February 2010Archives

By Emily Connor

    Things in Tokyo come and go so fast. Although I've only been living here for a few years, I can't even begin to count the number of stores that I once loved that are now replaced, the fashion trends that were the talk of the town and are now considered out of style, and the J-pop musicians who once rocked the charts but are now forgotten about. Tokyo is a very transient place. Maybe most other urban cities are, as well-- but since I grew up in mostly small towns in the US, all of the changes constantly taking place in Tokyo amaze me.

    I think I began noticing the rapid changes throughout Tokyo when one of my favorite cafes went out of business one day. There were always customers in the shop, so I'm not exactly sure what caused it to close down-- maybe the prime real-estate lot's monthly rent was too expensive for a small coffee shop to keep up with. Maybe the owner just decided to skip town and buy a vacation home down in Okinawa. I'll never know the reason, but I remember the day when I arrived at the previous location of the cafe only to find that a new eatery had already moved in, was open for business and customers were lined out the door to test out the new Oshare establishment. The cafe that I had so many fond memories of was gone, and everyone had already moved on to the next greatest thing.

    This same exact situation has happened to me at least 10 times, and I've only been in Tokyo for a short while. Imagine people born and raised in Tokyo; imagine how many times their favorite cafe has been relocated or replaced. A cafe is just a cafe, I suppose-- but they're also sort of comforting. It feels nice to be able to go to the same place and sit in the same seat, drinking the same coffee a few times a month. A home away from home, in a way. Maybe that's why chain cafes are still bustling with business in Japan, even when they're almost being boycotted in some regions of the US. Even if it's cliche, the chances of huge corporate cafes going out of business is slim to none compared to the life expectancy of local cafes in Tokyo.

    I didn't intend to write an entire blog post about cafe experiences in Japan-- things besides cafes are always coming and going in this city, as well. Restaurants, clothing shops, book stores-- you name it. But I suppose the thing that has affected me on a personal level most of all are the cafes. I love drinking coffee, and spending hours reading books or chatting with friends in small cafes-- it's relaxing, and reminds me a lot of home. I suppose the only way for me to solve this predicament is to open up a cafe of my own. On the other hand, maybe not.

By Claytonian

Since we are cautious about copyright laws here at jibtv, I can only direct you to follow a link to what I am going to be talking about today:ahiru-kuchi (the pursed lips of a person, usually a girl, impersonating a duck).

Pursed duck-like lips are a favorite of models in Japan. I guess because it's cute. And their lips are often pursed anyways to talk in that modern complain-laden way of talking that is also popular these days (I think it's called tongata-kuchi in Japanese, or pouty-mouth). I thought the duck face was a Japanese phenomenon, but I discovered antiduckface.com/ just a few minutes ago that gives me the impression that I am behind the times.

To remedy that, I made my own ahiru-kuchi image. I threw in a few purikura tricks and net slang to make it super kawaii. Am I still cool, kids?

by Anna Kunnecke

As a mother, my shoe collection has dwindled, both in number and in style points.  I am down to four pairs of heels now, and two of them are just incarnations of the same walkable pump--one pair in red suede, one in passable alligator.  I used to have stacks of shoes, in all the really beautiful colors: emerald green, peacock blue, gold, purple, pink, scarlet.  I rarely bothered with black or brown; instead, my shoes were my finery, my plumage.  They made me tall and graceful, and when people raised their eyebrows at the towering spires of the heels, I used to reply tartly that they were actually quite practical: they paid for themselves, see, in champagne and taxi rides.  But the truth was, I rarely accepted a free ride anywhere, and only a few thousand free drinks, tops, and my feet usually hurt by the end of the day. 

Then suddenly I had a baby to carry around, first in my belly and then, less gracefully, in a stroller.  I see shiny mamas soaring their enormous Swedish strollers through the wide Omotesando boulevards or jogging through Arisugawa park with bicycle strollers, but that was never a possibility for me.  Our train station has neither elevator nor escalator, so I was the only available engine available to hoist the perambulator up the stairs with its precious cargo.  My shoes reflected this sad change of affairs.  My heels sat neglected for a while, then were swept out in a feng shui attempt to peace with this new stage of life.  I bought some flats, but my heart wasn't in it.  I got some awesome sneakers, but the truth is that I don't like sneakers. 

The strange thing about the gigantic life-changing events in your life is that they sneak up on you and then smack you in the face.  For American women it might be the moment they sign for the dreaded 'mom van,' but for me it was the moment I stared into my genkan shoe cabinet and said in horror, 'Oh my god.  I've got mom shoes in there.' 

It's been hard to learn to walk flat-footed through the world.  Stilettos lend themselves to graceful flourishes and bold strides.  They call them fuck-me-shoes for a reason, but they're also called, appropriately, shit-kickers.  I never felt more feminine or more powerful than I did in heels.  I might not be able to run, but I could do all sorts of damage.  I miss the leverage, the height, the attitude. 

Now my baby is bigger, and though heavier to carry, she can move though the world on her own steam most of the time.  It's thrilling.  I can sense my old loftiness drifting back; I can feel myself going tippy-toed in anticipation.  I love the earthiness of motherhood as it manifests in my daughter, the way our bodies were entwined, the way the umbilical cord stretches further and further.  But feet firmly planted on the ground, grounded, down-to-earth--none of this appeals to me.  For a little longer I will clomp steadily, I will step carefully, pad meekly along.  I will chase, dance, throw my girl in the air and twirl her around.  But I can't wait to be a little closer to the sky myself, to walk a few inches off the ground again, to travel by air, by red carpet and, let's face it, by taxi. 

 

By Kevin Cooney

From my first few hours in Tokyo, now almost a decade ago, I have developed certain habits.  Habits can be both good and bad.  More often then not they are bad, but only because bad habits are usually more fun than good ones.  Most of my daily rituals are insignificant at surface level but for me they are an anchor of sanity.  
    I have my nightly pudding before I go to bed.  It is a specific pudding, from a specific shop, that I consume nightly with a little spoon.  I try to tell them not to give me the little plastic spoon, since I have a specific pudding spoon waiting at home, but sometimes am too tired or distracted to stop them.  At home I have a drawer designated for them called "The Cabinet of the Lost Spoons."  If several hundred house guests were to suddenly appear, I would be well prepared regarding mini-spoons.
    Now a pudding may not seem like much to you.  Mine is not even the nicest pudding around.  It is, I have decided after exhaustive research, the most economical yet delicious pudding for daily consumption.  It is also except in dire emergencies the same pudding I have been eating since I landed.
    Rolling my suitcase through the city I was overwhelmed by the lights an motion of Shinjuku on a late summer evening.  Hustle that even as a New Yorker I was unaccustomed to see.  Not because the people were so busy, but everything was busy.  Signs, walls, ceilings, floors, faces, smells and more, so many things were familiar but indiscernible.  My brain was calculating in overtime trying to process and analyze all of the new data streaming into my slack-jawed head.  For the first few months it seemed like doing any sort of activity required more brain skill than I had been accustomed to.  Even my toilet had options.  
    But in those first few days I found somethings through the sheer magic of guesswork that have stayed like tent poles unbroken by all the bizarre experiences I've had here.  It was then, on my second sleepless night of jet-lag, wandering around at the nearby 7-11, that I found her waiting for me on the shelf, my little pudding.  I'll admit, I haven't always been faithful.  Japanese convenience stores are an unending cacophony of choice, but my decision has always been relatively easy.  I know among all those puddings which one I will get each day.
    Some might argue I am mired in a pudding rut.  But getting into a routine is after all how the mind copes with change.  The 9/11 terrorist attacks happened about a month after I arrived, and pudding was there for me.  I've moved five times in Tokyo, but pudding is always at the nearest conbini.  I deal with the new and unexpected everyday but always, I have my pudding.
    But frankly there isn't so much of the unexpected these days.  Pudding has friends now.  I know what I'm going to order at the chinese restaurant before I sit down.  I know the exact vending machine, and drink I will get as I walk from the house to the station.  I have chosen my newspaper.  I know the first thing I will order at any sushi restaurant I go to... ever.  My life here has nearly become the exact same surprise-less routine that I had back home.  It seems no matter how I change the surroundings, my mind aches for routine and with time everything becomes "normal."
    Maybe I need to move to another country? Leave my pudding behind and search for new and exciting adventures abroad.

    Where does Flan come from?  Oh, nevermind.

by Emily Connor

    One of the things that has always confused me most about Japan are the cold masks. You know, the masks that you see doctors wearing throughout the hospitals in the US (and the rest of the world, too, I'm sure)? Many people in Japan choose to wear them on a daily basis to protect themselves from pollution, allergens and sicknesses from those around them. Sick people also wear them as a courtesy to keep germs away from people nearby.

    Don't get me wrong; I think they're a great thing at times, especially in a metropolis like Tokyo where everyone is surrounded by thousands of people every day. What I don't understand is when people don't even bother to wear the masks properly in the first place. Those of you who have been to Tokyo and witnessed this up-close probably understand what I'm saying, but for the rest of you I will explain a bit better.

    Cold masks are made in several different sizes depending on if you're a female, male, and have a large or small face. It's pretty self-explanatory and never too difficult to figure out the appropriate size to fit your face. Despite this, I see so many people walking around with huge gaps between their faces and the sides of the masks, obviously meaning that the mask isn't doing its appropriate job. A friend of mine once summed it up well:  ''Those would have to be some pretty lazy germs to not figure out how to penetrate through the huge gaps on the side of that mask.'' It's not as if masks are a grand fashion statement or anything, so if you're not going to bother to wear it properly, I really don't see a point.

    Not only do some people wear masks with huge gaps on the sides, some people don't even bother to pull the things up around their noses. If that's the case, then the person just looks like they have a feeding bag strapped to their face and there's no way on Earth that they are being protected from the germs or allergens, or whatever it is that they were afraid of in the first place. Maybe by having a cold mask halfway on their face, it's just a sign for people not to come around them. I honestly have no idea.

    My favorite thing though is when people wear cold masks, sunglasses and a hat all at the same time. It's really a phenomenal look and quite aesthetically appealing. I always assume when I see a cold mask-sunglass-hat person strolling by that they're either famous and trying to go undercover, or that they just really want to look famous. I think that most often it's the latter, because wearing such a combo only draws more attention.

    Be sure to try out the face mask look for yourselves if you ever make it to Tokyo. Everyone should experience it at least once.

by Anna Kunnecke

This is how they separate the sheep from the goats, the good mothers from the wanton wenches: school supplies. 

For preschool my daughter needs bags: a bevy of bags, so very many bags, a whole flock of bags.  Drawstring bags, cup bags, laundry bags, shoe bags.  I must acknowledge that it's not as bad as the old days, when my mother had to make ALL of my school things to spec--from handwritten Japanese instructions, naturally--bookbag, fork and chopstick case, lunchbox wrap with complicated ties and Velcro... it was awful.  No, I am very lucky because now, see, I can buy that all ready-made. 

However.

You pay for that, and not just in money.  You have to broadcast your inferior status as a mother, because the ready-made bags only come in two colors: electric blue or barmaid fuschia.  Needless to say they are all festooned with manic crawling characters so loathsomely cute that they make me want to brush my teeth with gravel.  Also needless to say, my daughter adores them.  She wants the bunny-kitty with pink hearts for eyes and little purple stars for brains, the ones with bouncy purple pigtails and fluffy salmon clouds.  They make my eyes hurt.  They make my teeth hurt.  Oh gravel, purge me of the loathsome sweetness. 

If, however, I were the kind of mother who were willing to make bags with my own two hands, in other words if I were someone who really loved my child as a mother should, my fabric choices would widen.  Now they would include sweet tintype trains, twining strawberries, and crisp blue gingham dotted with ladybugs.  So lovely were these fabrics that I had a brief identity crisis right there in the fabric aisle. 

I am bad at sewing, I hate it, and it has proven to be a sucking vortex of time, money, and dignity.  This is because the finished product usually requires much weeping and many extra trips for new materials to replace the ruined ones.  But there on the precipice, torn between the tasteful bolts of respectability and the public declaration of garish shortcoming, I waffled. 

Not for long.  Fate saved me: I asked the child's opinion on the ladybugs.  "Not blue, pink," she announced, pulling out of the rack of lovely fabrics the only sour note, a bright fluorescent pink.  Thank heavens.  That snapped me out of my sewing insanity immediately.  She gets a blue bag, the only plain one in the store, because I am mean beyond words.  The absence of cartoon characters leads me to believe that it is not actually intended for children, but for a specific mysterious purpose, perhaps storing one's dentures and hearing aid, or toting cans to recycling.  I don't know what that purpose is, but her teachers will, and they will read its coded message and look at me with pity and understanding, silently acknowledging my acceptance of my second-rate mother-status. 

Oh well.  If my daughter doesn't like it, she can sew her own damn bag.  I may be a charlatan wench, but I'm excellent at childproofing.  Good luck finding the needles, kid. 

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!"