Peter Payne's Friendly Japanese Fact Updates

[Sean @ NDF]

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

[IHATEMOKIDS87]

lol

[tenchu]

[.saint]

sweet shit

[Sean @ NDF]

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?

[JDMcd8]

these are pretty cool , going to request to be updated via email...

[BRYCE]

hmm thats good shit

[Sean @ NDF]

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.

[Sean @ NDF]

UPDATE!

Japanese students study a total of six years of English, even more if they go on
to college, and even though most people don't attain real conversational
fluency, English does seep into the culture here in many interesting ways. The
Japanese use thousands of foreign-loan words in their daily lives, mostly from
English, but sometimes the meanings get changed a little. In Japanese usage,
"milk" (miruku) always refers to powdered creamer for your coffee, and some
words for makeup are shifted in meaning: "rouge" means lipstick and "manicure"
means nail polish. Sometimes the Japanese will use words from languages other
than English for style or phonetic reasons. For example, to avoid problems with
similar words such as "crown" and "clown," they turn to French for the latter
term: pierrot. Gaijin living here often pick up Engrish words like phone box
(phone booth), cash corner (ATM) stand and pocket bell (beeper) and regularly
embarrass ourselves using these words with other foreigners.

There are some interesting expressions that the Japanese use a lot in speech,
which can be fun for foreigners to pick up and use since no one expects us to
know them. If something is too small, like your end-of-year bonus or your bank
account, it's "suzume no namida" (soo-zoo-meh no nah-mee-da), which means the
tear of a sparrow. To express the concept of flattering or brown-nosing someone,
there's the phrase "goma-suri" which means to grind up sesame seeds -- so if you
laugh at a dumb joke your boss makes, you're grinding his sesame seeds for him.
If you're hiding something but your secret is discovered, the Japanese would say
"shippo ga deta" which means that your tail has popped out from inside your
clothes -- somewhat similar to the phrase "a wolf in sheep's clothing" in
English. And if someone is "kao ga hiroi" they literally have a "wide face" --
which means that everyone knows them and that they have a lot of influence.

The J-List staff had fun last night at a "welcome party" for two new employees.
We gathered at our favorite beer restaurant and had a nice time welcoming the
new staff members to our little group. We ate and drank, then all went out for a
few hours in a karaoke box. Having official "drink parties" is an interesting
aspect to company life in Japan, and there are several events throughout the
year where the J-List staff gathers to have fun and relax outside of the
workplace.

One of the most popular products we sell here at J-List are the original
Japanese T-shirts with messages like "I'm looking for a Japanese Girlfriend."
Our two newest T-shirt designs are bizarre parodies of famous Japanese products,
Pocky chocolate stick snacks and Black Black caffeine gum. Very wacky and
off-color, the shirts look great, and are sure to get giggles from any Japanese
who see them. See the new shirts on the site now.

[Sean @ NDF]

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.