Category: Society & Culture

There’s an old lady who lives a few houses down from us. I usually see her when I return home from work or go out for a walk. In the five years we have known her, she has been known to talk only about one thing, the weather.
– “Hot today, isn’t it?”
– “Sure is cold.”
– “Looks like it’s gonna rain.”
– Or some small variation of the above.
Even when you try to talk to her, she speaks over you about the weather. Once, I asked when Big Garbage day was, and she replied about the hot spell we were having. So I eventually gave up trying to talk to her beyond basic greetings and the weather. I accepted it; it’s just been like this for five years.
Then, last week, as I walked by she suddenly asked, “Why did the color of your work uniforms change?”
I was too shocked to reply at first, and the moment of silence that followed floated in the humid summer air, suspended for eternity. Then the words stumbled from my mouth automatically, “Sure is hot today…”
She seemed to accept this as an acceptable answer and kind of nodded as I walked away.

A colleague just related something that he saw on a documentary last night: During WWII, Sumoto was number 173 on a list of 180 Japanese targets to be carpet bombed by the US. Apparently, they got down to number 66 on the list (probably somewhere in Fukui prefecture) before bombing with conventional munitions was made unnecessary by Fat Man and Little Boy.
It took me a while to figure out what could possibly be of military significance on this island (Awajishima) until I remembered that there was a railroad back then (the Nankai “Shima Densha”) which might seem useless since there were no bridges to the mainland yet, but when coupled with the numerous deep water ports on the island might have seemed like a significant supply point.
Also, there were big bore gun emplacements that might have threatened the passage of ships through the Naruto Straits – I have to go hiking to that site soon to see if anything remains.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the republishing of Little Black Sambo by a Japanese publisher, and my mom left this in the comments:

You used to like the pancakes at Sambo’s Restaurant, remember? All that melted “tiger-butter…it used to make me uneasy to look up at the Little Black Sambo sign and wonder how blacks felt…

Ingrate that I am, I actually didn’t remember a Sambo’s Restaurant at all, and I forgot to ask my mom about it.
Today I happened across a link that explains it: McDonalds, Taco Bell, and the first fast food restaurants
There’s one thing though:

Is it just me, or is this Sambo sugar-coated?

Whoa. Check out the latest comment on my Black Bus post from last year:
You are not understand nothing yet… gaijin
The commenter, Ryoma, is either a big fan or a cock-hoggin’ goose-stepper – I just can’t figure out if his comment is high praise or the lowest of insults.
You are not understand nothing… I have to admit, this has a special ring to it. The double negative implies that I know something… On the other hand, perhaps nothing is a reference to mu, the state of nothingness one achieves through meditation – or perhaps in Spain, where Ryoma is posting from, through several bong hits. Now that is just hurtful, man.
At least he has hope in me, as implied by the trailing “yet.” Maybe he sees my potential for not understanding nothing. Now that might be something to hope for!
Anybody else have any insight into this?
Ryoma, damn you! Why must you confound me so? RYOOOOOOOOOMAAAAAAAA!

NHK is the national public broadcasting station in Japan. They send subscription fee collectors to seemingly every front door in the nation on a semi-regular basis, and in my experience, get turned away more often than not.
1.17 mil. households refuse to pay NHK subscription fees
People usually try to get out of paying by saying that they either do not own a TV, or do not watch NHK. The latter isn’t an excuse at all; you’re supposed to pay anyway. I always used to use the former until a few years ago when the NHK guy pointed out my newly-purchased satellite dish and I had to explain it wasn’t for a TV, it was for my global mind control experiments, and used the following lull in conversation as a chance to slam the door on his face.
In a similar way, most newbies to Japan initially think they can get away with a verbal Gaijin Smash (ala Azrael), but after years of verbal abuse from everyone the collectors are quite crafty and usually come prepared with laminated English phrase cards (Pay up you dirty, lying foreigner! GIVE ME MONEY!). Most recently, I tried acting like a member from the local Mormon church (there really is a Sumoto branch of the Church of LDS) and I like to think I came pretty close to converting the guy – I tried to give him a copy of the Book of Mormon that the real Mormons had left on my doorstep a few months before, but his formidable training eventually kicked back in and before you know it I was resorting back to door-slamming again.
If you DO actually pay the subscription fees, you are issued an NHK sticker to post above your doorway. I have known people who peeled these stickers off of vacant houses to post on their own, figuring it would show they had already paid, but ultimately, the joke was on them because NHK actually targets houses with the sticker (I suspect it is much easier to shame Japanese people into paying a second time than it is the first time, since it implies cheapness rather than moral belief as a reason for not paying the “mandatory” subscription fees).
The most hardcore NHK collector I ever met came knocking one day when we were living in the slums of Osaka, in Nishinari. I tried every excuse and gambit in the book, but this guy was firm and wanted the money, no excuses. When I tried slamming the door, he blocked it with his foot!!! He started cussing me out in gutteral Osaka-ben, which was a uniquely surreal experience – being cussed out by an NHK fee collector! Eventually, I tricked him into moving his foot and successfully slammed the door in his face, which infuriated him even more, and he started pounding on it from the outside and yelled at us to open it… At that point, the yakuza living upstairs opened his front door, leaned over the railing, and demanded to know what the fuck was going on, and “did he need to come down and kill some urusai motherfuckers?”
The NHK guy got spooked and left the apartment complex entirely. We laughed as we watched him walking away down the road – he heard us laughing and shook his fist up at us, mumbling and swearing to himself, kicking at a crumpled soda can on the street.

This sounds like a scene straight from Ishi the Killer:

…Nagasawa then punched the victim in the face, saying he did not answer politely enough…
…Nagasawa then allegedly followed the victim into his apartment and forced him to take off his contact lenses…
“Are you wearing contact lenses now? Put them in my eyes,” Nagasawa told the 31-year-old victim….
After Nagasawa’s arrest Thursday in Kawasaki, just south of Tokyo, police put on display what they confiscated from his home — 124 pairs of glasses and 30 pairs of contact lenses of a wide variety…
…Police did not comment on his motive but Nagasawa reportedly said: “I felt good when I wore the glasses of a friend in my junior high school days. I have ever since been searching for glasses that fit me.”

You can read the whole article here.
Sometimes the quotes from criminals in Japan are just so surreal. Just yesterday, I was watching on the news about a 14 year old kid who hit a man in a wheelchair on the head as hard as he could with a dumbell because he was angry and felt like hitting someone, anyone. I guess the poor guy in the chair just picked the wrong moment to wheel across the street.

Uninspiring story #1:
The Japanese girl who really went to Los Angeles in pursuit of life ala Beverly Hills 90210. (seriously.)
Uninspiring story #2:
Her best friend, who followed two weeks later.
Inspiring story #1:
My former female coworker, who taught herself English by reading the newspapers used as stuffing in the pineapple boxes shipped from Hawaii to the fruit stand she worked at as a child.
Inspiring story #2:
Japanese (especially schoolkids) who can’t even return basic greetings in English, yet can instantly extend a middle finger and shout a healthy “FAKKU YOU!” like it’s second nature.
On a related note, I’m one of those people who learn languages the fastest by concentrating on the following areas first and foremost:
A. Learning how to order food
B. Learning how to ask where the crapper is, and
C. Learning how to say “wench,” “ale,” “stanchion,” and the other real essentials
(Bonus: “Cowper’s gland” in Japanese is, simply, “Cowper,” yet “Fallopian tubes” is not “Fallopia,” as one would expect, which is a damn shame because it would have made a damn fine name for a 660cc sub-compact made by Mazda.)
Fuck a classroom. It’s all about what inspires you.

So it has finally come to this: The incidental tourist
An American woman opts to pay $4,300 for a ten day vacation/medical trip to Hungary where she gets dental work done that would have cost an estimated $11,150 in the states with insurance. No word on whether she will play the next Jaws in the 007 series… Apparently it worked out well for her, though.
Come to think of it, the hospitals and clinics I’ve been to in Thailand were cleaner than what I’m used to seeing in Japan or the US – and they were a hell of a lot cheaper to boot (another fact – completely irrelevant and uninteresting to my fiance if she should read this – is that the nurses were a lot cuter as well, for those who are interested in such details).
Anyway, people flying out of the country to get medical treatment on their own dime because it’s cheaper than what’s covered by their medical insurance domestically – is it just me, or is that a really sad state of affairs?
(This post is dedicated to my little sister who is starting medical school in Chicago this very day, and who I expect to cause great change and improvement to the American medical system before I go home sometime in the mid- to long-term future. Good luck, sis.)

This is a question I have asked myself many times over the years spent here in Japan:
If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?
Hell, I just had a discussion about it a few weeks ago when T asked why westerners treat MSG (found in salt shakers that adorn the tabletops of many Asian countries, right next to the soy sauce, chili paste, etc.) with such… suspicion. I told him how it’s just accepted that it’s bad stuff, but realized I didn’t know why, and decided to look into it. It’s pure coincidence that I stumbled upon this article today, and it was a revelation of sorts.
The thing is, I didn’t even know that Ajinomoto was pure MSG until I came here, because I’d never even seen it in the states – I was born in 1974, and I remember hearing about the evils of it when I was around 7 or 8. One of my aunts said that she could tell when there was MSG in Chinese food because it made her neck tingle, the conversation turned into a discussion of the dangers of artificial food additives. Impressionable young mind that I had, I just accepted it as fact, and I’m pretty sure that almost everyone in my fresh, organic, free-range, sun-dried, gourmet, blessed-by-Tibetan-monks, zero-calorie, low-carb, pre-chewed-by-endangered-squirrels, natural, fibrous, pesticide-free, and overall, just nutritionally superior home state of California did, too.
Now that I’ve read that article and checked some other sites, it kind of pisses me off to think that the virtual ban on monosodium glutamate in the US was based on such weak evidence. It’s not especially surprising, since in the context of the 70’s, for a Chinese-sounding doctor to criticize the preparation of cheap takeout fare from the Lucky Dragon/Golden Palace/Wing Chun’s must have seemed like he really knew what the fuck he was talking about. It is, however, disappointing.
Sure, the potential for it being harmful is there. I just wish it could be scientifically proven one way or the other before being scared into the public.

Although I remember the headlines when her suicide was announced, I didn’t really know much about her life until I read this article:
Historian Iris Chang won many battles
The war she lost raged within
Truly sad… It’s hard to imagine how easy it is to succumb to the darkness until you’re surrounded by it.