with actual old people. Say hello to Koharu-san:

According to the manufacturer, the doll, which features a highly realistic detailed appearance, composition and range of movement, was designed “to help people understand the necessity of tenderness and affection when nursing.” Of course, to individuals such as myself with the maturity level of grade school children, the most amusing aspect of Koharu-san is the following highly-advanced feature:

It is possible to practice not only assistance in excretion using a stool or toilet, but also in removing excrement from the anus.

Tee hee.

The full details and specifications of this wonderful training apparatus can be found here.

Sadly, having intimate knowledge of the truly abysmal depths of the depravity of human nature, I have no doubt that someone, somewhere is putting Koharu-san’s “durable yet easy-to-handle skin material,” Kung-Fu grip, and widely opening hip joints to use in a manner other than the one intended. A “mature” love doll, if you will.

Ew.

Now let’s all share a collective shudder and do our best to erase any images that may have developed in our mind during the reading of the paragraph above.

Ask any Japanese person what first comes to their mind when they think of the season of spring, and they’ll answer “hanami!” Ask any Japanese person what first comes to their mind when they think of hanami, and they’ll answer “getting sloshed and passing out in the bushes!”

Yes, the hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season arrived in Tokyo this past week, and everyone and their mother was out enjoying the rare temperate weather and having picnics beneath the beautiful pinks and whites of the cherry blossoms in bloom. Many Japanese regard hanami as the quintessence of Japanese culture, the intricacies of which are too complex for the simple foreign mind to comprehend. To the Japanese, the beauty of the sakura is found not only in the delicate colors and the serenity of the gentle falling of the petals, but also that the blossoms epitomize the ephemeral nature of existence and the impermanence of life. Thus, at this time of year, people throughout the country get together in parks and other outdoor areas to celebrate the fleeting exquisiteness of nature by getting shitfaced drunk and littering the parks with mountains of garbage.

As the weather was exceptionally nice this past weekend, Judy and I decided to go check out the sakura in the Yasukuni/Chidorigafuchi area, as recommended by one of my coworkers. Apparently about one-fifth of Tokyo also had the same idea, as when ascended from the subway exit we were flabbergasted by the sheer number of people scrambling about for an unobscured view of the trees. We first took a walk through Yasukuni Jinja, a shrine infamous for the 14 convicted WWII Class-A war criminals housed within and the visits made by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that continue to infuriate Japan’s neighbors in China and Korea. Yasukuni was crowded as well (no surprise), but we did manage to walk around a bit and enjoy some of the fare from the stalls that line the walkway to the shrine.

Afterwards, I suggested to Judy that we go walk along the Chidorigafuchi moat to look at the cherry blossoms close-up, but she informed me that if I wanted to do so, I would be spending the rest of the afternoon by myself, as there was no way she was going to try wading through that crowd. So instead, we walked in the opposite direction from the crowds and spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the city, which is, in my opinion, the best way to find the hidden gems that Tokyo has to offer.

Sadly, Sunday’s strong winds combined with today’s rain have all but washed the sakura away, bringing this year’s hanami season to a premature close.

I guess that’s life.

Ever since the advent of the computer age, the unyielding speed of technological advancement has been nothing short of astounding. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before this progress extended to the world of smut (about five minutes, to be exact), where prospective applications stand to provide endless benefit to the world’s awkward and perverted. Geeky losers who would never have a chance of achieving physical contact with actual members of the fairer sex are hard at work on the development of computer-generated women, with the goal of one day realizing their ultimate dream of the creation of a virtual sexual experience where a willing human partner becomes redundant.

With a society that inexplicably breeds an inordinate number of socially inept men, Japan continues to lead the world in the development of advanced virtual sexual technology in an attempt to bring to life ideas conceivable only in the wildest imaginations. MetaDoll.com is a prime example of just how far this technology has come within the past few years alone. The site features images of nubile CG beauties in a variety of outfits and poses, as well as a number of animations and interactive games. Access to most of the content requires a membership, however there are a few select features accessible without one, including this great Shockwave game jovially titled “Play with My Boobs!” [hint: keep clicking for additional options].

As the innovation of this progressive technology continues, one can only imagine the potential applications when it will be inevitably combined with Japan’s advanced wanking technology. The possibilities are endless!

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Psst ↓ ↓ ↓

username: vip08
password: A01-4415-0822

Google is your friend.

Today is the first day of the Japanese fiscal year. All throughout the country, fresh-faced shinnyuushain (new hires) attended their first day of their first full-time jobs with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. Uniformly dressed in ill-fitting new black suits, they roamed the streets in packs on their way to and from the company that many of them will serve for the rest of their working lives. No doubt, a momentous occasion for those involved, but for someone like me who’s on the outside, it’s like watching fresh meat heading to the slaughter. The next year of their lives will be filled with suffering and hardship as they learn what they must do to fit in and toe the company line. And, thus, the loss of their youth, the crushing of their spirits and the death of their souls will duly commence, followed by roughly 38 years of ardent devotion to the national cult of salarymanism until they finally retire at the age of 60, at which point they realize that they’ve wasted their entire lives in the office and have no idea to do with the remainder of their time until the arrival of death.

I wish them all the best.

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My apologies for not posting in the past few days. The end of the fiscal year is always an extremely busy time. Hopefully I’ll be able to find more time once things get settled within the next week or so. In the meantime, here are a few more photos from my day in Asakusa in March. Yes, utter crap, I know, but whattayagonnado?

I think it goes without saying that Japan is a nation obsessed with breasts. From titty mags displayed at children’s eye level in convenience stores to women nonchalantly sizing each other up on TV, breasts can be found everywhere (even on actual women!). Forget about the rising sun, Japan is the land of perky, bouncy, delectable boobies.

Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Despite the fascination with all things mammary in this country, Japanese women are unfortunately known for having rather less-than- ample bust sizes. In this environment, as any economist will tell you, the shortage in supply of big knockers combined with the insatiable demand for them only increases the value of this precious, precious commodity. As a result, even if a woman has the talent and the personality of a pile of rocks, if she happens to be blessed with a bountiful bosom, she has the potential to become a famous celebrity simply due to the size of her “assets”. Conversely, the abundant supply of tiny ta-ta’s and the accompanying low demand leave many women with smaller chest sizes feeling inadequate.

Well, if there’s anything that unites women worldwide above and beyond having vaginas and going through a menstrual cycle and and all that, it’s undoubtedly an unfounded insecurity about their bodies. Japan is, of course, no exception, however rather than implants or other surgical methods of augmentation, Japanese women tend to rely on more “natural” methods in their attempts to enhance their busts, the most common of which are usually excessive padding and push-up bras.

However, as it is human nature to never be fully satisfied with anything, Japanese women continue to search for other ways in which to not simply make their breasts look bigger, but actually grow bigger. Naturally, enterprising companies are more than happy to capitalize on this desperate desire by offering a wide range of “enhancement” products with promises of bigger, fuller breasts in minimal time.

Just last week, various Western media outlets reported on one such product, which is advertised as being able to help enhance the size, shape and tone of women’s breasts. What is it? Why, it’s chewing gum! That’s right, B2UP, the makers of Bust-Up Gum, claim their product not only will provide a bigger bust, but also improved circulation, reduced stress levels and anti-aging effects. The product has grown so popular with significant interest from outside of Japan that B2UP has recently announced plans on its website to set up online shopping (in both Japanese and English) to try to meet the demand. Of course, larger, firmer breasts don’t come cheap. A single bottle containing 50 pieces runs about ¥5800 (US$55).

As odd as it may seem, Bust-Up Gum is actually only one example of many products on the large and ever-increasing “bust up” market. Swindlers Health product companies are offering everything from breast-enhancing capsules and rub-on gels to bras that supposedly utilize atmospheric infrared radiation and ultrasonic waves to increase the size of the wearer’s tits. Do any of these products work? I don’t know, and I seriously doubt it. However, if anyone has ever tried them, I call on you to kindly submit before and after photos for the purpose of, um, further research into the matter.

Together we can help make a difference in the fight against flat-chestedness.

It’s been long established that Japan is a nation of sexual perverts. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as it certainly makes things more interesting. However, there is one genre of sexual imagery here for which even I have been unable to gain an appreciation: tentacle rape porn (or shokushu in Japanese).

How anyone could get any kind of arousal from watching doe-eyed cartoon characters being furiously violated by slimy alien tentacles is beyond me. My assumption had always been that the reasoning behind the creation of this particularly peculiar genre of anime was to attempt to bypass Japanese censorship laws that forbid the depiction of genitalia, however, it appears there is a historical precedent for this kind of artwork.

Behold, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (1814) by renowned ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (left) and Abalone Fisherwoman with Octopus (c. 1880 – 1890) by an unknown artist (right):

Who knew that tentacle porn had such a long and storied history?

For the sake of comparison, here are two examples of modern shokushu found via a Google image search:

Hot stuff, eh?

Anyone interested in reading more about tentacle porn can find more information than you would ever want to know here.

It’s no secret that fads come and go in Japan as quickly as the little plates at a kaiten zushi joint [ha, how’s that for a bad simile?]. Something can be the the national obsession one minute and then completely forgotten the next, abandoned for some other bauble of empty stimulation providing fleeting entertainment to the masses who desperately seek an escape from the humdrumery of their vapid existence [sometimes I make up words, too!].

2004 will likely be remembered as the year when the “Kankoku Boom” rocked Japan. This sudden and overwhelming influx of all things Korean into Japanese popular culture — everything from movies to cuisine to hair styles — was precipitated by a phenomenon by the name of Fuyu no Sonata (Winter Sonata). Starring Bae Yong Joon and Choi Ji Woo, this serial television drama about an incestuous group of friends who play in the snow whilst declaring their love for one another quickly took Japan by storm, stealing the hearts and fancies of Japanese women and leaving Japanese men scratching their heads wondering what was so appealing about an effeminate Harry Potter lookalike with an ever-present vacuous smile.

The resulting mass hysteria was a Japanese marketing executive’s wet dream — a flurried frenzy of excessive consumerism, the likes of which had not been seen in Japan since footballer David Beckham had women licking toilet bowls in the wake of the 2002 World Cup. The Korea Boom is now all but over, but ironically, it did more to improve relations between Japan and South Korea in one year than had been achieved through diplomatic and economic means in the past 50 years.

Despite the fact that you couldn’t walk five feet in Japan during the past year without being exposed to Bae Yong Joon’s (or “Yon-sama,” as he was dubbed by the media) smiling mug, Judy had never expressed any interest in Winter Sonata nor any other aspects of the Korean fervor that had washed over the nation. However, last month, on a fateful visit to our local video store, Judy decided to see what all of the hype had been about and rented the first DVD of the series. In spite of my previous comments about TV dramas, in order to make an effort to partake in the interests of my wife-to-be, I committed to watching the series with her — in full (yes, I know what you’re thinking: BIG MISTAKE).

Like an inner city schoolboy after his first “free sample” from the neighborhood crack dealer, Judy quickly became hooked. Night after night was spent in front of the television, watching episode after episode of Korean actors wearing turtleneck sweaters and crying on cue. Of course, she wasn’t content with only watching the episodes dubbed in Japanese, she would also re-watch a number of select scenes in their original Korean, in order to savor the succulent voice of Yon-sama in all its glory (and also because Japanese dubbing is so craptastically bad, it makes me wonder whether I’m living in a country full of mentally deficient halfwits who need to rely on ridiculously exaggerated cartoon voices in order to tell the difference between men and women).

If any of you were wondering why I didn’t post very often during the month of February, now you know the reason. Yes, twenty episodes, each lasting over an hour, in the period of only a few weeks. Madness, I tell you, madness. Of course, the completion of the drama only fueled Judy’s obsession; she subsequently spent countless hours scouring the internet for pictures, articles, film clips and anything else she could find related to the drama. Thankfully, she seems to be coming back to reality little by little, however she recently started watching another drama starring Bae Yong Joon, entitled Hotelier. This time, however, I made the decision from the start not to watch it with her. That lesson has been sufficiently learned.

[Necessary disclaimer to prevent castration or other acts of vengeance at the hands of my fiancée, who probably won’t find the above amusing in any way whatsoever: Okay, honestly speaking, the drama wasn’t that bad, and I may have exaggerated Judy’s behavior just a little (althoughthatdoesn’tmeanthatanyoftheaboveisuntrue!).]

Bicycles are a very common form of transportation in Japan. Teenagers use them as a primary means of transportation, housewives ride them to the market and back, and many salarymen ride them in between their homes and local train station as part of their daily commute. Despite their ubiquitous presence, however, most cities and towns in Japan do not have the necessary infrastructure to accommodate heavy bicycle traffic. Hardly any roads have bicycle lanes, and this forces cyclists to ride on the sidewalk, often resulting in collisions with pedestrians. There is also a noticeable lack of bicycle parking facilities, which leads to dense rows of illegally parked bicycles on sidewalks and roadsides that hinders pedestrian and even road traffic.

In response to the widespread problem of illegal bicycle parking, many local governments throughout the country have established anti-bicycle brigades, which carry out frequent raids around town to collect illegally parked and abandoned bicycles and haul them off to large storage facilities where they are held until their owners come to retrieve them.

Last Thursday I happened to witness one of these raids and snapped this photo:

I, myself, actually had my mamachari (granny bike) confiscated twice when I lived in Saitama. Both times I had to make the trip out to the pound and pay ¥1000 to get it back. But hey, the combined fines were cheaper than the ¥2500 that I would have had to pay per month for a spot at the only bicycle parking lot in the area — half-way between my apartment and the station.

When you’re a kid, every bit of information you hear on the schoolyard is considered unquestionable and undisputable fact. Way back when I was (slightly less) naive and impressionable, the things that I heard about from my friends and classmates about Japan never failed to awe me, such as: the women are all sex-crazed goddesses with a penchant for housework and the culinary arts; the men are all geniuses and don’t need to do any physical labor because they’ve created highly advanced robots to do it for them; and there is absolutely no crime because police officers are all bad-ass martial arts experts who lay down the law by dispensing justice indiscriminately and without mercy.

Now, while the first example turned out to be true (and how!), the same unfortunately cannot be said for the other two. While automation might be slightly more advanced here compared to the West, the mental superiority hypothesis quickly died the moment I first heard a Japanese person espouse the oddly ubiquitous assertion that Japan is the only country in the world that has four distinct seasons. As for the Japanese keisatsu (police force). . . well, let’s just say that they’re not quite the ruthless, uncompromising badasses that I had envisioned in my youth. In fact, in reality, Japanese police officers seem more adept at sitting in the koban (police box) sipping tea and occasionally giving directions than at fighting crime and catching bad guys.

Take, for example, an incident that occurred earlier this week when Tokyo police arrived at a scene in which vehicle had slammed into a building in the Daiba waterfront district. When the police approached the vehicle, the driver emerged brandishing a metal club, at which point the officers reacted like little girls and promptly ran away as fast as they could (!). The police finally managed to capture the assailant when he tried to flee in a police vehicle, the keys of which had been left in the ignition.

The incident caused quite a stir in the media after the prime minister himself commented that it was “embarrassing” and called for increased training for the national police. Of course, had the episode taken place in the US, the driver would have likely been shot the moment he charged in the officers’ direction.

Anyway, video of the incident is available here and is definitely worth a look for comic value.

Of course, this recent incident is only one in an endless series of embarrassing and criminal acts perpetrated by Japan’s finest. From drunkenly assaulting shop employees to taking photos up schoolgirls’ skirts to forcing women to touch their naughty bits, these men in blue have firmly secured their position as the laughingstock of the world’s police forces. Way to go, guys!

Japan is widely known as a land of somewhat “unique” sexual practices and perversions. From bukkake to severe bondage to wild costume fetishes, no matter how extreme or absurb a sexual feat you try to imagine, there are likely thousands of Japanese people engaging in said act at this very moment. Of course, Japan has not always been so sexually advanced; back in simpler times, relations between the sexes were far more innocent and generally quite akwkard. Whenever a young man and a woman would first get together to express their affection for one another in a physical manner, the activity would generally only progress as far as a handshake and pat on the back before the couple would break into a fit of giggles and give up.

In order to get young people acquainted with the physical characteristics of members of the opposite sex as well as the technicalities involved in intimate relations, the leading minds of the day came together to create the quintessential guide to the art of lovemaking. With pens and clipboards in hand, they spent countless hours examining reel after reel of nature films depicting reproductive practices in the animal kingdom (because observing actual humans would be obscene) and toiled night and day in order to compile detailed instructions for every aspect of sexual behavior, from courtship to copulation. Thus, the Wakai Hito no Seiten, or Sex Manual for Young People, was delivered unto the citizens of Japan with great fanfare.

Not only does the comprehensive guide cover the basics, including hand holding and breast fondling, it also details other more, er, unusual practices, such as grooming, test tube handling and ways to simulate intercourse with posable wooden manikins. A virtual treasure trove of valuable information all contained within the pages of a single book, colorfully decorated with a photograph of a woman proudly displaying her unshaven armpit.

Thankfully, unlike an old man’s ability to achieve an erection, this incredible document has not been lost to time. Thanks to Tokyo Damage Report, a wonderful selection of pages from this classic text are available for your viewing pleasure here. Enjoy!

Like the countless other bastardized generic Western traditions, at one point in time the Japanese adopted the holiday known as Valentine’s Day and made it their own. No longer is it a day for a man to spend ridiculous amounts of hard-earned money on flowers and chocolate for his special lady in hopes of getting some good lovin’ in return in order to express his heartfelt feelings — instead, the Japanese took it upon themselves to combine the made-up day of buying stupid crap in the name of love with the eternal playground favorite “opposite day” and created a day in which women give gifts to men.

Great idea, isn’t it? Women in western countries are spoiled silly — birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Valentine’s Day — if you don’t spring for something nice on each occasion, there’s no guarantee your sweetheart won’t walk out the door and never return. Not once is the shoe ever on the other foot, so to speak, and we men receive unreciprocated gifts from the women in our lives. However, here in Japan, the 14th of February is a day especially for women to indulge men. From store-bought chocolate to home-made goodies, women throughout the country take the time to do something sweet for the ones dear to them.

And then there’s giri choco — combining the bitterness of obligation (giri) with the sweetness of fermented, roasted, and ground cacao seeds combined with a sweetening agent, giri choco is what Japanese women give to the men in their lives (friends, coworkers, etc.) out of nothing other than pure, unadulterated social obligation. Sure, it sounds silly and completely unnecessary, but then again, so are most social customs. Whether people like it or dislike it, all that matters is that they buy chocolate and make the chocolate barons even richer.

Of course, in Japan, obligation isn’t truly obligation unless it’s mutual and never-ending. Thus, the confectioners in Japan created a completely new holiday in order to keep up the indebtedness cycle, and White Day was born. Exactly one month after Valentine’s Day, men who were lucky enough to receive gifts on Valentine’s day (giri or otherwise) now have to give gifts in return, at often two or three times the value. In other words, White Day is a terrible, terrible holiday, and I’m lucky that no one likes me enough to give me giri choco in the first place.

Now excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

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Yesterday while browsing through the prepared food section of my local department store, I saw this and just had to get it. Behold, Valentine’s Day themed sushi:

Earlier this week, Tokyo police released figures indicating that the number of reported groping incidents on Tokyo trains has risen threefold over the past eight years. While it’s likely that the reported increase is mainly due to the simple fact that more women are filing complaints with police, there is no doubt that Tokyo’s chikan (gropers) still be gettin’ they grope on. In fact, a survey last year found that 64% of women in their 20s and 30s admitted to having been groped on trains, subways or at transit stations in Tokyo.

So what is being done to combat this problem? Well, in typical fashion, not very much. Several train companies have introduced “Women Only” carriages at peak times, namely late-night trains when people are returning home after drinking, however an unexpected side-effect of this is that any women not in the “Women Only” cars are seen by some deranged souls as willing targets for groping.

However, the fact that more women are reporting these incidents rather than suffering in silence is a positive sign that things just may be starting to change. Each year, more than 4000 men are arrested in Japan for groping on trains, and that number is rising. Furthermore, in a surprising break from the traditional Japanese societal norm of not interfering in the affairs of strangers, bystanders are increasingly stepping in to assist women who are being assaulted.

With all of the increased public attention and action against wandering hands, perhaps there may come a day when gropers will no longer be able to get away with fondling supple young bodies on their way to and from work. . . which means I’ll probably have to find a new way to pass the time during my commute.

No worries though, men who have a hard on for putting their hands on unreceptive women can always visit one of the countless imekura (image clubs) caterting to fancies of Japan’s chikan, where women stand around in rooms decorated like train carriages, just waiting to be groped unabashedly in the lewdest manner possible. Sure, it’s not the real thing, but at least the women give blow jobs afterwards.

There was a humorous article on the Japan Today website yesterday about what Sanyo Electric is doing in response to financial losses suffered this year:

Sanyo asks employees to buy company products to cut losses

OSAKA — Sanyo Electric Co has asked all domestic group employees to buy Sanyo products of up to 2 million yen per person by the end of March to help reduce losses stemming mainly from damage caused by earthquakes that struck Niigata Prefecture last year, company sources said Saturday.

Division chiefs at the home appliance maker were asked to buy up to 500,000 yen and rank-and-file employees 200,000 yen, they said. If each Sanyo group employee satisfies the company’s target, the group will boost its sales by about 16 billion yen, they said.

For anyone not hip to the foreign exchange market, the amount that Sanyo is “asking” (read: forcing) each employee to spend is roughly US$2000 ($5000 for managers). I can only imagine what it must be like to be a member of the Sanyo group right now. . . big posters up in every office declaring “Let’s buying Sanyo goods!,” daily reminders announced every morning, a chart on the wall tracking which employee has shown the most “dedication to the company” by dropping the most cash. . . madness.

Sure, it sounds like an incredibly ridiculous business plan, but is it really that crazy? I suppose the question is: would you rather be laid off, or receive what is effectively a two-grand salary cut? At least this way everyone gets to keep their jobs AND gets a houseful of new appliances to boot. Plus, they might even be able to make a little cash back by selling off their old appliances to the local Hard Off.

The food replica business is thriving in Japan — a visit to nearly any restaurant in any region will confirm this. In the front window you will likely find highly detailed replicas of a sampling of the shop’s dishes intricately made out of plastic or wax . Of course, food replicas aren’t limited only to storefront displays; one can find a wide range of objects, from keychains to rubber erasers, faithfully crafted to resemble popular food items.

Well, it appears that it was inevitable that this trend would be taken one step further to see the melding of the replication of culinary delights with state-of-the-art technology. Solid Alliance, a Yokohama-based company, has done the incredible and created a line of USB memory drives hand-made in the form of popular types of sushi. Never before has a portable disk drive looked so darn tasty.

Solid Alliance also makes rubber ducky USB drive as well.

I went to see the doctor yesterday. During the countless hours that I spent in the waiting room with absolutely fuck-all to do, I got to thinking about the differences between the procedure for visiting a doctor in America and the procedure for visiting a doctor in Japan.

Now, I’ve been to see doctors here in Japan a number of times, but I can hardly be considered an expert. However, to anyone curious about what a typical visit to a Japanese hospital is like, the following should hopefully give you a basic idea [and to all those people who couldn’t care less, feel free to go back to looking at porn now].

For the sake of comparison, here is the typical procedure when seeing a doctor in the States:

1. First, you make an appointment for a specific date and time (i.e., Thursday, January 26th at 1:45pm)
2. On the day of the appointment, you go to the hospital about 10-15 minutes prior to the appointment time in order to register
3. You go directly to the department in which you have the appointment, register and pay the co-payment, usually $10 to $20, depending on the type of insurance you have (assuming you have insurance, that is)
4. Then you sit down in the waiting room and flip through old magazines
5. About 10-15 minutes later, a nurse will call your name and lead to you a small private examination room
6. You will then sit and wait for another five minutes or so
7. Shortly thereafter, the doctor will arrive and will carry out his/her examination in complete privacy
8. If you require medication, the doctor will illegibly write out a prescription for you on a little pad
9. You then part ways and go to the pharmacy, either inside the hospital or elsewhere (if necessary), where a pharmacist will give you your medicine and offer you a private consultation if you have any questions about your medication
10. OK, you’re done!

Now, here is the procedure at a typical Japanese hospital:

1. First you make an appointment for a specific day, however whether or not you can schedule a particular time depends on the hospital — many only have “Reception Hours” (i.e., generally between 11:30am and 3:30pm), the only time during which you’ll be able to see a doctor
2. On the day of the appointment, you go to the hospital and register at the front desk, after which you’ll receive a print-out with your data on it (again, the procedure varies by hospital — some use automated machines, others make you stand in line to deal with an attendant)
3. Then you go to the department in which you have the appointment and give your print-out to the attendant there
4. You take a seat in a (magazine-less) waiting room and wait for anywhere between 1 to 3 hours
5. During that time, you will likely fall asleep and dream about sexy Japanese nurses giving you a sponge bath
6. Just when you reach the point when you’re ready to start randomly taking out other patients in order to shorten the line a bit, you will hear your name being called over the announcement system, requesting you to go sit in the hallway outside of the examination rooms
7. There you will wait for another 20-40 minutes
8. Finally, the doctor will call your name and you will enter the examination room (which isn’t even a “room” per se, but rather a three-walled space, behind which is an open area that connects all of the other adjoining exam rooms)
9. The doctor will carry out his examination while nurses bustle past you in and out of the room
10. If you require medication, the doctor will print out a prescription for you on the computer on his desk
11. Afterwards, you will head back to the main entrance to the payment counter to pay the bill for the day’s visit in total — in cash
12. You can then go to one of the many pharmacies surrounding the hospital (if necessary), where a pharmacist will give you your medicine and loudly ask intrusive questions about your condition in earshot of all of the other people waiting
13. At last, you can finally go home, feeling far worse than you did when you first arrived at the hospital

Yep, there really wasn’t a point to that, except to say that time does not pass any slower than when you are sitting in a hospital waiting room surrounded by elderly Japanese folks who have nothing better to do than stare at the foreigner in their midst.

Oh, and let it be noted that the world can never have too many sexy Japanese nurses!

Anyone vaguely aware of the existence of a world outside of their own shitty little backwater town is likely to know that Japanese people are inordinately obsessed with the concept of cuteness. Hello Kitty is probably the most widely-known iconic example of this affixiation, however, from ridiculous outfits for dogs to colorful comics graphically depicting the symptoms of colon cancer to hentai rape videos, absolutely nothing in Japan is safe from “cuteification.”

Just as one would expect, this obsession extends to children as well, and these tiny versions of people are one of the hottest commodities in the cuteness market. However, this can lead to unusual and even dangerous general attitudes towards children. For some, children are just another fashionable accessory; an object of the most extreme level of cuteness, which can be decorated and posed to the parents’ (read: owners’) liking. The realities of raising a child are often not considered when the decision to have a child is made (assuming there is any kind of decision-making process in the first place), occasionally resulting in tragic consequences.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I have seen kids wandering around crowded public places wailing for their parents who are nowhere to be found; kids being left in locked cars in parking lots while their parents play pachinko; and kids jumping around in the front seats of moving vehicles while their mothers pay more attention to the conversations they are having on their cell phones than the road ahead.

Of course, things like this happen in every other country as well, but for some reason offenses seem especially flagrant in Japan. Take for example the following seemingly innocent photo, which I stumbled upon on the site of the owner of a liquor store in Ibaraki:

Sure, it’s kind of a funny picture, but who in their right mind would place their infant child on the back of a live swan?! One of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood was the time that I was chased and pecked at by one of those things at my neighborhood park when I was about three years old. I would never put a child of my own anywhere near one of those filthy beasts.

But somehow I doubt the notion of any such risks passed through the minds of the parents when they plopped their first-born baby on the back of a live and potentially dangerous creature floating in a filthy pond. Nope, to them it was probably just too kawaii a pose to pass up.

Many people are aware of Japan’s love for excessive packaging.

Behold a particularly ridiculous example that Judy picked up at the supermarket the other day:

I haven’t even been back at work for a full week yet, but I’m already starting to slide back into my old routine of working 13-hour days. I cannot let that happen.

The reason for my overtime tonight relates to a little something known as “the challenges of cross-cultural communication,” also commonly referred to as “dealing with gobbledygook-talkin’ weirdos who smell funny.”

You see, two years ago one of the managers in my company — my former boss, in fact — was dispatched to our joint venture company in the States to help improve operations. Yesterday we received a letter from the American president of said venture containing an extensive list of employee complaints against the manager from my company; apparently he has been undertaking his role as Executive Vice President a bit, shall we say, “unconventionally.”

I’m not at liberty to get into specifics, but as I read through the incident reports in preparation for helping to draw up a response from our side, I couldn’t help but chuckle at how poorly the Japanese management style doesn’t work in America. Sure, you have sucessful management practices that took the business world by storm in the 80s, such as just-in-time production, kaizen (continuous improvement) and the 5S, but beneath the stoic exterior of the typical Japanese businessman lies an uncharacteristicly immature and erratic underbelly.

Therefore, whereas the American side of our joint venture decried actions such as shouting at and shoving employees, throwing objects and wildly striking machinery with a hammer as “unacceptable conduct,” I see them as what they are: aspects of Japanese management that are little-known outside of Japan (well, except for the hitting-things-with-a-hammer part).

By now, most of the world is familiar with the rigid hierarchy in Japanese society. The adherence to theis hierarchy is even more severe within a Japanese company: underlings kowtow to their superiors’ merciless demands and superiors berate and scold their underlings like misbehaving children (mid-level managers can go from superior to underling and back within an instant without even so much as a bat of an eye).

While I personally have never been on the receiving end of such treatment (I reckon I would react in a most un-Japanese of ways), I have beared witness to maniacal displays of managerial tyranny time and time again throughout my company. There’s nothing worse than sitting quietly while your coworker is subject to a five-minute public tirade. . . um, except maybe being on the receiving end on one yourself, I suppose.

Anyway, my company finally created a generic response to the letter, which of course had to be translated by yours truly (once again, despite the fact that my company has an official translator and it’s not me). None of the people on the Japanese side seem to have any problem with the manager’s behavior, but rather are trying to focus on why he chose to act in such a manner, i.e., what the American employees did wrong to evoke the manager’s reaction.

Ironically, during the course of the entire year that I worked under that manager, not once did I ever see him put on a display such as those mentioned in the list of complaints. Maybe he’s just dealing with culture shock as a result of being forced to live in the midwest.

While many people around the world are currently enjoying the gleeful Christmas season (or perhaps, more appropriately, the Christmas shopping season), we here in Japan are now in the midst of the slightly less-enjoyable nengajo-writing season. Nengajo are special New Year’s postcards that people send out to literally everyone they know, and are delivered on the morning of the first day of the new year.

Commonly decorated with images of the Chinese zodiac character of the upcoming year (2005 is the year of the rooster), they usually contain messages expressing appreciation for kindness received during the past year and well-wishing for the year ahead. Like the distribution of Valentine’s Day cards in elementary school classrooms throughout North America, innumerable acres of forest are destroyed each year as a result of this ultimately frivolous custom.

In order to ensure timely delivery on January 1st, nengajo must be deposited at the post office by December 25th, however, since I will be returning to California long before then, I have just three days to write out approximately 40 more of those dastardly cards. With such little time, I’m seriously tempted to just print this out and send it off. I wonder if anyone would even give it a second glance.

Despite nearly constant exposure to it, one aspect of Japanese popular culture that I have been unable to gain any appreciation for is J-pop. To say that I can’t stand the crap is a gross understatement; words simply cannot describe my extreme loathing of this genre of so-called “music.” In fact, the only thing that I could do to adequately express my feelings about this scourge on the earth would be to systematically smash in the faces of each and every talentless, squeaky J-pop “singer” on the planet.

However, the full brunt of my hatred of J-pop is reserved for one particularly annoying wench by the name of Otsuka Ai. Her whiny, nasally voice and her “Ooo~ watch me tilt my head and make a pouty face — aren’t I so cute?” poses inspire such a murderous rage inside of me that just the sight of her makes me soil myself.

Or maybe that’s an unrelated bowel problem — I can never be sure.

Anyway, on Monday night I was walking through Shibuya after work, and while stopped at a crosswalk I glanced up and saw a large billboard advertising a new Otsuka Ai album that was released a couple of weeks ago. Curiously entitled Love Jam, the album cover depicts Otsuka Ai’s face covered in what appears to be strawberry jam, evoking images of the fine Japanese tradition of the bukkake special.

Pure class. I’ve definitely got to give a pat on the back to whomever came up with the idea for that one.

I’m kind of in a rush today because I’ve got to go out and try to find some magic soy milk diet cookies (or something like that), so in lieu of my usual mindless drivel, I’m just going to put up another photo from my visit to Minato Mirai last weekend:

That’s the famous “Cosmo Clock 21″ Ferris wheel, as featured in countless commercials, television dramas and adult films.

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By the way, anyone interested in reading more about the REAL Japan should definitely check out this site: MasaManiA

The writer is a former porn director with a serious chip on his shoulder about all of the bullshit polluting Japanese society. His English is quite good, but the fact that it isn’t perfect just adds to the hilarity. The entire site is definitely worth a browse, but I would recommend starting with the entry brilliantly entitled Jap pussy should be seen more, fuck Jap gov!, which begins with the wonderful line “Have you noticed that any pussy and all dick cannot be seen in Japanese porn?” (not exactly work safe, although the rest of site is).

Enjoy!

There is an extreme overabundance of pointless jobs in Japan. Outmoded and reduntant occupations such as “women who press the buttons in elevators,” “old men who wave cars into parking lots,” and “construction workers well past their prime who stand outside of construction sites and bow to passers-by.” Apparently the Japanese government would rather have a low unemployment rate and high cost of living than a lower cost of living with a higher unemployment rate. It makes sense, I suppose, but it certainly seems rather inefficient [said the guy with a degree in economics].

I saw another fine example of this last weekend while hanging out at Minato Mirai in Yokohama. This man’s job was to hold a sign advertising model rooms open for viewing at a new housing development nearby:

Working very hard, as you can see.

A pair of cinder blocks would do a much better job for free and wouldn’t even need to take bathroom breaks.

There was an article on the Japan Today website last week about the number of teenage abortions performed in 2003:

Government reports 40,475 minors had abortions in 2003

TOKYO — The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Tuesday the number of reported abortions by minors aged 15-20 in 2003 came to 40,475, slightly down from the previous year but still double from 10 years earlier.

According to its survey of clinics, the overall number of abortions last year came to 319,831. For 19-year-olds, the number stood at some 14,600, while for 18-year-olds, it came to about 11,100. There were 7,900 abortions among 17-year-olds. There were 483 abortions for those under 15, according to the survey.

A related Japanese article reported that the figures show that 1 in 50 19-year-olds and 1/64 18-year-olds had abortions last year alone. . . and those are just the reported numbers! Crazy, eh?

While it’s apparent that Japanese teenagers share their Western counterparts’ penchant for doin’ the nasty, sex education is essentially non-existent in this country. Furthermore, decades of propaganda spewed by the government have left most women (and, ridiculously, many doctors) convinced that birth control pills cause everything from infertility to cancer. Combine the lack of information about birth control options with doctors’ financial incentives to perform abortions rather than prescribe the pill, and you can see how abortion is a highly lucrative business in Japan. (From what I’ve heard, the going rate is about 1,000,000 yen a pop — approx. US$950.)

An interesting cultural aspect of abortion in Japan are jizo, stone statues depicting the Buddhist monk Jizo Bosatsu, the protector of travelers and the souls of departed children (who, according to Japanese tradition, receive devine punishment for bringing grief to their parents. . . the little bastards). Mothers who have lost an unborn child usually dedicate a statue of jizo and adorn it with clothing, toys, etc. to encourage the deity to take special care of their child’s spirit.

Back in July, I happened to pass through Zojoji Temple on my way to the Tokyo Tower and was rather shocked to see the rows upon rows of jizo statues housed there. As I wandered through the temple grounds, I witnessed a middle-aged woman and her teenage daughter cleaning and decorating one of the statues — a very moving sight.

Here are some photos:

I took a peek at my logs last night and noticed something disturbing interesting. Among the many recent search queries that have brought visitors to this site, several stand out for obvious reason, including the following:

• japanese babes
• chicken fight pool photos
• meeting kogal in tokyo
• japanese upskirts
• mazakon
• hideki matsui porno
• rorita
• upskirts of olsen twins
• water slide oops nipple
• guy with elephantine schlong

(Okay, I made that last one up)

Now, the list above either indicates that a) I am a pervert for having mentioned the above words in some combination or another, or b) that the internet is awash in licentious perverts who actively search out salacious material using the above words in specific combination.

Or perhaps, as you’re probably all thinking, it could be c) all of the above.

Well, after Tuesday’s über-serious post, I thought I would post something nice & tasteless in order to bring this site back down to the gutter where it most likely belongs. Furthermore, if this list above is any indication, it would apparently be to most readers’ liking.

Anyhow, we all have heard the hackneyed expression “sex sells.” Unfortunately, in the U.S. at least, there is an overabundance of domineering conservative “family value” groups who jump at any opportunity to launch an attack at corporations, advertising agencies, television stations, production companies, etc. who exhibit any kind of content that someone somewhere out in the world might possibly deem offensive.

Thankfully, Japan is not like that (not yet, anyhow). Although in recent years, there has been some “cleaning up” of magazines, late-night television programming and the like, this country remains as one of the few remaining bastions of politically incorrect cheap titillation.

A recent example is the new commercial for Kirea Water, which features model/actress Miyaji Mao. In the ad, she is shown rolling around in bed while “full nude” (as the Japanese say), tracing her fingers along various curves of her body, revealing a continuous line of the word tsumaranai under the caress of her fingertips. Upon reaching her navel, her fingers stop at the words “tsumaranai mizu deta“.

What the heck does that mean? Well, I — as a not-even-close-to-fluent speaker of the Japanese language (and a general simpleton to boot) — took tsumaranai to mean “boring,” as I commonly hear it used. In that case, the final line would mean (vaguely) “boring water is here.” Yeah, that didn’t make any sense to me either. A little research revealed that the ad’s usage of tsumaranai was in fact the negative form of the verb tsumaru, which means “to clog” (which would explain why it was written in katakana as opposed to hiragana). Thus, the meaning is actually roughly something like “water that does not clog you is here.”

To put it simply, this water helps you poo.

Anyway, the ad is certainly worth a look if you’re a lecherous perv (or simply don’t have anything better to do). Seeing as my girlfriend would probably murder me if I were to do so, it would probably be best if I didn’t comment on the attractiveness of the girl in the ad. . . but off the record, I’d hit that shit ’til I died of dehydration!

If you want to take a look at the commercial, go here and click on either of the top two buttons to watch the streaming video (the one of the left is 1.6MB and the right is 430KB).

One line in the article I mentioned last week in particular that made me chuckle was the part where author brought up Japanese toilets:

Not only are toilet seats heated, but toilets universally include a bidet or a more general water spray from below — your choice.

He makes it sound as if all toilets here are a) Western, b) heated, and c) equipped with space-age ass-cleansing technology. If only that were the case. In reality, while many homes are equipped with modern Western-style toilets, when searching for a lavatory while out and about — especially in train stations, department stores and restaurants — the likelihood of encountering nothing but piss-stained, excrement-encrusted squat toilets is extremely high.

That was the case yesterday when I was out shopping in Shibuya. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say there’s nothing quite as unpleasant as trying to maintain balance and do one’s business whilst perched precariously with one’s pants around one’s ankles over a small hole in a slippery, urine-soaked floor. Sure, squatters aren’t unique to Japan, but I firmly believe that the moment we humans first progressed as a species was the day an ingenuitive caveman dug a hole in the ground, surrounded it with a couple of logs and sat down to drop his prehistoric load in comfort.

This has been around for ages, but click here to see an animated guide to using Japanese squat toilets.

Sometimes it’s downright incredible how outlandish people’s misconceptions about Japan are.

Case in point: this article, which was sent to me last week by a friend. Entitled Living and Dying in Tokyo, the author, Adam Sparks, begins with:

My mother-in-law passed away last week, and I attended the funeral in Tokyo. The five-day wake was a mind-blower in so many ways. It made me think of just how different Japan is than the United States and how, in so many ways, it is so far superior, both culturally and technologically. We have much to learn.

He then goes on to list the most clichéd stereotypes and far-fetched assertions about Japan that I have ever read. The result is pure comic gold; a mediocre work of middle school-level fiction that reads like a James Clavell novel. It’s blindingly obvious just how little understanding the author has of Japan and how clueless he truly is. Seriously, if I were to break down the article and provide evidence to refute the blatant falsehoods in each and every sentence, it would take me all week. (The irrelevant sentence about Dubya thrown in at the end was quite a doozy, too.)

The funniest (yet saddest) thing is that many people will probably read the article and believe every word of it. Incidentally, at this moment, those people are probably at home, dressed in yukata, polishing their Sailor Moon figurines and watching their collector’s edition of Akira, while dreaming of the day when they will arrive on Japan’s shores.

It really is surprising how drastically different Japan’s international reputation is from reality. Movies like Lost in Translation and The Last Samurai paint a picture of an advanced, utopian society in which all of the men possess an honorable samurai spirit and all of the women are hot, subservient babes. I suppose I myself am also guilty of having a somewhat idealistic view of this country before I arrived. However, seeing as I’ve never been much a video game fan nor have I ever watched an anime film in my life (a fact that gives me much pride), my preconceptions came mainly from Japanese toys from the 80s and The Toxic Avenger Part II.

Japan as an entity is very good at showing off only the best of its culture and society to temporary visitors, who are carefully shepherded around by handlers and guides to prevent the guests from seeing the “real” Japan. It’s easy for people to float around in a little tourist bubble for a few days and then go home with a head full of exotic memories. Meanwhile, those of us who decide to try to take root here (at least for a little while) find that Japan is not quite the welcoming land of gadgetry and geishas that it’s made out to be.

Anyhow, I don’t want to knock this country too much. Sure, like any place, it has its downsides, but if I didn’t like it I would have left a long time ago. I just feel that misleading articles like the one above tend to cause more harm than good, as a lot of impressionable people who do make it over here and try to acclimatize eventually end up bitter and jaded. For anyone curious about learning about the realities of the so-called Land of the Rising Sun, I recommend stopping by this site as well as reading a book or two on the subject.

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Here are some uninteresting photos from Shinagawa Intercity that I took a couple of months ago while wandering around killing time:

Yesterday I mentioned the Japanese predilection for abbreviating words and phrases, especially those borrowed from other languages, and gave “sexual harassment” as an example.

Another example is mazakon, which is short for mazaa konpurekkusu (”mother complex”, i.e., Oedipus complex). The meaning of mazakon in Japan is somewhat twofold, however: in most instances, it’s used without the sexual connotations to describe a “mama’s boy”-type character, and less frequently, it’s used to describe someone who has a thing for older women (rorikon, — short for rorita konpurekkusu, i.e., Lolita complex — would be the opposite in this case).

I bring this up because last night I saw a commercial for a new drama starting tonight on Fuji TV called “Mother & Lover” starring Sakaguchi Kenji and Shinohara Ryoko. Yes, indeed the same pair that Judy and I saw in Ginza last month.

According to the official website, this incestuously-titled drama features a theatrical troupe member by the name of Shingo (Sakaguchi) who regards his mother as “the woman he loves most in the world.” However, one day he meets an office lady named Hitomi (Shinohara) who is running late for work, and he delivers her to her office in a rickshaw. Immediately taken with one another, they make a date for the following evening.

Surely, there will come a time when young Shingo must choose between his newfound love interest and mommy dearest — tune in to find out!

Blah, typical J-drama drivel. Just like every other drama in the history of the world, this one will be melodramatic, formulaic, cliché-ridden hokum, and the following events will undoubtedly occur:

• They will fall in love at first sight
• She will buy him a necktie or some other article of clothing
• Another woman [in this case, mommy] will come between them
• They will break up while standing in the rain (sans umbrellas)
• She will try to move on with her life, but at some point will collapse on the floor in tears
• She’ll have second thoughts and try to call him, but for some reason or another, he’ll miss the call
• She’ll decide to forget about him for good and will make plans to move to a different city
• He’ll realize that he made a mistake and will reject the other woman
• In the climax, he will run through the streets at night to try to catch up with her before she leaves to tell her that he loves her
• At first it’ll seem like she’s going to tell him to get lost, but then a smile will slowly emerge on her face
• They will embrace passionately
• The entire cast, production staff and audience will simultaneously burst into tears
• I will stab out my eyeballs and pray for death

Yay, I can hardly wait!

I can’t believe how busy I’ve been at work the past couple of weeks. . . I feel like I’m slowly metamorphosing into exactly the kind of stereotypical salaryman whose pathetic existence I pity. Pretty soon I’m going to have to start chewing Lotte’s ‘No Time’ gum because I won’t be able to take three minutes to brush my teeth in the morning.

There’s actually a word in Japanese that means “death from overwork”: karoshi. Companies here are known to literally work their employees into the grave. In fact, in recent years there have been several lawsuits from families demanding compensation for the deaths of husbands and fathers sacrificed for the sake of the bottom line. Thankfully, I’m nowhere near that point (yet). Actually, if I were to reach such a level, I reckon I’d be more likely to flip out and kill someone else rather than succumb myself. I’m just that sort of “take action” kind of guy.

Anyway, back to work. . . .

I’ll leave you with the last of the photos from Kamakura. Enjoy!

As one might suspect due to the overwhelming amount of Japanese pornography available on the internet (or so I’ve heard), sexual imagery is everywhere in Japan. From skin mags displayed in convenience store windows to advertisements depicting alluring women in revealing attire to TV game shows in which bikini-clad models compete in physical challenges, one is constantly exposed to titillating and suggestive images.

In fact, not a day goes by when I am not confronted with the sight of nearly-naked women.

But I digress. . . this post is not about my love life. (Thank you, folks! I’ll be here all week.)

The reason that I bring this up (aside from the fact that I’m a lecherous sleaze) is that last night Judy told me about something she witnessed yesterday that I thought I would share.

For those of you who don’t know, Judy is a preschool teacher at an international school here in Tokyo. One of her class’ daily activities is a walk to a nearby park for outdoor playtime, and yesterday was no different. However, when she and her students arrived at the park, she was surprised to see two youngish-looking girls dressed in schoolgirl outfits, surrounded by several photographers. The girls were playing on the slide, the swings and the monkey bars, all the while coyly flashing their panties for the cameras.

As you might imagine, the children responded to this sight with great curiosity and repeated askings of “What are they doing?”. Thankfully, due to their ignorance and naiveté (bless them), Judy was able to quell their inquisitiveness by saying, “Oh nothing, just taking pictures. Now, let’s go play over there.”

While she was naturally appalled that those managing the photo shoot would carry out such an activity in the middle of the day in a location where children were bound to be playing, she was perhaps even more disturbed by the sheer nonchalance of the other people in the park, who seemed to take no notice of the risqué goings-on just feet away.

Perhaps their impassivity was a cultural thing, or maybe repeated exposure to these sorts of occurrences simply causes one to become indifferent. Who knows? But what I do know is that if I ever happen to witness such an event, I’ll be sure to try to obtain photographic evidence.
For, um, sociological research purposes, that is.

On Saturday Judy and I were in Ginza, where we happened to see Sakaguchi Kenji and Shinohara Ryoko, two relatively big celebrities in Japan. Although I didn’t see any cameras around, it appeared as though they were preparing to film something, as Sakaguchi was pulling a rickshaw in which Shinohara was seated, and production staff were scurrying about telling passers-by to keep walking.

Strangely enough, it was I who recognized the pair immediately and pointed them out to Judy, rather than the other way around as I would have expected. At that moment, it suddenly dawned on me just how much of Japanese popular culture I have absorbed during my time here.

I remember one time a few months after we first arrived in Japan, Judy and I were walking around Osaka when suddenly a young, hip-looking guy rushed past us followed by a gaggle of screaming teenage girls. Neither of us had any idea who he was. Since then, however, without any conscious effort on my part, I’ve somehow become familiar with most of the talento and their particular schticks, and on the occasions when I have seen celebrities in public (Tokyo isn’t that big a place), I’ve recognized them instantly.

What I find even more interesting, perhaps, is that American pop culture is becoming almost alien to me. Whenever I go back to the States, I find that I just can’t relate to much of what’s going on around me. I find popular music to be over-commercialized and uninspiring, I think reality shows like American Idol and Survivor are incredibly lame, and I seriously couldn’t give two shits about the Olsen twins.

Of course, I feel the same way about things in Japan, too.

Has popular culture always been such a vapid wasteland? Maybe I’m just getting older. . . .

Within the past few years, “global” has become a major buzzword in Japan and popular opinion seems to be that any Japanese firm that doesn’t declare itself to be a “global company” is behind the times and destined for failure. The company I work for, despite already having over 30 production facilities around the world, has recently joined in the globalization frenzy and has been doing all it can to “think globally,” as the cliche goes.

In typical Japanese form-over-substance fashion, the first step my company took was to add the word “Global” in front of every department name. Hence, the Marketing Department became the Global Marketing Department; the General Affairs Department, the Global General Affairs Department; and so on. This was considered a major step and was lauded within all echelons of the company. Apparently no one realized the utter pointlessness of it all.

The company’s latest endeavor in this globalization pissing contest has been the creation of a “bijinesu manaa” (”business manner”) database containing guidelines for proper business etiquette for interactions with non-Japanese companies. A few weeks ago, I was approached about helping to create a detailed guide to Western dining etiquette. You see, as the only non-Japanese person in my company, I am thought be an expert on all things foreign, and thus, despite being an ill-manner clod, I was consulted on every aspect of Western table manners.

After the guidelines were created, a few of the people in my office were assembled in the conference room to pose for photos demonstrating proper and improper table manners. The guide was posted on my company’s intranet site today and the photos are so laughably bad that I just had to share them. Here are some examples for your viewing pleasure:

[Note: In Japan, X (batsu) means incorrect and O (maru) means correct (like a checkmark in the West).]

It’s well-known that Japanese people have a sincere appreciation of the four seasons. Having grown up in Northern California, where the seasons are essentially limited to two: warm and cool, I find the heightened awareness of the changing of the seasons in Japan rather endearing.

There are, however, instances in which this obsession with seasonal changes goes a bit too far. Case in point: the sheer number of people that I have met who seriously believe that Japan is unique in the world as the only country with four seasons is astonishing. Seasonal food products are another example; in Japan, seasonal items extend far beyond fruits and vegetables into things ranging from tea to potato chips to chocolate. Most of these items are hardly distinctive and tend to sit inconspicuously on supermarket shelves until their time is up and the next batch arrives to fill their place

There is one seasonal product, however, that due to its overwhelming divinity, holds a special place in my heart and a special roll in my ever-burgeoning gut. The product of which I speak (or, um, write) is none other than Kirin’s Akiaji (”Taste of Autumn”) beer. Forget about the temperature outside, the changing of the leaves or the so-called “equinox”, this is what signifies the arrival of autumn:

Yes, folks, autumn has come and it’s in the form a tasty malt beverage made from the finest ingredients and now available in your local store for just ¥218 for 315ml or ¥286 for 500ml. With a distinguished, rich flavor and at 6% alcohol, this truly is the Nectar of the Autmnal Gods.

Recently the hot topic of “conversation” (if it can be called that) in my office is what people will be doing for the upcoming summer holiday next month. In typical Japanese salaryman fashion, many of my colleagues will spend the week-long holiday at home watching television in between daily visits to the office. They may even squeeze in a trip to the driving range if they can find the time.

Aah, the good life.

Anyhow, since I’m one of the few people who hasn’t yet finalized my plans, every person I chat with about the holiday likes to give me their opinion about where I should visit. Curiously, they all offer the same advice: “You should go to Kyoto.”

Every single one. I kid you not.

Japanese people seem to have an strange fascination-bordering-on-obsession with Kyoto. The impression I get is that Kyoto is a representation of traditional Japanese culture; a place where the Japanese spirit lives on, despite the rampant materialism and hyper-consumerism that plague Japanese society today. Or something like that.

“Yes, many Japanese temple and historic place,” they say. “You can see the Japanese traditional life.” Sounds all fine and dandy, however — and this is a big however — oddly enough, whenever I ask if the person recommending Kyoto has ever been there, nine times out of ten they’ll sheepishly admit that they’ve only been there once and that it was for a junior high school trip (which usually took place before I was born). Arbitrarily recommending a destination that one has no inclination to visit oneself . . . well, that’s just odd, isn’t it?

As annoying as it may be for a non-smoker like me, in Japan the smell of cigarette smoke is as ubiquitous as bespectacled salarymen, sushi, karaoke, Godzilla, tentacle porn and all of the other things that people elsewhere associate with this country (although ninjas are sadly very scare). Having grown up in California, where smoking cigarettes is about as uncouth as knocking up your grandmother, it was a bit of an adjustment getting accustomed to spending nearly every waking hour enshrouded in a cloud cigarette smoke, but I am now depressingly used to it.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), Japanese people regard smoking as little more than a bad habit and there is essentially no education here regarding the many health risks associated with it. Thus, while cigarette packaging in other developed countries contains warnings labels such as “SMOKING WILL MAKE YOUR DICK SHRIVEL UP AND DIE”, in Japan the labels merely say, “There may be a risk of damage to your health, so be careful not too smoke too much.” Why doesn’t the government require stronger warnings? Well, that would be bad for business, seeing as the Japanese government is the largest shareholder in Japan Tobacco (!).

However, feeling pressure from anti-smoking activists and foreign governments alike, Japan Tobacco has implemented a campaign to increase public awareness of the dangers of smoking. Recently, I happened to see one of their new advertisements in the train during my commute:

“WTF?” you ask? Yes, in the typical Japanese “path of least resistance” manner, Japan Tobacco has chosen to focus on the “manners” aspect of smoking, rather than the harmful health risks (”Forget about cancer and birth defects, YOU MIGHT POKE SOMEONE’S EYE OUT!!”). This began a few years ago, with such campaigns as “Smoking Clean” and “Are you a good smoker?” which all focused on educating smokers on proper smoking etiquette. The slogan of the new campaign is “Anata ga kizukeba, manaa ha kawaru” (roughly “If you take notice, your manners will change”).

Um . . . yeah.

I tried to snap a photo of the ad, but unfortunately with the rocking of the train and the stares of everyone else in the carriage wondering why the crazy foreigner was taking pictures of a smoking advertisement, the photo didn’t turn out very well. So instead, I went over to the Japan Tobacco website and found several brilliant examples that are each works of art unto themselves. I promptly stole them and have set up a gallery on this site in order to preserve them for all time. Let the hilarity ensue.

The other day I caught the beginning of a program about Harry Potter on TV. As is typical with most Japanese TV shows, there was a main host and alongside him the obligatory talento (TV personalities) — in this case, two women I had never seen before and none other than Guts Ishimatsu, the former boxer-turned-B-list actor and TV personality.

As Guts was the biggest star on the panel (a telling indicator of the crappy production budget), the host began the program by asking him what he knew about Harry Potter. It turned out that old Gutsy had never even heard of the character. Normally, this might lead one to wonder what the heck he is doing appearing on a TV show about Harry Potter, but this is Japan — “the place where logic need not apply” — and so it really wasn’t all that surprising. At that point, the chirpy woman sitting next to Guts chimed in to say that she absolutely loves Harry Potter, and that “Daniel-san is SO CUTE!!!11″ In another feeble attempt to draw attention to the “big star,” the host then asked Guts, “Guts-san, what do you think of Daniel-san?”, to which Guts replied simply “Ma, gaijin da na” (”Well, he’s a foreigner, you know”), prompting laugher all around.

Although I won’t go into depth about my thoughts on the word gaijin at this time, I’ll just say that it’s a discriminatory term and there’s really no need for it to be used when their are several other inoffensive alternatives. While some may argue that gaijin is simply an abbreviation of gaikokujin (foreign national), the true meaning is quite simply “outsider” and carries derogatory connotations. Despite this, many Japanese people continue to use the word freely despite knowing that many non-Japanese people find it offensive.

Anyway, what upset me about Guts’ comment wasn’t only that it was offensive, but that those sorts of comments are shockingly common on Japanese television and never draw any kind of controversy. Just imagine of Alex Rodriguez was asked what he thought of Hideki Matsui and responded with, “Well, he’s a Jap, you know.” There would be an enormous public outcry. In Japan, however, such comments are simply par for the course.

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In lighter news, the new Harry Potter film comes out tomorrow and Judy and I have tickets to see it. I haven’t seen a movie on its opening day since Jurassic Park came out when I was in 8th grade. Of course, Judy was the one who really wanted to get tickets for tomorrow. She’s the Harry Potter fan, not me. She’ll try to deny it, of course, but don’t listen to her.

I read today that Tokyo was once again rated the most expensive city in the world. That’s obviously not much of a surprise, of course, seeing as it costs an arm and a leg just for the bare necessities here, which doesn’t leave many other body parts to pay for much of anything else. I try to cope by maintaining the illusion that once I leave Japan everything will seem ridiculously cheap by comparision for the rest of my life, but even self-delusion has its limits.