Blue Eyed Views of Mt. Fuji

ABC is DOWN, suckaz

2007-07-24T10:34:00.000+09:00

The post which inaugurated this blog was about a language school called ABC. Go to the archives and read about my first hand experiences interviewing with the place.

Anyway, to no surprise of anyone aware of the place, along with deceptive recruiting practices, deceptive advertising ("native speakers"? With heavy foreign accents, right.) and paying less than half the market rate, the company didn't pay anyone for last month, including office staff.

And then last Tuesday, the staff arrived at work but could not reach the owner/general manager. The guy cleaned out the general bank account and left the country.

Did I call this crap or did I call it?

Delays

2006-12-30T10:56:00.000+09:00

Toi Otosho O!
Sorry for the delays, readers. Refresh the RSS on the blogger page, because I hope to post pics when I get back from my New Years in Kyoto.

Hot Summer, Cold Food

2006-08-14T15:36:00.000+09:00

Summers in Japan are like Michigan summers, hot, wet, heavy tests of endurance. Osaka wilts under a lead grey sky in the low 30s and 95+ humidity. Kyoto is a bowl of suet and sweat. Yet Japanese businessmen will insist on black business suits and stoic expressions. The smarter gaijin are free to get away with offending the locals with t-shirts and shorts. Ah, freedom.

But there is respite. Noodles are the staple in Asia next to rice. You can find noodle dishes in every corner of Japan but what many Westerners may not know is that noodles can be eaten...cold!

Somen is a kind of limp white noodle that is best served in a deep dish, soaked in ice cold water and dipped by the strandful in a soy-sauce type of juice called 'yu-tsu'. The more adventurous will soak sliced mushrooms in the yutsu and quartered tomatoes and tofu in the somen dish. Very little garnish is needed.

Somen is best served and eaten cold with a side dish of edamame or green onion. This happens to be my favorite hot weather food. Once you try this, I hope I've made a convert of you!

Short hiatus

2006-05-16T17:26:00.000+09:00

Sorry for the lack of content. I've been a bit busy with other projects lately. I'll try to put something up next weekend! Thanks for your patience.

Hanami

2006-03-22T11:40:00.000+09:00

Hanami is the annual celebration of the cherry blossoms. Being a nature-oriented culture, Japan takes time out to observe seasonal occurrences, Spring being one of them. Hanami is not an officially sanctioned holiday but a culturally approved one. Because cherry trees bloom at different times of the year, students get the luxury of witnessing the first blossoms while office workers hope that the blossom stay long enough for the weekend.

Cherry blossoms don't last very long, a week and a half at the most. Therefore, it is Japanese tradition to observe hanami as a gesture appreciating the short span of life of the sakura (cherry blossom), and of human life.

How is hanami celebrated? Very simply. It is the one time out of the year when (except during baseball season) the Japanese can let go of their carefully composed behavior and let loose! Everyone has a picnic under the cherry trees, eating, drinking, laughing, moving from one picnic spot to the next where they visit old friends or make new ones. An American comparison might be the Fourth of July. Not that close, but its still a picnic or a barbecue, with some beer and sake, and beautiful flowers above you.

Hanami in Osaka and Kobe is supposed to begin the last weekend of March and runs through the first weekend of April. Tradition holds that the later hanami arrives, the shorter the summer. I certainly hope so.

Geisha: Part Three, さゆり

2006-01-07T17:03:00.000+09:00

WARNING: THIS MOVIE REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

About a month ago, there was an article in Japan Today about the controversy of authenticity in the then-upcoming movie, 'Memoirs of a Geisha' ('Sayuri', in Japan). Thinking that this would be a great article for my private students, to engage them on a cultural topic they already knew using English, I pared the article down and prepared a lesson plan. Surely every Japanese, especially the women, knew enough about geisha and Gion to initiate a conversation about what is authentic and what is portrayed on TV and movies.

To my surprise, several of my younger students knew what a geisha was but they didn't know many of the important qualities. It seemed I knew more than one of my students who had trouble identifying a musical instrument in a picture. It was a koto, a traditional stringed instrument geisha are taught to use during dance recitals. My students could not differentiate the difference between a mai-ko and a gei-ko, though the mai-ko wear the brighter kimono and have the larger obi and hairpieces. Furthermore, tea houses were assumed to be places to sip tea, like Starbucks, not places where you drink sake and are entertained by gei-ko.

The reason why I am telling you this is to remind you of points I raised in the first two posts: the geisha world, and many other cultural elements in Japan, are disappearing.

So the trick is for a movie director to figure out how to present a story about the mysterious world the geisha live in, knowing there will be filters in place to distort the truth. The Japanese do it all the time, with their period dramas which depict geisha as courtesans of the night. The great Kurosawa himself took enormous liberties with authenticity and his earlier financiers almost shut him down until they realized they were making a lot of money off the guy.

So a filmmaker has some choices, knowing full well that an accurate portrayal of the subject simply is not possible. But how to revere the subject knowing that there are cultural and dramatic liberties which filter reality once removed from a book and is further removed with a movie. Rob Marshall, acclaimed director of 'Chicago', had to either be true to the cultural integrity of the geisha, or stay true to the book, or recognize there is that filter, the several removes from the subject, and move away a step further.

Let me give you an example: when I was traveling in Italy, ten years ago, I ate genuine pizza. Thin crispy crusts with a little sauce, some meat and vegetables and very little cheese. American pizza is wide, much thicker than the real the thing, and lathered with tomato sauce and toppings. In Japan, its American-style pizza but with Japanese items, mayonnaise, cold cucumber, corn and seaweed. Ergo, the real item, the American interpretation of the item, and Japanese interpretation of the American interpretation of the item. Bread topped with mustard, squid and cheese, a special at Pizza Hut according to the Japanese flier stuffed into my mail box this morning.

Marshall's choice was to 'base' his film on the book and distance himself as much as possible from the subject without alienating readers of the book. Marshall also recognized that his target audience must be the general American viewing public, not the Japanese and not Japanophile purists. So he Hollywood-ized the story.

The story very loosely follows details from the book but I emphasize loosely. The city is renamed. Certain elements are completely removed. World War II spans about four minutes. The last third of the book is excised. The US release version is a little different than the Japan version. Characters are replaced or renamed. But it is essentially the story of a little girl sold to slavery who eventually becomes the beautiful geisha, Sayuri.

Now my review: I loved 'Chicago' and I knew that this movie was going to have a lot more action, a la dancing, than the book. I also knew a lot of the talky bits were going to be reduced in favor of visual moments. I also think Marshall made the right decision to distance the movie from the book. But the movie, pure and simple, is a white man's fantasy inspired by another white man's fantasy of geisha. Marshall would hire traditional Japanese musicians to play some pieces and then he would say, "okay, now make it faster, add more beats." Huh? Wait, does he want authentic or does he want hip hop? Same goes for the training, which supposedly took six weeks and involved the actresses touring extensively around Kyoto. Um, no. You don't learn dance for six weeks and then have an American choreographer teach you completely different moves, but I guess this is what happened.

I have seen the Gion Spring Dances, open to the general public as they are. I will be seeing a performance this coming May, tickets cost $120. The cheap seats. These dances are, in a word, boring. Most of the audience sleeps through these things. Tourists soak in about thirty minutes and then they fidgety. The little emo performance art thing that is Sayuri's dance number halfway through the movie is nowhere near the same thing as what I will see.

Strengths:
-Stunning set design
-Beautiful kimono
-Superb performances by Watanabe/Yeoh/Li/Zhang&Co.
Weaknesses
-Every plot point or motivation leads nowhere, many sequences occurring for no reason at all
-At one point in the movie, I vowed if Sayuri said "I don't understand" one more time, I would reach out and wring her neck
-ESL English. I have to deal with it every day for work. I don't want to have to pay $15 to hear it for two and a half hours
What to do for the DVD release
-Cut an hour from the movie, it will make it tighter, thus stronger
-Require the material from the US and Japan be the same for the DVD
-Lose the dance number or incorporate another one that is closer to what a tourist might actually see if they come to Gion

Here is my final point to this very long post (and I apologize!). My whole review and Marshall's justification for why he made the film the way he did is a house of cards. Marshall said in an interview, and I quote:

"We had index cards of the entire book. We started outlining the movie, pulling away things ... But we were basically very faithful, because I knew it was a beloved book. I wanted to serve that anyway, because it's good.

"While we were writing we started the casting process. And during that time I took my entire team to Japan" -- all the designers, producers, writers, designers. It was much the same team Marshall worked with on "Chicago".

"We just immersed ourselves in the culture, went to teahouses, walked the streets at night, were entertained by geisha, saw an apprentice geisha get made up from start to finish."

With those words from the director's mouth, the house of cards falls. I am not very shocked by the arrogance of the man. But for him to say that he tried to adhere to the book and to the traditions...and then he gives us this movie which is a completely different, and sometimes random, animal is hubris. That's okay, though. His audience is not me. Its the average American who can't tell the difference between a shamisen and a ukelele and honestly doesn't care. Hot chicks in kimono, and you can take the wife with you so she can have her movie cry, and you can even nap some in the middle, that's the target viewing audience Marshall had in mind.

I usually ask people not to come to a movie or a book with preconceptions but I think it is very important that you do for this film. Understand that what you see is NOT based in anyway on authentic traditions. These are Hollywood stereotypes catering to an ignorant public and is not the real thing. Its a fun movie, I enjoyed it but you need to realize that you will not leave the theater having learned something of Japan.

In the spirit of balanced discussion, for further reviews of the movie, here is a brief list:
Hollywood's Faulty 'Memoirs'
Welcome to Kyoto, California
Memoirs, a pleasant suprise.

This film is family safe, but there is sexually suggestive content (including implied attempted rape, selling off virginity and shared bathing).

Geisha, Part Two: 'Memoirs of a Geisha', the novel

2006-01-05T11:29:00.000+09:00

The Novel
'Memoirs of a Geisha', by Arthur Golden, is the story of a young girl taken from her home in a remote Japanese fishing village and sold into servitude to an okiya, a Geisha house. Narrated by an old woman living in New York City recounting her past, the story unfolds as the girl grows up to be one of the most celebrated geisha in Kyoto before and during World War Two. Hardcore Japanophiles have complained about minute details in this novel. I didn't have problems with it.

'Geisha' is a romance novel for the sophisticated reader. It makes no claims to an accurate account of life as a geisha (and this blog makes no claims to be factually correct) so the issue is moot. Its a fantasy novel. I think it is a beautiful story which gives a white Western male perspective of an enigmatic practice in an already exotic setting. The harsh story of a little girl who is thrown into slavery to become a geisha yearning for years to meet and be with the one man who showed her kindness when she was a child is simple, almost trite. There is no plot, though biographies or memoirs rarely have one. I've dismissed criticisms of this book because I understood exactly what I was getting into when I read it.

If you put aside the quality of the prose, the 'facts' and the inconsistencies, you are left with a wonderful love story told by an old woman who was a famous geisha. The story lends credibility by reminding us that she kept the story to herself until she was sure all of the important characters in her tale had died, to protect them. Also, she defends some of the traditions she practiced by comparing them with the pretty girlfriend of a rich married man. It is often a sad story, sometimes a captivating story with a few facts but mostly a romantic reminiscence of earlier times. Granted, WWII is explored in a ten page chapter and the conclusion is five pages long. Sort of like running the credits exactly when the hero is racing away with the girl. That's it? That's the end? But on the whole, while it could have been better (get rid of the 'Translators Note', the Author's Note and the Sulking Teen scene) and it might have been stronger (by incorporating actual geisha facts instead of knowingly borrowing from lesser practices and calling them 'geisha'), 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is a lush fairy tale told by a Japanese narrator from a Westerner's mind.

The first time I read this novel, I was living in Japan and when I finished it, I decided to walk around Gion and try to recapture some of the dwindling spirit of that world. I was lucky to catch glimpses of mai-ko, might have seen an actual gei-ko, though I couldn't be sure at the time. Eight years later, I have re-read the book, I have spent more years in Japan and in Asia and have read volumes of material on Japanese history and culture. I am not a Japan scholar and I will not say I know what a geisha is/is not with authority. I can say this: the novel is just that, a work of fiction. It was a fun story to read and it fueled my curiosity and appreciation for this culture. I note the irony that the book, by an American, is told by a Japanese--with the same sort of awareness that underneath the suit or the kimono, we are all the same. For example...

The Controversy
Golden ends his book with an Author's Note by thanking Mineko Iwasaki, a former geisha, for allowing him to interview her. Apparently, there is an unspoken rule among the geisha that no geisha talks about themselves or their art. Sort of like that Fight Club rule but I can't talk about that here.

Iwasaki-san sued Golden for defamation of character for portraying geisha as prostitutes and for violating a clause in their contract stipulating anonymity. File that last one away for now because we will come back to it shortly.

In the suit, Iwasaki-san claims 'Memoirs of a Geisha' portrays geisha as prostitutes and Japanese as man-beasts who enjoy having adulterous affairs and make an upper-class, rich man's practice of it. Having read the book, I can say that this argument was extremely difficult for me to see unless I pulled and twisted the rationale like taffy. Here's how it goes: some geisha are 'kept women' (like the boss's young 'friend' who shows up at the party), others sell sex for money-->all geisha are prostitutes-->Iwasaki-san was a prostitute. Hmmm. Let fix the faulty logic. ~~Faulty~~ profitable logic: In the book, some geisha sell their bodies-->all geisha are whores-->Iwasaki-san is a hooker-->defamation of character=book deal.

Writers don't make a lot of money in Japan. A publishing deal in America is considered the mother lode. Also, you don't make money as a retired geisha. You don't entertain when you retire, it just doesn't work that way. There is no doubt the allure of a three book deal in America and a credit in a movie you had no involvement with might have something to do with turning to the guy who made millions off his book about you and crying, in an indignant stage voice, "foul!" I had mentioned a moment ago that Golden and Iwasaki signed a contract requiring anonymity and that when he named his source, she said the book, not she, broke the rule regarding a geisha's code of silence. Never mind the books, the movie credit and the numerous TV guest appearances around the world do more to reveal the inner secrets of the geisha community than three sentences at the back of a book quite a few people thought was, meh, kinda boring or kinda romantic.

So how does one portray a hidden world with material fraught with misconceptions and inconsistencies, while preserving the exotic, romantic atmosphere?

Part Three, the movie.

Geisha

2006-01-04T11:08:00.000+09:00

This is part one, of three, on the subject of geisha. Geisha are female Japanese entertainers in the traditional arts. Before the era of karaoke, Kohaku Uta Gassen and Hamasaki Ayumi, geisha were the favored form of entertainment for men who liked to go to tea houses after work to unwind.

This simple introduction does the courtesan, the geisha, no justice. To simply refer to these women as 'entertainers' is incorrect and inappropriate. To my mind, they inhabit a secret world and within that world, they belong to a mysterious order. Religious, political and magical, this sisterhood recruits, trains and then presents individuals who perform the arts. No, that is no better than the first paragraph. Geisha are art. They are the embodiment of artist, art and performance housed within a beautiful frame and clothed in silk and white facepaint.

There is a hierarchy within the geisha community: the Mai-ko (apprentice geisha), the Gei-ko (the adult geisha) and the Oba-sama (literally 'grandmother', with the same reverence one calls an honored matriarch, she is a retired gei-ko). Oba-sama is not used anymore as typically geisha who retire give up the title geisha forever. And the houses, virtually self contained estates, where the geisha live don't exist anymore. The Gion geisha registry office which used to administer geisha affairs, particularly fees and taxes, now houses a travel agency and a chain English school. Part of the Allied Occupation Forces realignment of Japan's governmental system, prostitution and thus the entertainment districts in Japanese cities was abolished. The customs practiced by geisha since the middle of the 18th century when the first geisha appeared are now illegal, and they wouldn't have been used anyway since modern attitudes would have deemed them unacceptable.

The Japanese National Tourism Office, JNTO, now governs the geisha as tourist attractions. Though most geisha adhere to the traditional codes of the geisha, what is formally understood of the traditions has been erased. There are conflicting statistics to the number of officially licensed gei-ko but the accepted figure is around eighty. With the same disclaimer, the number of mai-ko is somewhere around a dozen. For all of Japan. Take into account there were probably six or seven hundred geisha in Kyoto alone at the end of WWII. And there were thousands at the turn of the century.

Geisha are a relatively new phenomenon in Japanese history but like the samurai and imperial rule, they are on the point of extinction, if only barely preserved by a handful of purists who struggle against the rising tide of the future. You see, Japan is a land of water, both literally and figuratively. With interests as fluid as those of contemporary Japanese, soon there won't be enough geisha to pass along the traditions to keep the art alive. Very soon, that world will pass into the mists of memory and eventually will be remembered in misunderstood and misinterpreted representations that will never reflect the truth. Somewhere there is an echo of the geisha world, where beautiful women with white faces deftly pour sake into men's cups or play lilting tunes on a koto but the nuances are lost, the proper element of nihongai will be missing. All that is left is what TV scriptwriters can drudge out of their imaginations before the 2PM deadline or what the Western novelist who needs a theme for his romance novel.

Part two, 'Memoirs of a Geisha'

Onsen: Part Two, Spiritual Healing

2005-10-22T20:56:00.000+09:00

There is so much to say about onsen that just isn't possible to cover in one, or even two, blog posts. As follow up to the introduction I gave in the last post, I would like to talk about the more ephemeral qualities of onsen.

Ironically, once you have experienced the onsen, there isn't anything magical about them: when you step in, all artifice of your daily life, your mundane routines, your petty obligations and feuds, all are steamed away until you are left with the essentials. Onsen are a retreat from the hectic, brow-beating world and a force feeding of actual reality. You are as you are in an onsen, nothing more nor less. Naked and submerged in the elements and boiling to a point between sleep and total lucidity, you are brought down to your basic parts. Gone is the ego, gone is the psychological hurt, erased are the joint aches from lugging the briefcase.

And it is here, at this point, when there is nothing left of "you", that the word ephemeral can be properly used: as you soak in an onsen, the most important things in your life, whether you think they are important or not is irrelevant, surface from the depths of your mind and allow you to consider them at leisure. There havebeen times when I had absolutely nothing to think about as I sat in an open air onsen and gazed at the pine covered mountains. And when I stepped out of the springs, rinsed and dressed, I felt light and free. Truly within the moment and comfortable.

There is a reason cultures with richly integrated values concerning nature and spirituality are also cultures with hot springs. With this hasty generalization is the recognition that among the world's cultures, it is communities with hot springs that seem to be more earthy, more together than others I have experienced in my travels. Even the animals recognize the value of onsen. I once sat in a spring and across the way, I saw monkeys gingerly and shyly enter their side. After a while, we all relaxed and the totally human way they reposed in the springs amused me; when I got over my initial awe, we were able to simply let ourselves be ourselves and heal whatever a man and a monkey needed healing in the springs.

Special thanks to the National Geographic Foundation for permission to use Snow Monkeys for my blog, with permission granted on non-transferable use. You may not copy this image from this blog without express permission from the NGF.

Onsen

2005-09-19T14:24:00.000+09:00

It took me a while to plan this post because it had to follow the previous post on sentos. Obviously this post is about onsen, but how to go about it?

For years, the onsen has been one of the mysterious and luxurious facets of Japan to Western eyes. It seems like an extravagent escape: flee to Nihon and after a few crazy days in Tokyo, head to the West and lounge in a ryokan in your yukata with Mt. Fuji rising in the horizon outside your bamboo window. Below you the ground is fogged from the steam spilling from the thermal baths called onsen.

I didn't want to do a How To on onsen like I did for sento. There isn't much difference between the two except that onsen are natural, they are usually open air and there are traditional style inns associated with the hot springs in some way. You enter an onsen the same way you do a sento. But the experience is far more spiritual, in my humble opinion.

Hot springs make an appearance in almost all tourist literature in Japan and much of the marketing for hotels concentrate on onsen or ryokan which have onsen. They also appear in TV shows, movies, anime, manga and as literary references. Every romance or comedy has a ubiquitous situation involving hot springs. Entire series (anime) have been devoted to onsen and any situation that can possibly include girls in revealing situations in a spring. Onsen have even made an appearance in podcasting (for information about matchmaking onsen, listen to the excellent Planet Japan radio show, episode 8, here.)

Japanese hot springs, like all other natural springs, are said to be as healthy as they are relaxing. If I said in the previous post there was no better way to end the day than to soak in a bath and have a cold beer afterwards, that would be an understatement at an onsen. My biggest problem is that onsen aren't very available in my area. There are a few, to be sure, but they aren't as nice as the thousands in Kyushu or Shikoku, and the inns are actually modern hotels with indoor onsen. The experience is tempered with modernity and convenience that, incidentally, doesn't quite fit the true onsen experience. But I have been to onsen and ryokan out of the area and can garauntee that spending a couple days at such a place is phenomenally expensive and worth every yen.

You don't get away for the weekend and just take in an onsen. It doesn't work that way. You take a short vacation and you concentrate your holiday on the onsen experience. And it isn't like Disneyland; you don't try different onsen in the area like a theme ride. You can try two over the course of a weekend but each particular rollercoaster ride should be slow, no climbs, and langurous. Soaking in an onsen should be a social lubricant, it should be for self-reflection, it should be for sloughing away the worries of the real world and revealing the simple purity of a spirit taking a rest.

And with that last thought in mind, I give you a gratuitious picture of the onsen in popular media. Enjoy.

Sento

2005-09-04T09:09:00.000+09:00

The sento. The Japanese public bath. In a nutshell, this is a communal bath house, open only in the evenings, where people go to soak in a choice of baths. The procedure is this: you enter a building that looks a bit like your high school locker room on the inside, take off your shoes and then pass through drapes with the kanji for "man" or "woman". Once inside, you are in the true locker room where you drop your clothes and put them away. At the other end is a large bathing area. This is where you sit on a very low plastic stool and thoroughly soap up and rinse. You wash yourself before you enter the baths. Once you are sure you have rinsed all of the soap off, you are free to join the others in one of the tubs. There will be several to choose from. One might be icy cold, another might be boiling hot and yet another might be lukewarm tea. There might be an electric bath. In some sento, there is a sauna room. More on that later.

Most foreigners are uncomfortable with the idea of the public bath. On the one hand, if you are staying at a traditional japanese inn, you can't avoid it: there aren't individual showers and you can't bathe in the morning like we usually do. You have to use the communal bath area. Sentos are the idea that you must go down the street to a business catering to bathers and strip, wash (before the bath, not IN the bath) and then soak in the tub with a bunch of strangers. And because you are foreigner, they all want to look at your penis. Its true.

It took me about a year before I was ready to take the plunge, as it were. I was living in a ryokan-turned-gaijin house and most of my housemates went to a sento across the street at least twice a week. They always came back like they just had the full spa treatment. But I am a bit of an uptight guy. The kind of guy who makes sure the bathroom door is locked when he takes a shower. But I came across an article introducing the virtues of the sento. So I decided to give it a try. I was careful to watch others before trying it myself. I even took a quick shower before going on my expedition to be on the safe side. Three hours later, I was a changed man.

You have to understand, once you go sento, you never go back. You go native. The sento is the greatest idea ever and why it hasn't caught on in the States, I'll never understand. Okay, yeah, we have public baths...those kinds of baths...and we have hot springs, but its not the same. Its hard to explain, you just have to do it yourself to get the picture.

Now, when I travel in Japan, its no accident that the first thing I ask about are the sento. I've become kind of a sento snob. But I am not alone, its a treat, and sometimes my only excuse for getting out of bed and putting in a long day at work. And I have a routine. I clop down to the local sento in my flip flops, pay the ridiculously cheap admission fee, get naked and spend at least fifteen minutes lathering, shampooing and shaving. And then rinsing. Then I get into the warm bath. That's key. Its preparation for the "you won't have children after this" volcanic bath next. When my skin has started to blister and I have trouble seeing because my corneas have shriveled, I get out and steam in the tiny wood sauna room. When I am almost recovered but now hallucinating, I get out and step into the icy cold tub, whose waters I think might have been siphoned from Siberia.

Then I rinse in the shower and start the cycle over again. And I do this about three or four times. When I return home, I weigh about fifty pounds, I'm four inches shorter and my skin glows like a fourteen year old girl's. Then I plop down on my tatami floor, flick on the fan and drink a very cold beer. The end of a day couldn't be better.

Planet Japan Podcast

2005-08-28T17:50:00.000+09:00

Over the Obon holiday, I went to Shiraishi Island where the Lady of Japan Podcasts, Amy Chavez (columnist for The Japan Times), resides and tends the Mooo! Bar. She is also one half of the Planet Japan podcast cohosted with Doug DeLong. In an ealier podcast they invited any of their listeners to come to their first ever Planet Japan Beach Party and I took them up on their invite.

I encourage any of my readers of this blog to go over, right now, and start downloading past episodes of the podcast. The show is a real treat: a fun, often funny, and informative look at life in Japan for those of us trying to make heads or tails of the place. It also helps that I am also in one of the episodes (episode #11), you can even see pictures at the Planet Japan blog page. You get to hear me in all my drunken and exhausted glory. Of the several non-native speakers interviewed for that episode, I was the one with the most foreign accent and disjointed sentence structure. I blame the Moo Margaritas. Dang you, Amy, dang you for your delicious boozy beach drinks!

Anyway, the podcast was recently given minor celebrity status when the creator of podcasting himself, Adam Curry, gave the show a thumbs up. So hop on over to the podcast, grab yourself your favorite Japanese oriented libation, settle yourself into your favorite comfy chair and listen to the happenest podcast about Japan on the Internets. Final note: you will have to go to the podcast page itself for the URL needed to subscribe to the show; but you'll be able to listen to the streaming audio from the front page itself.

Obon Holiday

2005-08-20T09:14:00.000+09:00

The Obon Holiday in Japan roughly coincides with the third week in August every year. The holiday is not unlike the Christian Easter Holiday with some Halloween sprinkled in.

The Japanese believe the spirits of their ancestors return from the realm of the dead this time of year to visit the family. On the first day of Obon, families will place two small spinning lanterns near their windows or the family shrine to guide the spirits home. On this or the next day, families will go to their family graves and clean them, replace incense sticks and pray.

In Kyoto, on the last day of Obon, fire symbols burn on the mountain tops for the ghosts to use to find their way back to the afterlife. On many islands along the Inland Sea, families make small paper boats and set them afire and afloat out to the night sea, burning into bright specks on the dark horizon.

Obon is not a flamboyant holiday, like Halloween is in America, nor is there a sacred custom, such as Easter. There aren't special meals prepared though individual family traditions may determine this. The tradition of cleaning the graves is more of an annual obligation and an opportunity for the family to come together. And while many Japanese still feel the spirits come to visit the household shrine, the majority use the time as a way of bonding with the grown children who may have moved away, with school aged youngsters on Summer break or with their neighbors. It seems every community has their own way of honoring the dead but during this holiday, all of Japan shares in an intimate and solemn exercise that also allows them to show their affection to their family.

Old school finding new rythms

2005-08-03T16:38:00.000+09:00

Japan's youth generation has gained infamy for ripping through fads and trends at lightspeed. Whatever is hip this week in Harajuku isn't going to be The Thing next week. Popular culture in Japan appears to ride swells of trends, even generating the waves of what's fresh and the withdrawing tide with the same motion last season's clothes are pulled off hangars.

At the same time, Japan also maintains customs that are centuries old, honoring the ancient traditions in small ways: festivals, visits to the local shrine, kimonos. The hipster kid in the Mura (Osaka) in his newest Hawaiian shirt and chinos may pause at a shrine before pushing on, oblivious to the contradictions. A girl who is a habitual consumer of the latest fashions may also look at the latest kimonos with the same eye and on the same whim.

But sometimes old traditions come creeping back into society to become trendy again. I noticed this when I was walking through Ebisubashi in Osaka the other day, looking for some sweet arcade game action. I was drawn to a crowd outside one of the arcades in the area. Of all the machines in the place, racing games, shooting games, fighting games, there was just one game outside the place: a taiko drum game. Take Dance Dance Revolution, change the music to taiko drum beats and stick two traditional-looking drums in front of the machine and you have The Taiko Drum Game(tm). In and of itself, I wouldn't normally think this would appeal to the generation that is always looking for the latest version of The Thing or the newest moment on the horizon, but here was a young man just wailing on the fake drums to the beats in the game like a real taiko drummer! And he had a huge audience! And did I mention this was a videogame?

While I was standing there, the crowd got bigger. The guy was obviously good. He also added embellishments to his style, looking no less the part of the taiko drummer. I also saw a couple other guys on the side, I guess waiting their turn, and they had their own taiko drum sticks.They were the model taiko drum game otaku, there is a devoted following of the game complete with their own sticks and their posse.

So just when I think that Japanese culture has two completely divergent aspects of itself, and the nationalists would have you think that the New Japanese are destroying the traditional way of life, here comes a temporary integration of the two faces of Japan. One final note: You can't really see it in my picture (crappy 1 megapixel cellphone camera), the little girl in front is bouncing to the beat. Kawaii!

Go, go Lucky! Go!

2005-07-27T22:50:00.000+09:00

(large img)I wasn't a fan of American baseball after the first big strike but when I first arrived in Japan I was in awe of the sacred aspect of Japanese baseball. Supporting a ball team here is literally like invoking the gods to bring good harvests and keeping bad weather away. Baseball is not the capitalist industry it is in the US though you can't deny it is a huge money generating engine here in Japan.

However, baseball is a fan driven sport and there is no fan in Japan like the Hanshin Tigers fan. All of Japan makes fun of the Tigers fans. This is a country that will observe a moment of silence when a legendary ball player plays his last at bat. In Koshien Stadium, the riot police were overwelmed when a foreigner ran his last around the bases. It was not so long ago that the district required the stadium ticket offices hold stands at opposite sides of the general ticket sales. There were always riots. There used to be game delays because of fights in the bleachers during the fifteen year period when the Tigers were the last rated team in the Central League. Oh, and for those who don't know, Tigers Stadium is the only stadium to have the highest occupancy of any stadium in any league. Ever. Since 1935.

So I was invited to a monumental occaison, a Tigers match against the top ranking Giants. The Giants have been the most popular team in the Japan for, like, forever. And here I was with the lowest ranking team in the league with the highest ranking team in terns of popularity. To make a long story short, watching a Tigers game is like watching a car wreck. When the Tigers win, its always a physical feat; when the Giants make a play, its about organization and sportsmanship.

This year, the Tigers are ranked #1. They just are because they have won the most games. All of of them by accident, it appears. All of the wins are close calls or made on errors or lucky linedrives with a man on third.

Around the 7th inning at Koshien Stadium, an interesting event occurs. Everyone blows up a balloon that looks just like a condom. When it is fully expanded, it looks like a penis. I am not making this up. In fact, at an appointed time the balloons are released and look uncannily like sperm. You don't believe me. Exhibit A:

While the fans wear their funny (or sometimes sexy) costumes, get loud in a way that would make the Italians proud during a football match, and drink until dawn on a work day when the team loses, the Hanshin Tigers are a very atypical type of Japanese you don't see on TV. They show that there is a passion here in this country which breaks from the reserved and phoney exterior the mainstream demands. You get to see real people cheer real champions who make next to nothing compared to their Western counterparts. This is a sport when it was at its greatest and its fans at its most personal...in a land where the status quo, wa, is the ideal.

I sure hope the Tigers win this year because if they don't, the entire region is going to sink into depression until Spring next year.

Gackt

2005-07-20T01:09:00.000+09:00

While every nation has its pop icons, Japan is no exception. Frequently bordering on the bizarre to the kitsch, Japan has produced individuals both real and 2D who represent the trends in pop culture. But there is one person who has successfully blurred the lines between what is real, what is illusion and what is style.

Camui Gackt claims to be a 400 year old Frenchman who makes his home in a castle in Kyoto. The truth is, no one really knows how old Gackt is but what they do know is he is an enigma which has generated a massive cult following, earning him practically an industry unto himself. Gackt is involved in music, movies, anime and even videogames and is personally vested in each of these media.

The facts as they are known: Gackt is an enormously popular J-rock musician who can play six musical instruments, mix his own albums and is responsible for the PR behind his work. He speaks four foreign languages including English. He says he is blue eyed but wears colored contact lenses with a special polarized tint because he is sensitive to light. He is emphatic he is not gay but his stage acts and his personal associations with the likes of Hide and Yuma bely a heavily homosexual inclination. This only fans the yaoi flames. I said flame. That was funny.

Anyway. On one level, Gackt is the master of self-promotion. He involves himself in a variety of projects, much like product placement when you think about it. But the man himself doesn't say much. And when he does talk, its often contradictory and colorful. Soft spoken, given to monosyllabic utterances in a bass monotone, he will grudgingly give up answers to interview questions, like "I like the taste of the sea." The question, dude, was "what was it like working with Yuma and can you elaborate on the rumors of a relationship?" In the middle of a quiz show, Gackt stepped off the podium and lay down on the center of the stage for no apparent reason. After a few moments, he quickly sat up and returned to his place. He refused to comment when pestered by the game show host. Regardless of his odd antics, he is a beautiful male specimen with gargantuan intelligence. I'm soft spoken and say odd shit sometimes but so far I got nothing on this guy.

Whoever Gackt is, he represents an ideal that many Japanese feel is impossible: independent, individualistic and capable of mastering his own destiny (even if it is a fake one created by his own rich imagination). He is also incredibly good at what he does, be it music or film. You have not truly experienced the weird side of Japanese innovation until you have seen this guy at work.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

2005-07-17T12:10:00.000+09:00

A new "relaxation" center has opened in Ikebukuro (Tokyo), the newest offering in an explosion of massage centers in shopping malls and shopping arcades all over Japan. I found this latest bit in the Daily Mainichi, Japan's version of People: New relaxation center opens in Ikebukuro.

In this article we learn that Riraku no Mori will offer several different relaxation treatments for a culture that promotes putting the group before yourself. I read a lot about Japanese sararimen working themselves into exhaustion. But I also read (and see) just as frequently, these same individuals partying it up late on a Monday night and frequently partaking of hair of the dog on the way to work. I see armies of teens and 20somethings lounging around parks and arcades, looking really bored, looking aimless, looking like they just can't wait to hit their thirties and real responsibility. I'm guessing here.

Don't get me wrong. I think having these Thai and Western massage booths is a great idea. Its very practical from a consumer perspective and its also exploiting another business opportunity. Any way to make a buck while also helping others gets a gold star in my book. But its also slightly redundant.

I follow the dictum: if it aint broke, don't fix it. See the picture at the start of this post? Lawnchairs, EZchairs, ComfyCouches, there is a reason they were developed and why people still use them. Aint broke. Moderate consumption of low grade alcoholic beverages for citizens of legal age. Beer. The nectar of The God Of Summer Days and BBQs. That also--aint broke. Now if you put the two together, hold on to your seats, put your ass in the LazyBoy and the beer in your hand and, wow, the magic just manifests itself. That feeling you get? In America, we call it "relaxed." Put aint broke together with aint broke and you get aint broke.

So for the Japanese, having the massage booths is a nifty idea to serve a very specific purpose: feel good during a shopping spree. But for most, the "riraku" (relax, if you didn't figure it out already) model is already there. Don't go out. Don't go shopping. Stay home, turn on the TV, sit in the recliner and open a cold one. I would do that, too, but I've got work to do. Can't waste time relaxing. I mean, what do you think this is? America?

(ED: I encourage anyone travelling in Japan, tired and achy from a day's sightseeing, to spend 15 minutes in one of these places. And when you get back to your inn, plop yourself down on the tatami and open a cold Kirin. This will go miles toward refreshing you for the next stage of your stay, whatever it may be.)

Late Nite Diner Eikaiwa

2005-07-13T22:26:00.000+09:00

Most Westerners who come to Japan end up teaching English. As a result, there is an industry of English schools, called eikaiwas, which promote English instruction as a service to the public and hire native speakers. You don't need any training or experience as this is provided, usually.

I have a pretty good gig as a corporate trainer which is in the higher end of the industry, the requirements are rather strict but I am compensated well for it. But I also don't mind checking out the competition and possibly picking up extra work for fun money.

After looking through the want ads, I came across a school that seemed really small, just starting out and didn't teach children. That was key because I didn't want to come to a side gig teaching babies from my real job in a suit. So, I fire off an email with a resume to the school, hoping for an opportunity to at least check them out.

The first warning should have been the lengthy delay in response time. I had followed up my email nearly a week after my submission and when a month went by, I figured they passed on me. Which is fine. But two months after I submitted my resume, I get a request to come for an interview! I shrugged my shoulders and fired off a request for a meeting time. Another month goes by.

The school, let's call them Late Nite Diner Eikaiwa, emails me again but its a short note, a name and a phone number, nothing else. By now, I have written them off but I see the number so I just ring it up for amusement. I end up speaking with a guy named Charlie. He says he's from Australia. They have a small operation and would I like to meet with him to explore the possibilities. I mention it had been a while since he emailed me and figured they had moved on. Hint #3 or 4: he isn't even listening to me, he's going on about what I should bring and how to get there.

I go. Yep, I have to see this. I really do. So I go. Once there, it turns out to be an office separated by cubicle partitions. I think this is a good set up for a school if all you are going to do is conversation practice but not for a real class. That's okay because it turns out that is just what it is. Students walk in for private one on one lessons for about 45 minutes and then they leave. But there is no way of knowing what the student abilities are, there is no testing! There is no way of knowing what material was covered in previous lessons, there are no student records! There is no way of knowing what the student needs are, there is no interview or asssessment!

There are zero teaching materials. All you get is: a small table, two chairs, a whiteboard, a dictionary and partitions on either side of you barely wide enough for you to slide sideways to your chair. The whole thing is a nightmare. I have decided there is no way I would teach part time there unless they offered me something really juicy.

So I am about five minutes early to my "interview." I introduce myself to the front office staff, make them laugh, and then a guy appears and he starts talking to me. I notice first off that he is Asian and clearly not a native English speaker. He later tells me he is a New Zealander but I figure he is Vietnamese or Cambodian but possibly an emigre to New Zealand. His name is Duc ("Duck") and he informs me in broken English that Charlie can't meet with me but instead he will interview me. He is the assistant manager of...the English school. I sigh and we sit down.

Duc has never interviewed anyone before. I give him a hard copy of my resume and he doesn't even look at it. The first question he asks is, "where are you from?" I point to the top of my resume where the second word after my name is: American. "Take your time reading this," I tell him. He looks up and down at it and then takes a long time looking at the photo on my resume (standard Japanese CVs require a picture as well as your nationality and blood type and other details). Why he needs to look at my picture when I am sitting in front of him, I'll never know.

Remember, I have observed that he hasn't given interviews before. His second question is, "may I tell you how much we can pay you?" Fine, I smile at him. It had better be a whole lot of fucking money. He smiles broadly and says, "nine hundred yen per hour but we can only pay part time."

The minimum hourly wage for this industry, for someone without experience, ground floor, yada yada, is 2000 yen, a little more in Osaka. I am paid two and half times this, not including selling bonuses, with a hefty schedule. I make bank. I don't really need a side gig. But what the guy in front of me is telling me is I am worth less than half what a...year long tourist...is expected to be paid. Duc can see I am not amused. He explains, "after few months, if we like performance, we pay you 1000 yen."

That's it. I'm out the door. Before I go, I ask Duc about the other teachers. Surely, no one, NO ONE, is working for $8 an hour here. I walk around the office and see three teachers, Charlie is one of them (also Southeast Asian?), a young woman with a heavy Russian accent and a Japanese. Duc is also a teacher, I am told. I ask if they have any native English speakers and Duc tells me that they are all native speakers.

I've had my fun, I got to see the true underbelly of the industry, the lowest it can possibly go, at the Late Nite Diner Eikaiwa. Greasy food and tepid coffee, a bored waitress with cigarette forgotten on her lips, and an endless parade of customers who just want to get in, eat and get the hell out. And get the hell out, I do.