Whales, dolphins.... and tuna!?

Hi there, me again. So I don't really keep up with South Park all that much anymore, but every now and then I watch when they cover an issue that I enjoy - something about hearing them ridicule both sides of the argument and show that everyone is if not full of shit, at least partially containing shit, or shit-like, substance in some capacity. This week's episode was more of the same, covering Sea Shepherd and 98% of the world's lack to comprehend why Japan wants to hunt whales and dolphins. Yes that's right, there's also dolphin hunting, but from my understanding it's mostly only in a small village called Taiji in Wakayama-ken in a festival that's been going on for quite a while.... and Sea World (watch the new South Park episode here).


Now I'm not going to bother giving my entire opinion on the whole whale hunting thing again, but let's just say that I've had whale meat before and feel that as long as their numbers are kept sustainable, hunt away. I will say that to me this is a different issue than with dolphin hunting, as dolphins are in no way anywhere near being extinct or endangered, so the issue is more one of intelligence and, well let's be honest, cuteness. I'm sure there have been studies to back this up somewhere, but beautiful people have a marked advantage in life, and the dolphin case to me is an extension of this into the animal world. Pigs are really intelligent creatures, and yet we keep dumb chihuahuas as pets and stick them in stupid Hollywood movies while we have 101 tasty ways to get a pig onto your plate and in your belly.


Ok, so now I've given you the background on the whales and dolphins - where does the tuna come in, you say? Well look no further than today's headlines to find that an organization in Europe is in agreement with significant reductions in fishing of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, of which stocks are said to be as low as 15% of their original numbers. This is in response to the EU talks of enacting a ban on tuna fishing within its waters to keep the species going. There was also a ban on fishing of certain other species of tuna in the Atlantic for 2 months of last year. As you may or may not know, Japan is the world's largest consumer of tuna, which is a popular staple for sashimi and sushi. Sushi has gained in popularity worldwide in recent years, but that's nothing... do you know how much tuna Japan consumes? Really? They fish more than 300,000 metric tons every year, and yet still have the rest of the world bringing their tuna to Tsukiji market to sell more of top of that. That's 300,000 METRIC TONS, which means that if you had 30,000 dump trucks that could carry 10 tons of tuna each... then no one else would be able to drive anywhere because that's a lot of frickin' tuna.

So, now to bring this all together. Here we have Japan, which has shown that they really like eating fish and other bounties of the sea, even more than they care about what the rest of the world thinks of their eating habits. On the other hand we have a species of fish that is thought to be all too common wind up being endangered because one country eats 1,000 international space stations worth of it on an annual basis. Will Japan be willing to curtail its hunting to let numbers get back into a sustainable figure, and what will this mean for sushi lovers worldwide? Who will think of the tuna!?

Well the answer is that Japan has already agreed to cut back its tuna fishing for a whole 2 months over a 2 year period, so I'm guessing this is one fish they're willing to play ball on. This latest news may mean even more cuts than the measly 5% cutback the Japanese fishers have agreed to thus far. They agreed that tuna is yummy, and thus it would be ashamed to deprive the world of it for a lifetime by stuffing our faces with it now. Looking at the way things are going though, I'm guessing you're going to see less tuna now, and possibly even higher prices for a while if things get too bad. So you heard it here- be responsible next time you do sushi, order the anago.

New Joyo Kanji!!

凄い！

Yesss... every Japanese language nerd's dream come true- more kanji!! Well technically speaking, actually, none of them are new. Rather they are mostly quite common, which is entirely the point. But hey, I guess first I should stop talking (typing?) to myself and let you guys in on what I'm rambling about, right?

So word on the street is that next year they're talking about adjusting the daily use kanji list to 2,131 characters. 5 characters (銑 (SEN, pig iron), 錘 (tsumu, spindle), 匁 (monme, a unit of weight), 勺 (shaku, a unit of capacity), and 脹 (CHOU, swell)) are up for removal, and another 191 are slated to be included. Of those being removed, I would really only consider one (腫, as commonly seen in 腫れる, to become swollen) all that useful.

This would be the first update to the list in almost 30 years, and to be honest I think it's about time. Due largely to the advent of computers and cell phones, it is so much easier to use kanji now - no one knows how to write them, but you don't have to to be able to type them in. (You think people can actually write 鬱病?)

So what's new? Well a lot of stuff is used in place names. Believe it or not, there are quite a few characters that are currently not "general use" that are used in the names of a few cities, prefectures and *ahem* close by countries: 熊 from 熊本 [Kumamoto], 奈 from 神奈川 [Kanagawa] and 奈良 [Nara], 茨 from 茨城 [Ibaragi], 栃 from 栃木 [Tochigi], 阜 from 岐阜 [Gifu], 阪 from 大阪 [Osaka]... even 韓 from 韓国 [Korea]!! These were all on a separate "name characters" list up until now, but I mean seriously? I think Osaka was in my vocab lists 1st semester, Japanese 101. Oh and the word for vocab (語彙)? Until now that didn't make the list as well.

Besides that, some of the stuff on the list are total gimmes - I cannot believe that the words for chopsticks, bath, pillow, rainbow a slew of food words and most of all 俺 (おれ、masculine 'I') is currently not considered "general use".

To be fair, "general use" is really just a guideline though and doesn't necessarily dictate the limits of most people's knowledge. You're supposed to know this list and the name list by the time you graduate high school here, but most kids would already know all the characters on this expansion list as well. Going through them myself I recognized about 2/3rds of them. You can check the list out yourself over at kanjiclinic.com if you want, by the way.

So that being said, I guess the big difference is that a lot of the words that up until now you would see in broken combinations in newspapers will finally be able to be printed properly (完ぺき→完璧, うつ病→鬱病, あいまい→曖昧, etc.). This actually brings up what to me I see as a rather interesting side note - newspapers are written such that anyone with a high school education can read them, and this does not only go for Japan. From what I've heard, actually, US newspapers are written more at like a 9th/10th grade level, if that... not even graduating high school!

More kanji I say, more! It's not going to hurt anything, and hopefully this means these will make their way into a newly revamped JLPT for me to have something to brush up on when I finally get around to taking level 1 again.

Oh and finally a note - the word at the top of this post got snubbed from the list, despite the fact that it is used daily by mixi and keitai users nationwide.

The Great Burger

This would just so happen to be my submission for the Japan Blog Matsuri, which is rather convenient because I was planning on writing about this place anyway due to its sheer awesomeness.

Ok, I hope you are ready for a treat, because a burger like this does not come along everyday. Now many people may think that burgers are a decisively American food, but then many people thought that Britney Spears deserved a Grammy Award, and you'll never convince me of that one. Many people also tend to think of food in Japan as generally light faire, but they wouldn't totally be right on this point either. While the streets do flow with more tuna than anywhere else in the world, Tokyo especially is great for international cuisine of all kinds - including burgers, which brings us to today's topic. The Great Burger.

I originally stumbled quite haphazardly across this gem looking online for a good burger place one day. I've been to Kua'aina Burger, Sasebo Burger and a slew of others, but this one in my opinion really does top them all and should rightly be the #1 meaty solace of any guy living in or near Tokyo that occasionally needs a manly serving of beef to get the blood pumping. If you're going to go out of your way to get a burger in Tokyo, settle for nothing less!

So shall we start with the burger then? My biggest gripe with Sasebo Burger is that while they are quite tasty, the burger itself is rather Japan-sized. Great Burger has no such problems with a nicely sized patty, seasoned to perfection. Also, with 20 different burgers, including a gorgonzola burger and both double and triple burgers as well as 10 additional optional toppings, they are sure to sate the hunger of even the most ravenous of appetites. Just remember - if you eat a triple burger then you have to live with yourself after wards. Of course size is no substitute for taste, and this burger holds no punches in that category either. I've been to Ray's Hell Burger in DC (ok, technically across the river in Arlington), which was visited by Obama a few months back and is arguably the best burger at least in the DC area, and this is easily as good as their burgers. Pictured to the right is the bacon double cheeseburger without relish, mustard and mayonnaise of the condiments they put on the burger as standard. Call me a purist, but I prefer ketchup (or bbq sauce) on my burgers. They all come with steak fries, but the appetizer menu is rather extensive. And while they don't leave you a bottle, there are plenty of packets of ketchup available at each table - more points in the plus column!! (ps: I have been to many places which sacrilegiously serve fries with 1 measly packet of ketchup, which everyone knows is never enough)

I must say though that besides simply having a classic burger, another thing that makes this place great to me is the shakes. Now these are real milkshakes, blended from ice cream with real fresh ingredients added - my girlfriend picked up a chocolate macadamia shake, and there were quite a few large chunks of actual nuts in the shake. I myself rather enjoy the chocolate banana shake. If beer's more your thing, and being that meat is involved I wouldn't blame you if it is, they have close to 30 different beers in stock as well, ranging from one of my sleeper Japanese favorites, Coedo, to Negra Modelo and Pilsner Urquell.


How do I get there, you ask? Well it's closest to Harajuku or Jingumae stations, but Shibuya is walkable, too. It's situated off of Cat Street, sort of behind the Audi and Uniqlo: UT stores, so while you're there you might as well wander around to check out some of the boutiques and cafes around that define the area. Like most places on Cat Street, the store itself is rather small, so be prepared for a crowd if you show up around lunch time.

Restaurant details:
Address - Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Jingumae 6-12-7 J-Cube A, 1F
Phone No. - 03-3406-1215
Hours - 11:30 - 23:00

Tokyo's Plastic Food

Not that this is particularly specific to Tokyo, but that was the title of a video over at the BBC on the topic. Thinking back to when I first got here I guess it was rather amusing at first, but of course this is just one of those things that loses its shock value after a while and becomes just another mundane detail of life lost in the noise. Oh and by the way, they were originally all made of wax, but production was mostly changed over to resins such as plastic due to the models getting soft when left out in the sun. Apparently some of the more difficult things to model are still made of wax.


As the video points out, a lot of effort goes into making food samples for restaurants here in Japan: they first make molds from the actual food itself, then pour resin into it, and finally hand paint it to look delicious. Each one is hand made to order with everything from steaks and beer to soup and pasta available, all painstakingly crafted to whet your appetite.

The origins of this industry are a tad iffy, but a few possibilities place the first of these food samples (食品サンプル), as they're known in Japanese, as somewhere between 1917 and 1932, possibly first offered at either the Shirokiya department store or by the Shimadzu Corporation, which does have some history with chemicals.

I think that this is definitely one of those little things that does have merit, especially for those that may not be able to read the menu, like tourists. Of course there wouldn't be a market for this if it was only for foreigners - the thought behind these food samples is that a simple menu with words doesn't fully convey what the meal will look like, so this helps to draw customers in. I also find that many menus here tend to have a lot more pictures as well, which I also think is a good thing.

Will you ever see anything like this anytime soon at a restaurant near you? Unfortunately, unless you're living in Japan I think it's doubtful. There is an entire multi-billion yen industry behind food samples, but with each one being hand crafted, their reach is limited almost exclusively to Japan with some getting out into other parts of Asia, such as China.

Fortunately though, for those interested in learning more about what goes into the making of this everyday art form, you can visit an area with plenty of sample producing shops in the city of Gujo in Gifu Prefecture, some of which have hands on tours that will let you try your hand at making some. Two such factories are Sample Village Iwazaki and Sample Kobo. (links are Japanese only!) Also, if you are in the Tokyo area then you can find a whole bunch of food artisans populating an area between Asakusa and Ueno known as Kappabashi.

And finally, here's a video of someone making a plastic piece of shrimp tempura.

A Change of Diet

So the big news out here as of late is the national elections, which make it appear as if I will shortly be seeing my 5th Prime Minister since stepping foot in Japan. This time around it's associated with a potentially huge paradigm shift politically, but I won't even begin to act like I'm highly versed in Japanese politics. Just know that the swing was huge - the ruling party coalition of the LDP/New Komeito went from 300 and 30 seats in the Japanese Diet respectively to 119 and 21. The JDP in the meantime went from 115 seats up to 308, given it a straight out majority even without the others in its coalition. Other, more informed opinions on the reprucussions can be found here, and if you'd like to know what the new leader, Yukio Hatoyama, himself has to say then check out his NYT Op-ed here. Also, if you like numbers and statistics, there's some that have pointed to this happening for the past 15 years or so according to this over at 538, although Japanese politics is definitely not Nate Silver's bag (baby).

I also find that I must note a rather interesting observation I heard from someone I know, and that is the slight resemblence of Hatoyama (or "pigeon mountain", if you prefer) to a certain Christopher Walken... I'll let you be the judge.

Battling cultures in the world of tech support

I ran into a rather interesting snag this past week that was, at least to me, most unexpected.

So my girlfriend's computer has been giving her an odd error involving memory/space allocation or some such nonsense, which I for the life of me could not fix. This along with some less than ideal partitioning and some other things made me decide it'd be easier to just start from scratch with a fresh install. She doesn't have a recovery disk or anything, so I used a fresh copy of English Windows XP.

Now in what I would consider normal circumstances, you can go to the homepage of most laptop manufacturers and download any drivers you might need, or at least find out which drivers to look for and find them elsewhere. A visit to the Sharp Japan homepage, however, gives no such information.

Furthermore, clicking on the "support" button is rather telling I think in the difference in mentalities between Japanese service and American service. They give you 4 options: 1) I don't know how to use my computer, 2) I'd like to send my computer in for service, 3) I'd like you to setup my computer for me, and 4) I want to upgrade my computer. Further clicking shows that you can call their call center for the first year for free advice (pay after that), or bring it in and pay them to look at it. In the US, they couldn't be happier to have you try and fight with it yourself, as it'll save them time and effort.

So not only can I not find driver or specific hardware information, there is nowhere on the website that I can find an option to simply ask them for such information, or even advice without paying. Not even a simple email. I went through their FAQ on re-installation, and the only thing they mention on hardware drivers is to use their reinstall disk.

Just for a bit of balance, I went to the Dell support page to check, and sure enough "drivers and downloads" was the first option on the list. In my time here, it seems to me that either people are less willing to try to take on a task themselves or maybe just merely don't have the time to, and are thus much more dependent upon the service industries.

This could be a chicken/egg argument as I'm not sure which is the cause and which is the result and, albeit to a lesser extent, this exists at home as well, but this is far from an isolated case. You get looks of amazement telling most people out here that you've changed not only your own oil, but also your own brakes and so on. Now granted, in this case there is also the problem of having the space to work on your own car, but the fact that most people wouldn't even consider trying to pick up a wrench themselves is beyond me. I've heard stories from a particular friend married to a Japanese man who has wound up looking up how to fix her toilet herself when the husband didn't know where to begin. TV's broken? Well it's too hard to even think about fixing, better just buy a new one.

I'm sure that at least to some extent most of these are cases where the money spent for these services is for the saved time it allows, but there's also that element of Eastern willful interdependence vs. Western individualistic mistrust. Japanese companies further fuel this by basically saying "that's really complicated, you wouldn't understand. Just leave it to me."

Nah, I think I'd still rather figure it out myself and learn something in the process.

Unexpected lessons from life in Japan

Note: Edited Oct. 20 to officially add #10.

So having spent 4 of the last 10 years of my life abroad now, it's interesting to look back and see some of the less obvious things that I've learned in my time in Japan and roaming around. I'm sure there's plenty more I'm not thinking of, this is just off the top of my head.

1. What a real cockroach looks like.
By the time I first stepped foot in Japan I already knew a bit of the language, but the first new word I learned was 'gokiburi', or cockroach. Japanese roaches can get frickin' huge, and unless you have lived either Japan, Texas or somewhere south of the border or tropical, then I doubt you really know what I'm talking about here. Besides that though, the greater point here is that there is a whole world of disgusting and scary bugs out there that I was never aware of until coming here - 2" cockroaches, poisonous centipedes, giant moths and most recently swarms of little gnat-like flies that simply will not go away... I'll get back to that one later. To be fair though, there are cool bugs too like kabutomushi and praying mantises, which if you're lucky will feast on unassuming cockroaches.

2. Whale isn't so hot, but horse meat is actually pretty good.
If you live somewhere halfway across the globe, you're more than likely going to have to eat the local food or else pay out the ass to maintain your old eating habits. Luckily in Japan this isn't too bad since most of the food is excellent. This also includes being a bit adventurous sometimes, and I've taken some rather wild culinary adventures which have included whale meat, fugu, raw horse, fish scrotums, python-flavored ice cream, several tropical fruits I never even knew existed... and an overnight stay in a Bangkok hospital, but we won't talk about that one. The view was nice, at least. At the top of my list for "exotic" (Japan doesn't really feel so exotic after a while, thus the quotes) foods, I would say do try raw horse (basashi), fugu and eel (anago if they have it, unagi if they don't), stay away from fish scrotums (shirako), and only eat whale or sea urchin (uni) if you haven't tried it and want to, just once for the experience.

3. Most sauces and dressings are really simple to make.
I cook way more since coming to Japan - mostly because it's cheaper and healthier. I do make local stuff as well, but sometimes you just want a little taste of home. The only problem is that a lot of times the sauces and dressings you're used to back home are prohibitively expensive, if you can find them at all. Luckily, in times like this there is the interweb, with a little place called recipes.com. Can't find bbq sauce? No problem - do you have ketchup, sugar and red wine? Ranch dressing? Well that's just mayo, sour cream, garlic, onion and few other spices. I've figured out how to make a whole bunch of things from scratch out of necessity, and had plenty of fun along the way.

4. 3USD/gallon for gas is pretty damn cheap.
Growing up in the US, it's easy to become disillusioned about fuel prices, and really the cost of driving overall. You don't think about it, but we have government subsidies to thank for artificially lower gas prices than the rest of the civilized world as well as a mostly toll-free national highway system. Out here they'll charge you about as much for a liter as you would get a gallon in the US for, and there is not one section of highway that doesn't charge a toll. Luckily there's an easy way to get around the whole thing here - trains. You guys should look into those. :P

5. Toilet paper and toilets that have seats and flush are a luxury.
Wow- you would not believe the spectrum of toiletry you find in Asia! Starting off in Japan is actually pretty tame, although you do get to run the entire bathroom gauntlet from its traditional squatters (supposedly crouching helps things come out, but I'm not going to find out) to talking washlets that can make artificial flushing noises so no one hears you fart if you're concerned about that kind of thing. Once you get used to that go out to a place like Thailand, where I looked for toilet paper and instead saw a bucket of water with a small cup inside to wash myself with. Or China, where a friend of mine not only had to squat, but did so right next to other guys with no walls between them. Lovely stuff.

6. The whole world does not share my affection for cheese, and Chicken Kung Pao is not real Chinese food
It was almost traumatic the first time I went to a Japanese supermarket and looked for the cheese section. It was a selection of two types: sliced and grated. Simply another one of those products that isn't used in cooking as much as back home, so you don't find it as much (see #3 above). Also though, going to restaurants you'll find that things aren't served the same as you're used to. You may find a "hamburger steak", and when they bring you a side of fries you may get a single packet of ketchup when you expected them to just leave the bottle. Or even worse, they may just give you a dollup of mayonnaise! If you go to a Chinese restaurant, don't bother looking for General Tso's Chicken or Chicken Kung Pao, but say hello to gyoza and shumai. There's also Japanese interpretations of Italian, Thai, Indian and just about any other food you can think of which will more than likely be different than what you're used to. This can be doubly true if it's the Japanese interpretation of your own country's food - do not go to a Japanese Denny's as you will be most disappointed.

7. Never get an apartment on the 1st floor.
This may be more true here than back home, but God living on the 1st floor has more drawbacks than I could ever imagine! When you search for an apartment here, they list "2nd floor and above only" as a possible search criterion, and I now know why. I thought it was just a girl thing - not wanting neighborhood pervs stealing their panties and peering in to see them change and all (anyone who knows me knows that I have no problem with being seen less than fully dressed). But oh no, it doesn't stop there. First, it was the additional moisture, which gives way to mold. I have had mold on my floors, in the bathroom, on my clothes... on my couch! And then there's the bugs... they stay close to the ground, and we get them all. Never again, never again.

8. Platypodes lactate but don't have nipples, and other fun facts.
Ok, so this one doesn't actually directly relate to the point that I wanted to make per se, but it is an interesting and random fact that I looked up at work one day so I'm going to let it ride. I find out all sorts of interesting tidbits of useful uselessness for work looking stuff up on wikipedia among other sources. Some recent findings are where Toyota got the name 'corolla' from (it's actually the name for the petals of a flower) and that Princess Di was actually cursed by ancient Japanese superstitions. Sometimes it's more interesting than other times, and this is something that probably would've happened no matter where I work, but I'm guessing my job being here has me looking up different things than you would back home.

9. Lorries, boots and general dodginess.
An interesting thing happens when all of a sudden English is the common language between you and people from all over the world - you learn all sorts of quirky localisms from all 4 corners of the globe. This goes doubly true when you are asked at work to "fix" your own Americanisms to match a text to what someone in the UK (or Kenya, apparently) expects to see. Trucks suddenly become lorries, and Sarah Palin goes from being a dangerously uninformed extremist to merely being a wanker. This knowledge becomes doubly useful when on a night on the town with your new neighbor from New Zealand or Egypt, or somewhere else you're not likely to have ever actually been yourself (if you have then good for you). Now why a globe has four corners I have not a clue, but you will be sure that I shall be looking it up later per #8.

10. All the Stuff I've learned about Brazil. (added Oct. 20)
The last thing you expect coming to a country is learning about elsewhere in the world, but the truth of the matter is that you being fellow foreigners with others sometimes means you'll make bonds with a rather international crew. Since coming to Japan I have friends in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, Switzerland, Australia, Brazil, Korea... I could go on. I started capoeira out here too, which means I could find a place to stay in Brazil, no problem.

That's about all I have for now - if you have any additions of your own, feel free to comment.

Uniqlo: Japan meets the Gap

In Japan there's this store that everyone goes to, but most people don't readily admit or talk about. Well, at least that's how most Japanese people see it to the best of my knowledge, but there are plenty of foreigners that are just nuts about the place and can't rave about it enough... I myself wouldn't go quite that far. This store has a name, and its name is Uniqlo.

Uniqlo is sort of like the Japanese version of the Gap - or maybe what the Gap should be. Their prices are cheap and they'd like to think they have style, but most people just go there for plain items they wear layered under stuff that can blend in with whatever they're wearing. Uniqlo's strengths are its affordable prices and comfort, which in trying economic times such as these are a great business platform. While Toyota is posting its first annual numbers in the red ever, the owner of Uniqlo has just this year become the richest man in Japan at a net worth of $6.1B USD, surpassing the former top Hiroshi Yamauchi of Nintendo fame. In fact, Tadashi Yanai hasn't ruled out trying a buyout of the Gap to catapult his company's ambitions for going global and hitting the US market fullscale. In actuality, the economic downturn is probably helping Uniqlo's numbers since these are about the only times that no-name and cheaper business models can take off in Japan - as an example, the used book store Book-Off made used books popular around the time of the bubble collapse.

Anyway, I recently stopped by Uniqlo as I was running embarrassingly low on underwear that didn't have holes in them, and while wearing Japanese pants for me is normally akin to a Chris Farley "fat guy in a little coat" session due to 15+ years of soccer and capoeira, Uniqlo is rather well known for comfortable undies and fitting us furriners. So I decide to give them a shot.

So I went out to the newly opened Shinjuku store (pictured above) and got my shop on. While I was there I stopped in the UT section, which is Uniqlo's attempt at fashion in "designer t-shirts", if such a diametrically opposed juxtaposition of terms is allowed (Armani Exchange would like to think so). They had some interesting candidates, but none were interesting enough for me to walk away with. Top candidate is pictured at right, courtesy of the UT homepage.

I must say though, they have put a little effort into things, including buying up rights to put out some random stuff that appeals to foreigners. One great example is Warner Brothers products, which does include Looney Tunes, but also includes the Goonies (!!) and Batman... most Japanese people don't even know about the Goonies!

Japan is absolutely littered with Uniqlo stores, but if you're not in Japan and want to see one, you only chances will be if you live close to New York or LA... or you could just wait for Tada-chan to buy out Gap or some other sucker.

Oh and to anyone wondering, the boxers were still just a tad snug, but I'm sure they'd be fine for most... you might still need to go up a size from what you're used to.

[Edited for embarrasing grammatical errors... my brethren in the "I judge you when you use bad grammar" Facebook group would be ashamed. :'(]

Tokyo erections

Really, I don't like morning people.

I'm not sure what kind of noise ordinance laws there are in Japan, but I am frequently awakened from my slumber on weekends by overzealous go-getters, looking to seize the day before I would argue it should even begin. No, the yaki-imo guy is not trying to make a comeback, but as I have alluded to in the past he certainly is not the only one in Japan that finds it acceptable to roll around in a little truck with a big microphone.

No, this time around it is election season, and the propaganda trucks are out in full force. By propaganda trucks, I am simply referring to the campaign trail as seen in the 1950's of America and Back to the Future. Today is the big day for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections, so hopefully from here on out I will be able to sleep past 9am - these guys have been rolling by my place as early as 8:30 am almost daily for about the past week or two, and I for one am glad that it is all coming to a close. Incidentally, this will be the first time that my girlfriend has voted. The vast majority of Japanese that I know have little to no interest in politics, and that goes double for young people.

So why are Japanese political campaigns stuck in the '50's, you ask? Well there's some stupid law that says that they can't have advertisements on tv, so they have to resort to posters littered everywhere, enough pamphlets and handouts to overfill my mailbox was past the brim, and... little trucks with big microphones, what the hell.

You'd think it would irritate people, but then Japanese are so used to people yelling in their daily lives that I'm sure they just ignore with the rest as it's phased out into white noise in the deep abscesses of their minds. Whether it's the army of guys passing out fliers and trying to talk you into coming to his store in front of the station, or the people standing in the streets yelling outside stores about the "special sale" they have every single week, or the shop clerks constantly yelling 'irrasshaimase' as they walk through stores for 30 years, it must just be second nature to them to ignore some yakiimo schmo or Ichiro Blow politician in their noise truck.

Oh and for those that don't know, the Communist Party is alive and well in Japan with 13 representatives (of 125 total) already in the local assembly - I've seen posters around all over the place, and one of the 3 candidates for the district in which I reside is a pinko commie. Doesn't he look menacing folks? I'm sure he'd chew a baby's head off and spit it out like a piece of overchewed gum... or at least talk it to death.

Shiso-flavored Pepsi?

What were they thinking with this one???

Ok, so every year for the past few years there has been some random limited edition flavor come out that's only available in Japan and only for a limited time!! Japanese people will buy anything if it's only for a limited time. They love their gentei stuff in general (限定= limited issue or limited area goods) - maybe as much as they like cute stuff.

Anyway back to the nastiness, horrible. Two summers ago it was cucumber Pepsi, which wasn't very good. Last year it was apparently Blue Hawaii, which I may or may not have tried but obviously did not leave much of an impression on me if I did. This year? Shiso-flavored Pepsi. What is shiso you may ask? Well the English translation is apparently a "beefsteak plant", which I know has just got your mouth watering already. Basically though, it's that edible minty leaf thing that you may find garnishing your sushi. Shiso by itself isn't too bad I guess, actually pretty good wrapped around (horse) meat, but the mere idea of mixing it with Pepsi is just beyond disgusting to me. It makes me feel like reaching back in my vocabulary about 20 years or so to call it grody. Or maybe it just makes me feel like reaching back into my throat to purge the vileness from my body before it reaches my stomach. That my friends is what grody tastes like. So of course I bought one, but just so I could drink it and tell people how grody it was.

First off, it's green. Smell? Sort of like that wasabi-ish dry spice that shoots up your nose and burns just a tinge. Taste? It sort of lags a bit - at first it just tastes weird like when you were a kid and mixed Mountain Dew in with your Coke and then accidentally put orange juice in instead of orange Fanta, but then the shiso kicks in and it's sweet and spicy at the same time. I've had spicy beer before as well, and I am going to have to say that God did not intend drinks to be spicy. Ever. It does not work.

In the also-ran category, Coke has decided to come out with their own gentei version that people will buy even though it's disgusting, green tea Diet Coke. While I've heard personal account that this is really not good either, it just doesn't trigger my gag reflex as much as shiso Pepsi.

Oh, and as an added bonus, McDonald's is having a special on their McNuggets, which are now a 100 yen until July 2nd (more gentei, I can't control myself!!). They now come with more Pokemon meat, as can be seen on the box to the left. Mmm... pikachu meat.

Yakudoshi - the year of calmity

(Please excuse the crap pics as I'm still arguing with Canon over mine and am limited to my phone's camera and existing internet stock)

So I recently got to see a little bit of the more Japanese side of my girlfriend lately in the form of a lesson in Japanese superstition, which I shall now pass on to you. See there's this thing in Japanese called 厄年 (read yakudoshi, year of bad luck/calamity) in which all sorts of bad things can happen to you - you're supposedly more likely to lose your job, get cheated on, get seriously injured or what have you. Normally being a rather sane and grounded individual she of course didn't believe such nonsense, but she's had a series of unlucky experiences lately which she has come to associate with this, such as feeling the squish of a roach-zilla on her toes as she put on her sock (not sure if it was already dead or if she killed it), almost getting hit by a car on her bike (I got her beat on that one) and other such things. As other examples of yakudoshi, I found stories about people getting hit while standing waiting for a stoplight by a bike at just the right angle to break a leg, and apparently Princess Diana was on her yakudoshi the year everyone found out about her affairs and she got divorced (!!).

I personally had not heard of yakudoshi, but here's the gist as it was explained to me. There are apparently some slight regional variations on this, but basically it goes that at the ages of 25, 42 and 61 for men and 19, 33 and 37, you better watch your back for the boogeyman because random shit is waiting for you around the corner. These years are based on the old system for counting years in which you are born at age 1, so basically you just take a year off that. The middle of these is supposedly the worst (called taiyaku 大厄 in Japanese - 42 and 33 for men and women respectively) with the year itself (本厄, honyaku) being preceded and followed by years that lead into and tail off with the bad luck (前厄 and 後厄, maeyaku and atoyaku). You can see a chart of this year's yakudoshi to the left. As with some other Japanese superstitions, reasons for the years picked is widely thought to do with alternate meanings for the readings of the numbers. 4 is generally an unlucky number in Japanese because it can be pronounced shi, as in 'death', and thus 42 (shi-ni) is bad... but only for men. 33 for women can be pronounced 'sanzan', which can mean terrible.

So what do you traditionally do in such years of calamity? Well in order to shoo away the bad luck you go to a shrine for either 厄祓い or 厄除け(yakubarai and yakuyoke) in order to get rid of bad luck or serve a preemptive blow to possible forthcoming calamities. At the shrine you can either give the priests a few man (couple $100USD) to put your name in a ceremony they go through several times a day to scare away the bad luck demons, or you can buy one of their lovely, overly-priced protective charms. Obviously the more money you spend the better, so they have charms anywhere from 500 yen to 50,000 yen (the crystal ones are allegedly most effective for yakudoshi... expensive buggers). My girlfriend went for one of the cheaper options - they sell you a wooden peg which you write your name onto and then smash it down into a board with holes using a mallet as shown above. There was also the standard omikuji, which are sort of like your luck horoscope which you read and then tie onto a string with all the other omikuji for the day as a sort of prayer to the luck gods. (Mikuji picture on the left courtesy of Wikipedia)

Where does such superstition come from? Well, it comes from onmyodo (陰陽道), the Japanese version of astrology based on the Chinese zodiac system. Exact roots aren't known for sure, but there was an ancient custom in China stating that children from the ages of 7 to 9 should be careful of calamities which some think may have some correlation. Onmyodo originally came from Chinese Wu Xing and the yin/yang principle introduced to Japan in the 5th and 6th centuries, then was mixed with Shintoism, Taoism and Buddhism. This form of astrology is more popular out here than that associated with the western zodiac. The whole yakudoshi biz was believed by the aristocracy and higher ups by the Heian Period, and knowledge had spread to the general population by the Edo era.

And you may wonder why does it last for 3 years and not just one? One opinion I found from a Shinto scholar is that this comes from an ancient Japanese tradition called 致斎 (chisai) in which you are supposed to distance yourself from celebration, mourning or any other gathering for 3 days if you are in contact with a death, birth or other bloody act which needs purification in the sight of the gods. This normally holds for the day before and the day after the actual event itself, a concept that could have been carried over to yakudoshi as well.

I found one site trying to make some ridiculous parallels between yakudoshi and supposed superstitions in the west and other countries, but I couldn't find any information anywhere online to corroborate these correlations in English. Just out of interest I'm going to list these to see if anyone else has heard of any of these superstitions:

• ENGLAND - for men any year ending in 4, and for women any year ending in 7. To ward off bad luck you're supposed to gather fruit off a tree in the number corresponding to your age and leave them outside for 3 days and 3 nights, then burn them. The more witnesses you have the better (so everyone can laugh at your superstitious ass).
  
  
• SPAIN - for men 24 and 44, for women 14 and 34. To cure yourself, you're supposed to surround yourself by relatives and friends while eating a certain number of pieces of horse meat corresponding to your age. After this there's a big party with singing and dancing... silly Spaniards, that's their solution to everything!
  
  
• EGYPT - for men and women every 4th year from the age of 4 all the way through your 50's. To cure this you're supposed to get a piece of fabric from a local elder and keep in on you for that year. I think this sounds sort of like a Muslim "DON'T kick me" sign.
  
  
• TURKEY - for men 23, 43 and 63 and for women 13, 33 and 53. This is cured by the relatives and friends getting together and making a life-sized clay doll and robing it with colorful clothing, then washing it away with water. The person has to stay in the house while this is being done so he can keep from laughing at all his stuperstitious relatives and friends.

These all sound rather ridiculous and I doubt any of them really exist, but then again I think the whole yakudoshi thing is ridiculous too. I think I'll just hide up on the 13th floor with my black cat underneath a ladder and toss salt over my shoulder until the whole thing blows over.

Sanma's SUPER Karakuri TV, and Japanese relationships as told by "famous" wives

So I'm not much of a fan of Japanese tv, but one show that I do watch at least semi-regularly is Sanma's SUPER (!!!) Karakuri TV. The host, Sanma, is one of Japan's most famous comedians, and known for having extraordinarily big teeth... he's ok (See right). They of course have the obligatory "talento" panel gathered to comment about things, but have some funny stuff on there using actual people, not tv personalities. They've also had a bunch of foreign regulars over the years, including Thane Camus, Bobby Olugun and Robert Baldwin. In the past they've had stuff like the foreigner Japanese quizzes with "Japan King" Robert Baldwin, the Hiroshima-born Canadian that knows entirely too much about Japan, or they'll have quizzes with 3 old guys (note: old people that don't care anymore and will say absolutely anything), or my all-time favorite when they used to have the drunk salarymen quizzes where they'd ask a drunk guy on his way home from a drinking party some question and then let him use a public phone to call whoever he wanted to try and find out the answer, often to hilarious result.

Anyway I watched it tonight (7pm Sundays and on channel 6 in Tokyo, btw), and afterwards there was a "special" (considering every other week is a special, it has about as much meaning as them calling the tv-personalities "talent") with five famous wives asking them about their spouses, and I thought it might be a small window into Japanese relationships so I left it on... it wasn't interesting enough to receive my undivided attention, but here's what I remember of it.

So the 5 wives were Junko Akimoto (60-something year old singer), Akira Hokuto (female pro-wrestler... scarily mannish), Izumi Ogami (announcer and voice actor), Nozomi Tsuji (overly cutesy former Morning Musume singer) and Miki Fujimoto (pretty hot former Morning Musume singer).

They talked about a few topics, the first of which I remember the discussion being about married finances. It's fairly well-known that the wife holds the purse strings in most households in Japan, at least traditionally. Miki-chan was the newlywed (or rather will be next month), and was talking about them each keeping their own finances, which most of the other women said was unrealistic as time goes on, especially after kids. I'd say that's a fair assessment, but not reason enough for me to hand over my entire paycheck to the wife every month and have her give me a monthly allowance. Everyone was shocked, or maybe disappointed would be a better description, at one of the wives when she said that she's the one that gets an allowance. I've heard from several former co-workers that they indeed let their wives control the money... they say they don't have time to worry about bills, supposedly because they are too busy working absurd hours at the office or something. I don't see why Japanese guys are so stereotypically bad with money though... one of the wives said her hubby wastes all kinds of money on an aquarium and fish, and another said her hubby wastes all kinds of money on a car (I could totally see that one, actually).

The other question I remember them asking was "your trick to a healthy relationship." First up was Maki-chan who said she mails her fiance about 10 times daily, for stuff like when she wakes up or telling him where she's going or whatever, and that he's always good about responding. I believe in communication, but 10x/day... wow. She got lots of "he~~~s" from that one. I agree with the overall concept of keeping in touch as much as possible and all though, which the other guests seemed to think was unrealistic.

Next up was Nozomi-chan, who said they kiss everyday, which shocked everyone. Examples she gave were a good morning kiss, a goodbye kiss before going to work, a kiss when you get home and before you go to sleep - nothing that odd. The host's comment was that that sounds really stupid and unnecessary, and pretty much everyone (except Maki, bless her heart) agreed that keeping that up was just about impossible. To me it's not surprising to hear them say that with all the talk you hear about sexless marriages and married couples sleeping in separate beds and all, but disappointing nonetheless.

Well ok, I guess it wasn't really that informative to me at least, but it did reaffirm a few ideas I have about relationships in Japan, and maybe it'll give you a better idea of things. If you kiss someone every day and sleep in the same bed then you are living a miracle to them... I guess extremely low standards are good in that they make it easy to be impressed, but it's still hard for me to believe this kind of stuff is considered standard for the state of relationships in Japan. Sorta depressing, no?

"Cash for Clunkers"? Pfft... get a load of Japanese shaken

Steven Levitt over at freakonomics brought up the US "Cash for Clunkers" program again, which just passed the US House of Representatives. Before details were released, he was originally speculating that they would make it so cars over a certain age would be available for a trade-in of $3,000-4,000 or so in an effort to get older, dirtier cars off the roads and replace them with more fuel-efficient models. According to the article, the final details of the plan are thus:

Under the plan, owners of cars and trucks that get less than 18 m.p.g. could get a voucher of $3,500 to $4,500 for a new vehicle, depending on the mileage of the new model.

The plan does have several hurdles that will keep some potential buyers on the sidelines. The clunker being traded in will be crushed or recycled, meaning it will have no trade-in value beyond the voucher. Of the 25 million vehicles estimated to qualify for the voucher, most will be trucks: even 15 years ago, only five models of midsize sedans managed just 18 m.p.g.

To ensure the vehicles being crushed are actually coming off the road rather than cinder blocks, the trade-ins have to have been registered and insured for at least the past year.

So they settled on an mpg rating as opposed to a year rating to focus on removing foreign oil influence as opposed to lowering emissions directly. If, however, they did decide to try for lowering emissions, they could look no further than Japan for a plan as they have a great plan for doing so. It's expensive for consumers, but that's part of the point - giving negative incentives to owning cars so people will look into the alternatives and not be so wasteful. (This would of course need to be supplimented with such alternatives to be effective, but these could be made if the people wanted it badly enough.)

First off, most know that gas is more expensive in Japan than it is in the US, but then that's true for pretty much the rest of 1st-world countries as well. I don't have a car anymore so don't really look too closely, but last time I noticed regular gas was around 120JPY/liter ($4.62/gallon at today's exchange rates) out here - it was pushing on 200JPY/liter (~$7.50/gallon) back when Americans were complaining about $4-5/gallon.

But gas isn't the real expense of having a car out here, it's only a very small part. Just to get a license in Japan you're forced to go spend about 300,000JPY on driving school lessons (note: transfer of foreign license is exempt of this). And if you buy your own car you have to have proof of a place to park it, which unless you live way out in the country you're definitely going to have to pay for and could run you several 10,000s of yen a month, especially if you're around Tokyo. Also, one of the better parts of Japan's temporary economic stimulus package has made it so that you can use the highways to get anywhere for only 1000JPY, but all Japanese highways are tolled. Just to give you an idea of the normal rates, it usually costs give or take 10,000JPY to go from Tokyo to Sendai one-way, which will take you 365km and roughly 5 hours. A ticket on the shinkansen meanwhile will cost you about the same and get there in 2-2.5 hours, less than half the time.

Then there's the major cost in getting a car out here - the shaken system ("shah-ken"), which is basically a system requiring you to get your car inspected every 1-3 years depending on age and type of the vehicle. New passenger vehicles don't need to be inspected for 3 years, then after that they need inspection every 2 years. The inspection itself will cost you anywhere between 50,000~100,000 with any repairs deemed necessary on top of that, including scheduled maintenance items like tires, timing belts, clutches, etc. Most anywhere you take your car they will make you replace something, so normal costs to expect could be anywhere from the 60~80K JPY range for kei-cars to more like 100~200K for higher end cars (my '00 WRX cost about 150K).

This is why used vehicles depreciate so fast in Japan, and also why you don't see all that many cars that are more than 10-15 years old... not too many people are willing to spend more than the car's worth every 2 years just to keep it on the road, and for a lot of cars the shaken cost exceeds selling value after about 10-15 years or so. Older cars that aren't wanted are either exported to poorer countries that can still use them or crushed. This makes it almost impossible to find classic Japanese cars, and puts the price of those you do find prohibitively expensive for most. On the flip side, this means that most cars in Japan, including the older ones, are normally kept in spectacular running order - no clunkers. Also, because of the gas prices and highway costs, along with the craptacular traffic in urban centers like Tokyo, most people consider the spectacular train system a great alternative for long trips and commutes, opting out of using the car for long distances and keeping the odometer reading relatively low as well.

Now bringing us full circle, the consequence of this is cars in better shape due to regular and expensive inspections, meaning better gas mileage and lower emissions. Older cars are just as expensive to hold onto as newer ones, so newer cars with even lower emissions are the norm. As a corollary, newer cars mean that people have to buy cars more often, further feeding the economy (normally). Also due to the higher gas prices and highway costs, people are more likely to buy more efficient cars in the first place... if they decide to buy one at all. I'm sure if the American system took this as its model, well first off you'd have a bunch of pissed off Americans, but you'd certainly cut emissions and raise fuel efficiency.

In closing, this is why I do not own a car in Japan. The end.

Manga for adults?

So the other day I was in a rather typical situation - getting my haircut and making small talk with the barber. The place I go to get my hair cut is actually pretty interesting - they measure my hair on different points of my head with a ruler after cutting it and put it all on this spiffy diagram to save for the next time I came in, so after a few times they know exactly to a science how to cut your hair. Not only that, but everyone in the whole store knew me and my girlfriend by name after the first time going there... and to top it all off they give this awesome scalp massage. Spectacular service!

Anyway, my barber seems like at least a halfway intelligent guy and is pretty cool, and the last time I went in the conversation somehow got onto tv. I find Japanese tv to be barely tolerable in most situations and spend my time in front of a computer to avoid it - I'll spare you the reasoning, but if you're interested then reading this might give you an idea why - so I tried to change the topic by asking him what he's read lately.

Read? Nope, not him. Or at least, not books. He apparently devotes all his reading energies into either manga or magazines. I've personally never been able to get into manga, but I know that a decent portion of the Japanese population, including adults, spends a fair amount of their social reading energies with it.

If I were to pick up the latest issue of X-men or whatever at my age back home then I'd be labeled a nerd before I got the front page open, but I'm not even sure if it's possible to ride the train home from downtown Tokyo without seeing at least one 30 or 40-something salaryman flipping through this week's issue of whatever manga. I can see ulterior motives sometimes though as some of these are interspersed with pictures of J-girl nekkidness... I'm talking about pictures of actual girls here, but you will also find plenty of adult-content manga out there with nudity as well, which just boggles my mind.

There are all sorts and kinds of manga out there on any topic - from your standard Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist to the more obscure, like the Kuroudo title I mentioned the other day to manga versions of famous books like Vagabond (based on the classic novel Musashi, written in the 1930's and translated in 1981 if you want to look for a copy) and even on historical events. Predominantly it's targeted towards boys/men, but there are also female-oriented manga out there as well.

It is probably because of this range that many people flock to manga as a lighter, more enjoyable alternative to books, but I'm still not sold. There are certain titles out there that I'm sure I'd enjoy (Vagabond and Kuroudo are probably both interesting), but I'd just rather stick with books... how much of it is just a personal prejudice I'm not sure, but books just feel more sophisticated. To me, reading manga for something would be akin to opting to wait for the movie to come out back home, and with some exceptions I'd say that in my experience the original format is far and away better when it comes out in book first (or movie for that matter).

Sure it's probably easier to get through the manga, but maybe that's another reason I like the books... if I'm going to pick up language from reading, I'd prefer it to be as sophisticated as
possible. Also as a translator, it's important to stay read up in both languages to keep my skills from dwindling. You get plenty of people who come out to Japan and lose their high-level communication abilities in English due to lack of native-level input, but then trying to avoid talking over everyone's head will do that to you... I'd like to keep that from happening, in both languages.

Also I don't want to make it seem like everyone out here only reads manga - I'd say books on the train probably still outnumber manga... there's also a fair bit of PSPs and DSes out there, as well as the girls that will sit there and just mess with their phones the entire time they're on the train.

So bottom line, does reading manga instead of books make my barber a simple person? Nah, I think it just makes him more Japanese. I think I can deal with that.

What happened to real bbqs?

Ah yes, the charcoal, smoke from the grill, drinks and friends, hot dogs and bur... wait, what happened to the burgers?!? It's barbeque season, and as barbeque is one of the things I think the US does best in terms of food, I take pride in firing up the grill with some regularity out here as well. There are definitely some things I miss though, like burgers!

This past weekend I helped organize a little barbeque, and while I was grabbing a spot and setting up the grill, the Japanese co-organizers were over at the store picking up the meat and everything. Knowing from previous experience, I explicitly told them to pick up burgers and sausages that could be placed in a bun, resembling what you or I might know as a "hot dog" (go ahead, do the airquotes along with me).

Japanese people love barbequing, but the concept of a burger on the grill seems to be utterly lost to them. My partners in crime come back with the standard Japanese faire - yakiniku-style meat (small little bite-sized pieces that can be eaten easily with chopsticks - see above), yakisoba, veggies, and some quite nice bacon-wrapped asparagus sticks. What's missing? Where's my burgers?? They tell me that the store, while touting itself online as a "bbq specialty" market that even rents out grills and other ancillary barbeque equipment and furniture, does not carry burgers. Or buns, for that matter. That sir is an outrage!! It is a rather standard outrage here though as I mentioned, because I've been to many a barbeque in Japan and never see them pull out burgers. I should note, however, that speaking to a German attendee he said that Germans don't really do burgers either... he was with me on the sausages though.

So yesterday, feeling slightly unsatiated with my whole barbeque experience, I went to the store and bought some hamburger meat and made some hamburgers, fired up the grill yet again and topped them off with some Jack Daniel's Honey BBQ sauce, with Old Bay seasoned fries on the side (it's a MD thing). Situation tastily averted.

Tipping the Scales - the US vs. Japan

Well I am feeling just great here - given my reemergence on the capoeira scene as of the past year or so and my more than open work schedule as of late, I'm probably in the best shape I've been since moving out to Miyagi almost 3 years ago now. My weight's right about where I want it, and being so active gives me a ton of energy. Maybe it's rubbing off, but my female companion person has been feeling the need to get back into exercising, which with her schedule is a much more arduous task.

To reach her newly founded goal of losing 5kg, she is using one of the newer fitness fads out here lately (and apparently worldwide I'm told), Core Rhythms. It replaced Billy's Boot Camp, so that automatically gives it cool points. I find it to be absolutely hilarious, but she enjoys it and that's all that's important. She wanted to have a definite starting point to the whole thing though, so she picked up this scale that measures BMI and body fat and all, which brings us to today's topic.

You see, Japan has entirely unrealistic weight standards for me and just about any other non-Asian descent foreigner here you speak to, but that won't stop the doctor from tell you you're fat based on his standards if you go in for a checkup. I wasn't totally sure what BMI was exactly, or what acceptable values for it or body fat were, so I did a little research on world standards and how they stack up against Japanese standards as shown in the instruction manual for the scale and what I could find online.

First off BMI, or Body Mass Index, is basically your weight divided by the square of your height.
Anything below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5-24.9 is acceptable and over 25 is overweight. There are different levels of everything, for example over 30 is obese, over 40 is morbidly obese and under 15 is known as "Skeletor".

So this is the ideal range, what's the actual ideal? Well this is where you start finding different results... there have been studies by a Japanese guy (go fig) that say that the absolute ideal is between 21 and 22 according to this and this other sites, meaning that at roughly 5'6" you should weigh 138lbs! This is just simply not going to happen anytime in my lifetime. The instruction book for the scale said you should aim for 23 however, which would put me at about 145lbs or so. Here's a readout on a site I found based on the Japanese standard:

Translation:
Your height: 169cm
Your weight: 68kg

Your height-standard weight is 62.83kg.
Your ideal weight is 57.12kg.
Difference between your weight and the standard is 5kg.
Difference between your weight and the ideal is 10kg.
Your obesity level is NaN (searched again and came up with 8.228%)
Your BMI index is 23.8.

...so that means that BMI 22 is even too high, what?!?!? Me at 57kg (BMI 20 and 122lbs!) would just be disgusting, but I'm convinced that this is exactly the kind of unrealistic weights that Japanese doctors expect to see from Japanese people. As this brings back not-so-fond memories of pictures of me as a scrawny, pimple-faced high schooler, I don't see that happening ever, ever again. If you have any muscle mass at all then that is totally unrealistic, and even with no muscles would still make you look all scrawny and puny like some goth chick in Harajuku or gyaru in Shibuya so skinny that she looks like a skeleton with skin, and believe you me, you will witness this at least once with a little walking around. The proof that doctor's spread this kind of weight goal to everyone is in the pudding - everyone here is chasing unrealistic weight goals and it shows.

This to me is such a huge disservice to the Japanese public - if you think all girls are self conscious about their weight then you should see what it's like with some seriously effed standards breathing down their necks (see Harajuku/Shibuya reference above)... stressful I'm sure. It makes me think of a situation where a kid's parents pressure him to get straight A's his whole life, then he gets a B+ one day in gym or something because he's all skeletor and stuff and his parents shit a collective brick. What good is that really? Not everyone wants to be a stick figure with a 4.0 GPA, geez.

As for those body fat levels, according to this site healthy for my age would be between 8-19%, and my girlfriend should be aiming for 21-33%. The simplified goals in the scale instruction manual list 10-20% for men and 20-30% for women, not too far off. With a body fat % of 17ish, I'm right inside the world safe zones both here and on BMI, but I hope to get the fat one down a little.

I shall not be losing 10 or even 5kg, in fact if anything I might wind up gaining a little overall in terms of muscle - screw Matsutaka-sensei and his whack standard weights to hell!! I won't let my girlfriend get down on things - I think she's awesome staying in the BMI23-25 range and focusing more on keeping the fat down. If she hits 22 then I'm taking her out for some yakiniku or something, no unrealistic goals for her either.

My struggles with カビ

Ah yes spring, my favorite season is finally here! The sakura have bloomed, the birds are chirping, and the temperatures are just perfect for at least a month or two before the unbearable heat and humidity of the Japanese summer that will undoubtedly be accompanied by excessive amounts of AC blasting throughout the trains and stores across town.

It also means the return of an old nemesis: mold. Mold and Japan go hand in hand like... I dunno, two things that go together really well. Given my current choice of breakfast I'm gonna go with "like bananas and strawberry yogurt". Anyway, lots of mold in Japan.

My history with mold in Japan goes back to my first days here a few years back when I lived in an all tatami apartment. It was spacious and free so I wasn't complaining at all, but come spring I knew why people avoid tatami mats and go for western style rooms. I went away one weekend and left the windows open to air the place out, then came back and it half looked like I had a lawn in my apartment! You need to keep your place clean to avoid mold settling in, and this goes double for tatami mats. This was up in Tohoku as well, so I'm sure that having tatami rooms further south could only be worse.

So ok, lesson learned and I haven't lived in a tatami-based home since. Now this time around, I look in my closet the other day and what do I find? Mold, growing on some clothes! This place tends to gather condensation a bunch since it's on the 1st floor. And here I thought people avoided living on the 1st floor in Japan so people wouldn't look in their windows and/or steal their panties (girls only), but yes, the 1st floor is more likely to have bug and mold problems as well.

Now what do you do if you have mold? How do you avoid it? You need to be careful of any place where condensation might gather, such as closets, drawers, around the bathroom and washing machine, the kitchen and close to windows. In general, you need to keep the place clean, have good air flow and not allow hot air to settle if you can help it. Here are some tips that I found:

1. After you take a shower/bath, before you leave turn on the fan, then rinse the walls off first with hot water, then with cold water. This cools the place down and gives all the hot air a chance to get out.
2. Always turn the fan on in the kitchen when cooking or running hot water, and leave the fan on for a little afterwards too.
3. Leave things like beds and couches set off from the wall about 5cm or so as mold tends to gather in small crevices.
4. Buying a dehumidifier is the easiest for sure, but if you don't want to or can't afford it then there are these things you can buy at DIY shops to help handle humidity. I got a bunch to stick in drawers, some that you can hang in your closet, and bigger ones that you can just place on the floor anywhere that tends to get hot and/or moist. The closet ones were called ドライペット if you're interested, but that's just the brand.
5. If you have tatami mats, wipe them down regularly! First you go through with a damp cloth, then a dry one. I did it once every 2-3 weeks depending on need.
6. Clean things regularly (!!), and every now and then check areas you don't use or look every day such as drawers, spare futons, around windows, in the shoe storage areas, etc. Here's a diagram I found covering everything, although it's in Japanese.

Here's the original Japanese for a site I was looking off to make this list if you're interested. One thing I thought was interesting on the site was that it mentioned that because Japan has such a humid climate, the culture developed a bunch of fermented food products, such as miso, soy sauce and nihonshu (sake). If that's the case, I wonder why cheese never caught on here??? Sigh... I could make a whole other post about that one.

Japan and swine flu hyper reactions

Well here I am, back in Japan for a week now. Time back home sure seemed to fly!

So before we even landed in Narita, we got smacked with the most recent pandemic that has swept the nation of Japan: swine flu hysteria. Note that the pandemic is not swine flu itself, which has been widely shown to be only about as strong as the seasonal flu and only has a few hundred cases worldwide, but the hysteric hyper over reactions to it I've witnessed everywhere.

In the plane they gave everyone in the plane a health survey to fill out along with the standard customs and disembarkation papers, which is ok enough I guess, but then the real fun started when the plane touched down. We were made to wait in our seats 30 minutes for a quarantine inspector to make it to our plane, at which time the less-than-comfortable-or-attractive masks were summarily passed out to all passengers (note: none of the stewardesses were wearing masks at any time, even during the inspection, so I assume that they at least realize the folly in all of this). Then the inspector comes through with an industrial-sized mask and a heat-sensing camera to check us all out. He checked our surveys one by one then gives us this sheet saying they'll call to check on us later.

Another half hour later we're out of the plane, and after showing the paper to the new makeshift quarantine gate it's reentry as usual... except for another camera crew and yet another accompanied by news staff trying to interview people on their "scary" bouts with the flu abroad. I'm sure they were sitting there for a while trying to get someone that was actually scared about the flu so they could put it on tv and spread baseless fear across the country. Looking around, we weren't the only ones that had shed their masks before even leaving the airport, so I'm imagining that most all of the people coming from abroad are much more cool-headed about things since they have not been exposed to said Japanese media scare-mongering.

2 days later, my girlfriend and I both separately got calls from the quarantine center asking us if we had any signs of the flu or anything. After I told the lady no, she said to call her if anything arose and that she'd waste her time again in another 10 days to call me and the hundreds of others that flew in.

Since getting back I've seen various reactions of people, with a strong delineation between those that read news elsewhere and those that get all their information locally. One friend told me that someone in her office that went to Hong Kong over Golden Week was told not to come into work for 10 days, and that he would be forced to use his own vacation days to do so. He was understandably upset. While I do find this disturbing, as 病休 (sick leave) is basically only used in Japan (by Japanese, at least) if you wind up in a hospital overnight I was not entirely surprised. I've heard other direct accounts that even people that are sent abroad for business trips at certain companies are forced to take a voluntary leave of absense upon returning on their own time.

I also ran across this story over at Japan Probe about university rules for travel on Golden Week, etc. This in from Waseda:

日本大学は全学渡航禁止命令を出しました。日本国内で一人でもインフルエンザが確認された場合、全学休講となります。外出をなるべくひかえ人混みに行かないように注意。

Student travel is forbidden, and students are told to avoid going out - especially to crowded places. The e-mail states that if one single human infection is confirmed in Japan, the whole school will be shut down.

One case in the country, and the whole school shuts down. Forget international travel, they won't even allow national traveling, say to visit family? Geez, over-react much?

So you'd imagine from all this that there's been at least a few cases in Japan thus far, right? Well just the other day there was finally a bonafide case of swine flu in the news. 3 Japanese coming back from Canada contracted it, so the reaction was to quarantine them and about 50 others on the plane, putting them up in a hotel. The account of one of the guys stuck in the hotel were just incredulous to me:

A Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official asked the man not to leave his the room, except for meals, to wear a sanitary mask and not to touch anything if he had to leave the room.

Hotel employees have been prohibited from entering the travelers’ rooms, so the man cannot get room service, he said.

He said he has to wash his clothes in the bathroom of his room. He puts used towels inside a plastic bag and leaves them outside the room to be picked up by a hotel employee, he added.

For lunch Saturday, he said he had curry rice in what appeared to be a conference room. In the room, about 15 round tables were set at intervals of about three meters apart, apparently to prevent quarantined people from coming into contact with each other and spreading the virus they may possibly be infected with, he said. He sits alone at a table to eat, he said.

For dinner that day, he said he had steak.

He was asked to take his temperature in the morning, afternoon and evening.

A doctor visited him Saturday evening and told him he showed no flu symptoms, he said.

The man said he was in an unfortunate situation, but quarantining him and the other travelers was the only way to prevent the virus from spreading.

A certain phrase comes to mind that I think sums up the whole situation rather nicely...

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
-FDR