Category: Japanese Society/Culture

Rebuilding beef trade with Japan could take years
Anybody want to bet how long it is before they find more infected beef and halt importation from the US again?
My money’s on three months or less, and this is due one simple factor: Quality control on the US side simply isn’t up to the task of screening every piece of meat – this is an economical impossibility – but the Japanese side will be testing with a vengeance. If meat from an infected cow slips through the US side, it most probably will be found on the Japan side.

Even though my masochistic hobby of watching horribly shitty movies is fairly wide known, I am still fairly ashamed to say that I sat through the entirety of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift this past weekend. It is was basically the antichrist of cinema and has since burned a hole through both my eyes and the hard drive it was stored on.
I will not rip apart the movie point-by-point, because it’s a waste of time. The only things worth mentioning are that:

1. Somebody didn’t do their homework on drifting… (surprise!) I’ll go so far as to say somebody didn’t even bother to watch Initial D.
2. Worst representation of Japanese culture/language since Rising Sun (this in itself makes it a must-see, but only if you can do so in a way that doesn’t allow the studio to recover any of the reportedly $100+ million it spent making it – YOHOHO beeyatches!)
3. Justin Lin reportedly fought to make big changes in this movie, removing typical Asian stereotypes (such as height jokes on the train, and kung-fooey temple scenes) and the like – in the end, I wish he had just concentrated on making a better movie. The whiteboy protagonist is truly a hick piece of trailer park shit who fearlessly wades through endless pools of Japanese teenage tits & ass, beats the yakuza on multiple fronts, and becomes the fucking drift king of Tokyo, for chrissakes. (I am ashamed to say that I hated this character of the Hick Drifter so much, it kinda made me miss Vin Diesel.) YO JUSTIN! YOU ARE REPRESENTING THE NAME, BITCH! STOP FUCKING IT UP! (I saw Annapolis too, fool. That’s 2 strikes.)

If you are eating fugu liver pate and start feeling a tingling sensation on your lips or in your mouth, down a cup of hot sake and then immediately slit your wrists to bleed off the neurotoxin.
That is all.

TK is an older guy who works in my office. He’s married, with kids who have long grown up and moved away from the island for the usual reasons; the lack of local jobs, the hellish sameness of the Japanese countryside, etc. TK is the very epitome of salariman, a lifer, so surroundings don’t really matter that much to him – living out in the country is just an added bonus because he won’t have to move when he retires, and why should he? Life is good for him out here.
TK owns a house, and a small boat, and he goes fishing every weekend. There’s really not that much else to do on the island, anyway. Until a short time ago, TK had a dog that kept him company, which was great, because it was lonely after his kids moved away.
His boy, his pride and joy, is studying for a year in New Zealand, which TK is pretty sure is an island close to Australia (which is in turn an island close to England) where they have great flocks of fuzzy white sheep and rolling green hills – that’s what it looks like in the travel brochures, anyway. His daughter got married to a guy TK never really approved of and they moved away to the distant urban wasteland of Nagoya – they only come to visit once or twice a year now. During these visits, TK really tries to get along with his son in law, but can never shake the feeling that his not-really-kin’s greatest achievent in life was somehow getting TK’s daughter to marry him (in retrospect, he never should have let his wife talk him into sending their daughter off to college all those years ago).
TK’s dog was a Golden Retriever who had big floppy ears and a magnificent coat of honey-gold fur, and for that reason, he named her Honey way back when she was still a puppy, more than a decade ago.
One day not so long ago, TK came to work crying, a sight I was not ready to see, for he was one of the steadiest workers I have ever seen, one of the old guard who knows everything about his job, and generally, very comforting to have around. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, simply, “Honey has died.” I was secretly relieved, because from the way the old man looked, I’d thought it had been his wife… I conveyed my sympathies, but felt slightly awkward about seeing him cry at work over a dead pet. It just seemed out of character, and in a way I hated myself for pitying him, so I dropped the subject entirely. Out of sight, out of mind. Until today.
Today, TK suddenly announced he is going to get another puppy, and take it on his evening walks together on the same route he took Honey all these years. At first he was against the idea of replacing her, he explained, but something last night changed his mind.
Last night, he was walking through the same park next to his house that he has walked through every night for the last ten years when a police cruiser came around the street and shined the spotlight on him. Thinking it was a cop he knew from the neighborhood playing around, TK walked up to the car saying, “Hey, cut it out! Turn the light off!” Whereupon, a rookie cop TK didn’t know got out of the car, pulled out a nightstick, and told him to back off.
The cop made TK put his hands up in the air, and frisked him. “We’ve been looking for a peeping tom in the area,” he said, using a slight varation on the standard excuse cops use when they want to jack you in Japan. TK apologized and said he had thought the cop was another cop he knew, that he had made a mistake. The rookie wan’t having any of that, though.
“Why are you dressed in black, then?”
TK explained the black running suit was just his usual walking clothes, but the rookie wasn’t one to be fooled:
“What is this cord you had in your pocket?,” he demanded.
TK explained it was a leash for his dog.
“And where is your dog, then?”
TK explained, on the verge of tears, that his dog had recently died.
“Why do you still carry around the leash if your dog is dead, old man? Do you think I’m stupid? Fucking imaginary pet stories…”
By this point point, a crowd of neighbors had gathered around to watch what was happening, and several of them spoke up:
“Leave the old man alone!”
“TK is our neighbor; he walks around here every night!”
“Fuck off, pig!”
Embarassed, the rookie sheathed his baton and started muttering about peeping toms and perverts (and who knows, maybe Night Elves as well) they were on the lookout for, and got back in his car, and peeled off into the night.
…………………
The moral of this story is, never carry around a leash not attached to an actual dog at night in Japan while wearing black, lest you get beat down by a rookie cop. (Aesop, eat your heart out!)
…………………
As of this writing, TK has not yet decided what kind of puppy to get. I will suggest he gets one with big teeth to scare away peeping toms and Night Elves.

There is a sex doll desecrating my bridge.
That is all.
UPDATE: OK, that wasn’t all. If you are feeling brave today, click here.
If you didn’t poke your eyes out after that last link, go ahead and try this one as well.

I’ve been a fan of Takeshi’s movies for a long time. His early directing efforts were truly visionary.

That said, Takeshis’ 2005 was disappointing and just too damn long. There is a difference between looking at yourself in a mirror, and watching yourself look at yourself look in the mirror. This movie was filmed with the latter in mind instead of the former, and I’m pretty sure that’s why it sucked.
Takeshi’s on a bit of a sucky streak at the moment – that fucking godforsaken remake of Zatoichi and the movie with the title that basically precludes having to call it wack, Dolls, from a few years back kinda makes this three strikes… I still have faith in Takeshi though. After all, so did Kurosawa when he passed the torch to him.

It’s official. A post-lunch stroll through the company parking lot confirmed my suspicions: Japanese CAD (Computer Assisted Drawing/Drafting/Design) companies have the funniest names.
I’ve written about this one a couple times before: ZERO PLANNING
With a name like that they pretty much have to be doing work for the government (or perhaps Sony’s been using them as of late…). They had a branch office near our apartment in Tamade, and seeing their logo everyday on my walk to the subway never failed to put a smile on my face.
As I walked among the parked cars today, one with a huge green logo on it stopped me in my tracks: Sodick
You might have to click on the “Global Sites” button to load the English page, but it’s worth it. My favorites:

1. “Why Sodick technology attracts users?”
2. “Sodick is to celebrate 30th ever growing anniversary…”
3. “The Sodick Group”
4. Would you not feel a little embarassed working here? Or driving around in a car painted with the company logo (like the one I saw today)? Does the company have a hard time giving away free t-shirts at trade shows in the US? (I just don’t understand it, we splurged for pockets and everything!)

The best, though, is the history behind their company name:

The name of “Sodick” is the abbreviation of 3 Japanese words. They are “Sozo” “Dikko” and “CuroKokufuku” which means “to create”, “to implement” and “to overcome hardship.”

Hearing that explanation opens a whole new level of horror: You mean by simply using the overwhelmingly popular romanization of the word (??), the company would have been named “Sojick”? They were so close to being merely nonsensical instead of self-deprecating!

A while back I wrote a post regarding the Ministry of Justice proposing changes to immigration/foreign worker policy, and specifically how the Nikkei (Japanese ancestral) visa will be affected.
Gen Kanai left a comment on that post yesterday which I will reproduce here in full (the only change I made was to add hyperlinks and remove double hyphens because I think they might still cause problems in MT):

J, I was holding back my opinion on this because I knew that there was information lacking.
I’ll forward a review by Arudou Debito of the proposed changes. He was, like you, initially angered by the proposal, but after investigation into the details, his tone has changed significantly.
Please take a moment to read the actual proposal. I’d appreciate your evaluation afterwards.
Gen

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
“ON HOW TO ALLOW FOREIGNERS ENTRY FROM NOW ON”
MOJ “PROJECT TEAM REPORT”
TRANSLATION FOLLOWS, YOUR FEEDBACK TO MOJ BY JULY
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
July 4, 2006. Freely forwardable
Last newsletter, I wrote you about how Dietmember and Senior Vice Minister of Justice Kouno Taro and folks at the Ministry of Justice have issued a statement regarding future policy regarding immigration and foreign workers. They are accepting feedback on this until Saturday, July 15, so time is of the essence here.
I sent you a blurb of three bullet points, but of course there are more. So before bed last night I pored over the document (available at http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/nyukan51-1.pdf ). At seven pages, it’s not a bad read. And it’s not all bad news. Allow me to summarize the recommendations immediately below.
(These are not direct translations. All errors, and there may be several in this hasty translation, are mine. Please see original document if you need to check or clarify any sections.):
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. BASIC PREMISES
(1) Cap the foreign population at 3% (not including the Zainichis).
(2) Increase foreign tourism, exchange students, and working holidays.
(3) Increase foreign workers to fill the gaps in sectors where there are labor shortages, working in sectors such as assisting the elderly, part-time, and developing economic sectors. Change (henkou) policy regarding low-wage labor (particularly regarding systems to accept trainees, researchers, and Nikkei workers). [NB: Unclear what direction this “change” will take.]
(4) While expanding foreign labor, increase administration of their residency (zairyuu kanri).
(5) Require foreign laborers to have equal wages with Japanese unemployed (hikoyousha), along with equal social insurance. Punish noncomplying companies.
(6) Have compulsory education for the families of foreign workers.
(7) For a diversifying (tayouka) Japanese society, give due consideration to the nationalities of resident foreigners, without favor towards any one particular country.
(8) Make Immigration procedures rational and efficient.
2. SPECIFIC POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
(1) REGARDING TRAINEES AND RESEARCH LOW-WAGE WORKERS
– Require Japanese language ability and study for foreign trainees and researchers. Make continuation of employment contingent on improvement in language ability.
– Allow for exceptions under bilateral agreements with countries.
– Restrict these workers to specific economic sectors deemed to need them.
– Restrict this system to allow workers from countries with good guest worker programs (soushutsu taisei).
– Pay workers the equivalent of a Japanese worker if the level of skill is equivalent.
– Create a revolving-door system for foreign workers if they do not plan to stay in Japan.
– Create a system for resident foreign workers to bring over their families, and require a degree of Japanese language ability from them.
(2) REGARDING RESIDENCY FOR FOREIGNERS IN GENERAL
– Create a system for understanding their lifestyles and statuses of residency.
– Require them to advise the authorities whenever they change jobs. This requirement also includes employers to do the same, in order to avoid overstayers.
– Create a similar system for understanding the situations for overstayers.
– Punish offenders and organizations severely.
– Create an information bank between administrative organs overseeing foreigners, in order to serve them better.
– Create a super Gaijin Card which will service foreigners beyond just administrative registering.
– Increase awareness (haaku o okonau) that Zainichis are also residents. [NB: Does this mean they will get a Juuminhyou residency certificate at last?]
– Create a system for severe enforcement and policing of employers who employ foreign overstayers.
(3) REVISING THE NIKKEI WORKER SYSTEM
– Stop importing Nikkei just because they are blood related to Japanese. Increase the technical quality of Nikkei workers from the start.
– Acknowledge that Nikkei families (including those with Japanese citizens) who have been here long-term have increased qualifications to be here.
– Require language ability for their continued residency.
(4) REVISING THE ENTERTAINER VISA SYSTEM
– Crack down on the water trade business expressly importing “entertainers” for prurient purposes.
(5) REGARDING GUEST WORKERS AND EXCHANGE STUDENTS
– Crack down on exchange students becoming overstayers by capping the degree of students to between 1 and 10% of the foreign population.
– Make it easier for the real educational institutions to bring in foreign students.
(6) REGARDING PERMANENT RESIDENCY AND NATURALIZATION
– Encourage (sokushin) foreigners who are contributing to our economy to become established (teichakuka), and loosen restrictions for them to become Permanent Residents.
– Give due consideration those nationalities which will increase our country’s diversity (tayouka).
– Make naturalization more difficult for those applicants who do not have Permanent Residency or Zainichi status.
– Even after granting Permanent Residency, check on their residential status (zairyuu joukyou) and punish offenders. [NB: Unclear what those offenses might be even if you have PR.]
(7) REGARDING CREATING A MORE SECURE LIFESTYLE BASIS (seikatsu kibon)
– Accept foreigners as part of Japanese society, and guarantee their reasonable rights (gouriteki na kenri no hoshou) and make them pay taxes. [NB: Naturally, I’m wondering what kind of rights are involved and how they will be guaranteed.]
– Give foreigners the same social security (nenkin, shakai hoken etc) as unemployed Japanese. Also, take responsibility for their housing and living environment (juukyo tou seikatsu kankyou).
– Enforce compulsory education for families of foreigners, and shorten residency for noncompliers. [NB: I see lots of problems here-see comments below.]
(8) PROMOTING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND COOPERATION
– Greatly (oohaba ni) increase the number of working holidayers and tourists.
– Increase scholarships, confer credits to international universities, and bring higher-quality students here.
– Increase the brain drain by bringing foreigners with educational qualifications higher than baccalaureate. [NB: Humph. Watch the universities and Monkashou shoot this down promptly by refusing to reform Japan’s academic apartheid. [ http://www.debito.org/activistspage.html#ninkisei ]
– Enliven Japan’s international business knowhow by allowing longer-term visas for business expats.
– Increase worker flow from the US and South Korea by considering making border controls more automatic.
(9) RATIONALIZING IMMIGRATION PROCEDURES
– Unify application and renewal procedures.
– Allow for Internet applications and announcements.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
ENDS
COMMENTS
It’s surprisingly not all bad news. There are proposals and ethos that we have been saying repeatedly over the years (particularly about foreigners being taxpayers and contributors to society-bravo!). So let’s give praise where due and criticisms where not.
GOOD POINTS:
I basically agree with compulsory education of immigrants. I think anyone who lives in Japan should become as fluent in the Japanese language as possible (as the alternative-functional illiteracy and a lifetime of limited communication ability with society-limits one’s world and severely impinges upon one’s ability to control their own fate). The emerging underclass of uneducated Nikkei youth gangs down south illustrates this quite well.
HOWEVER:
The requirement of improvement of language in order to continue employment, or compulsory education for minors with reduction in residency for noncompliers is definitely open to abuse.
a) Who controls the education of workers, and who assesses their ability and improvements? If it is the employer, any nasty boss could simply report that the level has improved insufficiently and use it as a means of sanction or firing (I personally have experience with this situation). Standards and qualifications should be made clear even at this stage. Nihongo Kentei Shiken at least.
b) What systems are in place for children of foreigners who face bullying and ostracization at school, and cannot for psychological reasons attend? Will they and their families be exiled back to their native country simply because their kids got a raw draw of classmates or teacher? I suggest the Ministry of Education offer ethnic alternatives (such as accrediting the ethnic schools found nationwide) for children who do not, for whatever reason, fit in.
MORE GOOD POINTS
I herald increased enforcement of laws regarding overstayers as long as they zero in more on the employers which encourage the practice, by specifically employing foreign labor from a standpoint of weakness (confiscating passports, etc.), and threatening them with exposure if they complain about slave work conditions. Not all overstaying is deliberate, or avoidable, and there has been too much punishment of the victims in Japan. Consequently Japan, as the US State Dept. has famously pointed out, is an egregious human trafficker. Glad to see a crackdown on that at last.
However, this crackdown is also open to abuse with nascent policing (including Permanent Residents) all over again. Central control and notification of even change of employment is open to abuse, with people squealing on foreigners already (through Immigration Snitch Sites, see http://www.debito.org/immigrationsnitchsite.html), and opening them up to all manner of harassment. There has to be a check on police powers here or else there will be wanton raids and racial profiling.
I also cheer the lowering of the bar for receiving Permanent Residency and citizenship, and hope that awareness raising campaigns (if any) will be successful in encouraging the popular view that citizenship and residency are not a matter of race. However, there is no clear sign that foreigners will yet get a “juuminhyou” residency certificate. When will Japan do away with the requirement of citizenship for formal registry registration? (http://www.debito.org/residentspage.html#checkpoints)
I also am happy with the news that human rights (whatever “reasonable rights” is supposed to mean) should be guaranteed. However, given that Japan’s government recently applied to the newformed Human Rights Committee (and received a seat) without mentioning ONCE a single thing about guaranteeing foreigners’ rights in their application, I think I will take a “wait and see” attitude. More on this later in a Japan Times article.
FINAL POINT-SIMPLIFY THINGS, PLEASE!
If Dietmember Kouno and the MOJ were really interested in getting feedback from the public, particularly the international residents whom it will affect, one would hope they would make the Japanese as easy as possible (with furigana as a minimum, and simplified Japanese as a nicety). Not to sound provincial, but an English translation would also have helped. Instead, the proposal starts out with flowery bureaucratic language (such as “honne to tatemae no kairi” (??), the last word I spent at least twenty minutes just trying to find!), completely unnecessary for public (not to mention international) consumption. If you want more feedback from the public, make the policy proposal easier for the public to understand!
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’ve commented on the arbitrary and unreasonable 3% population cap, so others can point that sort of thing out themselves to the MOJ. I encourage you to do so. By July 15.
////
Address: 100-8977 Houmushou Nyuukoku kanrikyoku Kanri Kikaku Kanshitsu
Fax: 03-3592-7940
Email: nyukan42@moj.go.jp
Questions to 03-3580-4111 ext 5685
It’s all up at http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/nyukan51.html in Japanese.
Or you can contact Dietmember Kouno Taro directly (he reads English)
at http://www.taro.org
////
Thanks for reading. Back to work.
Arudou Debito in Sapporo
debito@debito.org
http://www.debito.org
July 4, 2006
ENDS
…………….
My response to the MOJ document follows in the extended entry.

Continue reading “The End of the Nikkei Visa?” →

Article in question: “YouTube” Web site has Japan’s broadcasters in a tizzy

“Piracy of web contents, both in Japan and abroad, has been increasing recently,” an NHK spokesperson tells Shukan Asahi. “NHK devotes time to confirming these violations one by one, and requests their removal. Even if extra efforts are involved, we believe that it serves as a discreet means of preventing illegal use of program contents.”

Good luck with that, assholes. And stop coming around my house to beg for money to squander on this bullshit… Resistance is futile, biooootches!

“One of Japan’s top promoters of showbiz talent, Johnny’s Jimusho, the office of Johnny Kitagawa, said it is mulling legal action to make sure its performer’s rights are not infringed upon. A spokesman for the agency said it was determined to “root out” YouTube and similarly predatory web sites.”

Watch out, the Kinki Kids are coming to root your ass out! (only after Johnny’s done with them first, though)

“Once, TV would broadcast a segment and that was the end of it,” recalls a program director. “But now things have come to the point that anybody can watch things anytime and anywhere. This is creating a sense of alarm among the people on the production side and can be expected to impact on programming quality. To discourage lowbrow piracy, it might be better for us to try to improve, even slightly, the type of programs we air on a daily basis.”

Okay, that whole blurb is just a pile of shit, but here are my immediate thoughts:

1. Fuck people on the production side. It’s called work for a reason.
2. I fail to see how inspiring TV networks to improve is a bad thing.
3. Isn’t this the same argument made against Sony when the first BETAMAX machines went to market? That one worked out real well for these idiots, too.

…………
[Note: I just headed over to Riding Sun and realized I’ve again unintentionally covered the same article after he has, which has happened a couple times recently. I swear it’s not intentional, GB. Besides, you earn the serious linkage, so I don’t imagine it bothers you too much… But writing the same comparison to the VCR issue of old is just plain spooky.]

As if it wasn’t already official, convenience store chain Lawson has now sealed the fate for my beloved island as the Isle of Dentures (and Onions): Lawson opens 1st store tailored for elderly
I am so gonna get the first photos of the brown Lawson sign up on the net. w00t.
BTW, Awaji-shi is the new name for the area of the island north of Sumoto, including Tsuna-cho, Higashiura, Hokudan, and Iwaya.
UPDATE: Oh no, I’ve been scooped! So I imagine photos are online at some Japanese news site, as well. Oh well, I’m just gonna have to make up for it by taking really good photos, say of an elderly gang of ojisan squatting in the parking lot eating yakisoba UFOs and loudly lamenting how much they want to get their hair cut… I think I got a good tip as to the store’s location (interesting story: A coworker who took a week off to see the world cup noted that a Lawson near the airport bus terminal in Higashiura was shut down for about ten days for remodeling). Thanks to stu for the tip.