Hiku (引く): to draw back or recede.
Komoru (篭る): to seclude oneself or be confined.
Hikikomori (引き籠もり): A person who isolates themself and refuses all human contact for long periods of time, often years. The term also refers to the entire social phenomenon.

Japanese society places many demands upon its youth. Its educational system is structured as a vast selection machine in which performance even while very young contributes to one’s eventual standing in society. “Social mobility is extremely easy for the able individual. On the other hand, people fear that if they do not succeed against the competition, the fall will be limitless.” (Kurimoto) The educational system itself is not the only problem, as children are quick to bully others who stand out, even to the point of suicide.

Most people eventually emerge into adult life unscathed. However, for a small fraction of them, the pressure proves too much to bear. As a consequence, they simply refuse to participate. In the young, the problem is called school refusal. Those who had held out until adulthood in the hopes that things would improve end up hikikomori.

The problem with hikikomori is that it is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Tatsuhiko Takimoto, whose best-selling novel Welcome to the NHK is based on his own experiences as a hikikomori, writes:

The largest source of rage is his own personal cowardice.

He is poor because he lacks the skill with which to earn money. He has no girlfriend because he lacks charisma. But the process of seeing this truth and acknowledging his own incompetence requires quite a bit of courage. No human beings, regardless of who they might be, want to look directly at their own shortcomings.

Hikikomori often suffer crushing self-esteem issues which make it difficult for them to even contemplate improving themselves. There are legitimate obstacles to their finding a traditional job, but few manage even to support themselves as freeters. The majority are instead are supported by their parents, and either live with them or are entirely supported by a stipend from them.

Parents of hikikomori rarely cut off funds and force their children into the world. Having one in the family is seen as an embarassment, like mental illness, so parents often aid and abet in the seclusion of their children. Schools write off extended absences as “medical trouble,” and parents leave food and allowances at their child’s doorstep.

There are any number of professionals in Japan working to help hikikomori. These can range from “rental sisters” to more traditional halfway houses. In his book Shutting Out the Sun, Michael Zielenziger writes about three:

Minami, Watanabe, and Kudo are, in Watanabe’s definition, lunatics–people who are “doing really good, original work” to help some of the most vulnerable members of their society. These three have no professional contact with one another. Each pursues a different strategy of counseling hikikomori… Yet each operates on remarkably similar principles. They want their charges to exercise individual judgment over their lives. They insist that each be held accountable for his actions and be able to distinguish between fixed, not flexible, notions of right and wrong. They want to encourage individual autonomy over collective sensibilities, and recognize that these lost and sometimes troubled young adults can prosper only in an open, flexible, and trusting environment.

Eventually, some hikikomori emerge on their own, and some through the assistance of professional help. Many, however, are only thrust back into the real world with the death of their parents. With no professional background, no social skills, and no sense of how to deal with the world around them, the fate of these unfortunates remains unknown.

There’s a sad statistic that’s on the rise in Japan these days: divorce.

The combination of the country’s rapidly aging society, high stress levels and a new law that enables a woman to claim up to half of her husband’s company pension is causing the number of older couples getting a “vintage year divorce” to rise.

When I was an English teacher, I taught a wide range of students, including a fair number of housewives, and I remember being surprised by the venom some of the women were capable of spitting when discussing their husbands. I didn’t understand at the time that at least some of this husband-bashing was part of a Japanese social custom you might call “out-humbling each other,” as women try to show that they have the most worthless, lazy husband in the room. (Japanese mothers and grandmothers will do the same thing when discussing their own children with others, having competitions to see whose kids were the most baka, and I’ve had to expressly forbid this kind of talk in my own home.)

The divorce rate in Japan is still comparatively low — currently around 2.2 per 1000 people per year, compared with 4 in the U.S. and 2.6 in the U.K. — but finding someone who is batsu-ichi (lit. “one strike out”) is a lot more common than it has been in the past. Coupled with the trend of women either marrying much later or not at all, it Japan has some tough issues to face as the 21st century progresses.

The combination of a slow news day and other real-world concerns it making it hard to post today, so here is BBC a report that though a bit dated, provides a pretty good idea of young woman fashion in Japan that is still pretty applicable today.

There are three kinds of employees in Japan: full time, part time, and arubaito.

The last type, the name for which comes from the german word for “work” (arbeit), refers to contract-less employees who are paid by the hour and work irregular or semi-temporary schedules, as differentiated from full company employees, who have benefits like twice-annual bonuses and vacation time, and semi-official part-timers, who also have some formal benefits.

One of the biggest trends in post-bubble Japanese society is the tendency of younger workers to shun traditional full-time employment, instead being content to work informal jobs staffing video rental stores and gas stations, tutoring at evening cram schools, and so on. According to a new government report, an amazing 35% of the workforce now occupies these “non-regular” employment positions, exchanging freedom to change jobs at will and less on-the-job stress for lower job security.

Why so many would choose to work as freeters (as these part-time and temporary workers are called) puzzles older Japanese, who of course benefited greatly from the stable economic growth of the postwar period. The reasons ‘baito is so popular are many, but one big one is that many Japanese have come to value their own leisure time over work.

This is a good thing of course, although I personally consider the industriousness of the Japanese people as a whole to be no less than a National Treasure for the country, and something that I hope will continue into the future.

The New York Times recently reported on a new trend in Japanese tourism, both those visiting Japan and Japanese going abroad. While fewer Japanese are traveling outside the country, more foreigners are visiting; most of whom are coming from Asian countries.

Once prohibitively expensive, Japan is suddenly drawing soaring numbers of Asian tourists who splurge at the nation’s department stores, lounge in its hot spring resorts or explore remote corners, like this stretch of pristine mountains and forests on Japan’s northernmost tip.

Japan itself was once known for its free-spending tourists, who flocked to boutiques from Hong Kong to Fifth Avenue. But as Japan’s economy stalled for the last dozen or so years, rapid development in countries like China and South Korea raised living standards there.

At the same time, there has been a decline in the number of people going abroad from Japan. The number of Japanese traveling abroad has fallen 3 percent from the peak in 2000 of 17.8 million, the government-run Japan National Tourist Organization said.

By contrast, the number of visitors to Japan from South Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong almost doubled last year from five years earlier, to 5.36 million, according to the tourist group. Those four regions alone accounted for nearly two-thirds of all foreign visitors to Japan last year, the organization said.

Many Asian tourists interviewed said they liked to shop here because Japan has the latest fashions first, and at prices way below those in many other Asian countries, where tariffs are steep. They also said they liked visiting Japan because it was close, safe and cleaner than much of the rest of Asia.

During the 1980s, Americans were the largest group of overseas visitors to Japan, but have now fallen to fourth behind South Korea, Taiwan and China. Surveys also showed Asian tourists came to Japan for different reasons than Westerners. While Americans said they came to see cultural attractions like temples, Asians cited shopping, followed by hot springs and nature. Visits to factories are also popular, he said.

or yet another entry in my long series of crap that no one reads

in response to the horrible stabbing spree in akihabara, tokyo, japan a few weeks ago the japanese national police agency has once again shown why policy changes proposed during the height of public panic and tragedy have such a reputation for being well thought out, logically consistent, and effective in practice.

it has been decided that the most effective way to prevent such incidents from happening in the future is to help strengthen the familial and social bonds within japanese communities to reduce feelings of alienation and bitter isolation in the nation’s citizenry. to educate citizens on what to watch for in individuals that might indicate possible instability and what to do. to take steps to decrease the stigma associated with mental illness and the shame which prevents families and friends from reporting strange behavior to get counseling and medication for their loved ones. to increase the penalties for those who commit violent crime, and to revamp laws to favor self defense and empower people to stop criminals like this before hostile situations get further out of hand. all while recognizing that no matter what legislation is enacted, not all murders can be prevented or tragedies averted.

no, i’m just kidding, they want to ban double bladed knives and increase the restrictions on guns. to quote the article:

A panel of legal and other experts has submitted a report to the National Police Agency, saying daggers and other double-edged knives should be banned “to prevent their use in serious crimes. Such knives are “originally intended for stabbing and are highly dangerous…The panel…also recommends tightening laws on firearms

obviously all such incidents and stabbings could be prevented if only the authorities only took away every dagger, hunting, bowie, butterfly, switchblade, exacto and pocket knife, church key, and letter opener in the country. maybe they could melt them down into a healing image of hello kitty to commemorate the loss of lives in akihabara. i mean its not like people could find an alternative murder weapon. or that single edged knives could possibly hurt anybody. or that any of these blades have legitimate uses besides stabbing people. or that knives in japan are already regulated to help prevent crimes like this. or that those laws failed to prevent this massacre. or…

while they’re at it why not just outlaw the wedge? it is after all the most evil of the simple machines.

and i think we can all make the logical conclusion that a madman running down innocent people in a car, then getting out of the car and stabbing others with a knife until stopped by a heroic group of officers carrying firearms, is really an issue resulting from lax gun regulation and slap on the wrist gun crime laws. we all know that had hunting rifles been illegal the aum attack would never had happened. and if paintball guns didn’t exist, neither would takuma. seriously though, wtf?

i guess they’ll be coming after video games next. it would complete the trifecta of stupidity after all. if only children weren’t allowed to see violence they wouldn’t be violent, etc., etc.

but if japan wants to insist on banning items that can be used as weapons and strengthening laws on items already restricted then i’ll help them with my own non-comprehensive list of things to be banned.

i think this would be a good start, murder would probably vanish, and the ignored mentally ill would most likely join hands and sing songs under a rainbow.

according to an article in the new york times online,written by norimitsu onishi, the ashes in a japanese urn are an apt metaphor for the future of the system of funeral buddhism in the country.

where as in the past, the japanese reliably counted on buddhist priest’s and their rituals as a source of comfort during the time surrounding the death of a loved one, many now are choosing to go with services provided funeral homes or cremations with no services at all (preferring instead to dump their loved one’s remains in the nearest ashtray and keep their kaimyo in the toilet in case they need something to aim at when they’re drunk).

photo of a priest staring disinterestedly at a wall, hat tip to the old grey lady

while there are a myriad of reasons for this shift in attitudes towards death and the proper place of religion during this time, to numerous to be discussed in detail here, there are a few notable trends listed in the articles.

1) the accelerated drop in religious belief in the cities combined with their ever increasing populations has led to a large group of people who have no religious belief whatsoever and see no need to start on the day of their death.

2) the rural demographic, where until recently buddhism was still strong, is aging and dying off as the younger generations move to cities and the birthrates are not enough to make up for the exodus of population and businesses. this leaves country temples serving an ever dwindling number of less affluent elderly to serve, thus making many temples financially insecure.

3) the sense of japanese that buddhism doesn’t cater to the needs of the living, thus making them more indifferent to what it teaches about what happens after death; and the lack of change in that area the clerics seem to want to make in this regard.

4) a lack of moral authority apparent in the buddhist temples since the end of wwii when they began to sell prestigious posthumous names to people who paid them enough money, thus denigrating names once reserved for revered buddhist adherents with strong moral characters to an indulgence of sorts. as appropriate in situations like these payments are usually made in unmarked in envelopes on a no receipt-cash only basis.

5) the general expense of traditional funerals combined with new rent a priests employed by funeral homes to provide services for people they most likely have never met before and willing to provide honest listings of fraudulent extravagant titles that can be attained at rock bottom prices and you get a receipt.

all these factors are combining together to create an a daunting challenge to the continuing existence of temples across the country. with funeral expenses being analogous in importance to these temples as tithing is to churches and synagogues in the west in terms of revenue sources, many priests face being the last generation of clerics ministering their religion in japan.

as a consequence many temples are expected to close their doors over the coming decades, taking with them (they claim) a major source of local history and sense of community and continuity in their local precincts. of course some of the major private and state sponsored temples and unesco tourists sites will be unaffected, but many charming repositories of small town rural culture will be disappearing. so if you always wanted to visit that one out of the way zen garden that somehow escaped being listed in the travel guides and is free of tourists, now might be a good time.

soon places like this might be overgrown memories of a different age

few random closing thoughts…
a) what’s going to happen to all the libraries of coin lockers supposedly holding parishioners souls? talk about a crappy afterlife, you’re closed in a hole in the wall until the local priest can’t make ends meet and then bulldozed; lame.

b) i find it darkly humorous that the priests see many of the sources of their decline, recognize they are preventable, and then do nothing. this lethargy in response to their situation seems to come from a certain amount of apathy about their beliefs. they talk about how other religions provide sermons and community services outside of funerals to keep their faith relevant to their congregations as if it would be some theoretically nice thing to do, and then take no action to emulate. has buddhism in japan become this esoteric that it no longer has an application in people’s daily lives? i suspect that it’s just laziness on the part of the priests

c) perhaps this is just the logical conclusion to japan’s seeming cognitive dissonance on the issue of religion. after all if you don’t believe in it and didn’t live your life according to its precepts and went to your death this way, how would having an extravagant funeral change this? it you believe that human existence ends when the lungs stop breathing, the heart stops beating, and the neurons stop firing signals through their dendrites why waste your money to commemorate, dedicate, exalt, and provide a home for a soul you don’t even believe exists? and if you do believe in a deity or higher power of some sort exists, do you really think that a life spent living in sin and unbelief can be made up for by having a really cool name and a nice funeral? i guess these types of services are more for the living, but if that’s true why not remember the dead in your own way? it would be a lot more meaningful and cost effective than spending over ten thousand dollars for a piece of lacquered wood and empty platitudes from some guy who never even met the deceased.

d) think of the boon to the horror movie industry. decrepit buildings, abandoned alters, moss covered statues, rooms with soul lockers; this will be great!

The New York Times has an interesting article on Japanese energy technology. What always leaves me scratching my head is how this environmentally-minded country has such lousy windows and insulation which leads to more heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer (and thus more energy consumed and greater expense). I’d also love to see an accounting for all of the energy consumed by the millions of ubiquitous vending machines!

Now, with oil prices hitting dizzying levels and the world struggling with global warming, [Japan] is hoping to use its conservation record to take a rare leadership role on a pressing global issue. It will showcase its efforts to export its conservation ethic — and its expensive power-saving technology — at next week’s meeting in Japan of the Group of 8 industrial leaders.

“Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure,” Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said. Japan “wants to contribute to the world,” he said.

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less. It is also the only industrial country that sustained government investment in energy research even when energy became cheap again.

Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union or the United States, and one-eighth as much as China and India in 2005. While the country is known for green products like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have been in less eye-catching areas, for example, in manufacturing.

Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged at the equivalent of a little more than a billion barrels of oil since the early 1970s, according to Economy Ministry data. It was able to maintain that level even as the economy doubled in size during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and ’80s.

It took my wife a year to train me to take a shopping bag with me when I went over to the konbini to buy lunch. It was all I could do to remember my shoes and what I was supposed to buy when I got there. And when I got there, I usually realised I’d forgotten the bag. But eventually, like Pavlov’s dogs - only different - I was conditioned to hear the call for lunch, and automatically pick up a shopping bag.

What has taken slightly longer is training the staff in the konbini to stop trying to give me another bag every day. Along with chopsticks, spoons, forks, and wipes that I don’t need.

I stood at the cash register, counting out money, the bag tucked under my arm, and keeping my left eye on my money, I’d have to swivel my right eye - chameleon-like - to catch them as they grab a plastic bag. I’d tell them I didn’t need one. They’d express surprise, then thank me, then apologise. I tried variations on this which involved opening the bag obviously while counting out my money, but found that not only did this do nothing to dissuade them from thinking I might like another bag, it also required three hands at the very least.

After two years of standing at the till going through this Groundhog Day routine, I was shaken out of my complacency today. I chatted with the cashier about the weather - good, safe, conversational ground for the English and Japanese - and then something peculiar happened. We just stood looking at each other waiting for someone to do something.

I realised that the routine had been thrown to the wind - she’d overcome her reflex to reach for a bag. Unprepared, I stood there, gormless, with my MyBag (yes, ‘my MyBag‘) under my arm (no, not ‘my MyArm’), until my brain creaked back into action.

When I stepped outside, it was no longer raining. The sun was even making an effort to shine.

Photo from Roseville California community site, entitled ‘The Urban Tumbleweed’

The New York Times has a nice bio piece on Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Nintendo’s Wii game system as well as Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, and Zelda! The latter 3 games have sold more than 350 million copies while the new Wii system has sold 25 million units.

• He lives near Kyoto with his wife and two school-age children.
• This past spring, he was voted the most influential person in the world in an online Time 100 poll.
• He has been an instrumental part of Nintendo gaining a net worth of $8 billion and making Nintendo’s former chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi the richest man in Japan.

Toyota recently became the world’s leading car maker and the Associated Press is reporting that last month it surpassed 1,000,000 gas-electric hybrid Prius sold (I looked it up, Toyota says the plural of Prius is Prius).

• The Prius first went on sale in 1997.
• It’s sold in 40 countries and regions.
• 592,000 were sold in North America and 315,000 in Japan.
• The latest model gets 48 miles per gallon (20 km per liter) in city driving and 45 miles per gallon (19 km per liter) in highway driving.

Before I started riding the trains here, I drove a Honda Insight in the U.S. and loved it. Unfortunately, it was discontinued because the 2-seater was too small to be practical for most people. Nevertheless, I’m glad that Japanese automakers are taking the lead on greener cars since the U.S. surely isn’t.

It’s one thing to idolise someone who happens to be stupid. It’s quite another to idolise someone because they’re stupid.

Japan’s pushy mothers may be missing a trick by keeping her offspring in juku (cram school) until late at night every day, when there is a clear alternative - professional idiocy.

There used to be a time when we were pretty undemanding of our entertainers provided that they had at least one marketable skill or talent. You’d forgive a good singer for being daft as a brush. Likewise you didn’t hold it against a great actor if he couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket.

Arise, おバカイドル (o-bakaidoru - a portmanteau of ‘baka’, meaning idiot, and ‘aidoru’, meaning idol) - the professional idiot.

Take the trio Suzanne (スザンヌ), Yukina Kinoshita (木下優樹菜) and Mai Satoda (里田 まい). All equally as daft as each other, and all over your TV screen all the time. See them at their ‘best’ on FujiTV’s Quiz Hexagon, hosted by the ‘punchy’ Shinsuke Shimada, where they will be set up and mocked for your delectation.

So taken were they with the girls’ talents, FujiTV execs even made the girls into a pop trio called Pabo (which is apparently Korean for, you guessed it, ‘idiot’).

And to prove it’s not all bimbos, there’s quite a selection of himbos too. Check out Shuuchishin (羞恥心) if you haven’t been driven to distraction by their played-to-death current single already. They’re another baka trio made up of Takashi Tsuruno (つるの剛士), Yuusuke Kamiji (上地雄輔) and Naoki Nokubo (野久保直樹).

FujiTV, who are giving the phrase “mindless entertainment” an entirely new spin, has a lot to answer for.

in an apparent chemistry experiment gone awesome, a 14 year old girl managed to not only to give herself considerable trouble breathing, but forced an evacuation of her apartment complex. according to police this is only an isolated incident in a series of similar experimentation through out the nation. driven to recreating this inspiring chemical reaction by educational websites around the world, many japanese both young and old are racing to combine household cleaning products in order to artificially create the chemical responsible for odiferous flattus.

when reached for comment about how and why so many people around japan would be performing their own trails with household cleaning chemicals when the results, in addition to being well known, are also so stinky; the head of a tokyo based group specializing in this field gave this observation…

“It’s easy, and everyone can do it,”

finally a family friendly way to introduce the children to the wonders of science through empirical observation of molecule creation. think of how little taro’s eyes will light up when you tell him you’re going to show him how to create a smell like a bad fart in an enclosed space. that rebellious and angsty girl airi will finally find something she could do when she is alone. your spouse could learn a good prank to pull next time you forget your anniversary. why not just surprise everybody and do it yourself? it just takes one’s breath away when considering all the people that could benefit from testing this home school biochemical reaction.

just remember for the sake of your neighbors, please put up a notice like the one listed in the article. it is always good to let the people living around you know that might not want to partake in your pursuit of knowledge that they may need to keep a wide berth. sort of like a mythbuster’s “science content” warning.

I caught a report on TV the other day about a unique problem Japanese companies are facing. It seems that the best young employees aren’t that interested in working for companies like Honda, Mitsubishi and Sony, and instead are looking to join Google, Nike, Nokia or Microsoft if they can.

These are gaishikei or “foreign capital” companies, a term which is loaded with images of open, flexible corporate culture where individuality and fresh ideas are encouraged rather than hammered down like the proverbial “standing nail.”

While working for a Japanese company offers more stability and less fear of sudden risutora (layoffs, from the word “restructure”), young people today prefer to work in an environment where they can make a more active contribution and distinguish themselves. The trend is supposedly happening in China, too, where U.S. firms like Motorola and Intel and are proving better at winning top applicants than Japanese companies.

One job-seeker interviewed said, “I have the impression that in U.S. and European companies, I might be fortunate enough to have an idea of mine accepted and turned into a product, allowing me to see the fruits of my hard work. But this would be difficult in a Japanese organization.”

It’s a long-term crisis for Japanese companies, I’d say: the kind of bold energy that led to game-changing ideas like YouTube or even Toys R Us just couldn’t have emerged from inside Japan, since so many industries are dominated by large, hide-bound companies.

There’s another reason Japanese might prefer to work for foreign-based companies: being able to say that you work at BMW or Intel is extremely kakko ii, and anyone with a career with a well-known foreign company will surely become popular with members of the opposite sex.

You know who Domyoji is, right?

And here is the behind-the-scenes report in which his outfit is scrutinized. Personally, I don’t think he really needs to drink a zero calorie drink–he’s gotten awfully thin again.

So, what do you think about the yellow suit?

in zenkoji temple, located in nagano, a movement is taking root. instigated by an incident in which one of the tendai sect’s high priests punished a monk for insubordination by forcing him to copy sutras in a small room for two months: enraged by this form of discipline the man’s fellow monks filed a lawsuit stating that the temple authorities were violating his contract of employment.

all it needs is a gm logo

not satisfied with the possible remedies of law and equity that the courts could offer, the monk also approached nagano’s zenroren and asked them to determine whether he had cause and standing to create a union at the temple. finding that his set wages and specifically defined hours working for daikanjin, the zenroren ruled that he was legally of the same standing as a salaryman working for a corporation and approved his petition to begin union negotiations with his monks and the temple.

the resulting agreement, dubbed the zenkoji daikanjin bunkai has already inspired monks from other sects to contact their own local labor boards and ask whether they to can create their own unions. the seeming hope among these junior monks is that one day they may enjoy better working conditions and higher wages for their work at the buddhist temples and shrines across the nation.

in what is one of the more disturbing trends in contemporary japan, the maid cafes and other perverted male otaku hang outs have spawned a new branch of cafes for female otaku, ones based one gay comic book porn. that’s right, women who want to indulge their childhood fantasy of young effeminate men dressed in high school uniforms flirting with each other, engaging in oral sex, or brutally anal raping each other finally have an outlet for their fetish.

now if you’re anything like me, your fist reaction to this article might be, oh say, wtf? but apparently in japan’s never ending quest to cater to every possible kink, they have stumbled across a sizable subset of female otaku that just can’t get enough of yoai manga and doujinshi. as a consequence proprietors sensing an opportunity for profit have created bars and restaurants much like the one featured in this article. run by a woman by the name of emiko sakamaki, the place goes by the name of edlestein (named after a yoai comic set in a german high school) and features a staff of young cosmetically enhanced men. according to her and others the market is driven by the atmosphere of female indulgence that has been of which japan has, until this time, been bereft of, combined with the popularity of anime and manga, complicated by the desire for relationships which transcend traditional gender roles, all united by a sample population of young to middle aged single women who appreciate the unparalleled beauty of a fragile young teenager being raped by other men (preferably in groups).

below the buzzing metropolis of tokyo in the depths of a high rise building is a microcosm of an agricultural revolution. in a facility staffed by former freeters looking for a source of lasting employment, there are six rooms dedicated the the seeding, germination, and successful growth of various vegetables. why is this anything exciting, you might ask?

while for the last century large scale indoor cultivation has been commonly practiced around the world and indoor greenhouses and grow rooms are used by people as varied as researchers to marijuana growers, what is interesting about this experiment is the intent and unintended consquences. pasona o2, unlike its counterparts has among it goals the employment of that portion of disaffected japanese youth. in addition it is a live testing of the marginal transformation of land to capital in an urban environment.

while at first this may seem unexciting, to me it is intriguing for two reasons. first of all it is an introduction to a field of steady work for moderately educated youth to introduce themselves to both industrial and agricultural technology. while these are seemingly dying arts they are also heavily subsidized industries and thus a safe bet. secondly, while the proprietors may not see this as the future of farming, it was an object of debate in an environmental economics class in which i once enrolled. in an area where land prices are high and the soil quality is poor enough that it must be continually augmented by expensive fertilizers, there could conceivably be a situation, provided a cheap source of electricity, where hydroponic gardens in skyscapers could be the source of food to a nation and the nations to which it exports.

hat tip to pruned

Steve Levenstein over at InventorSpot writes in to point us to an article he has posted about a new Kit Kat product called Kit Kat Lucky Little that effectively turns each box of the tasty treat into an on-line computer game.

[T]he bits are either pink or white, matching the shades of the cherry blossom petals that flutter to the ground each spring in Japan. Moreover, each bag contains a different ratio of white to pink bits.

Dump ‘em out and count ‘em up… then get on your comp and go to the Nestle Japan website where you type in the number of white and pink bits, and in return are told your fortune!

A movement has started in Japan to use green lanterns (midori chochin) to signify restaurants here that use domestic ingredients in their food.

Jidori Hirokawa, a chicken dish restaurant in the basement of a building in the Kanda area of Tokyo began hanging midori-chochin, unlike traditional aka-chochin (red lanterns), at the top of the staircase leading to it in April.

The green-paper lantern has a sign reading, “This restaurant supports local produce.” The lantern also is decorated with four black stars on a five-star scale, indicating that at least 80 percent of the ingredients it uses are domestically produced.

Restaurants sporting the midori chochin are rated using a star system from one (50% domestic products) to five (90%).

Sounds nice, but since the entire scheme is based on the honor system, it is probably meaningless as the Japanese food industry has become notorious of late for mislabeling their products. So I guess all this system does is allow people to decide whether they prefer Chinese lies or the domestic kind.

See a list of midori-chochin restaurants here (Japanese).