A little something to relax by this weekend. . .

The Hikone, Shiga town mascot ひこにゃん received 43 chocolate gifts from female fans nationwide.

On Valentine’s Day in Japan, only women are supposed to give chocolate to men. But how do the ladies know “Hikonyan” is male? And where does all that chocolate go? Does the mascot keep it?

[SOURCE] [SOURCE] (Japanese)

A quick Japundit check on the web finds the mascots from other cities, including Hamamatsu, Saitama and Sendai did not receive chocolate.

“Why is Hikonyan so popular?” asked one mascot who declined to be identified speaking on official matters.

“I’ll do my best to receive chocolate next Valentine’s Day”, said another mascot.

ABOVE: Sendai’s and Saitama’s city mascots in happier times.(File photos)

By now just about everyone knows how Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Japan. If you don’t you can do a search of JAPUNDIT or the net for many different ways to tell the same story.

THe following is a simple video that I shot at the local supermarket last week, where they had literally stacks and stacks of chocolate in preparation of this special day.

In some countries, they take a much dimmer view of Valentine’s Day.

Check out this Reuters report on a Japanese guy who has totally given up on women and maintains a harem of 100 sex dolls.

A company in Tokyo named Hime & Company(Japanese page) has started offering its all-female staff “heartache leave” to provide them with paid time off to ease the pain of break-ups with loved ones.

[The company], which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. “Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate, whose company of six women markets cosmetics and other goods targeted for women, told Reuters by telephone.

Under the heartache leave scheme, Hime (which means “princess” in Japanese) employees 24 years old or younger are allowed one day off per year, workers from 25 and 29 are given two days annually, and those older than 29 are can take three.

“Women in their 20s can find their next love quickly, but it’s tougher for women in their 30s, and their break-ups tend to be more serious,” Hiradate said.

Hime & Company also claims that their “shopping leave” also helps the modern working woman avoid problems and feelings of guilt for taking off to hit the stores when sales are on.

“Before, women could take half-days off to go to sales, but you’d have to hide your shopping bags in lockers by the train station,” Hiradate said.
“But with paid leave, we don’t have to feel guilty about bringing our shopping bags to work, and we can enjoy the best part about sales shopping — talking about our purchases afterwards.”

Via Asian Pop with YienJee

Danwei is reporting that an “experienced American journalist” (experienced in what is not specified) is looking for white guys who date only Chinese women for an on-the-record chat about their affliction with yellow fever.

Apparently this information is going to be used for a serious article that will be aimed not at making the guys look bad, but rather at presenting a fair and balanced picture of the mixed race dating scene in China.

If you are interested in finding out more or in sharing your experiences, drop Danwei a line at: yellowfever@danwei.org.

A 15-year old girl was assaulted recently while shopping in Saitama Prefecture by a knife-wielding man in his 20s or 30s,who grabbed her head from behind and tried to hack off her hair.

No doubt the guy expected her to scream helplessly as he had his way with her, except it seems that he picked the wrong girl to mess with. The “victim” has a 1st degree black belt in karate and so she knows more than a little about how and where to kick. . . and so she did.

The surprised stalker was last seen putting as much distance as posible between him and young lass, with more than his pride hurting.

The girl reported the attack at the nearest police box.

Kimono-Clad Girls a dying tradition?

Kimono-Clad Girls at Meiji Shrine in Tokyo on Coming of Age Day

It was the second Monday of January and once again Japan’s new adults were out and about enjoying their new-found adulthood on the national holiday of Seijin-no-Hi: Coming of Age Day. Many young women sported their decorative kimono with the long-sleeves called furisode. While most young men wore suits, there were a few here and there that wore the formal male kimono known as a hakama.

Japan especially likes marking the ages of its populace and Seijin-no-Hi is no exception. In November, the little ones are all decked out in pretty kimono. Girls ages 3 and 7 and boys aged 5 are honored every year on the Shinto holiday, Shichi-Go-San. Another national holiday is Keiro-no-Hi in September which is respect for elders day.

As for Seijin-no-Hi, the national holiday is only a little over half-a-century old having started in 1948. Now the focus is mainly on the young women in their stunning kimono while the boys get second billing. In the past, however, the emphasis was on the boys. Young men had two coming of age celebrations in which they would change their names. At 12 and 16 they would individually go through their own private special ceremonies. For samurai households, this was a big deal with much pomp and ceremony.

As I usually do every Seijin-no-Hi, I went to Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine which serves as a magnet for kimono-clad girls and avid photographers. Meiji Shrine’s courtyard was packed with people. Disappointingly most of them were visitors and photo-hunting photographers. Occasionally, the dull visage of the monotonous fashion of the throng would be broken up with the arrival of brilliantly colored kimono-clad girls either alone or in small groups. A declining population, rising kimono prices, and a growing disinterest in traditional culture has led to fewer sightings of Seijin-no-Hi’s main attraction.

The price of kimono has risen sharply over the years especially handmade ones. A number of the furisode kimono worn on Seijin-no-Hi are family hand-me-downs, rented, or pre-made from China. The overall cost can be quite staggering. A full-fledged new furisode can be as much as $10,000. And the accompanying beauty make-over with hair styling can run up to a thousand dollars. The appointments have be made months in advance.

Kimono-Clad Girls become celebrities for one day

Why all the hassle and expense?

“For the parents it is their desire. From the day a girl is born they have the desire to dress her in furisode when she becomes 20 in the seijin shiki, take her picture, and send it to relatives as custom requires. In some cases, the mother herself also wore a furisode she received from her mother in her seijin shiki…

“If they have the possibility of dressing their daughter in a Y1,000,000 kimono it is proof that they have worked hard all their lives and can afford it. It is the result of their life work…But the girls do not always understand their parents’ feelings and they say they would prefer a car.”

(from A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan - Fashioning Cultural Identity: Body and Dress by Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni)

Kimono-Clad Girls entering Meiji Shrine

A growing percentage of young women are opting for evening gowns which while still expensive are far less expensive than the furisode and more practical.

At Meiji Shrine, two girls attracted their fair share of attention by their bold mixing of traditional fashion with modern goth chic. For footwear, they eschewed the normal sandals and tabi socks for trendy boots. One of them sported a red heart shaped bag while the other had a death’s head dangling from hers. One of them had braided hair and the other’s hair was short with a streak of red running through it.

A bold mixture of modern and traditional

In this reporter’s humble opinion, I hope that the tradition of wearing the furisode kimono continues. Evening gowns are a dime a dozen throughout the world but the wearing of the furisode kimono is a unique Japanese phenomenon.

Hopefully not the last of the Coming of Age Kimono-Clad girls

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While surrogacy is not illegal in Japan, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology has banned its members from assisting in surrogate births.

Back in October last year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare called on the Science Council of Japan to debate “the propriety of surrogacy”, and the council submitted a report last week.

The Ministry of Health’s position, as of 2003 was that “surrogate births should be completely banned with penalties“, while the Science Council’s draft report “suggests that only those who are involved in such practice for profit-making should be punished.”

Penalties should be applied to these cases, it says, “on grounds that surrogate births cannot necessarily be seen as crimes that cause harm to people.” It goes on to say -

Surrogate mothers face physical and psychological burdens and surrogate births impose serious mental effects on children, and that it is “questionable” that surrogate mothers accept the role through self-determination even if they are aware of the risks of surrogate births.

This claim to be looking out for the mental wellbeing of children and mothers angers me. Other Japundits may feel differently. To me, it smacks of deeply chauvinist patronising of ‘the little woman’ who hasn’t the capacity to know what’s best for her. There’s no mention of fathers that I noticed.

A Nagano doctor, Yahiro Netsu, who has famously flouted the ban since 2001, commented on the report -

Netsu said he felt “indignant” that the Science Council is trying to deny the spirit of self-sacrifice of surrogate mothers who help others in difficulties despite their own physical risk.

While Netsu said he supports punishing doctors who assist surrogate births for profit, the doctor charged that the council has failed to listen to people who have difficulty conceiving. The report “gives the impression that the council is trying to impose the opinions of scholars on patients,” he said.

One would have imagined that any boost to Japan’s declining birth rate would be welcomed. But the view from certain ivory towers appears to be completely different.

Yesterday my wife and I went to our favorite restaurant and noticed that the girl who had been working there was gone, replaced by a young man who was waiting the tables instead. I guessed why the girl wasn’t around — “I’ll bet she quit to get married” — and when we asked the owner, that was indeed the reason.

When it comes to men and women there’s definitely a different mind set at work over here, with a high number of women actively yearning for kekkon taishoku (leaving employment due to marriage) so they can become housewives, at least until the kids are old enough for them to return to work. While I personally believe women can do anything they set their minds to, the goals that many women in Japan set for themselves can be quite different from what’s considered the norm back home.

During my career as a teacher I had one student who had really dedicated herself to learning English, studying in the UK and working hard to achieve her goal of becoming a “ground hostess” for JAL, one of the most sought-after careers here. Naturally she threw all this away when a coworker proposed marriage to her, quitting her job and becoming the only perfectly bilingual homemaker in the neighborhood.

The challenge for me as an outsider is to keep from judging things like this from my own local world-view, since Japan isn’t the U.S. and the U.S. isn’t Japan, but sometimes it can be a challenge.

Mr. Pink writes in to tip us to a story about the All-Japan Bodybuilding Tournament held in Tokyo last year.

The following video is of Aki Nishimoto, a 41-year-old Tokyoite, who took the title of Miss Japan.

Her name is Yuka Ritty. The song is Elevator.

Lord knows just what this young lady is trying to accomplish, but her video has around 20,000 views on YouTube.

I have to admit, though. . . Japanese women do this kind of thing really well.

Via Skirmisher

In an editorial titled, “Another tradition fading,” The Japan Times reports on a recent Cabinet office survey that reveals that more than 50 percent of Japanese men think women should not stay at home and function solely as housewives.

In 1979, the percentage supporting women’s traditional house-bound role was 72 percent, and only 20 percent disagreed with that. In 1992, the ratio had increased slightly to 30 percent against house-bound wives. If this trend continues, in the next 10 years or so, the numbers reflecting new attitudes are likely to climb even further. Of course, that depends on the economy, which is one of the prime reasons for this change in long-held beliefs.

After the “bubble” years, it became a necessity for many families to have two incomes to cover the bills. With ongoing change in family structures, especially the higher divorce rate, having a wife stay at home without working became an expensive luxury.

Still, Japanese women put their family before their career (men put their careers first), and women prepare meals 85 percent of the time.

After less than a year in business, Fukuoka’s C.C. Club has pulled the plug and closed the doors on Japan’s first “host soapland” for women. (Soapland is a word that was manufactured after the Turks expressed displeasure when they found out that the bathe and bop joints in Japan were being called toruko buro, or “Turkish baths.”)

Though the C.C. Club website was attracting 10,000 hits per day, the business itself never generated the cash its owners hoped it would.

“We weren’t operating in the red, but the money wasn’t coming in the way we anticipated,” the owner tells Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 2). “The bottom line, including salaries, was about 6 million yen a month. We were deluged with inquiries, and had regular customers who flew in from as far away as Tokyo or Nagoya; but not many local women patronized our place. They wanted to have a good time, but I guess they shied away out of fear of being spotted.”

C.C. Club was on the sixth floor of a building housing other sex shops, and because the touts for other sex shops in the building lurked near the entrance, many women apparently felt reluctant to be seen entering such a place.

The basic charge for a session at the C.C. Club was 30,000 for the first 90 minutes, which could be extended in 30-minute increments at 10,000 a pop. According to the folks who ran the place, most of the women who did visit ended up spending 50,000 to 60,000 yen on a single visit. This reportedly is cheap when compared with what a woman could expect to pay at a host club.

After a few days, the folks who ran C.C. Club reopened as Lady Lady for men, which apparently is where the money is.

So. . . White men have an incurable case of Yellow Fever (hots for Asian women), right?

Well. . . Not really if you believe the result of a study titled An Economist Goes to a Bar reported by Ray Fisman at Slate online that reports on a “speed-dating experiment” that he counducted with two psychologists, Sheena Iyengar and Itamar Simonson, and fellow economist Emir Kamenica at a bar just off the Columbia campus.

One of the interesting findings of the study had to do with race.

Women of all the races we studied revealed a strong preference for men of their own race: White women were more likely to choose white men; black women preferred black men; East Asian women preferred East Asian men; Hispanic women preferred Hispanic men. But men don’t seem to discriminate based on race when it comes to dating. A woman’s race had no effect on the men’s choices.

Two wrinkles on this: We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women’s neutrality, not the men’s pronounced preference.

Via Danwei

So you’re addicted to shopping and all things kawaii, but still you feel unfulfilled. What you need is a scented credit card. You heard me.

I didn’t know these things existed, but apparently since December 2005, JCB has been issuing “women-oriented” JCB LINDA Sweet credit cards. Reportedly the cards “feature the upbeat citrus notes of mandarin, grapefruit and lemon.”

On issue, half a million of these things were snapped up. Heaven only knows how many there are out there now. Ever encountered one?

Via

Shideido continues to bring to us great commercials that show strong and beautiful women

Forbes has detailed its list of the 100 most powerful women in the world. Not surprisingly, the top position is captured by Germany’s Angela Merkel, with a number of American and European executives and politicians filling out the upper levels. And a number of Asians. There’s Wu Yi, the Vice Premier at number 2. Over in Singapore Ho Ching takes 3rd.

And where does the first Japanese face appear?

It doesn’t. Not at all.

Even the UAE got someone on the list. Japan? Not a peep.

One man’s advice on how to tell women from different East Asian countries apart.

This is part of a multi-chapter series you can see more of here.

Via asian-sirens.com

Time was, the gold standard for hair in Japan was, well, some Hollywood celebrity.

But I was struck this past spring while in Japan to see a shampoo commercial not only featuring all Japanese women, but also taking a sort of “celebrate Japanese women in general” stance to the SMAP tune “Dear Woman.”

Japan Times has an article on this phenom, claiming:

“Westerners are saying Japan is cool, and that view is winning acceptance in a kind of reverse import,” she said. “Shiseido’s advertising didn’t even talk about the shampoo’s features. Its message, that Japanese women on the go are beautiful, was more about a feeling.”

Of course, if you are a regular reader of Japundit, then you know we’ve been harping on this “reverse import” business for a while. Then there’s this:

“Our message really appealed to Japanese women, who are starting to awaken to a sense of self-confidence,” said Hiroyuki Ishikawa, who oversees hair care at Shiseido. “Up to now, Japanese women haven’t generally been chosen as global symbols of beauty.”

Riyo Mori, anyone? Maybe Hiro’s future (er, past) girlfriend is already having an impact. (And on a somewhat related note, I was intrigued to learn that my entire Riyo Mori post is on Ines Ligron’s blog . . .)