J-BLOGGERS - jibtv

By Claytonian

Forgive me, I'm not near as good an illustrator as our own Martin, but I thought that this drawing, which started as a absentminded sketch while thinking about winter, encapsulates a lot of my impressions of Japan when it is cold. And it's still quite cold as I write this!

That whole lack of significant insulation or central heating thing that happens in homes over here necessitates a certain lifestyle. Let's analyze my scribble to see what I've included from the lifestyle. First off, lets talk about the mikan in the room.

Mikans are like oranges. Or clementines. Or something. I hear them referred to by all kinds of names, but I just know them as the citrus that dominates the countryside to which I first moved when I came to Japan. The people of the city import the mikans by the veritable basket-load for winter consumption as they are easy to get during this time. And then they give them to their eikaiwa teachers, or customers, or passing strangers. There are a lot of mikans coming into my house at any given time.

Besides the anthropomorphised mikan, there are some other wintry objects. For instance, we have his hat. I don't get the impression that many Japanese people wear hats in their cold rooms, but I certainly do. I get wrapped like a Bedouin each night.

Then there is the stove. These are filled with noxious gas and will probably kill you. So of course lots of people use them. The stove is often topped by a teapot to keep moisture in the air and teacups. Or in my case, laps.

The most important heating object in this picture is of course the kotatsu.  Not pictured is the air conditioner. Where I come from, air conditioners only cooled air, but here they go both ways. Despite the fact that heat rises, air conditioners are always near the ceiling. The TV is important too; it distracts one from the bitter pain of the cold.

by Emily Connor

I hate Valentines Day. Always have, always will. I suppose that I just never saw the point of such a holiday. Sure, the original concept of the holiday was to celebrate St. Valentine and the wonders of love and affection, surprising your special someone with a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates-- despite all of this I still hate the day. I think I can recall purposely skipping school on pretty much every February 14th of my high school years.

If you thought that Valentines Day wasn't burdensome enough already, the Japanese spin on the holiday will really get you going. There are two Valentines Day-type holidays in this country; the usual February 14th Valentines Day, and another one on March 14th called 'White Day'. On February 14th, women are expected to hand-make chocolate for their significant others (and also male friends), and on White Day men are expected to give back chocolate to the important women in their lives. Although White Day has been around since the 1970's, Korea and Taiwan are the only two countries besides Japan to celebrate the day. (Actually, in South Korea they also seem to have similar holidays called Rose Day, Yellow Day, Black Day and Orange Day, but since I'm no expert on South Korean holidays I won't go into that.)

Yes, by the way, I did say 'hand-made chocolate'. Simply buying nice chocolates doesn't quite cut it in this country, and hand-made chocolate is much more preferred than store-bought chocolates. Buying chocolates at the store is not taboo by any means (you should see the chocolate section at some department stores on February 13th!) but unless you're willing to dish out a reasonable amount of money on the candy, you're better off to make it by hand. Many stores sell kits just for the occasion; box-mixes for making chocolates accompanied by molds in every cute heart-shape imaginable and small doilies with ribbons for packaging up the chocolates after and if one succeeded in making them. I guess it's the thought that counts when it comes to gift-giving, but I just can't imagine making chocolate for anyone. Not even myself.

I'm not sure exactly why I despise Valentines Day and White Day so much... I suppose that in a way they are just nice days to promote loving the people close to you. On another level thug,it just seems like another commercial holiday, especially in countries like Japan when chocolate companies actually make up their own holidays in order to boost sales. White Day? Give me a break. I say that the Japanese do like the (most the) rest of the world, and that men and women exchange chocolates on the same day of the year at the same time.

I rest my case there, world.

By Kevin Cooney



What exactly is so frightening about beans I will never know. How an Oni (devil) would have much cause to fear them is even further beyond me.  But there you are, today is Setsubun, the ancient Japanese tradition of driving out the evil devils of misfortune with a handful of beans.  Across the nation on this day Japanese families are carrying out the age-old tradition in their home by casting about handful's of beans and crying "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" Out with devils! In with good luck!
 
I've read in books about Japanese culture that it is typically the male head of the household who is honored with the task of driving out the demons.  But my own informal surveys reveal that actually it tends to be the male head of most households (or family pet) that puts on a devil mask and gets pelted with beans by his wife and children to complete the ritual.  I have a feeling the writers of those books were themselves the male head of a household.  It is a cute, truly fun family event for all.  Well, unless your kid has a pro-league pitching arm.
 
For research purposes I had friend wing me with a few dried beans.  It stung a bit, but barely left a little red mark.  If you didn't know an Oni is entirely red, so this would seem to be somewhat self-defeating.  Perhaps if the bean were fired from some type of makeshift gun using rubber bands or firecrackers you could start to do some damage.  And even then you'd have to hit a particularly sensitive area.  Realistically you'd probably just end up pissing off the demon even more.  Just throwing them, really?  Apparently Japanese devils are huge wussies.
 
I mean, if a demonic creature from the beyond is frightened of being dinged with dried beans, how serious a threat could it really pose to the health and safety of your family.  I found the biggest danger to this whole Setsbun thing is slipping on a kitchen floor covered in dried beans.  Don't tell me I'm the only person still finding bean fragments clinging to my socks two months later.
 
I explained all of this with excitement and a sense of accomplishment to one of my Japanese friends.  Brimming with smug joy I had pointed out the silliness of his nation's ancient traditions.  Then the little Oni asked "So how is it then, exactly, that vampires are afraid of garlic?"
 
"What!  That is totally different.  I mean, somebody throws a bean at you, that's one thing, but a head of garlic has some heft!"
 
"So Vampires bruise easily then?"
 
"Well no... It... Well... Doh!"

By Martin Faynot

by Emily Connor


There are a few questions that the Japanese seem to love asking to foreigners. Can you read kanji? Are you good at figuring out the train system? Can you use chopsticks? It's a constant test to see how well you've managed to assimilate to the land of the rising sun.

But my favorite question by far has to be ''Can you eat natto?''.

For those of you who don't know and haven't had the opportunity to try this culinary delight, natto is fermented soybeans that are insanely good for the body but insanely harsh on the five senses.  The Japanese have been eating natto since the beginning of mankind, using it in many forms of cuisine, all of which I can't stand. You can eat it over rice with a raw egg, eat it wrapped up in maki-sushi, eat it right out of the package, and many other ways that I'm just uninformed about. No matter what you do to the stuff, though, it's just not palatable for me.

Don't get me wrong, though. Whenever I'm asked if I can eat sushi, tofu, konbu, wagashi-- many things, really-- I always answer 'yes'. I won't lie about not liking uni, though. Eating the skin on chicken meat also freaks me out. I'm not going to lie and say that I enjoy natto, though. A lot of foreigners (like me) who come to Japan and want to fit in with the natives probably have made such a mistake and regretted it miserably. We Westerners weren't raised on natto, and weren't genetically engineered to even be able to swallow it properly.

The first time I tried natto it was in an izakaya in Okinawa. It was a really nice and well-known place, and a Japanese friend of mine was treating us all to dinner, so when she ordered natto-maki I felt obligated to at least try a piece. I figured that the rice, nori and shoyu would mask the flavor that was rumored to be unpalatable by so many. I put the natto-maki in my mouth and chewed, chewed, and chewed and the natto just wouldn't disintegrate in my mouth, and the pungent aroma of the fermented soybeans just wafted into my nasal cavities, almost causing me to gag. Spitting the food out of my mouth would be unacceptable, so I eventually managed to swallow it down after about three minutes of downing a glass of water in attempt to force the natto down my throat. Needless to say I wasn't a fan.

But my burning desire to someday be able to deliciously consume natto didn't end there. I was convinced that it would grow on me if I ate it enough times. They say that humans aren't capable of really enjoying the full-flavor of whiskey until they're in their forties, and I thought that maybe natto would be the same way for me. If I trained my palate and tried it in enough forms, just maybe I would be able to see what all of the rave was about. My futile attempts failed me, though. To this day I am not capable of enjoying natto.

Perhaps, though, natto isn't even delicious to Japanese people. Maybe they just say it's delicious because they eat it from when they're children, and told by their parents that it's good for you and that it's important to eat. It could possibly be comparable to when I was a child and told to eat my Flinstone chewable vitamins every morning before school even though the purple one tasted like cough syrup and I hated them with a passion. On some days I would just hide it under my tongue until I got out of the door and spit it out into the bushes, but there were days when I would stomach the potent flavor because I wanted to grow up to be big and strong. Apparently it worked, because I now stand at an impressive 176 centimeters. Thanks, Fred Flinstone.

When you come to Japan, try natto in attempt to mingle with the locals. Don't expect to enjoy it, though.

by Anna Kunnecke

     I have been reading about the devastation in Haiti, and it's so huge that I can't even wrap my mind around it.  I tend to enter into understanding through the chink of my own experience, so my mind has been turning again and again to 1995, when I was a senior in high school and a massive earthquake hit Kobe, Japan.
     While Haiti feels impossibly far away, Kobe was maddeningly close to Tokyo, and yet we were similarly helpless.  TV reports were filled with stories of relief workers stymied by crumpled roads.  We could see footage of people lined up for food, but there was no way of getting it there.  One salaryman took the day off work to make hundreds of onigiri, the flavored rice balls that are a nourishing, transportable meal.  I don't know if he ever got them to the people who were really hungry.
      Months after the earthquake, the city was still in crisis, and it came about that my high school class traveled by bus to help with ongoing relief efforts.  30 seventeen-year-old foreigners are nobody's dream team, but we were eager to help...if also eager for an adventure.  We sobered up pretty quickly as we saw collapsed highways and buildings with an entire wall sheared off.  We passed intimate spaces pried open to the world: tables set with dishes, beds that people were still sleeping in, a bookshelf stuffed with comics now stained by rain and soot.  We performed the most menial of tasks--shoveled ditches, trundled around relief packets, chopped endless pounds of potatoes and carrots for the cauldrons of stew that were cooked and served every day.  Such meager help.  What I still feel today is the shame of the old dignified ladies who sidled up to me and asked for packets of tissues and clean underwear.  
     That trip surely helped us students more than it did the people we went to serve.  This is the irony of going to a place to 'help'--it would have been most effective, in terms of efficiency, to take the money it took to transport and feed all thirty of us and our chaperones and simply donate it to the city of Kobe.  But because we went there young and open, we were entangled in the reality of the ruined city in a way that was irreplaceable.  'Earthquake' will forever mean to me something more visceral, more human, and more sad than any story I've ever seen on a screen.  So a part of me is awake as I think about Haiti.  I'll send money to relief organizations, because I don't know how else to help.  But I will also send up prayers, though I am not a religious person.  I mourn with them.  I don't believe this is self-indulgent.  I am not the only person who feels a personal chord vibrate to the tragedy of Haiti, and it's that vibration, that empathy, that moves us to step outside our comfort zone and try to be useful wherever we are.  

By Kevin Cooney

I spent the New Year's holiday in the most traditional Japanese way.  Cocooned inside layers of blankets watching TV and eating mikan oranges. Of course, the kadomatsu, kagami mochi and other seasonal decorations are an important part of the Japanese New Year celebrations.  They are, however, only minor distractions.  The TV is king during those lazy days of the New Year.  Kohaku Uta Gassen, the Ekiden are among a few of the programs that keep people glued to their sofas.

This year I passed on most of the traditional New Year's programming, and instead kept myself busy with a triple marathon of american science fiction shows.  I cruised the stars with Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and Star Trek.  I know, I am a stellar nerd.    

The year 2010 is a bit technologically disappointing.  I remember as a kid thinking about 2010 being so far in the future. I would have though we'd have flying cars and food made out of plankton by now.  But we don't.  Well, actually I'm not sure about the plankton thing. I think I might have been served that recently in Tokyo.

One thing struck me from all the Sci-fi I watched.  In almost every future world conceived by Hollywood, most people eat with chopsticks.  What's more, people in the future almost always appear to be eating udon noodles.  How is it that the writers and creators of Hollywood collectively decided that in the year 2365 all humans would be eating udon with chopsticks?

Chopsticks are not new, far from it.  Their origin predates the fork by centuries.  I prefer chopsticks to the knife and fork, but I'm curious why so many different science fiction creators agree that our future is the chopstick.  I had such high hopes for the "spork."

Obsessively watching the details of every scene, I started noticing Thai triangular pillows in the alien sleeping quarters.  Ikebana in the intergalactic meeting rooms.  Martians eating out of a donabe hotpot! American sci-fi set designers incorporate a stunning amount of asianesque bric-a-brac into future worlds.

I suppose it's due to the exotic nature these things have from a western perspective.  I'm often asked by friends back home about Japanese robots and technology.  No flying cars here.  Though the door at Seven Eleven opens by itself.  That's cool, but not a sentient cybernetic personality.  At some level living in Asia demystifies the foreignness of these things and thus ruins the imaginary future.  Instead of enjoying the fantasy world in my TV, I just wonder quietly to myself why hundreds of years into the future, the universe is using chopsticks yet still these gaijin can't slurp noodles properly.

 

By Claytonian
I'm from nowhere, USA. By the time I arrived in Japan, I had a train riding tally of one: some in-state ride that made one stop about every three hours. So when I realized my primary means of transport out of my first town in Japan was trains, I was a bit scared to be honest. I remember my first ride in Japan quite clearly.

I needed to go to a gathering of ALTs in some nearby town. My handler took me to the station and ordered a ticket for me. Then she started to just walk away after passing it to me. "Wait!" I choked. "Where do i get off?" I couldn't remember city names at that point, let alone stations. We conferred with the station master, and I was told to get off at the fifth stop down.

I was quite jumpy for the whole ride. Not only was it an alien feeling to ride the train, but I couldn't understand the announcements and was paranoid about my ability to merely count to five reliably. Luckily, another ALT got on the train at one of the stops because he was going to the same meeting. We exchanged tales of how weird life had been since we'd arrived in Japan a week before to relieve our mutual stress until we got to our final destination. In a way, I had dodged my first test by encountering the other ALT. But there were plenty of chances to fail at trainsmanship over the coming months and years.

I make mistakes, even today. Even with my magical ability to read those funny characters and tons of experience on the rails. It's kind of amazing that I still can't get trains right, but I take heart that even Japanese people make mistakes at this. One trick that does help is to ask the golden question: [station name]で止まりますか (~de tomarimasu ka, which means: does this train stop at station x?). That phrase has saved me countless times.

Unfortunately, since I moved to the much busier area that is East Japan, I don't get to see the train staff as often (the trains are too long and the staff are in the ends usually). They will direct you, using their encyclopedic train knowledge, to the correct train platform if the one in question is not right. If staff is not immediately available, sometimes I resort to asking civilians. But that can freak them out--yes, some people freak out when approached by a foreigner no matter what language said foreigner is using--, so I loathe doing so.

Lately I have been relying on my smart phone to find the simplest-possible route between places. If I have to do a 乗り換え (norikae, switching trains at a stop), that multiplies my error margin by about 10%, so the phone is a life-saver. But even the phone will sometimes make a mistake! I got to feel smug one night when I noticed that the phone was giving me bad advice. Take that, "smart" phone! I snickered to myself. It retaliated a few days later by running out of battery power in the middle of Shinjuku Station.

By Martin Faynot

Happy New Year! Enjoy 2010 the year of the tiger.

By Emily Connor


It's amazing how the Japanese continue to support the music industry. Japan is one of the few countries on the planet where the whole pirating boom hasn't quite taken over the minds of the youth, and record shops that are long gone in the UK and the US are still bustling with customers lining up to be the first to buy so-and-so's album on it's release date. Many people have absolutely no problems with putting down 1,500 yen for a single-CD, or up to 4,500 yen for a full-length album.

I'm led to believe that this is due to the fact that high-school students and university students are really driven to support an artist or a person that they think is admirable. After all, no matter how many boy bands release an almost painstakingly similar song throughout the year with a different title, everyone will still buy it. And if a truck with an idol's face goes driving through Scramble Crossing, you'll always see girls pulling out their mobile phones in the blink of an eye to snap a photo of their favorite boy-idol singer's face. It just makes some people feel good to support an artist, or idol, that they like. People feel like they're helping out their idols by dishing out the money for albums and music DVDs, and there's nothing wrong with that.

A lot of artists include a special fan good item with their CD on the first week or so of it's release, and I also think that that helps with album sales. For example, if you buy the A and B version of the same exact single (different covers and maybe one different B-side track on one of them) sometimes fans get invitations for very limited in-store concert events, or artist meet-and-greets, or sometimes just little things like sticker sheets and posters will drive fans to buy the CD instead of just downloading it. I also feel like this is maybe why iTunes hasn't taken off in Japan as well as it has in the US.

For people who don't wish to actually buy the CD, but also don't want to illegally get it, CD rentals are available in Japan. You cannot rent video games, mind you, but music CDs are very common to rent and end up being much, much cheaper than buying the actual CD... Unfortunately no extra prizes come with rental CDs, but it's still a good way to support an artist.

No matter how you look at it, record sales are declining considerably worldwide. Unfortunately it probably won't be too long before people in Japan stop buying CDs, too... But until then, being a music artist in Japan is a great thing.