Kancho Assassin

Eternal Question, Part 3

2005-08-22T14:25:00.000+09:00

Why do Japanese people buy cars in drab colors?

White is BY FAR the most popular color for cars in Japan, and silver must be a strong second. Hundreds of corporate fleets are white-only, but many, many other privately owned cars are white as well (including my own ready-to-explode-on-contact Mitsubishi Toppo, purchased secondhand for a song and a tap dance earlier this year).

I've tried to ask people in the industry why Japanese people like their cars colorless, and no one can give me a good answer. One guy told me it's so the cars can be more easily repainted, but how many cars ever get repainted? Virtually none, I would bet. Guy was a bullshitter.

The follow-on question is whether the colorlessness of Japanese cars in Japan is consumer-driven or manufacturer-driven ... answers on a postcard, please ...

Outsourcing ...

2005-08-21T12:55:00.000+09:00

Although I've never seen one, an icon of Japanese ... differentness ... is the "Used Schoolgirls' Panties" vending machine, from which men with less-than-mainstream sexual preferences can obtain, well, used schoolgirls' panties. As advertised.

I've wondered, though – and more than once, which may say something about my own mainstreamness – how is the buyer to know the panties have REALLY been used by a Japanese schoolgirl?

I mean, as is the case in so many other areas of business, wouldn't the smart used Japanese schoolgirls' panties entrepreneur have thought about outsourcing to China?

And thus, isn't it more than likely that these "used Japanese schoolgirls' panties" are actually "used Chinese peasant women's panties"?

Food for thought ...

Full-body Tattoo

2005-08-21T09:29:00.000+09:00

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's thus-far failed efforts to privatize Japan Post follow in the footsteps of his grandfather Matajiro Koizumi's (failed) efforts to privatize Japan's telecommunications infrastructure in the first half of the 20th century.

Matajiro Koizumi, who was Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, was nicknamed "the tattoo minister" because he had a dragon tattooed all over his body and reportedly was not shy about displaying it.

Junichiro Koizumi's legacy has yet to be decided but he can certainly lay a good claim to the title "the prime minister with the hair".

Tomiichi Murayama of course was "the prime minister with the eyebrows", Ryutaro Hashimoto was "the prime minister with the mistress who was a Chinese spy" and Yoshiro Mori was "the prime minister with the heart of a flea and the brain of a shark" ...

Koshien

2005-08-20T15:27:00.000+09:00

Today was the championship game of the 87th annual Koshien high school baseball tournament.

Komadai Tomakomai High School from Hokkaido beat Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School 5-3 to defend its title, but the game was much more than that (see photo of kids, post-game, filling bags with Koshien dirt – you can be sure that Hideki Matsui has a bag at home). The qualifying for the tournament started with more than 4,000 teams hoping to make The Big Show in Osaka's Koshien Stadium, home to the Hanshin Tigers except during August, when the 49 remaining high school teams take over and the Tigers go on a three-week road trip that normally hammers their winning percentage.

Strange thing about this year's championship game – the kids looked as though they were enjoying themselves. In past years, it has always seemed to me that Koshien is the place you'd be most likely to see a Japanese person commit seppuku. There's no grass on the infield at Koshien, as is the case in many Japanese ballparks (Eternal Question #3), but if there were it would be lush, nourished by the millions of tears that have been shed over the years.

Today, when early on the Kyoto shortstop threw away a routine grounder with two outs to allow the go-ahead run to score, he laughed ruefully, thumped himself on the chest as if to say "my bad", and joked with his teammates on the way off the field when one batter later the third out was made. Based on my previous experience of watching games in this tournament (which Japanese kids would MUCH rather win or even play in than the Little League World Series), I expected him to rip out his intestines by hand and call the second baseman over to administer the coup de grace.

But no. Cheerful, relaxed, having fun ... it was all very un-Japanese and confusing.

Slippery Slope, Seen From the Other Side

2005-08-20T10:59:00.000+09:00

If "slippery slope" is a tough one for Japanese, what's the equivalent for gaijin in Japan?

Japanese pronounciation is fairly straightforward, in my view, with lots of hard, crisp sounds and syllables, but one that I always have difficult with is "ryo" or "ryu". These can be people's given names on their own (or shortened versions of longer names such as Ryutaro and Ryoichi), but can also be parts of words, such as ryokan.

How are they pronounced? Difficult to convey in writing, but think Sean Connery saying the “ry” as sort of a very rich “y” ... So "ryo" is "yo". But not as in "Yo, Vinnie!" More as in James Earl Jones saying, "Yyyyyyyyyoooo, mah bruthuh ..."

Pesaroso ... por favor tentativa outra vez

2005-08-19T09:24:00.000+09:00

Follow up on my successful acquisition of a Japanese driving license earlier this week ...

The written test is much easier for foreigners than for Japanese, comprising only 10 "yes" or "no" questions. I can't imagine anyone studies for it, it's mostly common sense and you only need to get seven out of 10 to pass (I got eight).

However, in keeping with the trickiness of the entire process, the English version of the test that I took (you can choose, I think, among Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, English and Portuguese) was a very poor translation of the Japanese. On one question the diagram was clearly at odds with the text. I went with the diagram, assuming it was the same in the Japanese version, and got that one right.

In today's paper, it is reported that the Portuguese version contains an error, and has done for three years. Over those three years, 168 unlucky Brazilians are known to have failed the written exam as a result of having gotten this question wrong (plus others that pushed them into the "fail" zone.

Do not pass "Go", do not collect $200. Pesaroso ... por favor tentativa outra vez.

Maritime Safety ...

2005-08-19T08:58:00.000+09:00

Fishing villages all around the world have one thing in common. Whatever the culture, whatever the local religion(s), there is a shrine (shrines) at or near the water's edge. Today fishing is probably a safer career choice than at any other time in history, but it's still a lot more dangerous than accountancy.

The oldest maritime safety measure, of course, is prayer.

I don't know how many local fishermen have died at sea over the past 20 years, certainly fewer than the average of the past five centuries, but there will have been some. Our village's harborfront shrine (see photo) will have seen hundreds of thousands of answered prayers, and scores of unanswered ones.

Notes From a Small Fishing Village

2005-08-19T08:44:00.000+09:00

Walking through the village this morning to drop off the (burnable) rubbish, I noticed that there's an economic divide between the two main groups of residents. Either that, or they all have money but choose to live very differently.

This small village (an hour and a half from Tokyo by not-so-fast train) is home to fishermen and farmers. And me and Mizue and Taiyo-kun. The farmers, thanks presumably to the fat economic subsidies that the Japanese government (like most governments) give to sons and daughters of the soil, seem to live in large, newish, luxurious by rural Japanese standards houses. The fishermen seem to be living in much older homes, many of which are part- or wholly constructed from corrugated iron sheets (The wonder material! Hot in summer, cold in winter!).

The fishermen also seem to take their work home with them (which I guess makes sense - nets to mend, etc.) and as a result their homes are surrounded by ancient maritime detritus, which since it's mostly made of plastic (The wonder material!), will sit there forever.

Both groups are early to bed, early to rise, though. We can hear the fishing boats headed out at 0400 most days, and the farmers are in the fields well before 0600. There is no disco in the village, and it's lights out at 2100 for everyone except us.

Slippery Slope, Part 1

2005-08-19T08:22:00.000+09:00

If you have Japanese friends, or better, have a live-in Japanese friend like I do, the inability of Japanese to perceive the difference between "R" and "L" can provide hours (years!) of entertainment.

[Please, please, please, Political Correctness Police, if you don't live here in Japan, crawl back into your caves!!! And if you live here, well, you know what I mean.]

The phrase I most enjoy hearing my wife say is "slippery slope". In fact, whenever we're out walking in the countryside, as often as possible I try to navigate to hilly, icy places, just to maneuver the conversation toward the slipperiness of the slopes.

The R-L Confusion reaches into every corner of Japanese society, since Japanese – though people generally are not at all good English speakers – use English (or more accurately, Japanese English) virtually everywhere, in product names, on signs, in conversations ... [Weird, very different to China, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, etc ... probably there's a doctoral thesis in trying to understand it.]

And so, it's always fun to spot malapropisms, especially of the R/L variety, because Japanese will be the first to tell you that on many occasions they've got NO IDEA whether or not to use "R" or "L". In fact, I've often thought of setting up a small booth in Shibuya to provide R/L consultation.

One of my favorites is the Mitsubishi Legnum. A "legnum", native English speakers and Latin scholars will know is ... nothing at all. "Regnum", of course, is Latin for "reign". Which is a good, strong word suitable for an automobile name.

So without having called to ask, I figure the guys at Mitsubishi decided to show off their classical scholarship when they named the "Regnum". But forgot – as is so often the case here – to doublecheck the spelling. And started producing the "Legnum".

Eternal (maybe not quite so eternal, this one) Questions, Part 2 (Ambitious Japan)

2005-08-18T14:13:00.000+09:00

The slogan "Ambitious Japan" is plastered on the sides of Japan Railways (JR) bullet trains, and at first I thought it was a government campaign designed to inspire unambitious salarimen and high school students. But no, it's the JR's own slogan.

JR previously used a quite-relevant-to-a-railway-company "Discover Japan" slogan, but ... "Ambitious Japan"?

Meaningless.

Especially since Japan, despite its high levels of achievement, is at the moment not a country one would characterize as ambitious. The Japan I see is a country that just wants to be left alone. Left alone by China, left alone by (North and South) Korea, left alone by anyone else who wants to pick at the scab of colonial memories, left alone by George Bush so they can pull their troops out of Iraq, left alone by everyone who wants it keep it off the United Nations Security Council, left alone by American beef, left alone by California rice, left alone by Korean LCD television makers, left alone ...

Perhaps that's Japan's ambition: to be left alone.

Eternal Questions, Part 1 (Roppongi)

2005-08-18T14:01:00.000+09:00

Go to Roppongi. At night. See (and very probably talk to) every Nigerian resident of Japan.

Eternal question: why is every bouncer in Roppongi Nigerian? What's the Roppongi-Nigeria nexus?

They have big guys in Japan. They have black guys in lots of countries (even Japan). They have big, black guys in lots of countries (in Japan, Bob Sapp).

But in Roppongi, all the bouncers are Nigerian.And it seems unlikely that the majority of unruly customers are Ibo or Yoruba speakers ...

Eternal question ...

Photo copyright (c) Kuni Takahashi

Jumping Through Hoops (And Paying Through the Nose)

2005-08-18T13:08:00.000+09:00

Got my Japanese driving license yesterday and had a relatively easy time of it compared to everyone I met at the Ministry of Transport's Kanagawa licensing office during the course of my FIVE visits there. Yesterday's successful effort cost me five and a half hours, plus an hour and a half of travel. The entire process was probably 25+ hours. And an average of US$40 per visit. I met a guy there who had failed the driving test seven times and counting (in fairness, the guy was a crap driver), and a guy who obtained his bike license after 14 MONTHS of effort.

While Prime Minister Koizumi is focused on privatizing the post office, there are plenty of other government departments that could use a vigorous housecleaning, and though its presumed coziness with the driving school industry will prevent any improvements in this millennium, the Ministry of Transport's licensing operation is in my view and painful experience a ripe target.

For Japanese the system is set up so that you will enroll at a driving school, which in exchange for a considerable amount of money, the school will undertake to train you, and – here's the important bit – get you through the test. People who learn at a driving school take the test there as part of their course and never have to undergo the driving test at the testing center.

If you're a foreigner, unless you are from one of a handful of countries with reciprocal agreements with Japan, you need to take a written AND driving test. I began this process on the 25th anniversary of obtaining my first license, and although I consider myself an alert and good driver, I failed the test twice before passing. I would venture to say that unless you take a "lesson" (offered by the testing center) beforehand, you have zero chance of passing on your first try.

So where did I go wrong? First of all, I assumed it was a test of driving ability, awareness, confidence and competence behind the wheel. No, no, no, no, no ... it's a test of following the rules of the testing center, some of which are unknowable unless you've been tipped off by a friend beforehand, or paid for a lesson.

My first mistake was not tracking around an early corner as tightly as possible to the curb. Although I was turning from a two-lane (one each way) road into a two-lane road, the roads are pretty wide and are considered four lane. I should have clawed my way along the curb as tightly as possible.

Second mistake was overshooting the stop line coming up to a T-junction. It was impossible to see around the corners from the stop line, so I did what nearly everyone does (except at stop lights) and stopped where I could see. End of test for the day. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. And in fairness, that's certainly an offense, so ... my bad.

And so, I booked another test. Two weeks later. Turned up quietly confident. Rolled out and at least this time completed the course without getting the joy buzzer from the examiner. Passed without a problem, I thought.

Not a chance. Here were my two "mistakes": one, I had driven too close to the "hazard" cones in one section of the course. "You should have been 50 centimeters away from those cones," the examiner said. "How far was I?" I asked. "Thirty centimeters," he said. That's when it hit me that I would pass when he was ready to pass me and not before. Thirty cm? Not a chance, that's with the wheels almost rolling over them and they'd been visible out the window from my side (the far side) of the car.

But it gets better. My main problem, he said, was that I "didn't use third gear enough." Quick check of the Japanese traffic regulations ... nope, didn't think there was law governing the use of certain portions of the gearbox. I just laughed (the course limits your speed nearly everywhere to 25kph, with turns and other activity nearly every 10 meters) and booked my next test.

Third test. Two weeks later.

New examiner. Is this good news or bad news? Tough to tell. It was the same guy the first two times and both days he passed only one person all session (there's a morning session and an afternoon session) and the rumor is that the examiners have instructions to pass at least one person each session.

The new guy was friendly enough and before we started he asked me how many times this was for me (although they know this already since it's marked on your papers ... and my belief is it governs whether or not and when you pass). Three, I said. "Do your best," he said. "I will," I replied, "and I'll be sure to use plenty of third gear."

Zoomed around the course (metaphorically, of course; I was driving like a granny) and when we pulled up he said, "Good. Good driving." He said this again to me as we were walking upstairs, and again when he handed me the paper that would allow me to proceed with the licensing paperwork. Pretty shocking. I wondered, driving home, if I had turned in the all-time best performance in the history of the testing center ...

So I passed. And weirdly, so did EVERY OTHER PERSON being tested by that guy in that session (five of us). Even Lean, Brazilian my testing center buddy with whom I had gone through every stage (of failure), and whose driving yesterday the instructor described as “so-so”. He was sure he’d fail, but the gods were smiling.

Classic NHK earthquake coverage

2005-08-16T12:24:00.000+09:00

Big earthquake in Sendai this morning, felt here in Kanagawa nearly 400km away. As everyone does in Japan, we quickly flicked on the TV to see where and how hard it hit. Pretty hard, it seems, with a magnitude of 6.8.

The classic TV news shot following every earthquake in Japan is from a camera mounted high on a wall in the local NHK office. From this camera, which is hooked up to what NHK calls a "skip-back recorder", we can see NHK staffers running around trying (as today) to keep a shelf of TV sets from falling over, or standing clear of the walls wondering if this is going to be The Big One.

Once they realize it's not going to be The Big One, but will indeed dominate the news for the next 24 hours (and in Japan when I say "dominate" I mean DOMINATE), they run for phones, cameras, battery packs and onigiri and then dash out the door to film every man, woman, child and stray dog who might have something banal to say to the country's 127 million citizens on that evening's news broadcast.

The other outstanding feature of earthquake coverage from the wall camera is the view in the foreground of a plastic NHK sign hanging on chains from the ceiling. A clever bit of marketing ensuring that every viewer – and every news agency that wants to use NHK's earthquake footage - will see the NHK logo, dramatically swaying as the building shakes. Cool, but boring after a while since every NHK office is the same cramped, squalid paper-strewn cesspit you'd expect from a national broadcaster.

Asia Means Always Having To Say You're Sorry

2005-08-16T09:52:00.000+09:00

Another anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II has passed and Prime Minister Koizumi has apologized again (as he did in April at a summit meeting of Asian and African leaders and as Prime Minister Maruyama did in 1995) for Japan's behavior during the war.

Good for Koizumi. Let's face it, for some things you really can't apologize enough.

However, for many in Asia, especially in China and Korea, Japan really CAN'T apologize enough. No apology, however heartfelt, will permit bygones to, if not quite be bygone, at least be moved to a higher shelf, more toward the back, a little more out of the direct line of sight.

Which creates a problem. At some point, fed up with getting bitch-slapped every time it either does or does not apologize, Japan will tire of apologizing. Efforts at reconciliation, having failed, will cease. The extension of the olive branch, already a tricky political football for Japan's leaders, will be seen – correctly – as a pointless strategy.

And relations will very likely deteriorate (even further) as the pendulum swings the other way ...

Insularity, Part 1

2005-08-16T09:00:00.000+09:00

In very un-Internet Agey fashion, I like to watch the TV news in the evening. Although like most of us (especially in the post-9/11 era) I check news headlines a few trillion times a day at CNN.com or elsewhere, the Internet news sites haven't in my view quite developed their video offerings to the point of competitiveness with television.

Japan, like many countries, has a national broadcaster. The 7:00 p.m. NHK news is pretty much what you'd expect from a national broadcaster ... not-too-pretty weather girls, and a just as unsexy news mix. Bringing us to today's topic: insularity.

Insularity means "of, relating to, or constituting an island", which Japan is (okay, group of islands, the ownership of some of which are disputed by just about every country in Asia with a coastline). Another meaning of "insular" is "circumscribed and detached in outlook and experience; narrow or provincial", again, which Japan is.

[Hey, hey, hey, don't get your knickers in a twist! I'll be the first to admit – and apologize repeatedly for to my non-American friends – that the United States (and many countries, if we're all going to stare long and hard into the looking glass) is (especially during the current administration) far from the world leader in broadmindedness.]

Now this may be the same in every country on earth (e.g. on Fox News?), but insularity as practiced by Japan's national broadcaster means you could easily miss what I consider significant news because very few foreign stories make the editors' final cut.

Example: last September the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was stabbed to death while shopping in a downtown Stockholm department store. It's not every day that the foreign minister or any senior cabinet member of any country is murdered, nor is it every day that this happens in relatively crime-free Sweden (though we can recall one other occasion ...).

Pretty major story, right? Didn't rate a mention on NHK's main evening news that day. Nor on any subsequent day.

And this happens all the time.

Many domestic stories, however, rate WAY more than the 15 minutes Andy Warhol allotted to them. Stories are picked over from every angle, fistfuls of locals are interviewed to obtain their incredibly banal views (example: story about heat wave ... pedestrian interviewee says, "It sure is hot, isn't it?"), and followups are done for days or weeks. But that's a whole 'nother wildly entertaining post ...

To Yasukuni or Not To Yasukuni?

2005-08-14T11:21:00.000+09:00

Yes, it’s that time of year again, the time to poke one’s Asian neighbor with a sharp stick.

Time on August 15th (the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the second world war) for a Japanese prime minister to perhaps visit the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of 2.5 million Japanese war dead – including convicted war criminals – are memorialized.

Time also for Chinese and to a lesser extent Koreans and other Asians to pick at the scab of remembered Japanese aggression dating back to the beginning of the 20h century.

Fun for everyone! Bring the whole family!

Japanese emperors stopped visiting Yasukuni in 1979 after it was disclosed that war criminals were among those enshrined there, but prime ministers for the most part have found it politically expedient – if in an “unofficial” capacity – to literally bow to nationalists every summer, reminding the right that Japan does not take orders from Beijing or Seoul.

As is true in most countries, the majority of citizens historically have not much cared what the prime minister does with his midsummer mornings, but as China has more and more overtly fanned the flames of anti-Japanese sentiment, many Japanese are wondering whether or not the government should be fighting this particular battle.

Although in this foreigner’s view clearly it would be easy for Prime Minister Koizumi to solve this problem (e.g. move the war criminals, who have been enshrined at Yasukuni only since 1978, to another location; or pay tribute to war dead at another site, such as the nearby tomb of the unknown soldier), it is even more tiresome to watch China and Korea beat their own domestic political drums year after year after year on the same issue that sooner or later must be consigned to the "unpleasant history but we've gotten over it" pile.

China and Korea, it seems, would like Japan and the world to believe that they are the only two countries in history to have been on the often-nasty receiving end of colonial aggression.

A recent article by Howard French and Norimitsu Onishi in The New York Times presented nicely the view of one Chinese author with experience of Japan that Japan offers the Chinese government “an unrivaled distraction” from China’s own problems.

Yu Jie, who has written two now-banned works about Japan, said, "We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni. This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did.” As in Russia, however, where Uncle Joe is enjoying a comeback, and the United States, where Dumb Dubya easily won a second term, "strong leadership" has its fans!

Tomorrow’s the day! I’m betting Koizumi goes.

Figuring Out the Kuuru Bizu Code

2005-08-13T18:36:00.000+09:00

This summer in Japan the government is trying to encourage businesspeople to save energy (Japan is the world’s second-largest oil importer) by leaving their suits and (for the men) ties at home in the closet.

Offices have been instructed to set their thermostats at 28 degrees centigrade, which for the metrically challenged translates to 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, then, t-shirts and flip-flops? I admit, for me, yes, there’s not much change to the dress code, EXCEPT when I need to interact with other humans in a business context.

On those occasions I do have to go into Tokyo to interact with other humans in a business context I need to try to guess whether or not the people I’m meeting will be following the government’s “Cool Biz” – “kuuru bizu” – guidelines, or … dressing like grownups who have business to transact. It’s tricky.

Take a recent three-day series of meetings with people in both government and the private sector.

Day One (sweltering): suit and tie for me and my colleague, but everyone we met was in full kuuru bizu mode, open shirts, no ties, jackets at home or in cold storage at the dry cleaner. Thermostats at 28 degrees and we were roasting. Bad call. But still, better to err on the side of decorum, no?

Day Two (sweltering): Still erring on the side of caution, we go with the suits and ties again (hell, these people are gonna give us money!!!). But again, it’s wall-to-wall kuuru bizu and dialed-up thermostats. Another two shirts for the laundry.

Day Three (sweltering): What separates us from (most of) the beasts? The ability to LEARN! So, it’s kuuru bizu for the boys today. We’re lookin’ good, too, WAY BETTER that your typical salariman whose wife bought him three pairs of chinos and five short-sleeved business shirts when the Prime Minister started giving interviews in kuuru bizu mode. Plus, we’re on extra safe ground because the big meeting today is with Tanaka-san, who was in kuuru bizu mode two days ago.

But today … he’s not. Four meetings and EVERYONE in suit and tie. Except Crockett and Tubbs – we looked real cool.

Death by Tsunami

2005-08-13T10:36:00.000+09:00

We moved in April from Kyoto (never had a major earthquake hit, and a long way from the sea) to a small fishing village southwest of Tokyo, around an hour and a half by (reasonably) slow train. We found a great place to live on a small hill overlooking the village and the sea, with Mount Fuji visible across the water when the air isn't too humid.

So what's not to love? Nothing, actually, unless you're a mother and you need something to worry about. April, of course, was only four months after the deadly south Asian tsunami that killed well over 120,000 people. Killed people who ... LIKE MY MOTHER'S SON ... lived on or near the sea.

I can see you know where I'm going with this.

Yes, my mother's first question on learning that we had found a beautiful home with a gorgeous garden and a view of Mount Fuji was, "What about the tsunamis?"

To which I laughed – laughed in the face of danger! – and reminded her that, "The chances are well be dead from the earthquake WAY before the tsunami reaches land, Mom! Relax!" [And posted off a copy of the above graphic, which depicts the "Great Earthquakes of the 20th Century in Japan" ...]

Lynddie and the Blowfish

2005-08-12T21:18:00.000+09:00

When you live in a small Japanese fishing village, you learn to amuse yourself. Cause the circus ain't never comin' to town.

Wandering down to the water one evening recently, I stumbled across a gaggle (clutch? coven?) of dead blowfish, which I suppose are related to the famous poisonous "fugu" that cost quite a lot in restaurants and must be prepared by a specially licensed chef. [Note: to this barbarian tongue fugu is not especially flavorful, and my feeling is that you only really get your money's worth if you have a near-death experience. Poisoned, but not TOO much.]

Anyway, for some twisted reason, in my mind I connected these blowfish to ... Lynddie England and Abu Gharib. Yes, hmmmm, I know ...

And so, a story played itself out, without fear that sennior officers would be disciplined, in the tiny village of Nagai on the Miura Peninsula just southwest of Tokyo.

Gotta Love Those Debt Waivers!

2005-08-12T19:17:00.000+09:00

One of last year's big economic stories in Japan was the failure of Daiei, a large retailer with fingers in too many pies and poor management. After rejecting suggestions that it should divest itself of non-essential business units such as ... its baseball team (even Disney dumped its baseball team!), the company required a government "rescue" (translation: taxpayer bailout).

So much for the background. This summer, the company said it had good news! And guess what? It's profitable! The "rescue" worked! Operating profit for the first quarter totaled 434.8 billion yen! Great!

What was the secret to Daiei's super-rapid turnaround?

Wait for it ...

"Debt waivers".

Hahahahahaha!!! We should all be so lucky. Daiei's creditors waived ... wait for it (and remember what profits were) ... 441 billion yen. Nicely matching up with profits. {But oops, first quarter sales fell 8 percent, and sales have declined for 16 months consecutively ...]

Further bolstering its turnaround, Daiei plans to discontinue items in its general-merchandise stores that generate low operating profit.

Clever.

Strawberry milk sausage sales set to sizzle

2005-08-12T18:54:00.000+09:00

According to the Mainichi Shimbun, those product development wizards at Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd. (Nissui) are about to launch "Strawberry Milk"-flavored sausages. The sausages, going on sale September 1, are in fact "fish-meat sausages" with strawberry juice and milk added to create "a strawberry flavor".

Mainichi reported that when Nissui conducted a survey as part of a project to create sausages that children would like, it found that strawberries were children's favorite fruit. The report said, "The firm decided to use the flavor in its products and seasoned the sausages by adding strawberry juice and milk to them, creating a product that had a strawberry flavor. The texture and flavor of the sausages are reportedly close to those of regular fish-meat sausages, with the exception that the aftertaste of strawberries remains."

And then, in case we weren't convinced, Mainichi quoted "a Nissui official", who after all, ought to know. "It's an unexpected combination, but a taste that children will like," the official said. "Strawberries go well with minced fish."

Um, we'll take your word for it.

Scoring a Cord

2005-08-12T15:39:00.000+09:00

Probably the best part of living outside your own, or native culture, is seeing how people (peoples) do things differently. My most valued asset in 16 years of living in Asia and traveling to 50+ countries around the world is the respect I have developed for the local way of doing things (of course in many cases I have developed a healthy disprespect for the local way of doing things because it's just WRONG!).

Right or wrong, though, the local way of doing things is almost always interesting. Take the Japanese custom of keeping and storing the dessicated nub of a baby's (your own baby's, not just any baby's) umbilical cord.

Having just fathered a half-Japanese baby myself, I find myself freshly in possession of ... the dessicated nub of a baby's umbilical cord. For which, I am told, we will be acquiring a small cypress box (obtainable at www.umbilicalcordboxes.com, I assume) within which we will be storing said cord. For the proverbial rainy day.

True story: friends whose baby's umbilical cord nub had just fallen off placed it on a window ledge at the wife's parents' house to dry out more thoroughly. They went out, leaving the dog alone in the house. They returned and the cord was nowhere to be found. And the dog was sniffing around for more treats.

I wonder if can get a deal on a never-used cypress umbilical cord box ...

My Son, Pinocchio-san

2005-08-12T15:25:00.000+09:00

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

In Japan, it's your nose that gets you the best bedroom in the palace.

Take, for example, young Taiyo, born on July 27.

After his emergence into the atmosphere at 0137, Taiyo spent the usual (for Japan) four days in the hospital with his mom, during which time EVERYONE who saw him (and everyone who saw him was Japanese) remarked on his "fine, big nose".

If Taiyo had 100 yen for every time someone had admired his nose, he'd have around 3,000 yen.

Nothing Bleeds Quite Like a Head Wound

2005-08-12T05:24:00.000+09:00

If it was a fight, they woulda stopped it.

I moved to Kyoto not long ago, into a large old house on a quiet street not far from the main railway station. A long time ago, my father lived in Japan, and for that reason during my youth I was exposed to Japanese culture to – for an American -– an unusual degree. I grew up with an appreciation for the architecture, the pottery, the food, the paintings and perhaps best of all, the food.

Then, five years ago I married a Japanese lady; my wife is delighted to see me gaining first-hand experience of her country, its language and much more. She thinks the experience will be good for me … “disillusioning”. I enjoy hearing her pronounce the word.

Of course I’d visited Japan many times prior to moving here last week, including a fair amount of time at my wife’s parents’ home. A typical visit to their home for me involves cracking my (shaved) head at least once on the top of the door frame going into their living room. These close encounters with a thus-far immovable object nearly always result in bloodshed, and the blood shed is invariably mine. However, the wounds heal, the scabs fall off, the scars fade; it hasn’t been a big deal.

I thought that when I was actually living in Japan I would quickly get used to traditional architecture, to 180-centimetre-high doorways and low interior overhangs (the stove hood, for instance, which in my house is around 170 centimetres from the floor), and learn to bend and bow and bob and weave like I imagine all of Japan’s not-so-short, shaven-headed, unscarred citizens must do intuitively.

That has not been the case. Just a handful of days into my residency in Japan, I have taken more shots to the head – from the stove hood and various door frames – than Mike Tyson did against Lennox Lewis.

Young medical residents will envy my experience of cranial trauma; I have been able to observe a wide variety of injuries – from daikon-grater scrapes to ice pick punctures – the result of always-changing impact geometries. The scabs on my head, in various stages of development, resemble a satellite’s eye view of a large (crimson-to-bordeaux-coloured) Pacific Ocean archipelago. The blood I’ve spilt … well, let’s just say that nothing bleeds like a head wound.

Within a few days, however, my problems will be over, my blood reconfined and coursing healthily out through arteries and back through veins. I no longer expect my brain will be able to easily overcome 39 years’ experience of walking erect through doorways; rather, my household goods will soon arrive via ship from Hong Kong. In one of the 196 boxes the movers packed several weeks ago, I know there is a bicycle helmet. And in another box, a saw.