Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan

Even a prison would be better

Long time no see (again). Unfortunately, I'm still alive.
From my last post, I had had to be away from posting on here for many reasons, which are mainly being busy with work. And I have moved to an apartment near my office, but I have not set up my PC to access the Internet yet. It seems to take a few more weeks. (blame my ISP!)
Thanks for all who gave me encouraging words. I'll be back here ASAP.

By the way, while looking for a new apartment on an apartment hunting site, I found this weird room in the pic.
Its description said that it has only 8.7 square meters for floor space and no bathroom. Although there are many small apartments in Japan, a room of this size would be very rare. And it also said there is a common shower room and toilet in the apartment. I and my friends named it as "Pervert Mansion" because its owner is renting this apartment to only women under the age of 25! I'm sure there must be a peep hole in the wall of the shower room.

How Common Are Our Behaviors?

In the trial that a newspaper publishing company Asahi Shimbun charged a publisher Shinchosha with defamation over a magazine article which described two of Asahi's columns as ripoffs (one from a personal website), The Supreme Court accepted the Asahi's appeal and ordered Shinchosha to pay indemnity. I think it's a doubtful judgment because one of the columns was obviously resembling the website which was mentioned. But I don't want to take about the corruption of newspapers and judicial system of this country any longer, because I really hate Japanese newspapers and I get upset even thinking about it. (I've written about one of the reasons before)

But the contents of the column, i.e. the article in the original website, was pretty interesting. The summary was like this:

When I (the author of the article) talked with my friends, we realized that all of us were thinking that entering bookstores always made us have to go to the bathroom. We supposed that reading would bring a desire to defecate to our brains, or the smell of ink and paper would work like that, but could not find a satisfactory reason.
In Japan, there are not so many bookstores which have comfortable bathrooms and even enough selling space to sit down and read books comfortably. Although I know they are suffering from depression now, they should answer our needs then it would bring them prosperity.

We often talk with friends about our habits or usual behaviors that we think of as very personal, and we sometimes feel funny when we find the behaviors were actually common in others than we thought. Like this:

"I know it's so weird but... don't you start to have to go to the bathroom when you are in a bookstore?"

"Why do you know that?"

But actually, I can't sympathize with this example. I surely rush to the bathroom everytime I go to a bookstore, but I'm a person who needs to go to bathroom very frequently like a newborn baby. So no matter what kind of store or place I'm in, my brain orders me to defecate so often. It has no relation with books for me.

However, I have some behaviors that I'm suspecting they may not only my own habits. I'm not sure about those things are peculiar to our country, the place I was raised, my hometown, or completely personal. I sacrifice my pride to let you get to know that they are common or I'm only a weirdo. Please let me know if you shout "You, too?" when you read the following.

1. When you look down from a high place, can you help but say like "Will I be dead if I fell over here?"
...I can't.

2. When a person whom you have idly looked at realizes you, do you turn your head away and pretend to be just looking around the surroundings?
...I often do that.

3. Do you sometimes pinch your nose with your fingers so that fat come through the pores?
...I rather like it.

4. When you read a novel, do you cast every each character in the novel with a real actor and actress and reproduce each scene as a movie scene in your mind?
...That's why I'm a slow reader.

5. When you eat an ice cream cone, do you eat it while pushing the ice cream into the cone with your tongue?
...I do, because by doing that, even the tip of the cone can be filled with the ice cream.

6. This is for men only. When you go men's room for "no.1" and realize that there's someone in the toilet compartment, do you intentionally make a noise by clearing your throat or something to let him know you are there, so that he won't be surprised to find you when he comes out.
...I do. I know I always think too much.

7. Do you like squeezing some soft things like towels or blankets between any two fingers on your hands?
...Don't you feel it good?

8. When you are a kid, have you played a game with an imagination like this?
"You have to walk on only curbs of the road, stones, or concrete lids of the sewer, because you will be dead as soon as your feet touch the bare ground or the asphalt."
...I did. And even after I grew up, when I walk across a zebra crossing, I sometimes try to put my feet on only the white lines, of course without any purposes.

Voice from Customers

Some supermarkets have small postboxes that shoppers can post their feedback to the store. They put up those posts on the store's wall with their comments. We can see a lot of rants people throw their anger at, and overly polite answers from stores.

From customer:
Your clerks are cheerless aren't they? You never smile and we can't hear your greeting to thank us. Although I know you always care about your stuff to sell, "humanity" should be more important than them.  (The second floor can pass my test)

From store:
We are very sorry about that. We will instruct our all cashiers to serve you cheerfully.

I really sympathize the store manager for answering this kind of arrogant customers who think they are God or something. People seem to be taking out their frustrations pent up during their daily life (even no relation with supermarkets) on those posts.

On the other hand, sometimes I can find posts like this:

From customer:
I usually do shopping at your store. I'm enjoying canceling or dressing up myself.

From store:
Thank you for using our store. It's good for you that you seem to be happy with shopping or dressing up. Please take care of yourself and let us hear from you again.

I have no idea what he/she is canceling and why it brings enjoyment. And as you can read, the poster didn't show any of his/her claims, questions or suggestions to the store. There's only a "state".
Perhaps, this post may have been written by one of lonely elders who have no relatives and friends. They always want someone to talk to and are waiting any response from others to their statements. We often see old people alone and talking to the air.

The next one is similar.

From customer:
I hardly go to other town these days. Everyday I go shopping to your store. I want to change something to be better than now.

From store:
Thank you for your daily use. It must be tough for you to go shopping everyday! The rainy season and the hot summer are coming right now. Please take care of your health. We are waiting for your next post.

It was hard to translate because its original sentences are so weird and I can't understand what this poster meant to say. There seems to be something he can't accept but he doesn't seem to figure out  what it is. But it's not a big deal because what he really wanted is supposed to be a reply from others like this. I think this store manager can succeed as a good mental health counselor.

Curved Bamboo

A bamboo tree was bent down from the weight of the snow on it. Don't you think this is symbolic of something important?  I feel like this is pointing us to  something instructive, moralistic, metaphorical, and ironic. Just like what some Chinese wise man said. But ...I can't recall what is it. Let me think.

There is a Japanese saying: "Willow branches can never be broken" (YANAGI NI EDA-ORE NASHI). Willow branches are always hanging down to the ground and not firm. So they don't seem to be strong. But even if the heavy snow piled on them, they are only bent down and hardly broken. This saying means that the real strength is a flexibility. It's very close but I think there must be something else more suitable for this curved bamboo.

Speaking of Japanese saying, there is an interesting story. There is a saying: "Kindness is not for helping others". Many people believe the meaning of this saying as that "being kind to a person is not necessarily beneficial to him/her because we should solve our problem by ourselves."  But its actual meaning is: "If we are kind to others, we will get kindness back. So we should be kind for ourselves." The real meaning is more selfish than the common belief. It is off topic from the bamboo though.

I show you another funny Japanese expression. We sometimes call the front zipper of the pants as "social window" (SHAKAI NO MADO). As you are guessing, we say like this because the zipper is the border of the public/society and our very 'private' area.
Since my head was filled with that bamboo, I forgot to zip up my pants in the whole of today. So I had walked around outside keeping my social window widely opened. While I went to the bank, supermarket, drugstore, and video shop, my window was unlocked to everyone in the society. But I did not intend to offend by such an antisocial act. What a shame...

Hey, finally I figured out the meaning of the bamboo! It had warned me to "look down".

Gravestone Shop

There is a stone shop in my neighborhood which is displaying some stone objects to show their sculptural skill. The shop is  primarily making and selling gravestones, but those demonstration works are hilarious.

This kind of stone turtles can be seen often around ponds in Japanese old shrines.

This Doraemon is strange. He looks like wearing the shades.

Godzilla is hanging a sticker for " Protect Children" campaign on his neck.

Please notice the baby dinosaur breaking through the egg behind the hippo and dogs. It's just like the movie Alien.

I can't even imagine how expensive the total royalty for these characters would be.

If you are a Hello Kitty worshipper, this must make your eternal sleep peacefull.

And these are their proper works.

Lots of Unchi

You should better to stop reading this post if you are eating, because this is about a human excrement.

You can find this kind of POP displays in almost every drug store in Japan. This says "UNCHI DOSSARI". UNCHI means "feces" (in baby talk) and DOSSARI means "tons of". So people are shocked when they read it at the first time, "Are they selling poop here? Why so much?" This is very funny for us, but not for women.
Many Japanese women are suffering from constipation and most of them believe that it makes them fat. So they strongly hope to cure their constipation even with the help of medicines. They are really expecting to defecate tons of poop as that POP says.

This is a picture of a joke stuff "poop hat". No, I'm not going to introduce this stupid hat. I only want to let you know that feces in Japanese comics are always coiled like a snail shell or soft ice cream. I don't know who started to design feces like that. But every Japanese people recognizes that kind of shape as a human feces. It's strange.

And one more feces topic. There is a huge art object at the main building of a beer company, Asahi Breweries. It was designed by Philippe Starck in motif of flame, but everyone calls it a giant poop.

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".

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.

Game Machine with Phone Function

Japan may be like a theme park for people who love cell phones or other electric gadgets. But, I'm unacquainted to them and always miss the newest stuff. So this subject is not the latest news, too.

Recently, in order to help development of the Java application for cell phones, I borrowed the newest one, N900i. I was surprised that "Dragon Quest" (aka "Dragon Warrior" in US) was pre-installed to the phone. Dragon Quest is the Japanese most popular computer RPG . It was first released for NES in 1986 and 6 sequels are made until now, and total of 20 million or more copies are sold. It contributed much to spread the fun of computer games to people who had been indifferent to them. And I was also crazy about it.
I was impressed that this game, which could be implemented by using full capabilities of NES, was running on the palm-sized cell phone. Then I compared the specs of them.

	Nintendo Entertainment System	NTT DoCoMo N900i
CPU	RP2A03 / 8bit / 1.79MHz	OMAP / 32bit / 200MHz?
RAM	2K bytes for work RAM 2K bytes for video RAM	4.7M bytes for java heap
ROM	32K bytes	100K bytes (max size for "jar" file)
Display	256 x 240 pixels 16 colors	240 x 240 pixels 65,536 colors
Sound	PSG x 3 Noise x 1	64 voices (maximum polyphony)
Dimensions	150mm x 220mm x 60mm	102mm x 48mm x 26mm

This seems to be an absurd comparison... The capability of the present cell phone has easily exceeded the game machine of 21 years ago. Actually, the Japanese biggest mobile company NTT DoCoMo seems to be planning to spread their cell phone as a mobile game platform. Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director of DoCoMo said about their newest lineup:
"I think that it has a capability which is almost equal to PlayStation 1. I'm sure it's one of the record levels of handheld game machines."
Besides Dragon Quest, the popular games such as "Final Fantasy" and "Resident Evil" are already ported to their cell phones. Until now, playing phone games was only good for killing time. But people will become to check whether their favorite games can be played when they choose their cell phones.

I tried to play Dragon Quest after a long time, but I was frustrated soon. Because the LCD is too small and my eyes got tired immediately.
I guess that the people wearing glasses will continue to increase as we use cell phones.

Do They Know the Meaning of "Kitty"?

When I wrote my last article, I went to Sanrio's website for the first time. And I was made to be totally confused when I read this page (in Japanese). It says:

Charmmy and Sugar, this two, who are charming as their name, are Kitty's pet given by daddy and Daniel!! Kitty has just only started breeding them, but they are already tame and loving her.

And their profile say that Charmmy is a Persian cat and Sugar is a Djungarian hamster.

...Wait a minute!! Hello Kitty itself is...ah... WHAT?

Fisherman's Profit

There is a Japanese old saying, "a fisherman's profit" which is close in meaning to an English proverb, "fishing in troubled waters". This came from a Chinese story. In ancient China, when a hard clam was opening its shell, a bird flew up and bit the clam's body. The clam closed its shell and pinched the bird's beak. While both were fighting not to detach each other, a fisherman came up and caught the both of them with no difficulties. So this proverb means that if you fight with someone, a third person will take away your profit.

The typhoon No.18 left serious damage in Japanese various places. 44 people died and went missing. One of the national treasure, ITSUKUSHIMA shrine collapsed partially. Industrial damage, such as agricultural and marine products, was also serious.

In a harbor of TOSASHIMIZU City, KOCHI Prefecture, a fish preserve was broken by the typhoon, and 110,000 sea breams escaped to the sea. The neighbouring anglers who heard this rushed for the harbor, and they caught escaped sea breams one after another.
These fishermen made their profit without any efforts, but this happening differs from the meaning of saying "a fisherman's profit". They seem to be much more greedy than the fisherman in the saying.

Reporting Typhoon

Typhoon No.18 is landing the west part of Japan now. This is the seventh typhoon of this year to strike us, and it's the largest number ever recorded. No.18's maximum instantaneous wind speed, 60.2 m/s, is also the maximum record since 1937. I hope we don't get much damage.

By the way, I have a question about the typhoon reports on TV. Why reporters have to report in the middle of heavy rainstorm? They always report almost being blown away by storm and being soaked with rain. Sometimes, their shouts are carried away by the wind and their figures are blurred out through the camera lens with waterdrop.
High wave breaking breakwater and strong wind blowing down roadside trees are shown enough to feel fear through the TV image. But I think reporters don't have to stand into the wind, even by running the risk of their lives. It can be imagined easily that someone will be injured some day soon.
Or are they thinking that it's good opportunity to prove themselves as hard workers who are suitable for the position of anchorman or anchorwoman?

OKARA

I cannot help but tell this stupid local news.
This June, in the election of town councillors for CHIZU Town, TOTTORI Prefecture, candidate KISHIMOTO beat another candidate OKADA by a margin of only one vote. The defeated candidate OKADA got to know that there is a ballot said "OKARA" and it was counted as null and void. He claimed that "OKARA" was a slip of the pen for "OKADA" and it was a vote for him. The Election Administration Committee accepted this and it means that OKADA had obtained the same number of votes as KISHIMOTO. And it was decided that the winner will be selected from these two by drawing of lots.

By the way, "OKARA" is the name of a certain food. OKARA is the dregs of boiled and filtered soybean juice. As you know, filtered soy milk become tofu if it is solidified with calcium sulfate. OKARA is very nutritious and healthy food but it doesn't taste good.

Let me return to the subject of the election. The candidate KISHIMOTO claimed that "OKARA" had pointed him out. He said that he had cows and he used to feed OKARA to his cows. And he also said that all townsmen know that. (I've never heard about a cow which eats OKARA)
I think that both of these childish men should be defeated.

Crows

The residents of Tokyo fight with the crows every day. It's because they damage and disarrange the garbage we put on the street to correct.
In Tokyo, with the increase of population and garbage, the crows have bred unusually since they can eat anything which we eat. The number of them is said to be 30,000, that is 7 times of 40 years ago.
We cover the garbage bags with plastic net or steel cage, not to be teared them by the crows. But, they attack the weak portions of the covering using various methods and upset the garbage bags in the end.

The damage by crows is not only to garbage. If you pass near their nest at their breeding season, they will glide close over the ground and attack you with their sharp beak. The damages of the noise of their cry and the contamination by their excrement are intense in several areas that are crowded with crows. The hungry crows sometimes attack the young kittens!

The high-intelligence, learning ability, and memory of crows are surprising. Certain crows put the walnut on a road, and wait for a car passing over the shell, and eat the broken walnut. The certain crows fly into an orange orchard, and make a hole in the hard orange peel with their beak. It's not for eating the orange. They waylays a little bird which cannot tear the peel by itself fly to the scratched orange, and catch and eat them.

This is also an anecdote that tells the intelligence of crows. Many pigeons live in shrines in Japan. They are so friendly and some of them even take food from our hand. The vending machines which sell food for pigeon are put in some shrines. The crows steal the changes offered on the shrine, put the coins into the vending machine, and eat the food that came out from the machine. Yes, they even BUY their food by themselves.

Several years ago, there was an incident in which some stones are placed on the rail of the train every day in YOKOHAMA city. Since it may have caused a big derailment accident, people watched the track by using the video camera. The camera recorded the scene that a crow held a stone in its mouth and put it on the rail. I was shocked when I heard about it, since I guessed that the crows did it expecting the accident and to get lots of fresh MEAT!!
Fortunately, it was my misunderstanding. In fact, their habit was the cause of this incident. Crows have the habit of hiding their food out of sight. The bottom of gravel between rails is a suitable hiding place. They put the stones on the rail by chance for taking out their foods which they hid beforehand. After few days, the crows stopped approaching the track because the fake dead bodies of crows made from plastic were hung by the police.

But, the fight against the crows are still continuing here and there in Tokyo.