Shunbun no Hi

Hey, Nick,

While on a road trip last week, while experimenting with my Japanese vocabulary, I learned a new saying: "猫を被る"

¹ "Neko o kaburu," which literally translates into, "he wears a cat on his head," or more simply, "to put on the cat."

¹. This, apparently, is a disapproving statement implicating someone who is normally wild and outrageous of pretending to be polite and mild-mannered to impress or placate the expectations of someone who needs to be impressed.

And though Japan may seem to have quite a favorable relationship with the Felis catus

² With the 招き猫 (maneki-neko) and everything.

², this saying harkens back to a time when Japanese people were more suspicious of their fine feline friends, much like it's Western/European counterparts.

Early in Japanese folklore it was believed that cats were capable of transforming into monsters. And though my mother could attest to that possibility still being quite true with even modern house cats, there were a fair number of evil-doings in such stories attributed to the " 化け猫," or the "Goblin Cat," a youkai (妖怪) that was known to terrorize households with their supernatural abilities

³ Wikipedia conveniently lists common traits of the type of cat that qualifies for such a Pokemon-esque bake-evolution, and, likewise, we should all be a little more wary of Milo.

³. Among the bake-nekos more illustrious powers are walking on its hind legs, menacing and eating sleeping humans, zombification and shapeshifting, in addition to flying and talking. The bake-neko (and all cats who have the potential for promotion to bake-neko status) are revered/feared akin to the kitsune (狐) and tanuki (狸) (which are responsible for "moshi-moshi" and other more curious Japanese habits).

And so, according to folklore, cats were(/are) monsters capable of transforming into more terrible monsters capable of terrorizing families for generations through deception and burning things (+/- zombies). Thusly, someone who "puts on a cat" (or wears a cat-mask, I suppose) is someone who is putting on an air of placidness that hides a terrible potential for going wild. Sort of like a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

Similarly, other resources suggest a more situational "wearing of the cat" in "借りてきた猫," or "borrowing a cat," which suggests that the person is only behaving well mannered contrary to his nature in circumstances and situations that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. So pretty much like everybody in Japan.

Other more interesting "cat" sayings are "猫の額" ("a cat's forehead," meaning "a tiny space"), "猫の子一匹いない" ("not even a kitten around," which sounds like "nothing was stirring, not even a mouse"), "猫の手も借りたい" ("to want to borrow a cat's paw," or to be so busy you'll even take a cat's assistance), and "猫も杓子も" ("cats and ladies," which is akin to "every Tom, Dick and Harry").


All that to say I went to Ibaraki (茨城県) last week as a farewell-trip of sorts for one of the teachers who has always taken special interest in making sure the TSCA ALTs are feeling at home. It turns out that at least every 10 years a teacher has to change schools (3 for administrators). This is her 10th year so she'll be moving to a different school at the start of the new academic year next week so a few of us went out to have some fun: one last fling of sorts.

We went to Ooarai (大洗), ate at this really famous kaitenzushi place and followed that up with a trip to their also famous aquarium (the irony is apparently lost on the Japanese people).

絆

Howaito De

I know, Nicholas,

Quite a lot has been written about White Day. And when I say "a lot," I mean that White Day returns almost 4.5 million hits on Google (re: "White Day" in quotation marks) and has two lengthy articles on Wikipedia

¹ One on the Valentine's Day page in addition to its very own page.

¹.

Undoubtedly, White Day is is one of those peculiarly "Japanese" holidays that just piques American interest because, when coupled with Valentine's Day, it seems just familiar enough to recognize, while also remaining distinctly Japanese to a point that really stresses the constructed nature of holidays. Part of the astounding interest in White Day does appear to be the sheer arbitrary origin of holidays and the way it clearly illustrates how one culture can appropriate (or misappropriate) aspects of another and the awkward and interesting ways that these sorts of things find expression.


Another aspect that drives White Day's importance among the inter-cultural oeuvre are the cultural assumptions about Valentine's Day and White Day. The fact that both cultures celebrate a "Valentine's Day" on February 14th leads many to believe that the holidays would, thusly, both celebrate them exactly the same, which leads bloggers to write one harrowing story after another about misadventures with chocolates and gifts and miscommunication. Thusly, Valentine's Day acts as one of those "life application stories" that illustrates the importance of cross-cultural dialog and grace.

But, if by the end of those paragraphs you, as I did, still find yourself asking "what is White Day, and why was I expected to know about White Day," let me take the time to explain. But, first, we have to start with Saint Valentine's Day.

As is with anything that Japan has adopted from America, we really have to forget everything we know about our version of the holiday and look at it from an appropriated perspective.

Perhaps the biggest advantage to appropriating any idea--holidays included--is that you can take what you like and modify or leave what you don't with the advantage of time and perspective.

When Japan looked at the long list of great American ideas and finally got down to the Vs, between Vaccination Needles and Velcro, at Valentine's Day they knew they had a gem on their hands. After all, if you were a Japanese manufacturer of confectionaries and cutesy trinkets

² Which surely makes up around 99% of Japan's domestic commerce.

², what is there not to like about a holiday predicated on monetary expressions of love and devotion?

In 1936, Morozoff Ltd. of Kobe began running advertisements aimed at expats living in Japan, pointing out to them that, even though they're in Japan, there is still a February. The ads reminded these foreigners that it was time to buy Morozoff heart-shaped chocolates (and only Morozoff heart-shaped chocolates) for their loved ones. However, when Japanese companies attempted to capitalize on the potential of Valentine's Day, for one reason or another this trend was picked up only by women who were summarily directed to buy chocolates as expressions of their love. Wikipedia, that bastion of knowledge and truth, claims that this mono-directionality was due to a translational error in communicating the core values of the traditional American Valentine's Day during the initial campaigns in the '30s. Conveniently, this was never corrected and had become thoroughly entrenched by the time the holiday really took off post-war in the 50s as Japan attempted to expand their investment in Western cultural ideas.

For the most part, only chocolates are given on Valentine's Day

³ The Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia reports that chocolatiers make about half of their entire annual sales at or around Valentine's Day.

³, with Christmas Eve being the customary "date night" that would most closely resemble the American Valentine's Day tradition.

However, as only Japan is wont to do, it's never quite so easy as merely giving chocolates to the one you love: it's about giving the right kind and quantity.

More or less, there are two "types" of chocolate one can give/receive: giri-chocolates (義理チョコ) and honmei-chocolates (本命チョコ). Let's just say that the word "giri" is best translated as "obligation," and suffice it to say that I came away with about five boxes of giri-chocolates (all of which were delicious, by the way).

Giri-chocolates (sometimes called "fake chocolates") are the chocolates you give out of cultural obligation. You know, the chocolates you would buy for all the males you know and whom you don't want to leave feeling "left out."

On the other hand, honmei-chocolates are often hand made with special care and attention for a special someone. Giri-chocolates are chocolates you buy for friends. Honmei-chocolates are chocolates for lovers.

Or at least for boys you want to be your lover.


And this is how it was for many years. Women would buy chocolates as silent expressions of their love and obligation, and men got fat and sometimes went crazy trying to figure out just what to make of this complex chocolate-code.

But then the '80s came along and everyone

⁴ Chocolate retailers, especially.

⁴ realized that men had been getting away without making a proper お返し ("payback"). Apparently, a number of attempts had been made at "offering" men the opportunity to okaeshi, with little coming of concepts like "Marshmallow Day."

What caught on, however, was nothing less than the wicked machinations of an all-star marketing braintrust: a commercial masterpiece of cold cultural calculation. The idea that slithered its way out of the doors of Keio Plaza Hotel one cold day in 1978 was "愛に答える White Day": "Answer Love on White Day."

And, henceforth, every Valentine's Day chocolate merited a response. For every Valentine's giri-chocolate, for every hand-made confection, there was now appointed an appropriate White Day gift to be returned a month later on March 14th. At an evaluated rate of return of 三倍返し (sanbai gaeshi), literally around 3:1.

Just. Like. That.

Of course, it's easy to read into that rate of return as payback. In fact, a popular saying in terms of White Day is "海老で鯛を釣る," which simply means "using a minnow to catch a tuna" (literally, "a shrimp to catch a sea bream"). This is not an unexpected accusation despite the fact that most chocolates are given in attempts to express thoughtfulness, albeit through culturally prescribed means. The phrase, however, despite likely being rooted in selfishness and privilege, raises the question about the heart of the giver and their intentions.

And while there may very well be a number of gold-digging women out there hoping to catch a tuna or two with a pocket full of minnows, I would venture to guess that not all Japanese women are gold-diggers. But at the very least we know that the Japanese candy companies are.

Of course, pointing out the calculated machinations of a commercially contrived holiday does not absolve one of cultural and relational expectations. All I know for a fact is that I have less than one month to get together a dozen boxes of three-times more expensive giri-chocolates.

Kenkoku Kinen no Hi

Hey Nick,

I've had a hard time trying to get excited about going to the fancy shopping districts of Tokyo like Ginza (銀座) or Akihabara (秋葉原). I'd rather spend my time doing more romantic things like watching fingers of smoke curl from the tips of incense grope around the carved inlays of shrines, or taking contemplative strolls through the wrought landscapes of a samurai garden painstakingly manicured through time and discipline, or learning judo. I'm just not that interested in going to a district just to peer through the windows of shops whose average single-sale VAT totals outpace my monthly income.


Now, I'm not disinclined to shop. I mean, pretty much every Saturday that I find myself at Kashiwa no Ha Campus for the KIRA adult class I inevitably spend wandering through the halls of LaLaPort for two hours, walking in and out of Uniqlo or the Canteburry store, wafting through one patisserie and then another, or idly browsing through all seven home-goods gallery showrooms.

Actually, I find myself shopping for home goods an awful lot, which seems a bit decadent as the apartment Geoff and Mickie left me was fairly well furnished to begin with. But it seems that every week I come home with a new set of blankets or drapes

¹ This is a point of annoyance. Even though I tend to spend a lot of time planning out what I want to buy, because I end up running in and out of the store so quickly, grabbing the first thing I see that remotely resembles what I intended to buy, I inevitably buy the "wrong thing." This happens with amazing consistency, and, as such, I now have two sets of drapes for my door because the first one I bought was half-too-short. That in addition to the two "blankets" that I bought, despite being clearly labeled as a "Blanket" only to find out later that, at Diaso, "blanket" means "futon cover" while at Muji it means "kotatsu cover."

¹ (one set of drapes for the pair of sliding glass doors, one set for each window, and one to cover the stupid hollow steel front door).

All that to say that I'm not against the idea of shopping. I'm just not going to plan my trips around the idea of "destination shopping."

That having been said, as I was so disappointed by my short stint in Akihabara in September that I was put off enough to put off going to Ginza for 6 months. Even then, having resolved to give Ginza a go, I had to fold it into a trip to Shinbashi (新橋) and Daiba (お台場) to make it palatable. At that, Ginza was barely interesting enough to warrant any mention at all.



That is neither here nor there as last weekend I found myself walking up and down Ginza

² Mostly looking for the Nikon Showroom, which Google Maps completely whiffed on.

² and south through Shinbashi and then into Odaiba, none of which I was especially interesting or exciting… Except Odaiba.

Odaiba, itself, is--at least if you take a look at any map of Tokyo--pretty obviously a series of artificial islands; landfill pressed into squares and rectangles in the middle of Tokyo Bay. The name itself (台場, "daiba") means "fortress," and is derived from the six island fortresses constructed in the 1850s as Tokyo Bay's primary naval defense in response to the arrival of Commodore Perry's Black Ships

³ Please do take the time to read up on the Bakumatsu.

³.

When Japan was demilitarized in the middle of the 20th Century, Odaiba was expanded to serve as a seaport district, with several of the fortress islands in Chuo, Koto and Minato connected using additional landfill. Then in the mid '90s, when the economy of Tokyo began to diversify and shipping expanded to other ports around Tokyo Bay, a major development plan was instituted by governor Shunichi Suzuki to repurpose much of the unused land as Tokyo Teleport Town, a showcase of Tokyo's commercial entertainment and residential future.

However, by the time the landfill project was finished in the mid-ninties--at an estimated cost of ¥1,000,000,000--the Japanese economy had collapsed, forcing many of the companies who had partnered with the local government to pull out, leaving much of the island undeveloped and disappointingly unpopulated. With progress stagnating and access to the island limited to one major bridge and three tunnels, Daiba became a bit of a commercial pariah as many larger companies found it a less than economical location to heavily invest, increasing the hesitancy of smaller business ventures.

Daiba remained somewhat underutilized until the early 21st century when a few companies like Telekomm and FujiTV took advantage of the the municipality's renewed interest in expanding Daiba's accessibility. Even today, despite the large amount of revitalization construction being done, much of Odaiba remains unrealized potential: the ether-substance of the dreams of ambitious politicians.

That being said, though, what is built there remains quite a spectacle. The iconic Rainbow Bridge that connects central Tokyo to the islands is an engineering icon. The ultra-modern Fuji Television Studios and the Telekom Center take up their residence there, as well as the new Tokyo International Exhibition Center ("Tokyo Big Sight"). Additionally, Daiba hosts both the Panasonic and Toyota showrooms and both the Maritime Museum and the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation call Daiba home. Daiba also possesses one of Tokyo's two urban beach fronts, among countless large-scale super malls, shops and food courts.


The more I learn about Odaiba and it's "vision for the future," the more I realize how fitting a home it was for the life-size Gundam model back in 2009.

But this is neither here nor there, and despite the fact the few major tenants continue to maintain a strong and modern presence on this fantasy island, it is hard to ignore how unfulfilled and hapless the economic collapse has left Odaiba, which is, perhaps, a telltale sign of the current state of Japan, itself.

This, however, hasn't stopped the Tokyo municipalities from continuing to push through powerful and imaginative concepts based on the potential of Odaiba.

Little known fact: Tokyo put in a very serious bid to host the 2016 Olympics, which would have been a boon for the struggling metropolis. The plan was to use much of the currently unoccupied land in the outlaying islands of Odaiba for an Olympic complex. In an attempt to make this seem feasible, a number of large scale projects meant to improve the parts of Tokyo's infrastructure that ran with less-than-JR-levels of efficiency were undertaken, including the construction of a second major thoroughfare onto the islands from Tokyo.

This $1.4 billion project, which opens later this week, was started 10 years ago with the hopes that it would decrease the amount of time it would take most Tokyo-ites to get from Shin-Kiba (新木場), eastern Tokyo, to Odaiba (currently from 19 to 10 minutes), making Odaiba a more desirable destination for travelers, both domestic as well as those traveling internationally through nearby Haneda Airport, which would in turn attract commercial suitors for additional land development, thereby opening up the island for more populace uses, such as hosting an Olympic village.


The Tokyo Bay Bridge (dubbed "the Dinosaur Bridge") became the lead project in a sequence of major overhauls that targeted Tokyo's infamous traffic ails, receiving much of its present day funding in no small part because of the municipality's push for the 2016 Olympics. Ostensibly, with the 2016 Olympics going to Rio

⁴ Though shortlisted, Tokyo was eliminated in the second round of voting, finishing ahead only of Chicago.

⁴, all of the other building projects slated for Odaiba have been put on hold yet again.

Admittedly, the projectis quite an amazing feat of engineering and ingenuity, spanning 1.6 miles and is reported to expect to carry 32,000 vehicles a day and so is still potentially useful for industry and travel, as the Port of Tokyo remains Japan's busiest port and will still link eastern Tokyo to the Haneda airport which, in 2010, began 24-hour flight services.

It is hard to criticize

⁵ Which has received criticism for being a literal "bridge to nowhere."

⁵ such bold attempts to stimulate the economy through grandiose building projects that aim to inspire and continue to look forward. But at a cost of around ¥95,000,000,000, and considering that the Japanese Olympic Bid Committee came up an additional ¥100,000,000 over budget for their failed 2016 bid, what is yet to be seen is whether or not the Dinosaur Bridge

⁶ Along with the also impressive Sky Tree.

⁶ will be able to bear the burden of being another Tokyo-dream-project gone bust at the expense of the Japanese public, especially in this climate of austerity and government contraction. Or if the Tokyo Gate Bridge will ever eventually be able to span the distance between the Tokyo of today and Suzuki's dream of Tokyo's tomorrow.

Yosenkai

Ere long it is seen
Where in the snow an ox's
Path comes to its end.

---

Fast fact, Nick: did you know that the days after snow falls are actually colder than the day of snowfall? You see, while incidental factors (like heat-reflecting cloud cover and storm-related winds) may seem to suggest otherwise, the process of melting requires snow to absorb ambient heat-energy out of the atmosphere.

But that's nonsense. Of course you already knew that!


Also nonsense was that it’s already been one week since the first snowfall of the year... well, for Tokyo, at least, and, as everyone knows, it only counts if it happens in Tokyo. Ken and I celebrated

¹because Japanese people always celebrate the firsts of everything: 初詣 (The First Visit to the Temple), 初日の出 (The First Sunrise), and 初夢 (The First Dream). Heck, they even have a thing for the "First Strong Breeze of Summer."

¹ by meeting up with his Sig.Oth for a Fleet Foxes' concert at Studio Coast in Shin-Kiba, Tokyo. And because I am loathe to not celebrate absolutely anything ad infinitum, we went out again on Monday for some impromptu yakiniku, only mildly perturbed by the nipping cold and slight, though constant, rain. Ken was close to begging out, but I would not be put off Discount-Steak-Monday (certainly an event worthy of its own celebration).

Anyway, so Ken was right, in that by the time we were walking home, the cold, heavy rain had turned to cold, heavy snow. But I've always been of the mind that snow is much better than rain. At least snowfall is better than rainfall

²In as much as snow has a "Magicalness" half-life best counted in minutes rather than days

². Anyway, after being reassured that it never "really" snows all that much in Kashiwa, Mother Nature went on to say "oh yeah?" and dumped around three inches.

Three inches may not sound like a lot both to people who have and have no sense of how much snow "three inches” is, but all we need to know is that “three inches” is enough to blow everyones' minds. I mean, they went crazy. It was such a big deal that, not only did the Tokyo Fire Department report 53 instances of snow-related injury by 10 a.m. the next morning, but it literally blew thoughts of Friday's "first" snow storm out of the social consciousness.

Nonplussed, both Ken and Karl were ripe to mention that we should try to catch the earlier bus to accommodate the more sensible Chiba-ians who'd decide to take the bus rather than venture cars and bikes on the narrow, unsalted roads of Japan.


We adjusted accordingly and planned to be at the bus stop by 7:10 for the "7:21" bus. Verily

³I do not lie.

³, I gave away what very well was the "last spot" on the "early" bus to some old woman. Did it make me feel good about myself? A little. But not as much as I regretted not Heisman-ing her out of the way up the steps. But that is, as they say, neither here nor there. Certainly two more busses passed by the stop within the hour (no more than 20 or 30 minutes late), with neither stopping for passengers. At around 8:15, Ken suggested we skip the whole "bus" thing, catch a couple of trains that would find us slightly more north of our present location, and then proceed to walk the rest of the way.

And that is what we did.

It was a little past 10 by the time we walked into the office, which, to our surprise, was full for the postponed teachers' morning meeting.

It has been a couple days since the Great Snowfall of 2012, and our schedule has just gotten over reeling from the White Menace

⁴Snow, not Sperry

⁴, especially as this week was supposed to be Finals Week for the 三年生, who, inexplicably, get two months off to "prepare" for college entrance exams.

Anyway, what blew my mind was not the paltry amount of snow that danced across the streets in wisps like children, or how it put a stranglehold on normalcy in the Kanto region for days on end, but rather the hour I spent standing at the bus stop at 北柏駅.

Our stop is on a modest hill, one much steeper than I would like to walk on a daily basis, but no more steep than any random hill you could force any cross-country team to run in West or South Torrance. Then again, any hill of any size is steep enough for cars to lose traction when icy.

People do strange things when things don't go the way they expect them to. I could not tell you the number of cars that would slow to an eventual stall at the very foot of the hill thinking that gunning the accelerator would resolve the whole lack-of-traction problem

⁵"Constant thrust = constant speed!"

⁵. Granted, this would occasionally work and they would lurch ahead at a painstaking rate of inefficiency, only to return from their crawl to immobility inches later. I, literally, watched a delivery truck do this for an hour, deciding halfway up the hill to pull over to the curb and wait it out. What exactly he was waiting for is still unclear, but he waited.

Also astounding were the number of idle pedestrians who went out of their way to help push these cars stuck in ice patches. If I were a better man, I would have stepped out of the bus line to help. After all, a car in the way is one more car blocking my bus. But, then again, if I were an even better man, I would have fired up the ol' Google Translate and translated me up some "Please stop. Please put your car in reverse and turn around. Go a different way. This is not the only road through Kitakashiwa. Thank you"

⁶Incidentally, GT suggests "中止してください。逆に車を置いて、向きを変えてください。別の道を行く。これは、北柏で唯一の道ではない。あなたに感謝。" Not coincidentally, this is not correct.

⁶.

Whether it was obstinate pride or panic induced un-thought, both being double-plus un-good by the way, pretty much everyone would spend at least 10 minutes trying to gun it up the hill. And while that provided us all with an excellent visual demonstration of independent-wheel, anti-slip traction technology, people would try, try, try again, only to put their car in park and quit where they stood. I would like to think that it just didn't occur to them that turning around and going back down the hill was a perfectly viable option.

Certainly, this isn't unique to Japan: I've survived far too many rainy days on the 405 to know that Californians, too, can lose their minds when things don't go the way they're supposed to.


So, if I consider that most people responded the way they did because they had not considered that going back was an option (even to most of the helpful pedestrians, "forward" was the only way), I need to ask myself how long it would have taken me to finally get around to considering turning around as the best course of action.

I'd like to say that it would have come to me in a timely manner, but I can make no presumptions to think that I would have at all, were I ever to find myself in a similar situation. And I should not necessarily be ashamed of that. What I should be ashamed of would be, having watched this pattern of events for almost 90 minutes, not reassessing my own emergency-response methods to be sure that it includes a "backwards" option.

Actually, now that I think about it…

A few weeks ago I was in a classroom, as teachers are wont to do. I'm not quite sure when it was, except that I know that I was done with my instruction and was sitting down after doing a preliminary walk-through to make sure that everyone had understood and gotten started on the assignment.

So, anyway, I was sitting at my tiny teacher's desk, which is this tiny white-laminate TV tray of a table, when the whole building started to shake. Now having grown up in California and, thusly, a party to my fair share

⁷That's an American share, not a Japanese share.

⁷ of earthquakes, I quickly ascertained that we were in the midst of a mild 'shaker, which was fine. You know, besides the normal thoughts of "whoa" and "whoa-whoa," I realized that the students were looking to me and that I had no idea what I was supposed to do

⁸Our earthquake preparedness drill was cancelled due to rain in October, to which the students were instead treated to an instructional video that the ALTs weren't privy to.

⁸.

My initial play was to cool-hand it. After all, if I couldn't offer practical advice, I should at least provide emotional stability. The rumbling continued for a good 60 seconds and we rode it out in good spirits. Mid-way in one of them asked me if they should open the door and the window, to which I affected knowing and nodded my assent.

Before long, class was over, assignments were handed in and I was walking back into the office, off-handedly commenting how it was a real shame that the earthquake drill had been cancelled because I had no clue what I was supposed to do.

Come to think of it, I still don't. Well, at the very least I know that if there's an earthquake I should open the doors and windows.

That being said, after 90 minutes and still no bus, Ken suggested that we, ourselves, backtrack a little and take the train to 柏田中駅. So we did. And along the way found a French bakery.

So that was delicious.

Shin Nen Kai

Though often late, or
Rarely on-time, a bus should
Never be early.

---

Nick,

There is no doubt that you know that Japan's two most important holidays are 1) 正月, and 2) 大晦日, which happen to be "New Years Day" and "New Years Eve," respectively.

But one of the most exciting part about New Years in Japan is that television receives a much overdue production bump: a paint job for "Sweeps" season, if you will. This is when every game show and variety program gets a two hour special and every big televised anime debuts (or re-runs) a new "movie."

For a month, producers and writers pull out all the stops to catch the vacationing eye. Regardless of how vapid or interchangeable their preceding (and following) seasons have been (or will be), this is their opportunity to win over viewers and set their programming marks.


For all the chatter about how bad Japanese TV is--and it can be--the six-week period around New Years makes it all worth it. After all, this is the where we get amazing shows like the bunraku extravaganza 全日本仮大賞, or the reality show to top all reality shows, はじめてのおつかい

¹ Which is pretty much my new favorite TV show of all time.

¹. Pretty much any of those clips of Japanese shows venerated on YouTube comes from one "冬スペシャル" or another.

Yesterday, however, I came across a two-hour special that left me feeling slightly perturbed. The angle of this particular variety show special was more or less an "Extreme Makeover," where they would tell the woe-begotten tale of a person in need and reward their tenacity with a much needed makeover. Usually there is some medical impairment or requirement that renders the "makeover" justifiable and, therefore, palatable. At the very least, not quite as vapid.

This show, in particular, was the exploitation of a story of a rising Korean pop-artist who, early into her career, contracted a disease that attacked her face with some form of elephantiasis that was surgically reduced but left her severely disfigured.

I have been struggling to define what about this show bothered

² And, perhaps, "bother" is too strong of a word: maybe something more demure like "disquieted," or "unsettled."

² me. Now I have no problem with television "exploitation." I mean, I had publicly declared that my new favorite TV show of all time was はじめてのおつかい, which is basically a show that exploits four year old children by sending them out into the streets "alone" on their first errand. Ah the sweet, life-giving tears of innocent children!


In contemplating this the entire day, I think that what I had a problem with was that they picked a South Korean woman, focused on the depth of her despair and squalor (and near abject rejection) in Korea, and contrasted this with the open arms of Japan and its copious medical resources. From dank and gray with it's minor-chord soundtrack overlay, to bright and clean, endearing and hopeful.

Now, I don't mean to speak out of turn, in as much as I have no clue about this particular show's geopolitical perspective or its historiography. I don't know if they regularly travel throughout Japan offering medically necessary surgery to domestic economically underprivileged residents (unlikely) and happened upon a "great find" that--whoops!--just happened to be from Korea. What struck me as peculiar was that 1) there wasn't a viable Japanese candidate for this exploitation, and 2) the obvious deep seated tensions between Japan and Korea

³ This includes the lengthy and brutal occupation of Korea in the late 19th and early parts of the 20th century during the "日本統治時代の朝鮮" colonial period, which includes current conflicts over issues such as "comfort women" (forced prostitution) and political visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor/celebrate the soldiers who fought in WWII: both issues that remain hotly contested in contemporary Japan-Korea relations today and are especially relevant to the Zainichi (diasporic) Koreans who continue to live in Japan without political rights or representation. All the while there persists a grass-roots resentment over the growing prevalence of Korean presence in Japan, with minor "protests" as recent as August 2011 over the amount of Korean programming that was being broadcasted on Japanese television.

³.

Even still, I want to be very aware of my 外国人 sensibilities. That is, in addition to needing to take into account standard melodramatic TV tropes, I need to recognize my own geopolitical assumptions and avoid reading into what I think are inter-cultural necessities, especially as an "outsider," but even more so as an ignorant observer.

I find myself having to ask what my intercultural expectations are. What do I assume are normative and normal interactions between Japan and Korea on a macro- and micro- level? Then what sort of legitimate privileges do I have as an "outsider" to see these conflicts, condescensions and concessions, and then what are the inherent limitations that come with my American-level of sensitivity and sensibility? Am I, as a sensitized outsider, privileged to read of a situation cultural bias, or am I, as an over-sensitized outsider, privileged to read into a situation cultural bias based on my expectations of subtext? Granted, it's hard to think otherwise, with Japan's historically less-than-apologetic regard to normalizing relations, and persistence in believing everyone should just move past diversity issues

⁴ One only has to look either north or south to the way that Japan has dealt with either the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa or the Ainu people of Hokkaido. You know it's bad when there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the Ethnic Minority issues of Japan. Most relevant, however, are the Burakumin, who are ethnically identical to other "Japanese" people, but are discriminated against as a "social" minority group. Particularly telling is that the title "Buraku" was created because the government, in attempts to lessen the prejudice and stigma surrounding these so called "untouchable peoples," banned the use of the terms "Eta" and "Hinin." Generally, the approach is to discourage discourse and encourage the problem to disappear with time. Which, apparently, if you live outside of Kansai, is the case with the "Buraku problem" [especially as the problem is more or less left unaddressed by Japanese discrimination laws since the Burakumin are not a "specific race" (Degawa, Racism Without Race)]. Then again, apparently the Burakumin make up 70% of Japan's largest Yakuza syndicate, so "effectiveness" is up for debate.

⁴.

I suppose it's the general lack of social and societal institutions that exist to create dialog about the way Japan's history--based out of a strong sense of ethno-/national-centrism--lends itself to a persistent "othering" (or exo-grouping) which, in turn, affects the way the world responds to it. More often than not, when it comes to the topic of diversity (or the lack of integrative diversity), it's safer just not to talk about it, almost as if putting those words to air breathes life into the embers of crisis.

But I just don't know, Nick. I mean, on the one hand, the obviousness of the Korea-Japan contrast bothers me, which is a no-brainer. But that I lack the resources (culturally and linguistic) to even begin to ask the right questions confounds me. I mean, one of the things I loved most about Critical Theory was that "interpretation" was the belief that by figuring out the "right" questions to ask we could impose an organizing framework onto complex ideas.

In most cases the first step is "locating yourself in the ongoing dialog." Basically this means whipping open a text book or firing up Wikipedia, retracing what work has already been done over the last 50 or 50,000 years in the field, and then settling into a philosophical niche that works best for your mood. But this just seems to not be the case here: there's as little discussion about race and diversity in Japan as there possibly could be, so there's no real ideological springboard to work off or tap into. Even casual conversation about race and race relations is met with hesitance and embarrassment. Despite the historical presence of Japan internationally and the rapid growth of a foreign presence within Japan itself, there is very little discussion about the way the Japanese interact with exo-groups (even indigenous exo-groups), rather just a myriad of disparate questions floating around: is it possible to redefine "Japanese-ness" around it's core principles of homogeny and submissive/self-sacrificial unity without resorting to exclusion, or is it necessarily exclusive? Is "awareness" the first appropriate step? Should dialog be conducted at a grass-roots level or can questions be asked by "outsiders" through the educational system?


I realize that Japanese history is one of the more important subjects at Ichikashi and, seemingly, most high schools in Japan. The amount of historical facts our kids are required to learn--re: regurgitate--is staggering. Emperors, shogunates, wars, you name it. But it's all of a particular history. As late as 2007, the central government (which is in charge of pedagogical decisions) was found to be instructing high school textbooks to "downplay the military's role in ordering mass civilian suicides" of Okinawans during WWII. Julian Dierkes' 2010 expose on post-war history education in Japan pinpoints bureaucratic foot dragging as the key to maintaining this status-quo, preventing modern historical analysis and critiques, stunting critical thinking regarding Japan's jingoistic past.

However, this should not be surprising from a country that, in 2005, erected a monument to Justice Radha Binod Pal for his dissenting view

⁵ And yet even this issue is not rife with complexities. Pal, a purported Japanophile who considered the Japanese defendants proponents of Asian liberation from Western influence (Bix, 2001), seemingly agreed to sit on the tribunal with the intent to decry the legitimacy of the trial, never once engaging with the reality of the war crimes charged. However, Pal was right to point out the hypocrisy of "victor's justice" in play, as the firebombing and nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki upon civilians would never be tried in court, arguing that the Japanese on trial should be declared innocent based on the injustice of the indictment. Though, on first blush, and in persistent cursory interpretation of his dissent, Pal will continue to be lionized as purporting complete Japanese innocence, Ushimura Kei (2007) argues that a finer reading of Pal's judgment is one of procedure not of morality.

⁵ in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, arguing that all military personnel should be cleared of all responsibility for Japanese war crimes committed during World War II (such as those committed at Nanking), dismissing the legitimacy of the IMTFE's claims to justice.

So, maybe, then asking these sorts of questions in public spaces is the place to start, especially at a progressive school like Ichikashi. As a 外国人, I am in a ironically privileged place, afforded copious amounts of grace for not being Japanese enough to know/understand the morays of polite Japanese customs of silence. Just as we use "外国人-ness" to intentionally "get away" with eating while walking and sneaking the last chocolate out of the お土産 box, I am in a unique position to ask those difficult questions because I just don't know enough to know not to ask those kinds of questions.

If only I knew the right questions to ask.

Seijin no Hi

Hey Nick, long time no see!

You may not know this but today is 成人の日 ("Seijin no Hi," or Coming of Age Day), which is meant to “congratulate and encourage” those who have reached the “age of majority” (which is 20 years old in Japan)

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_age_day

¹. 20 seems really “late” for a C-O-A celebration that dates back to the 8th century, but having seen the way high school kids—emphasis on “kids”—are treated it shouldn’t come as any real surprise.

In honor of this auspicious holiday, I have committed myself to a new day planner

² It’s a very adult thing, I assure you.

². Though, really, I had a very nice calendar that I bought when I first moved to Japan, that was inauspiciously thrown out with the gift-wrapping while I was in Torrance for Christmas last week.

Regardless, I found myself back at Tokyu Hands slogging through the mounds of day planner options: full spread monthlies, vertical weekles, horizontal dailies, calendars with hourly listings or to-do lists. The options were seemingly endless

³ And frivolous.

³.

Step #1 in picking the perfect personal calendar, according to About.com, was to "Pick the Right Planner." This would obviously be a crucial step.

For my purposes and sanity, I wanted a simple weekly layout, one that maximized efficiency by limiting memo space. I went back and forth about a vertical weekly and a horizontal weekly, between hourly or lined.

This time I settled for a Takahashi Shoten "Link Up Schedule." A quick scan of their webpage reveals that they have 171 distinct calendar designs. I think it took only 43 tries before they got it right, but I give them credit for trying: each page is broken up into four rows, one for every day of the week with the eighth row on the right hand page given over to extra notes and a monthly view. However, the daily rows are divided into two columns, the right half for memos while the other, a four-panel table.


There was an insert that explained a variety of ways that I could use this table (maybe one pane for AM, one for PM and one for expenses and details), but it was all in kanji. Regardless, it was the versatility of the vague space that captivated me. I am also not one to let the irony of finding blank space marred by two thin lines more versatile than actual "free" blank space, but that’s the way of things: it is the imposition of boundaries that make sports challenging and therefore more interesting.

Granted, I find it annoying that I am not quite sure how I want to use the table: it’s ambiguity laughs in the face of the feeble sense of control that a day-planner pretends to propose. But I love the idea that any unused days can become a CSI-Miami 4-pannel comic

⁴

⁴.

Step 2 of maintaining a successful day planner, again according to About.com, was to name my calendar. I’ll have to commit some thought to that. Though, really, I would have made Step 2 (shortly after the all important first step of actually acquiring a calendar) "be consistent" in application and methodology. Or maybe just "make up reasons to use your brand new archaic calendar to justify the cost."