Hard to watch

Footage shot in Minamisanriku, a town of about 20,000 more or less erased by the March 11 tsunami. So far only about half of the residents have been found alive. My in-laws live about 30 km inland from here.



It sorta puts stories about Donald Trump running for president, Charlie Sheen and royal wedding in perspective, doesn't it?

Tweet

with a purposeful grimace and terrible snarl...

As usual, the Rude Pundit nails it -- what we need here is Godzilla!



Maybe if a giant fire-breathing lizard was in charge of dealing with oil company execs, instead of Dick Cheney, we could make some progress.

"Whitey go home" and other charming Asian proverbs

As annoying as teaching in Japan ever got - and believe me it got plenty annoying - I never had to contend with this kind of crap.

Korea activists target foreign English teachers
A South Korea group uses the Internet and other means to track foreign teachers, in an effort to ferret out illegal or unsavory behavior. The teachers say they're victims of stalkers and rumors.

There are lots of anti-foreigner groups around in Japan, but they don't bother to get quite so focused as these numbskulls in Korea. Mostly they just ride around in big black buses with loudspeakers demanding the people of Japan "Venerate the Emperor and expel the barbarians".

And I'll be the first to admit that there is plenty of unsavory behaviour going on that is related to English conversation schools. Starting with the school management that rip off teachers left, right and center in complete violation of the labour laws (but since the Japanese court system could take ten years to process your claim - and foreign devils rarely win - you might as well just suck it up). Yes, there are teachers who sleep with students and do drugs and drink their brains out every night - almost as many as in the regular Japanese school system. And don't lets get started on the number of people who take English lessons as a way of meeting foreigners to date or the student who stalk teachers or the large number of complete wackos some school's sign up.
I used to work at a school that sold lessons on credit that had a neighbouring branch in a large building just one floor below a mental health clinic. Lots of people would get off the elevator on the wrong floor and the school friendly staff of attractive young men and women - always under pressure to make their sales quota - were more than happy to sign them up for a package of lessons and then send them to our branch. No, there is nothing like being trapped in a glass broom closet with a schizophrenic who is off his medication and want to show you his karate kata or a delusional manic depressive who can't decide whether she desperately wants to have sex with all the teachers (male and female) or thinks they are all harrassing her.
Add to that the special classes of students who are studying English just to have someone to talk to, or as therapy for some sort of antisocial disorder, or who are just plain kooky --- or my personal favorite: students who study English so they can complain about how nasty foreigners are screwing up the country to the foreigners in their own language.
Don't get me wrong, the nuts only make up about 10% of the students I had, and I had some absolutely fantastic students of all ages and backgrounds here in Tokyo, but I don't really miss teaching.
As for the South Korean Foreign Virtue Police, they can bite me.

It's that time of year again!

Subway etiquette is important in Tokyo. No matter what happens, no matter how crazy the situation you must not react. A stoic countenance must be maintained. You must not complain or you will be the nail that sticks up. As a result, some people get away with murder on the trains. Molesting women is not as common as it once was, but it is still such a problem that some train lines in Tokyo have "Women Only" carriages during morning rush hour. And almost no one ever gives up their seat for the elderly or the heavily pregnant.

Poor subway etiquette and people's reluctance to complain has lead to the development of a series of monthly posters in Tokyo train station reminding people about how to behave on the train.

Every year, Japanese companies pay their salarymen a pair of bonuses - one at the start of summer and one at the end of the year. Traditionally, the end-of-year bonus is celebrated with massive drinking parties at which dour, serious-minded captains of industry drink like university frosh frat boys on Spring Break who have just gotten out of jail and are vacationing with the heir to a brewing empire after crossing the Sahara on foot. Leading to posters like this one.

This year's spring bonus was reckoned to be a very small one at most companies due to the worldwide financial crash and no one is optimistic about the year-end either. Which I guess explains the cans in the latest poster, what with convenience store or vending machine beers being the poor man's alternative to the local izakaya.

hat-tip to Shibuya 246

I know, you think I'm exaggerating. Think again. This was taken last night by one of my workmates.

hat tip to the Bald Avenger

for all my former students

The obligatory Japanese election post

Okay, this post is late and for that I apologize, but I've been busy down at the Ministry of Truth office rewriting the translations of what all the conservative movers and shakers think of the Japanese election. The consesus is that they are against it.

Doom and gloom is widely predicted by the right and less than 24 hours after the centerist Democratic Party of Japan signed a coalition with the leftish Social Democratic Party and the quasi-populist centerist/conservative People's New Party, headlines in the conservative press were announcing that cracks were already appearing in the tripartate alliance.

On the left, there is a bit more diversity of opinion. Some want to know when the bread and circuses will be arriving and others, realizing the economic fix the country is in, are being a bit more pragmatic and scaling back their expectations.

The new cabinet will be sworn in next week, so let's get cracking.

First, you need to know some things:
Japanese political history 101

Japanese media 101

Some decent political blogging on Japanese politics can be found at Tobais Harris' Observing Japan

Why the Liberal Democratic Party lost
As the old saw goes, the Liberal Democratic Party is neither, but that not really relevant here. The party lost the election for a variety of reasons

1. The economy sucks
2. Prime Minister Taro Aso brought a George W. Bush sort of eloquence to public speaking and was widely considered a bit of an embarrassment
3. The economy really sucks
4. People were sick and tired of the LDP after more than 50 years of them running the country. People have been sick and tired of the LDP for many years, but its never made much difference until now. Why? See reasons 1 thru 3.
5. The economy suuuuuuucks
6. The last elected Prime Minister in Japan was the very popular Junichro Koizumi, who was re-elected in a landslide snap election in 2005. Japan has had three unelected prime ministers since then.
7.Could it have been this kind of populist approach?

Education, Science and Technology Minister Ryu Shionoya also figuratively rose from the dead in a proportional representation bloc after losing in his single-seat constituency.
Shionoya said one cause of the LDP's defeat was "the people's lack of understanding of politics."
"I think the details of our policies haven't been conveyed to the public. I wonder how much ordinary citizens understand these things, including law-related points," he said.
"People need to make decisions based not solely on the lure of immediate gains. They need to think about what kind of society to build in the future," he said.
-Sept. 2 Daily Yomiuri

Mind you, that kind of elitism is rampant in Japan, but especially among the upper echelons of the LDP.
Japan is, in some ways still a feudal country at heart. People still go into the family business and follow in dad's footsteps professionally to much larger extent than in the west and parents still run their children's lives to a ripe old age.
And the aristocracy still rules. The vast majority of Diet members are graduates of one of about four elite universities - they go into the executive ranks of corporate Japan or the civil service and come out at age 50 to enter politics. That or they take over the seat from dear old dad, or granddad or uncle. Dynastic politics - children of politicians running for their parents and often grandparents old seat - is very common in Japan at all levels. Most of Taro Aso's Cabinet have a Cabinet Minister in their family tree somewhere and a full third of the LDP's elected Diet members in the last parliament were people who had effectively inherited their seats from family members.

Aso's paternal grandfather was prime minister and so was his father-in-law. His father ran a massive mining and cement company and his sister married into the Imperial family.

But the LDP hasn't cornered the market bluebloods either - the new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama is also a blueblood whose family has been called Japan's answer to the Kennedy clan.

Will the DPJ be any different?

Yes, at first. But while some of the old guard of the DPJ are the more centerist holdovers from the old Japan Socialist Party, a lot more of them are former LDP members or rookies whose main complaint about the old regime, aside from a few foreign and security policy points, is that it has denied them their turn at the trough. Power corrupts and we will eventually see the DPJ members getting their snouts in and the same cycle of corruption repeating.

What cycle is that? Well, the reason the LDP stayed in power for more than 50 years is that they managed to fulfill a vital role in post war Japan. It goes like this: To survive, a political party needs to get votes. To get those votes its needs money to campaign and money to reward areas that support it.

The LDP spent tax money like a drunken sailor on public works projects across the country - something very much needed to rebuild and modernize the nation in the 50s,but by the 70s, the government was building six-lane highways to nowhere, multi-million dollar bridges to tiny islands and spending tons of money on "anti-erosion" work - pouring concrete along the coast.

This brings jobs and money to rural areas and get the party votes. The construction industry in Japan is very much dominated by the Yakuza, so the contract bidding for all these projects were and still are, usually fixed. Companies collude to share the work and keep the price high, it's the Japanese way - the companies make money, the mob makes money and what the taxpayers don't know won't hurt them.

The mobsters then take their cut and launder it by donating it to the ultrarightist organizations they very often control, which in turn donate a slice of the cash to right wing politicians in the LDP and "spends" the rest at mob front businesses . The LDP also gets fat contributions from the construction companies and virtually anyone doing business with the government, which is just about everyone. The longer they stayed in power, the longer the reach of their fundraising tentacles. Whether the DPJ can or will step into the LDP's shoes in this cycle in the long run is an open question - I think they will try, but won't be as successful at it - but in the short run, the machine has been jammed by the change in government.

The LDP also promulgated a policy of agricultural self-sufficiency - the idea that Japan should be growing its own food, no matter the cost. This meant lots and lots of farm subsidies, which meant lots and lots of rural votes. And when you control the drawing of electoral districts, you can make sure that the rural votes you control count more heavily than those cast by big-city liberals and communists. It is reckoned that the vote of a farmer in out of the way Fukushima or Akita carries nearly three times the weight of a vote cast in Tokyo or Osaka, where the constituencies have far more voters.

Globalization of the economy has begun to put paid to that pillar of strength too, as Japan has been forced, grudgingly, to open up its agricultural markets to cheap food from China and the rest of Asia, a trend that will continue. The DPJ is offering a new and possibly more lucrative subsidy system to farmers in an attempt to bleed off some of the LDP's strength and has been somewhat successful, although voters in the countryside are still more likely to back the LDP than those in the city.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

The biggest change promised by the DPJ and the one least likely to be noticed aboard is their promise to move Japan toward "politician-centered government" -- I know anywhere else that would sound a tad redundant and ridiculous, but here's the dirty little secret about Japanese democracy -- its really the bureaucracy that runs the country. For the last 50 years it has been the deputy ministers and and other senior bureaucrats that have made all of the real domestic policy decisions, to the extent the average Japanese probably wouldn't get the joke underlying "Yes, Minister" and would feel that the domineering civil servant played by Nigel Hawthorne is a bit of a pushover if anything. The DPJ has promised to replace a lot of the senior civil servants with elected political appointees. I'm not sure how well this will work out -- there is a lot to be said for having competent professionals running government departments rather than amateurs -- but it is good to see the bureaucracy challenged and the will of the people's elected officials take the precedence over bureaucratic precedent.

The DPJ have also promised to take a new look at Japan's alliance with the US with an eye toward being less subservient - not a task given the nature of the relationship over the last 50 years. This change will probably amount to the Japanese government waiting a decent interval before saying "how high, sir?" when America says "jump"ns on security matters, but even that would be a stunning display of spine. One of the junior coalition partners, the SDP, favors kicking the Yankees out of Okinawa. Luckily, they are already accustomed to disappointment.

Much has also been made about the likelihood of the DPJ bringing Japan closer to China. While this would be a good thing and may happen, I sincerely doubt that they will ever be best pals. Too many Chinese remember or have been taught what Japan did to China in the 30s and 40s and too many Japanese forget or have not been taught the same.

The real change that is liable to come about will be in security policy. The DPJ gives every appearence of taking Article 9 seriously and the SDP definitely does, so the likelihood of things like Japan's ridiculous "participation" in the Iraq occupation being repeated are considerably lower than under the closet militant nationalist in the LDP. I would expect the current mission by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to refuel other nation's warships in the waters off Pakistan that are supposed to be on some kind of blockade of Afghanistan will not continue past next year.

What does the future hold?

Mostly, financial turmoil for the government as they try to live up to their promises of a generous baby bonus (about $250 a month per kid) amohanng other pledges of government largess for the common citizenry and some serious ructions as they try to wean the construction industry off the government teat u end the collusive practices in bidding on government contracts. I'm not convince either of these coming to pass as I think that over time, the DPJ will come more and more to resemble the LDP of old and get stuck in at the trough. However, if they do manage to face down the bureaucracy and put the decision making power in the hands of elected officials, that will be it enough to earn them at least a second, if not a third term.

The LDP faces an interesting future. No one wants to lead the party right now and given the nature of Japanese consensus-based decision making, I won't be surprised to see a few members, or even entire factions of the party, cross the aisle. The LDP needs a strong leader to keep the various diverse faction united in opposition, but anyone coming forward to lead the y party now is unlikely to be around for the next election in four years, so the list of people willing to be leader of the opposition but never prime minister gets pretty short indeed.

The only caveat to this is the chance (about even odds) that the DPJ melts down on its own due to scandal or simple ineptitude as a party with no governing experience, and is forced to call a quick election. If that happens this year or next, the LDP could slither back into power. If the DPJ get three years at the helm without having to switch leaders more than once, they have a good chance at a second term if the economy revives and the North Koreans don't invade.

If nothing else, the entire exercise has taught the Japanese voter one thing - that they can change the party in power, that democracy does exist here, at least to some extent.

But can they stop Godzilla?

There a general election at the end of the month here in Japan so the parties are busy running around trying to show how on top of things they are and how they have every possible contingency covered in their little policy books. Naturally, the papers have been full of policy stuff for weeks, much of it pretty vague and dry, but I did find this little nugget of awesome at the bottom of a very long article on defense policy in today's Daily Yomiuri:

One of the major policies proposed by New Party Nippon is to reorganize the SDF and launch a study to establish an organization--tentatively called "The Thunderbird Squad"--geared toward international assistance.

Sadly, the article did not elaborate or reveal whether New Party Nippon is favor of granting the Tracy family Japanese citizenship.

Sure, they are good at international rescue, but can they handle Godzilla?

Maybe they would be better off following the example of the last elected Japanese Prime Minister Junichro Koizumi and Calling Elvis.

Mocking the bozos

While they supposedly serve as a recruiting ground for the Yakuza, Japanese bike and hot rod gangs - known as bosozoku (speed tribes) - are not particularly daunting to most westerners. For starters, rather than being the huge, hulking, hairy, leather-clad menaces one associates with North American bike gangs, most of bosozuku are under 25, don't need to shave, ride 250 cc motorbikes or (snicker) scooter and weigh about 120 pounds soaking wet with a brick in each pocket. The pathetic bikes they ride generally are modified to be as loud as possible, something you never need to do with a real motorcycle like a Harley or an Indian or even a large engined Yamaha or Kawasaki. They supposedly do some intimidating for the Yakuza and deal at little meth and have been known to gang up in groups of hundreds and take over small villages or resorts for the weekend, but their main form of menace is to get together in groups of about ten to several dozen and ride down the expressway at super-slow speeds, blocking traffic. Obviously, they are lucky not to have met a road-rage afflicted North American driving a Cadillac. Yet.
They often have silly haircuts and wear what look for all the world like embroidered lab coats and seem more interested most of the time with taking pictures of each other trying to look tough or cool than in causing any actual mayhem. The meanest, toughest ones probably end up as low level Yakuza, some probably end up in the militant right-wing black bus brigades the rest probably are doomed to a life of day labor, sho-chu and pachinko. The average westerner in Japan generally reacts to them with veiled amusement or simple irritation, but the Japanese consider them an absolute Menace to Society on par with cancer, AIDS or drunken U.S. servicemen.
It's about time someone taught those scooter-trash punks a lesson! The cops need to crack down on these damned criminal bike gangs once and for all! People are mad as hell and they aren't going to take it any more! It time for action:

Bosozoku bike gangs in Ginowan called names
Takeshi Kawamura and Ryuhei Yoshimura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
Police and residents in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, have launched a campaign to drive away bosozoku motorcycle and automobile gangs using the epithet "dasaizoku" (uncool gangs) to describe them.
The campaign aims to embarrass bike gang members and encourage them to quit their reckless riding and driving. But will it work?

No. It won't.

This has been another edition of short answers to stupid questions.

Admittedly, Japan has a very different culture and the bosozoku are not exactly the Hell Angels, (they aren't even Hell's Grannies) but unless the goal is to make them laugh too hard to be able to stay on their ridiculous little bikes, this is so not going to work.

a different kind of pillow talk

Yeah, yeah, I know, "judge not lest ye be judged" and "People who live in glass houses" and all that, but uh.....sometimes it seems like this country is just one big open air freakshow:

Momo, whose real name is Toru Taima, has more than 150 body-pillow covers at home. His current favorite is Karada-chan, a copper-haired sixth grader from the anime “A Direction in the Day After Tomorrow.” She’s fully clothed in the cartoon, but in Momo’s imagination and thus on his pillow cover, she appears naked, her cheeks flushed, her prepubescent nipples hidden by her forearms, her white panties rolled down to her ankles. A translucent square etched onto the pillow cover censors her hairless vagina.
Every night, Karada-chan and at least two other animated preteens, drawn with large pink nipples and exaggerated labia, share a mattress with Momo, one on each side and another on top. “They’re so cute, I can’t stand it,” he said shyly. “It’s like my favorite girl comes to marry me every night. I just can’t stop thinking about them.” When Momo talks about Karada-chan, his mousy face lights up like a kid opening Christmas presents. “Her existence to me is like daughter, younger sister and bride all put into one.” Does he have sex with her? “Yes.” Is he interested in real women? “It’s not like I’m completely uninterested. But the last girl I really liked was hen I was 12 years old.”

And my wife sometimes wonders why I don't want the kids out of my sight in public places. If there was ever a society in dire need of a massive dose of psychotherapy, I'm living in it.

(a hat - tip to Our Man in Abiko)

"I bet I can eat 50 eggs gyoza"

On Sunday afternoon, I returned to one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo. You won't likely find it in any guidebook and, to be honest, I don't even know its name, but if you find yourself in the Kameido area of Tokyo, just look around near the station for a tiny dive in a side alley across from the train station with a long line outside and you will know you've found The Gyoza Joint.
It isn't much to look at. It is a dingy, slightly dirty, run-down place a little larger than your average basement rec room with a long narrow U-shaped counter running two thirds the length of the place and a raised tatami straw mat-covered platform running along the wall by the door. At the top of the U, next to the door is the open kitchen, a space with just enough room for two men to stand in front of a row of hot cast-iron pans about the size and shape of trash can lids. They don't need a lot of room for a lot of equipment

Those wooden boxes hold uncooked gyoza and they went through a stack of them that reached the ceiling in the half hour we were there. Even on a cool spring day with the doors open it's hot and humid inside. The walls are slightly sticky and the table we sit cross legged and shoeless at is cheap formica with squeeze bottles for the condiments - the holy trinity of soy sauce, vinager and hot chili oil - straight from the 100 yen shop. A stained, hand-lettered piece of card spells out the prices in multiples of 250 yen.

Remember that old Saturday Night Live bit with John Belushi as the counterman in the Greek diner? It didn't matter what people wanted, they got cheeseburgers, chips and "No Coke, Pepsi". Belushi would bellow out "cheeseburg! cheeseburg! cheeseburg!Pepsi! Pepsi!" and the cook, three feet away, usually played by Dan Ackroyd with a cigarette dangling from his lip would dutifully shout back "cheeseburg! cheeseburg! cheeseburg! Pepsi! Pepsi!" as he threw more patties on the grill. Belushi would urge chatty or indecisive customers along with "Cmon, cmon, we got to have turnover!"
Imagine that in Japanese with a couple of plump old ladies hollering "Gyoza! gyoza! beer! beer!" and you have an idea of the atmosphere. You don't even order here, except for drinks. You just wave for another plate of the finest cheap gyoza in town - five to a 250 yen plate - or another quart bottle of ice cold Asahi or a Birley's Orange Soda. (They might serve something else but I've never seen it). Fresh plates arrive like clockwork until you start to slow down and when the feeding frenzy ends, the waitress counts the plates and empty bottles and hands you the bill.

If you don't know what gyoza is, first let me express my pity. Poor you. Moving right along, gyoza are Chinese dumplings similar to shu-mai, but in Japan they are usually pan-fried instead of steamed or boiled. For those of you completely unfamiliar with asian cuisine, think of little envelopes of fresh pasta stuffed with ground pork, cabbage, ginger and garlic and then fried/flash-steamed in a pan until the bottom is just started to turn brown and crisp, and top is al dente. They are sometimes called Chinese pot-stickers in North America, I suppose because they stick to the bottom of the pot if you aren't careful.

And they are easy to make at home. We buy the frozen wrappers at the grocery store for the sake of convenience, but the wrappers are not hard to make either. This is the best recipe I've found so far.  

In Japan, you find them everywhere - in convenience store bento lunches, frozen in the grocery store or fresh made in the deli section and they are a staple item on the menu in  izakayas (Japanese pubs). They are a common item in the many sorts of gluttony contests held here all the time (Eating machine Joey Chestnut set the world record last year at 231 gyoza in ten minutes in LA) and there is even a sort of gyoza theme park where you can try a dozen different kinds of gyoza with different fillings (shrimp is delicious!)

We also went to a small festival to mark the start of the Golden Week holidays in Japan at this little shrine

There were all the usual food stalls selling takoyaki octopus balls, corn on the cob and flavored shaved ice, but the best looking was the trout-on-a-stick booth,  because everything tastes better on a stick.

(all photos by my nine year old son Kentaro, except the close up of the gyoza)

Rocket in your pocket

I've pointed out many times that Japanese Television has some very weird stuff on it you would just never ever see in North America. One popular family program is Kasou Taishou, a sort of odd costume/sketch competition that groups from across the country enter in an effort to get on television. The first clip shows some winners and its easier to show it than to explain it.



This is the latest winner in the humor category - not something you'd see on North American television.

tip of the fez to Nakaima Oh