Category: Society & Culture

1. People who test ringtones in public.
2. People who cut you off because you decided to drive “nice” today.
3. The phantom butt itch (in public – in private it’s scratchable).
4. Cheerful people on Monday mornings.
5. Cheerful people in general.
6. People.
7. The absence of napkins at many (most?) restaurants in Japan.
8. High society types from Tochigi who pronounce “Tochigi” differently than everyone else.
9. Computer-retarded Powerbook snobs.
10. Gossipy office harpies that spend lunchbreaks painting their faces like whores and have a cow over me “tapping” the copier when it gets jammed and won’t reset.

I am in the middle of researching the most important subject I will ever post on – that’s right! – even more important than Japanese fish sausage, although if you are the astute type, you already suspect that Japanese fish sausage is somehow involved. You are correct.
Hint: No, I am not covering the 500-foot tall Hello Kitty statue made of squid rings and rapeseed flowers to be erected in Sumoto this weekend.
Also, I am NOT writing about the prime minister of Japan getting a handjob from the US ambassador to the chrysanthemum court in spite of beef imports continuing to be banned (the real reason for this is that Japanese like tough Aussie beef better; just ask any skank you feel up at GasPanic this weekend).

No matter how much amusement it would have provided in the years to come, I could not, in good conscience, allow an acquaintance to name his new children’s English conversation school “Neverland.”
Update: I’m already too late to save this place.

An interview with Aeon CEO Motoya Okada:
Japan’s Answer to Wal-Mart?
Excerpt:

Q: So what can you do to resolve this?
A: Well, we will continue to enhance our supply chain and reduce costs, [so savings] can be passed back to our customers. We can also enhance our private brand.

Well, they’ve certainly got the corporate rhetoric down…
I personally think that most of the products marketed under Aeon’s TopValu brand is noticeably inferior to competing brands. They can’t even make decent green tea or dishsoap, which, as you might imagine, are fairly important items for the average Japanese consumer.

I have quite a few relatives in Japan, and have met many of them over the course of my stay here. They are all from my father’s side of the family, because the wealthy snobs on my mother’s side cut off contact with their American relatives years ago. I have not tried to get in touch, either – although I’ve made plans to several times, it’s not really that important to me, I guess. I get busy and forget about it, you know how it goes.
I’m quite close with a few of my second cousins (on my father’s side). I go visit them in Nara sometimes, and we hang out. It’s just nice having relations around sometimes… I think of this as an added bonus for Nikkei since most of us don’t have the “blue-eyed, blonde-haired gaijin” looks and benefits associated with such in Japan.
Anyway. I’m in a difficult situation now, or rather, my cousin is. She told me about it a couple weeks ago, and I really haven’t stopped thinking about it since then. Her parents have set up a marriage of convenience for her. She is unwilling – she has a boyfriend, among other things. But her parents are unrelenting. These facts alone create several different problems and no easy solution. There are other factors involved, but this is as detailed as I’m comfortable with, for now.
First off, I told her not to elope with her boyfriend in haste. Such youth does not mix well with impromptu life decisions, and I can say that because I know. Luckily, she wasn’t really considering that anyway so I didn’t have to convince her too hard. In fact, she is now pursuing the best course of action possible, and we covered it in detail that day.
Basically, I gave her my support. There is nothing else I can do at the moment. I respect her parents and understand their motivation, but I support their daughter, which, by the way, is what I think they would want of me, as well. I know them well. It is not for lack of understanding or compassion that they would marry their daughter to a person she has never met.
My cousin expressed regret that there is no happy ending to this situation. I told her that you can’t make everyone happy, and that the real Japanese way to handle this – a dual skinny dip in icy water via Osamu Dazai – might be just a bit dramatic. She laughed out loud, and the sound of it made everything better for a instant.
We are keeping in touch, and when I think about this it consumes me.
….
For the time being, I ask anyone who reads this post to refrain from acknowledging it in the real world to anyone but me. There is zero chance of it affecting the situation at hand, but it will piss me off anyway. Meanwhile, thanks for lending an ear.

… where people often get shanked.
I never used to be fazed by shit like this in the news because over the years I just became numb to it. When you first start living in Japan, it is hard to understand why the people can be selflessly polite and compassionate on one hand, and yet were feared as such ruthless self-disembowling baby killer rape-happy sadists not so long ago. One hint that perhaps not all is well in modern times, either, is the frequency of shockingly violent/sadistic/twisted incidents reported in the Japanese media. It seems like we hear about classroom slashings, group suicides, and heart-wrenching abuse cases on an almost daily basis, and I just got conditioned to it. I ceased thinking about it for many years.
Then, last year, my sister was stalked up the stairs to her apartment in Osaka. Her quavering voice on the phone, just after it happened, is burned into my memory forever. After the initial wave of brotherly concern/homicidal rage subsided within me, dark feelings started sinking in again. About how the fucked up shit you hear on TV doesn’t just happen to strangers. About how powerless you can be in the face of fate, no matter what precautions are taken or irrelevant “what are the odds” pontifications.
My sister went home to the states in the summer, but to this day, whenever I see a headline about a stabbing at a school in Osaka (way too often), I get that sinking feeling in my gut, my jaw clenches shut, and I taste copper. Time slows down and my shoulders start to feel heavy… But when I snap out of it, I realize my fists are clenched, my teeth ache from grinding together, and I seriously want to destroy some motherfuckers.

It occurs to me that on a scale of Loserdom, a white supremacist with a mother named Maria Del Prado is second only to these suicide bombers you occasionally see on the news whose vests go off prematurely, killing only themselves.
One can only hope these losers spend eternity comparing notes on their failed lives and getting eaten by 72 virgin goats in an oasis of poison oak and concertina wire.
Damn, what was in my coffee today?

I am not the only person who has scraped his asshole raw with the sandpaper commonly dispensed in public toilets in Japan. This is fact. However, I may be the only one blogging about it today, which makes me special. The entire point of this post is to point out that the Japanese should emulate the Brits with regard to this matter.
Also, is “hemorrhoids/haemorrhoids” like “color/colour?”
That is all.

Yesterday was setsubun, the traditional Japanese new year, and we celebrated accordingly. I got home from a long day at work, the GF touched my arm and said “you’re it!,” then we played “oni ha soto” tag for a couple minutes.
Then, I fell asleep on the sofa. (happy. new year.)
P.S. Shouldn’t we get the day off or something? Doesn’t tradition mean anything to these heathens?

If you are a techno gadget freak, this is not news to you but I’m posting this for all other forms of life in Japan:
BUY AN LCD MONITOR RIGHT NOW!
I bought two last week because everyone is predicting the prices will rise again soon… I bought a new high performance 17″ Mitsu for 1/2 the sticker price (at an online store I use often – PC Success), and it’s kicking ass for all the games I play. I also got a 17″ Iiyama for Nam, who spends many hours every day working on her doctoral thesis – this should help prevent eye strain. Our old CRT’s are out in my hallway, doing what they do best – taking up space! An unexpected bonus of switching from CRT to LCD was that it opened up a huge (albeit dusty) space on my desk (which I actually already filled up with stacks of CDs, assorted phone bills, food wrappers, etc., but that’s another story).
I opted for the Mitsubishi and the IIyama because these two companies along with BENQ are the only ones that use a 100-240V power supply, which is what I will need to use them in Thailand when we move. I’m only writing about this because I actually went to Osaka to compare product catalog specs to actual rating labels on the floor models a couple weeks ago, and I thought I’d save someone else the trouble since I’ve seen this question asked elsewhere.
To give you an idea of how cheap LCD monitors really are in Japan right now, I just saw offers for some 19″ models under the 30,000 mark – wow! I remember when 15 inchers were twice that price – not so long ago. I’m glad I waited so long to get ours.