Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan

Urban Legends

Usually she is covering her mouth with a mask. She asks people who happens to pass her by, taking the mask off and showing her mouth ripped to her ears.
"Am I beautiful?"
If you answer "No", you will be killed by her at once. If you answer "Yes", she will come with you to kill you in front of your house. There is no chance to live without answering "Ordinary".

This is the tale I heard frequently in my junior high days. If you search about Japanese urban legends, a lot of stories to scare kids too much will be found. Though I know that this kind of horrors tend to be circulated easily through people, rather I like hearing hilarious rumors like "hydrogen beer".
I could remember only these four "legends".

Disappeared Boy

There was a live TV show for small children. In the show, the woman who presided over the show asked several children sitting in line.
"Let's give some 't' words."
One boy raised his hand vigorously and shouted.
"Testis!"
The woman was stunned a moment and said with a stiffened smile.
"Why don't you give me something more terrific?"
The boy answered it quickly.
"Terrific testis!"
At the next moment, the show went to a commercial. When the show came back from the break, a teddybear had sat instead of the boy.

Hell-Pot

This is a recipe of a "Hell-Pot".
Drop several live loaches into the water in a pot on the fire. The water is getting hotter and hotter, and the loaches struggle to escape from the heat. Throw a chilled big tofu over it. Then the loaches make holes in the tofu and get into them to lower their body temperature. But, the tofu is also heated and boiled up with the loaches in it. You can eat both tofu and loaches together.

Although some people tried this cruel recipe, they said it did not succeed. A loach seems not to be able to anticipate that a cold tofu helps it to feel better in the hot water. There is another story similar to this one.

Put rice, water, and the live snakes into a huge pot. Cover the pot with a heavy lid that has many small holes. When the inside of the pot becomes hot, the snakes pop their head out through the holes of the lid to survive. However, they become exhausted before creeping out from the holes. If the rice has cooked enough, pull the snakes' heads from the lid. Their backbones come out together with their head, and only their meat left behind into the cooked rice.

I have read this in a Soseki Natsume's novel and of course I think it's a joke.

HANAGE

ISO (International Standardization Organization) established "hanage" as a standard unit to measure the degree of pain. The word "hanage" means "nose hair" in Japanese. They defined 1 hanage as equal to the pain felt when a nose hair with a length of 1 cm is pulled and extracted with a force of 1 newton.
It had been said that pain is subjective and impossible to express numerically. However, Professor Makoto Saito, the advocate of this unit said.
"The individual difference of pain in mucous membrane of nose is the smallest in the human body."
According to him, the pain of hitting our little toe against the wall is expressed as 2~3 Khanages(kilo-hanages). And the pain of delivery comes to approximately 2.5~3.2 Mhanages(mega-hanages).

This was originally written for a joke website, and spread among the people through the chain-mail in several years ago. Many people had not any doubt about it at that time.

South Pole No.1

If you ask some Japanese what the "South Pole No.1" is, many of them will answer that it's a kind of sex-doll. It is because that the first Antarctic expedition party in Japan brought it to their base in order to satisfy their sexual desire in that solitary land.

I had thought that it was not a truth and was one of the common urban legends for a long time. But, it was a fact.
One of the crew of the Antarctic expedition party wrote about it in his book together with his other experiences. The doll was converted from a mannequin displayed in department store windows. A fake female genitals made of rubber (There were only men in that party) and a steel can were embedded in it. When they use it, they had to fill the can with hot water not to make their body freeze in the cold weather. Since both of its legs were cut away because it was cumbersome to use, the doll became creepy and no one used it even once.
And it seemed that some sex toy manufacturer who heard this story named their own dolls "South Pole No. 2".

Keywords

Japan is the only country which uses Japanese as the official language. So we can say that almost all of the webpages written in Japanese were written for Japanese people (and for the very few foreigners who speak Japanese). According to this page, 295.4 million of Internet users are native English speakers. And 67 million of native Japanese speakers (i.e. Japanese people) are using Internet. This is the fourth largest numbers of Internet users after Chinese speakers (110 million) and Spanish speakers (72 million).

Now, suppose that we search a certain Japanese keyword with Google. Probably, this hit-count will reflect how much Japanese peoples are interested in the keyword. If we also search the same keyword in English and compare both hit-counts, we will be able to find out how each people in two language zones have different degree of interest in the keyword.

I tried it using various keywords. The following is the list of some keywords that brought obvious results. Of course, not only the simple hit-counts, but the ratios of the hit-counts in the number of each language users are shown. These ratio will show us what Japanese people are interested in or not. How about trying this also with your native language?

(These hit-counts are the numbers of the moment where I searched them)

Language	keyword(s)	hit-count	ratio of hit-count to language users(%)	ratio of bigger to smaller
Eng	"fortune telling" OR "foretelling" OR "prophesy"	922,000	0.31	1.0
Jpn	"" (URANAI)	6,010,000	8.97	28.9
There are no people like Japanese who are crazy about fortune-telling.
Eng	"blood type" OR "blood types"	627,000	0.21	1.0
Jpn	"" (KETSUEKI-GATA)	1,220,000	1.82	8.7
Read my past article about this.
Eng	"minus ion"	4,920	0.0017	1.0
Jpn	""	523,000	0.78	458.8
Read my past article about this.
Eng	"perversion" OR "pervert"	769,000	0.26	1.0
Jpn	"" (HENTAI)	877,000	1.31	5.04
This result seems to show us that Japan is filled with perverts. But, see below!
Eng	"hentai"	20,700,000	7.01	5.35
Jpn	"" (HENTAI)	877,000	1.31	1.0
Hey! Are there this much hentais in the world?
Eng	"school truancy" OR "school refusal"	36,200	0.012	1.0
Jpn	"" OR "" (FUTOKO)	376,000	0.56	46.7
Japanese students really hate their schools.
Eng	"aging of population" OR "aging of society"	8,640	0.0029	1.0
Jpn	"" (KOREIKA-SHAKAI)	243,000	0.36	124.1
In Japan, every two workers will have to support one retired person by 2025.
Eng	"declining birth rate" OR "declining birth rates" OR "declining birthrate"	40,500	0.014	1.0
Jpn	"" (SHOUSHI-KA)	311,000	0.46	32.86
In this year, population of Japan decreased for the first time from 1950.
Eng	"health food" OR "healthy food"	3,770,000	1.28	1.0
Jpn	"" (KENKO-SHOKUHIN)	3,120,000	4.66	3.6
Japanese people are sick with wanting to be health.
Eng	"promotion by seniority" OR "seniority system"	26,900	0.0091	1.0
Jpn	"" (NENKOU-JORETSU)	81,400	0.12	13.2
The bad habit is still alive.
Eng	"life time employment" OR "lifetime employment" OR "lifelong employment"	82,600	0.028	1.0
Jpn	"" (SHUSHIN-KOYO)	50,300	0.075	2.68
Japanese office workers used to say "I'm ready for burying my bones under this company!"
Eng	"environmental problem" OR "environmental issue"	641,000	0.27	1.0
Jpn	"" (KANKYO-MONDAI)	2,480,000	3.7	13.7
Every TV commercial says "We're thinking about environment".
Eng	"Iraq war" OR "war in Iraq"	8,130,000	2.75	2.96
Jpn	"" (IRAQ-SENSO)	624,000	0.93	1.0
Since a young hostage was killed by terrorist, at last, Japanese people started to take the war seriously.
Eng	"terrorism" OR "terro"	11,200,000	3.79	1.8
Jpn	"" OR ""	1,430,000	2.13	1.0
We also have experienced the terrorism by domestic left-wing guerrillas many times.
Eng	"United Nations" OR "UN"	34,700,000	11.75	9.5
Jpn	"" OR "" (KOKU-REN)	831,000	1.24	1.0
The corruption of the United Nations is hardly known by Japanese people yet.
Eng	"East Timor"	5,700,000	1.93	13.8
Jpn	"" OR "" (HIGASHI-TIMOR)	92,400	0.14	1.0
Many of Japanese may not even know what this is about.
Eng	"food crisis"	172,000	0.058	4.8
Jpn	"" (SHOKURYO-KIKI)	7,750	0.012	1.0
It must be a serious problem for us because we have only 40% of the food self-sufficiency ratio.
Eng	"starvation"	1,960,000	0.66	1.7
Jpn	"" (KIGA)	262,000	0.39	1.0
If this was 60 years ago, these numbers would be reversed.
Eng	"poverty"	20,100,000	6.8	11.3
Jpn	"" (HINKON)	403,000	0.6	1.0
If this was 50 years ago, these numbers would be reversed.
Eng	"racism"	6,330,000	2.14	24.3
Jpn	"" OR "" (JINSHU-SHUGI)	59,000	0.088	1.0
This word is not so familiar to us because Japan consists of almost one race.
Eng	"anti-Semitism"	733,000	0.25	13.2
Jpn	"" (HAN-JUDEA-SHUGI)	12,600	0.019	1.0
We cannot fully realize a confrontation between religions.
Eng	"patriotism"	2,150,000	0.73	3.3
Jpn	"" (AIKOKU-SHIN)	149,000	0.22	1.0
This word is seldom used because it makes many Japanese people feel "Imperialistic".
Eng	"copyright"	680,000,000	230.2	12.9
Jpn	"" (CHOSAKU-KEN)	12,000,000	17.9	1.0
This result seems to admonish me.
Eng	"Oedipus complex"	53,400	0.018	1.0
Jpn	"" (MAZA-KON)	61,300	0.091	5.1
This Japanese word rather means "a mam's boy".
Eng	"ninja"	7,950,000	2.69	1.0
Jpn	"" (NINJA)	2,070,000	3.09	1.1
There are not so many informations about ninja in Japan!
Eng	"Akira Kurosawa"	342,000	0.12	3.3
Jpn	"" (AKIRA KUROSAWA)	24,300	0.036	1.0
It is no use asking Japanese about Kurosawa!
Eng	"mansion"	6,680,000	2.26	1.0
Jpn	""	8,360,000	12.48	5.5
We use the English word "mansion" more often than native speakers.
Eng	"idol"	4,550,000	1.54	1.0
Jpn	""	5,510,000	8.22	5.3
And "idol", too.

Insulting Words

Knowing which keywords people were searching for when they came to my site is very fun. Many people came here just because all of their keywords happened to be included in my posts. And I'm sure most of them would be disappointed that the things they wanted were not in here.

I found out that several visitors strayed into my site when they were searching for "Japanese insults". I have no idea why they would like to know such things. Were they going to make a fool of some Japanese person? Do they really want to do it to my fellow citizen? Mmm... That sounds...fun! I'll help you.

(BAKA)
Perhaps, this is the most simple insulting word in Japanese. It means a fool or an idiot.

(AHO)
This has been mainly used in Kansai, the district around Osaka and Kyoto. Its meaning is mostly same as BAKA.

(MANUKE)
The original meaning of this word is "doing something untimely or too late", and now it simply means a stupid thing or person.

(NOROMA)
A slow person. It's interesting that "to be slow" is looked down on in both Japanese and English.

(HETA)
To be bad at something. HETAKUSO is worse (KUSO means a crap). You better never use this to your partner in bed.

(KECHI)
A stingy person. A miser. Many Japanese people came to be KECHI in this hard times.

(JIJI)    (BABA)
If you say these words to someone worrying about aging, certainly they will get angry. JIJI means an old man, and BABA is an old woman.

(DASAI)
An adjective which means "to be not cool" and is mainly used by young people.

(UZAI)
An adjective that young people prefer to use when they express something fussy or depressing.

(KIMOI)
Young people also use this very often just like above two. This means "creepy".

BUJUTSU

YOSHINORI KONO is a researcher and instructor of Japanese traditional martial arts, and his writings are filled with various interesting stories. Today, we recognize about martial arts as several independent sports, for example, judo, kendo or aikido, etc. But, samurais in Edo period did not classify them like that, but had mastered all of them as a synthetic art of self-defense. KONO calls it "BUJUTSU".

Imagine a boxer who is trying to punch his opponent. He will twist the upper part of his body, and will store up his energy for pushing out his fist rapidly. But, this movement helps his opponent to guess which arm he is going to use to attack. KONO says that the samurais did not twist their body when they fight. They could move quickly by moving all of their joints flexibly, without twisting their bodies. It was quite unpredictable movement for their opponents, just like a tuna cannot follow the thousands of small fish when they quickly change their swimming direction all at once. However, it is hard for us to move without twisting our body. KONO says that the samurai moved in a completely different way from the present theory of human motion.

A samurai was aimed a sword, and the tip of the sword was only a few inches from his nose. Since he even had not extracted his own sword yet, he seemed to have no chance to escape. Suddenly, he raised both of his legs and made his body to fall on his bottom. Momentarily, his body floated in the air, and it made every parts of his body to be able to move freely. He extracted his sword in a backhand grip, and struck the opponents sword away. The opponent who had pointed the sword to him was surprised that his face disappeared suddenly, and lost the sword before grasping the situation.

KONO has introduced various unbelievable episodes of "TATSUJIN", the experts of BUJUTSU. SAMANOSUKE MATSUDAIRA was also one of the samurai who was called as TATSUJIN. One day, he was ordered to arrest a fugitive who was taking a hostage at a hotel. He approached the fugitive, hiding a lump of lead in his sleeve, and without having a sword. When the fugitive swung down his sword to SAMANOSUKE's head, SAMANOSUKE threw the lead and stepped back quickly. Since his sword hit the lead, the fugitive mistook it for hitting SAMANOSUKE. In a very short time that the fugitive lost his attention, SAMANOSUKE swung his leg and the fugitive tripped and fell on the floor. Soon the fugitive was tied up and caught easily. KONO indicates that we become very weak when our expectations proved wrong.

He also introduces the episodes like this.
When we walk, we move our right leg and left arm forward together. When we step our left leg forward, we twist the upper part of our body and swing our right arm forward. Until this method of walking was imported from the West in about 130 years ago, the Japanese people had walked in the other way. They may have not been able to twist their waist at all. While they walking, they did not swing their arm or moved their arm and leg of the same side forward together. Therefore, almost all of Japanese people in Edo period could not run. In the old picture that depicted an earthquake in those days, the people who could not run are walking to escape, holding up their hand like dancing. In the other hand, it is said that the several samurais and ninjas had amazing running skill. KONO introduces about a samurai who ran the whole distance of 600km in three days. The samurai must have adopted some different kind of methods of running from ours.

The KONO's books explain not only the moral theory of martial arts, but many concrete examples of skills of samurai. His book should be translated in other languages.

If you want to know more about KONO's theory of martial arts, this page will help you.

Are We Really Hard Workers?

Japanese people are said to be hard-workers. At least, many of them believe themselves to be so. But I can't think so.
The unemployment rate of Japan has exceeded 5% for past several years, and people take it seriously. But this is very low value compared with the whole world. In Japan, 50 million people, equivalent to 40% of the population, are employed workers. A certain property of Japanese companies which employ them makes the unemployment rate lower than it would be.

I am a freelance worker and often attend the clients' offices for a month to a year. So I've seen many Japanese companies. I personally feel that the real hard-workers are 1/3 or less of the total office workers. Many companies must be supported by their self-sacrifice, but the same amount of salary is paid to the useful workers and other lazy workers.

In a certain company, three or four "KACHO" were in an office. Though the word "KACHO" means a "section chief" in Japanese, they didn't have their own sections. In that company, everyone who has worked for certain years is automatically promoted to the post of KACHO. A certain KACHO had nothing to do and were walking around the office everyday.

In another company, several employees were made to continue to input the redundant data to a database for a few months. If they employed a software engineer as a part-time employee, the work would be finished in two or three days. But, since the boss of the section didn't know much about computer, he didn't even have such an idea.

Japanese companies not only make their products or services, but are making a lot of useless works to maintain employment of many workers. I don't think it's so bad. The things for the basic living environment has been already accumulated for the past years in Japan. If we did not make any surplus works and there were only few indispensable works, most of us would become jobless. Japanese people seldom consider whether their works are really useful for society.

Even if the Japanese employed workers are not so industrious, it is true that their lives are very stressful.
I know some office workers who had to attend their office by 8:30 am, and had to clean there. When cleaning finished, they had to start the "radio exercises" all together. After easing their muscle stiffness, they had to read out the "company precepts" put up on the wall in chorus. (These obligatory daily practices remind me of my elementary school days. Actually those companies seemed to think that the cooperativeness among the workers was more important than their productivity. It's just similar to a principle of a school)

Some of office workers spend more than two hours commuting each way. They bought their houses in suburban prefectures of Tokyo, because the houses in the center of Tokyo are too expensive for them. They adhere to have their own houses and content with spending 1/6 of their day in the commuter train to pay their monthly installment.
And they also have to save their money. There was a refrigerator in a certain office and it had a lot of beers in it. When 5pm comes, several workers gather in front of the refrigerator and begin to drink. They drink in their office for thrift instead of going to the bar.

They seem to deceive themselves as they get satisfaction from their work by bearing the hardships that they face. I think that the Japanese people are too lazy to find a better way and they only choose a way that they don't need to think deeply.

The Wind Makes Tub-makers Rich

This is a funny example of chain reaction from a rakugo story of Edo period (17th - middle 19th century).
If a strong wind blows, dust will be raised into the air and will make many people blind. In those days, many of the blind persons played music for a living. So if blind persons increase, SHAMISEN, an instrument with 3 strings, will sell fast. Since cat skin was used for SHAMISEN's body, if SHAMISEN sells well, many cats will be hunted and decrease. (poor cats! I'ma cat lover) If cats are gone, mice will increase and they'll gnaw OKE, wooden tubs, in order to eat foods in them. Then people will buy a lot of new tubs. The wind makes tub-makers rich.

People tell this story to explain that all things are related each other, or things are sometimes caused by the reason which seem to have no relation. And I want to add another lesson of the story to them. Sometimes, someone's benefit is made by the damage of others.

About 50 years ago, with the progress of industry, Japanese government forwarded to cut down the natural woods and recommended to plant cedar trees instead. A Japanese cedar takes only about 40 years to grow to adult tree and is good for construction material. Now there are 4.5 million hectare of artificial forests of cedar in Japan. But in 1960's, importation of lumber was liberalized and price of lumber fell. Since taking care of cedar forest became impossible to pay, they have been left alone. An artificial cedar forest needs to thin out because crowded trees shut out the sunlight and it makes low trees and grasses dead. Bare ground without covering by small plants cannot keep rain water from flowing away fast. So the soil became poor in nutrients and the trees have got thin. Since the roots of trees became weak, landslide has been caused easily.  Many people are killed by landslides every year.

And in recent Japan, the wind makes pharmaceutical companies rich. In the towns and cities of Japan, one of five people has hay fever. It's an allergy to cedar pollen, to be exact.
Cedar trees bloom and sprinkle their pollens in spring. The wind carries the pollens to cities. Since most of the ground in cities are covered with asphalt, pollens don't return to the ground but continue floating in the air. People who have allergic constitution are bothered by symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, or itching of eyes. Japanese hay fever is a kind of pollution because it was clearly caused by the failure of the Government's policy. It is also said that exhaust gas in the air has changed our predisposition to be easy to get hay fever.

Some people said that the market scale of the anti-hay fever medicine in Japan is up to about 100 billion yen (950 million USD). However, the loss of the labor earnings of people troubled with hay fever may exceed it.
A certain volunteer organization releases the information about the expected quantity of pollen every year. According to it, in the next year, cedar pollen will be 10 to 15 times as many as this year. Although I myself am not predisposed to hay fever, I seriously sympathize with people who worry about pollen.

Mujo

Close to 1,000 houses collapsed in the earthquake which occurred last month, and about 50,000 people are still living in refuges. The sad news has also arrived that several sheltering people dead from fatigue. I shuddered when I imagined that it happened in the center of Tokyo or other crowded cities.

Though it is said that the Japanese buildings are proof against earthquake, the old traditional houses are not necessarily so. The walls of houses had not been thought important for the traditional architectures. In this moist country, to enhance ventilation, the walls were made by lime mixed with grass, and stone was rarely used. The windows were only covered with SHOJI, the framed thin paper, until glass was introduced. That is, the wall did not work to reinforce the structure of a house.

On the other hand, the roofs of those houses were closely covered with the ceramic tiles. The tiles not only prevented rain, but worked as a weight which protected the roof from being blown away by the strong wind. They were very helpful because we have been hit with many typhoons every year. But, since only several wooden pillars supported this heavy roof, the whole house was easy to be crushed under the roof if a heavy earthquake occurred.

The damages from several typhoons and earthquakes in this year made me remember "Hojoki (the Ten Foot Square Hut)". Hojoki was written by Kamo-no-Chomei, the Buddhist in the 12th century, as his reminiscences. Those days, Kyoto was already a big city as a capital of Japan. The crowded town of Kyoto was repeatedly hit by disastrous fires, and suffered serious damage also from earthquakes and typhoons. Chomei looked at people who repeated building and losing of their houses, and realized "Mujo". Mujo means "there is no eternal thing". He gave up having his own house and spent his retirement days in a tiny mountain hut.
And until modernization, other Japanese people who lived in their breakable houses also thought that the place they lived in were always temporary. This mental state of "abandonment" had influenced strongly the Japanese mentality. They were not adhere to things, but liked the simple life.

Today, Japanese people have became greedy, and began to build the concrete houses which cannot be broken easily. But, they will not be able to conquer the natural disasters perfectly. I am amazed that the words of Chomei in 800 years ago are still warning us.

Although the things humans do are all foolish, it is most foolish of all to spend their money and effort in order to build their houses in such a dangerous city area like this.

An English translation of Hojoki can be purchased at Amazon.