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Sean @ NDF [ April 27, 2005 ]

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UPDATE!

My Japanese mother-in-law remarked the other day that, "You don't see women with
big stomachs very often these days." At first I thought that women were getting
thinner, but my wife said no, her mother had been referring to the dearth of
pregnant women in Japan. It's true -- the birthrate here is the lowest in the
industrialized world, just 1.38 children per couple, and it's getting more and
more common to see companies offering products and services to those over 65
over baby-related items. Many products for the elderly that might be taboo to
advertise openly in some other countries, such as incontinence products or
baldness treatments for women, are advertised on TV regularly here. Part of the
reason for the falling birthrate is the high cost and extra stress of raising a
child in Japan, especially for Tokyoites living in their usagi-goya (rabbit
hutch) apartments. However, not all couples have only one or two children: it's
quite common to see variety TV shows documenting the daily lives of families
with 12 or 15 children, showing what they do to help each other get through
their day. Our favorite Japanese TV show, Hey! Spring of Trivia, had an
interesting bit of information: according to current projections, the number of
Japanese in the world in the year 3000 will be...7 people.

Japan's writing system can be the most complex aspect of the language, since it
combines three separate systems: hiragana and katakana, two syllable-based
systems used for expressing Japanese and foreign words, respectively, and around
2000 kanji from China. While the two kana are not hard to master (although they
look difficult when you first start), the real neck in studying Japanese is
usually kanji, at least for "white boy" gaijin like me. But while kanji can be a
challenge, it's not nearly as hard as it looks. First of all, there's a
structure to kanji that's quite logical -- for example most characters that have
to do with water or liquid have the same left half, called a "radical," that
refers to water. Kanji can usually be memorized by cutting them into four
quadrants and writing them repeatedly, although be sure to pay attention to
learning the correct stroke order. I knew that I would never be able to master
something as difficult as kanji unless I really enjoyed studying it, so I came
up with ways to reinforce my studies, for example reading manga or going to
karaoke bars and reading the kanji on the screen. I had a Chinese friend who was
taking level 1 of the Japanese Language Ability Test at the same time I was, and
I made it my personal goal to get a higher score than her, despite her natural
advantage in already reading kanji. I was lucky -- I managed to beat her score
by ten points.

It's not very politically correct to say that all Japanese look the same, but
when I first came to live in Japan, it took some time for my brain to get used
to seeing so many faces with Japanese characteristics, which in some cases did
look very similar to me at the time. After I'd taught English for a month, I
took a train to Yokohama to see the sights of the city, and while there I kept
thinking I was seeing my new students on the street, despite the fact that I was
quite far from home. In reality, there's a lot of variation in the faces of
Japanese people, with Mongolian, Korean, Ainu, Portuguese and other blood
coursing through the country, but it took me time to get used to my new
environment. For the record, gaijin can look the same to Japanese, too, and I've
been mistaken for other foreigners on several occasions, usually by older
Japanese who haven't had much experience with us. I usually smile and avoid
correcting their mistake since it would embarrass them.

Author:	Sean @ NDF [ April 15, 2005 ]
Post subject:	Peter Payne's Friendly Japanese Fact Updates
Japanese facts given to me by my friend in Japan, also the owner of J-Box dot com. I will paste the emails here for everyone to read. Anybody interested in Japanese culture or random funny facts should read it. I think its kinda cool. I'll post them up every other day that I get them. Last week a woman looked out her window and saw smoke rising in some nearby mountains. She promptly called the fire department, who went up to fight the fire, only to find that it hadn't been smoke that the lady had seen, but massive sheets of pollen kicked up by the Spring winds. Yes, Japan can be a nightmare for people with allergies, with many pollen-producing plants that torment allergy sufferers at various times of the year. One of the worst offenders are sugi trees, Japanese cedars that pump pollen into the air from January to April. I'm sometimes asked why Japanese wear those white face masks which became prevalent throughout Asia during the SARS scare. The masks help protect others from a person's germs, and also hopefully reduce the amount of allergens breathed into the body. If you ever travel around Japan, you'll quickly pick up on how each region of Japan promotes certain things that it's supposedly famous for, called meibutsu (lit. "famous things"), which are often types of food. Nagoya is famous for curry upon, fat noodles in a curry soup, and if you go to Osaka, be sure to eat takoyaki, balls of batter with octopus meat inside, and sauce and sliced bonito flakes on top. Kyushu is known for tonkotsu ramen, with a white pork-based soup, and our own Gunma Prefecture is famous for "four K's": katsudon (pork cutlet cooked in a delicious sauce), konyaku (a firm, gelatinous food known as Devil's Tongue in English), kara-kaze (the cold, biting wind that blows in the winter) and kakaa-denka (strong-willed women who run their households with an iron fist). Gunma is famous for another reason: the plane carrying singer Kyu Sakamoto crashed here in 1985 in a terrible accident that claimed 520 lives. Kyu was the singer of the Sukiyaki Song, known as Ue O Mite Aruko (I Look Up When I Walk), which became the #1 song in the U.S. in 1963. He also sang the popular song Ashita ga Aru Sa (There is a Tomorrow), which became the unofficial theme song of the Japanese economic recession. Do you have a cat's tongue? If so, it means that you can't eat hot food or drink hot drinks, just like a cat. The Japanese say that anyone who avoids hot food has a cat's tongue (neko jita). What is you have a lazy eye? If so, then you are "rom-pari" which is Japanese for "Rome, Paris" -- i.e. one eye is looking at Rome and the other is looking at Paris. If you're thinning on top, you might have "bar code hair." And if you sneeze, the Japanese say that someone must be gossiping about you -- one sneeze means someone is saying something good about you, two means they're saying something bad, and three sneezes means you've caught a cold. Or something like that. Anybody that wants to get them delivered to their email, should visit jbox and email him

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Author:	Sean @ NDF [ April 19, 2005 ]
Post subject:
UPDATE There are big problems in China as demonstrators in several cities engage in protests against Japan, calling for boycotts of Japanese products and even making threats of violence -- one protestor brandished a gun at some Japanese journalists, although it turned out to be a replica. In Beijing, thousands of protestors have been destroying Japanese businesses, wrecking Japanese cars and throwing rocks at the embassy. A big part of the issue are Japanese history textbooks which China and South Korea say gloss over the crimes of the Japanese military during World War II. I watched an interesting news report on the textbook issues which compared the eight history texts approved for use by the Ministry of Education, and explained the problem areas of each -- in general, only 2-3 pages were devoted to the issue of war crimes in each book. Chinese textbooks go to the other extreme, with half the content of one book shown devoted to the Sino-Japanese war, illustrated with many inflammatory pictures of corpses and emotional statements that have no place in the study of history. The Japanese textbook that caused the most anger is used in only 18 schools here and has been denounced by many Japanese educators, but this hasn't swayed the demonstrators. One theory about the current crisis put forth on Japanese TV is that after the Tiananmen Square uprisings, China increased "loyalty education" for children in schools, much of which focused on Japan as a national enemy. The generation that was in school in 1989 are now in their 20s, and they're the ones who are out demonstrating now. The issue is a very difficult one to resolve. Although Japan has officially apologized to China seventeen times since 1974, it has mostly failed to show real reflection about the terrible things it did in the 1930s. Japanese are sometimes willing to say "that was a long time ago" about China and Korea, but never about Hiroshima. On the other hand, I've had American friends who dismissed American atrocities in Vietnam with the same argument, so maybe all of us are capable of a similar reaction under the right circumstances. Another problem that comes up often is the role of Yasukuni, a shrine for the remembrance of Japanese soldiers killed during the war, which wouldn't be a problem except that the Japanese military leaders most responsible for the war are also interred in graves on the shrine's grounds. In Washington D.C. there are many places where Americans can go and reflect on their own country's past, like Arlington National Cemetery or the Iwo Jima monument, but Japan has only Yasukuni to fill all of these roles. Maybe one solution would be the creation of a "secular" monument to honor Japan's soldiers without bruising the feelings of neighboring countries?

Author:	JDMcd8 [ April 19, 2005 ]
Post subject:
these are pretty cool , going to request to be updated via email...

Author:	BRYCE [ April 19, 2005 ]
Post subject:
hmm thats good shit

Author:	Sean @ NDF [ April 21, 2005 ]
Post subject:
UPDATE Japan can really be a place of contrasting images. On the one hand, it's a modern, technologically advanced country that makes some of the most amazing products in the world. On the other hand, other aspects of Japan can look -- at least to my outsider's eyes -- quite backwards sometimes. Up until three years ago, when my son entered the first grade, students were assigned a number in alphabetical order, and all the boys were numbered before all the girls. Starting with the year my son started school, however, the system changed, allowing boys and girls to be numbered and seated together. Before my wife went to the U.S. to study English, she worked as an OL, an "office lady" in a Japanese company, where she was required to put in several hours memorizing which green tea cups went with which male employees, which male employees liked their green tea served a certain way, and what order to hand the tea cups out in. Sometimes the tendency of Japan to preserve the old ways is good, though. Although I can buy incredibly advanced electronics less than a kilometer from my house, it's not uncommon to hear the voice of our local "ishiyaki imo" seller, who drives his truck around selling delicious stone-baked sweet potatoes. Sometimes it does seem that the often-repeated idea that Japan runs a decade or more behind the West socially might be true. At least, Japan always seems to be in a state of imitating the U.S. and Europe in its institutions rather than taking the lead. Laws requiring child safety seats or forbidding sexual harassment in the workplace seem to have come a steady 10-15 years behind the U.S., and when Japan implemented a 401(k) type of system they gave it the original name of "Japan 401(k)." The next social change seems to be smoking: over the past few years, Japan has done a lot to limit where people can smoke, although usually tying this to politeness and good manners rather than fear of legal penalties. Now in most parts of Tokyo it's illegal to smoke while walking outdoors, and as a result, there are special "smoking corners" in parts of the city, establishments where all you do is walk in, sit down and light up, happy in the knowledge that you're "Smokin' Clean" (Japan Tobacco's slogan for smoking with good manners). You've been in Japan too long when you air-drum in your car while listening to the U.S. Military radio news opening, which goes "here's what happening...around the Kanto Plain." The only English radio available in the Tokyo area is the Far East Network, the AM radio station that serves the U.S. military forces stationed in Japan, and it's a staple of civilian gaijin here, especially when driving somewhere. In addition to NPR news and other programming, FEN serves up top forty and country music countdowns on the weekend, an hour of Rush Limbaugh every weeknight, and the occasional football game. Because it's a non-profit station, in place of radio commercials they play short pieces on "our proud military heritage" which give interesting tidbits of military history from the past. As a result, I know quite a lot about the history of the U.S. armed forces.

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