One of my favorite words of Japanese is actually wasei eigo or “made-in-Japan English.” It’s the phrase “going my way,” and it refers to people who live life in their one way without being overly concerned with society all around them, free to ignore social rules as they choose. As with the (Japanese) word “my pace,” it’s used as a fixed phrase no matter what the subject is, which makes for some strange sentences like, “That person over there is really ‘going my way.’”
Another word that changes when imported into Japanese is “free.” While the term most often has to do with absense of cost in English, in Japanese it’s more about freedom of choice, so a “free ticket” here would be a ticket that let you go on any attraction rather than one that didn’t cost you anything. A shirt that says “free size” will supposedly fit anyone (although large gaijin like me know better), and when a Japanese person goes to sell something at a flea market, in his mind he’s really going to a “free market” where anything can be bought or sold freely.
Are you an “about” person? The Japanese use this English preposition as an adjective meaning vague or imprecise.
Hydrogen sulfide - is there anything it can’t do? You don’t just have to top yourself with it - you can threaten others with it too.
Being the current suicide aide du jour taking Japan by storm, it seems it’s now being touted as an offensive weapon.
An Osaka robber dropped in on a loan company on Wednesday, threated the staff with what was purportedly the oh-so-fashionable poison, and made off with a (small) pile of cash.
At around 1:10 p.m. on Wednesday, the man entered the Nankai-Nanba-Higashiguchi branch of Aifle Corp. in Chuo-ku, Osaka, showed three employees a transparent plastic bag containing a brown liquid, and demanded money, investigators said.
“This is hydrogen sulfide. Give me your money,” he was quoted as saying. He grabbed 77,000 yen in cash from the office before fleeing. Three employees at the office were unharmed in the incident. There were no customers in the office at the time.
Now, you might argue that I’m contributing to the problem by posting this (but I’d argue that at this late stage, and in this language, it makes little difference), but would this whole palaver not have grown so huge if it hadn’t been reported in such lurid detail? I guess you could argue that they would have happened somehow anyway, but I can’t help but feel that the rash of cases of hydrogen-sulfide-facilitated suicides across Japan recently, and now this, are partly the responsibility of those who are so eagerly printing the headlines.
The NY Times has a straight-up report of the visit of Hu Jintao to Japan. Interesting points from the article:
It is the first visit by a Chinese leader in a decade.
They discussed some thorny issues including control of an underwater natural gas field in the East China Sea and an unsolved case of poison found in frozen Chinese-made dumplings sold in Japan.
China said it would lend Japan a pair of giant pandas, after a panda died of old age at a Tokyo zoo last week.
The two leaders will face each other in table tennis.
Had a hard time sleeping last night as a swarm of earthquakes kept rocking me out of my slumber over about an hour.
When I was first shaken awake by a strong jolt, I turned on the light and noted the time was 1:10 a.m. After settling back in and drifting off a bit, the house started shaking hard enough to wake me up again. This cycle off getting back to sleep and being shaken awake must have occurred about five or six times during the night, with a couple of really hard jolts thrown in for good measure. Also, there was one instance after a strong temblor when I could feel the bed continue to sway back and forth for what seemed to be quite a long time and build back up into another episode of violent shaking.
We had not had a strong earthquake for quite some time and it is easy to forget about them, but old Mother Nature has her ways of keeping you on your toes.
Officials Ohama Park in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture are asking visitors to refrain from feeding the monkeys there because, as can be seen below, overfeeding by tourists have made them grossly overweight.
Swiss lawyers are elaborating the doctrine of vegetable rights. “A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out.” In short, they are arguing that plants have inherent rights which humans can’t transgress. It sounds ridiculous. Why should we care? But we should.
A 24 page PDF edition of the committee report can be read here. One of the arguments for plant rights is that vegetables are members of “collectives”. But beyond that, each individual plant has inherent worth, rather in the way that men used to have. Therefore the committee concludes that “it is unanimously held that plants may not be arbitrarily destroyed … the majority considers this morally impermissible because something bad is being done to the plant itself without rational reason and thus without justification.”
But who is really being “empowered” by the Swiss committee’s decision? Is it plants? No. It is bureaucrats. The point of vegetable rights isn’t to give plants dignity but to transfer yet more individual human freedoms to activists and government officials.
SHIMONOSEKI, Japan — Poison has been as integral to fugu, the funny-looking, potentially deadly puffer fish prized by Japanese gourmands, as the savor of its pricey meat. So consider fugu, but poison-free.
Thanks to advances in fugu research and farming, Japanese fish farmers are now mass-producing fugu as harmless as goldfish. Most important, they have taken the poison out of fugu’s liver, considered both its most delicious and potentially most lethal part, one whoseconsumption has left countless Japanese dead over the centuries and whose sale remains illegal in the country.
But what could be seen as potential good news for gourmands has instead been grounds for controversy: powerful interests in the fugu industry, playing on lingering safety fears, are fighting to keep the ban on fugu livers even from poison-free fish.
“We won’t approve it,” Hisashi Matsumura, the president of the Shimonoseki Fugu Association and vice president of the National Fugu Association, said of the legalization of fugu liver. He added, “We’re not engaging in this irrelevant discussion.”
Some interesting facts from the NYT piece:
Shimonoseki controls about half of Japan’s fugu market.
Health authorities refuse to recognize officially that fugu can be made poison-free.
Fugu could be made poison-free by strictly controlling its feed.
Fugu has appeared in “The Simpsons,” in an episode in which Homer accidentally eats poisonous fugu.
Only one-third of all wild fugu have enough poison to kill.
Because of overfishing, wild fugu accounts for only 10 percent of the total sold in Japan.
A recent poll by Mainichi indicates that the support rate for Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s Cabinet is at 18 percent, which down six points from a previous poll conducted in April.
As many as 77 percent of respondents said they disagree with the April launch of a new medical insurance system for over-75s, while 74 percent disapproved of the reinstated provisional tax on gasoline, the result of the ruling coalition ramming a bill amending the Special Taxation Measures Law through the Diet into law.
The Fukuda Cabinet enjoyed a support rate of 57 percent when it came to power last fall.
Party-wise, the trends are the same.
As for the support rate for political parties, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) gained 20 percent, four points down from the previous poll, while the approval rate for the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) increased by six points to 28 percent. It is the first time that the support rate for the DPJ surpassed that the LDP’s since December last year, when the ratio stood at 27 percent for the DPJ versus 26 percent for the LDP.
Being a healthy male, I’m naturally fascinated with the opposite sex, and I find the subject of Japanese females to be an especially complex and interesting one.
Over the years I’ve known many Japanese females, from students I taught English to, to girls I dated, and of course my wife, and while each of them is unique, I have noticed some patterns.
Japanese females are often very concerned with how they appear to others, wanting to be chanto shiteru (roughly translatable “doing things properly, as they should be done”) in all things, and when it comes time to, say, split a lunch bill, out come the calculators so they can accurately compute the amount that each person must pay.
Often, Japanese girls feel the need to cultivate a certain kawaii character about themselves, and it’s not that difficult to find a girl in her high teens or twenties who thinks its cute to hold her coat sleeves in her hands to make herself look “super deformed,” to refer to herself in the third person or to spontaneously channel a “catgirl” without warning.
While there are exceptions, most Japanese girls are extremely slender, and I’ve known grown women here who, when visiting the U.S., need to shop at Gap Kids if they want to find their size.
Thanks to eating rice three times a day, Japanese females are constipated more often than not, and spend great quantities of money on exotic Chinese herbal remedies, when all they need to do is eat a little less rice.
I could go on, but I wouln’t want to ruin the mystique of Japanese women for anyone, and besides, they confuse me, too.
* Golden Week in Japan
* All comedy/novelty tunes this week
Listener Mail
* Cat In The Rain: Keep up the good show
* Keep up the great show, Mr. JP! I’m your big fan in Japan.
* David Penner: Thanks for podcast
* David Powell: Don’t forget Monkey Majik
* David Appelyard: Evidence?
* Kevin: What about Japanese health insurance system?
Japan News Roundup
* Gasoline prices back up in Japan
* Truck driver arrested for stealing fuel
* Fight break out in gas lines
* Aomori University: Coffee may help prevent uterine cancer
* Robert De Niro to expand into Japanese-style hotels
* Japanese whisky crowned best in the world
* Chinese snub ex-PM Koizumi with Olympic invites
* Japanese companies poorly organized
* Where’s the butter in Japan?
* Court awards damages for man who worked self into a coma
* Man arrested for holding ex-girlfriend hostage
* Man arrested for assaulting flowers
* City worker fired for viewing porn on the job
* Japan to give preferential visa treatment for language knowledge
* Banker wanted to be a weirdo… succeeds… arrested
It’s Golden Week and things are slow, but here is the Open Thread for this week.
Readers are invited to discuss things that have been on their minds, regardless of whether they are on topic.
If you are dying to say something that normally would be deleted under comment rules, here is your chance. Rules are very loose for open thread posts, and usual restrictions concerning topic matter do not apply.
Before, during and after World War II, the stereotypes Japanese held of United States (US) citizens and the stereotypes US citizens held of Japanese citizens changed drastically. At a certain time before World War II, some Japanese held a neutral feeling about people from the US, while others held a positive view of US citizens and US culture. In the US, compared to other Asian nationalities, there were many positive feelings about Japanese citizens as well. Leading up to World War II, however, the US government and US writers created myths that all Japanese were despotically ruled, automatons, who would do anything for the glory of their emperor-that they were the new eastern imperialists. In response, Japanese writers began to create myths that all people from the US were evil, barbarous, imperialists as well. Nonetheless, directly after World War II was over, these myths changed drastically. Amazingly, the negative stereotypes held on both sides changed into positive stereotypes almost overnight. Over the last half of a century, the stereotypes on both sides have oscillated back and forth, between good, neutral and bad, due to many varied circumstances. What caused such drastic changes in stereotypes between citizens of the US and of Japan? What can be done to insure that people of different cultures maintain positive images of one another? What can be done to insure that peace is maintained between the US and Japan?
Stories about misbehaving public officials are commonplace - they differ only in the details. But the details usually make interesting reading.
A Wakayama prefecture civil servant hasmadeworldwideheadlines with a feat of astonishing dedication.
Tax-payers in Kinokawa wish he could show similar dedication to his job. For it has been revealed in a 9-month period, the horny civil servant clocked up more than three quarters of a million hits on pornographic websites from his work computer.
His superiors were alerted to the problem only when his computer became infected with a virus.
The 57-year-old man, who has not been named, works for the city of Kinokawa in southern Japan.
That works out at almost 10,000 pages a day, or more than 20 each minute he was at his desk.
The BBC reports that his habit “reached its peak” last July with more than 177,000 page hits times during office hours.
Japanese company Coptiar Japan Co. has struck gold with http://www.copitar.co.jp/06/ that make it possible for people to enjoy tapping away at blocks of sand to find “fossils” that can be assembled into a dinosaur.
“Up until now the only type of excavations sets were either cheap or expensive,” said a public relations official for the company, which has set the price of its kits at a moderate 2,940 yen including tax.
The kits feature a block of hardened sand containing dinosaur “bones.” Using a hammer and chisel, users chip away at the block to uncover the bones, and then put them together to form skeletons of various dinosaurs, including the tyrannosaurus and the triceratops.
May Day in Kyoto not only involves a parade honoring International Worker’s Day, but also marks the opening of verandas in restaurants in Pontocho along the Kamogawa River.
A pair of maiko (apprentice geisha) shoes at the entrance of a Pontocho restaurant.
The restaurant where I ate had a little screen separating our area from the veranda next door. When I looked over, I spotted a camera crew setting up equipment. A little later, it became clear why the cameras were there.
A little breeze hit the screen, and in the opening, I could see a smiling maiko.
I’m pretty sure this was some kind of news crew documenting the start of the May and the opening of the verandas, which will be accessible till September 30th.
May is also the start of the Pontocho geiko dances at the Kaburencho.
Someone managed to catch a snippet of the dances last year, and upload it onto Youtube.
The folks over at BoingBoing TV have written in to alert us to something called TOKYOLOGY, a new documentary exploring contemporary Japanese pop-culture hosted by Carrie Ann Inaba.
Oh, what adventures await: sneak behind the scenes at a Japanese Rock TV show that pretends it’s shot in Los Angeles, cruise Harajuku, go clubbing with goth girls in Shinjuku, shop for shoes with Lolitas, experience the madness of the Tokyo Anime Fair, visit a video game company, browse the streets of Akihabara, and meet anime creator Yoshitoshi Abe.
Japanese company 
