私論 - Shiron - What I Think

Review: Hyatt Regency Osaka

2005-12-12T23:26:00.000+09:00

At the weekend we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Osaka on a cheap package from Trapics, 17,000 yen for two in a 40 square metre room, including breakfast.

The hotel's one problem is it is a bit far out from the centre of town, requiring two changes of train and subway to get to it from the main station Umeda, or alternatively there is a free bus mostly every half hour from outside the station to the front door. The advertised journey time is just 30 minutes, comparable with the public transport route, but, especially on the to Osaka trip, the traffic tends to be rather heavy, and it took us 50 minutes to get in.

The hotel is pretty new (I think about five years old) done in a very posh marble, vaguely Art Deco, style. Check-in suffers from a lack of a defined queue, and although they had someone on hand to try to guide people to the best queue, both times we lined up we had queue-jumpers passing us. The deal we had was a cash-only deal, but I felt it was a bit impolite when they asked us for 20,000 yen up-front. Most places would have asked for just a credit card impression, I would have thought.

One thing you should do before going to any Hyatt is to apply for a member's card, which entitles you to bath robes and a free soft drink, which we could take advantage of even though we were on a cheapskate stay plan! The room itself was very well fitted out. A minimal muted design, with all the expected features including free wireless (wireless, whether free or not, is still not a common in Japanese hotels) and a very generous bathroom with separate shower booth and a good selection of toiletries to fremantle. However, the sliding bathroom door, whilst increasing the available space was a bit noisy to use. The hotel also has air humidifiers available for free loan, if required.

Since we were staying around Christmas time, I did worry that the decor might be just too Xmas-y, but fortunately there was just the right level of well-appointed trees and no muzak!

Breakfast was a full buffet (the was the option of an alternative table service dining area, but we took the buffet) with all the expected options, and an egg bar for cooking omlettes and the like to order, but this also suffered from a poor queueing system. All the food was very tasty and very fresh - often a worry with these buffets is that some of the food dries out after standing for a long time - and all well-presented. The normal price for the breakfast is apparently 3200 yen, perhaps a little steep, but I would not have grudged paying that price.

Additional points: free newspapers - they gave me both the Yomiuri and the Japan Times; free cheap slippers; the room above us had kids running around until 1 am, which was a bit noisy; all staff speak English - at international hotels I always use English myself; although we had a non-smoking room, there was a definite stale cigarette smell; finally, if you're going to Universal Studios Japan and can find a good deal (say about 25,000 yen including breakfast and one-day pass and free shuttle bus) I can highly recommend the place.

Service	★★★★☆
Food	★★★★★
Room	★★★★☆
Value for Money	★★★★★

Today's Japanese lesson: 等分布性

2005-12-09T00:00:00.000+09:00

I came across this word through work, as we needed to find a Japanese translation for equidistribution. After a bit of a lengthy Google search, I finally discovered the likely translation, 等分布性, とうぶんぷせい, toubunpusei, a word that gets a mere four hits on Google. Well, five once this article makes it.

Oh, and can someone please kick the Blogger servers back into action?

Worst-designed kitty litter ever!

2005-12-06T00:00:00.000+09:00

Trying to find a good litter for our kitten to poo in, we tried one made from okara, which is soya bean husks. Interestingly enough, okara is classified as an industrial waste product, as no-one's really too interested in eating it (although I did have some last night (okara, not kitty litter!)), so a lot of it gets chucked away, so they need regulations to control the disposal.

We bought it, and kitty, who does like the occasional nibble at the paper-based products we'd used before, decided she liked the flavour, and started seriously getting into eating the stuff! We checked out the label in more detail, and it said it was edible, but if your cat eats too much, please go to the vet. It also said along with the soya bean husks, it also contained corn starch, so no wonder Aria was finding it so tasty, to such a degree that at one point she was ignoring her fresh food in favour of slightly kittie pee-flavoured litter!

Kitty also started doing wonderfully green-coloured poo, which, thankfully, I'll not upload pictures of. I wonder if since Aria should be teething about now, she wanted something a bit crunchy rather than the rather soggy water-soaked dried food we are currently giving her? I might try going back to the shop and asking for a refund as it seems rather stupid to not add something to dissuade cats from having a nibble.

Update on sitting next to the gaijin on the train

2005-12-03T00:38:00.000+09:00

Following on from an earlier post, I attended an SGI http://www.sgi.org/ (well, Soka Gakkai Japan International Division) meeting last weekend and one of the Japanese people giving a speech mentioned that he had shakubukued http://www.sgi-usa.org/publications/world_tribune/b2b/themeaningofshakubu.htm five foreigners, all of whom he had initially approached in the train.

As an SGI member, I think that's great, but as a person who likes his peace and quiet on the train I'm not quite so sure!

Panasonic Lumix FX-8 review

2005-11-30T23:56:00.000+09:00

Since my previous posting regarding purchasing said camera seems to be a popular article, I thought I better add a review of the camera as promised.

The first thing that struck me about the camera (well, second, after the pinkness!) was the size and feel, just right for slipping out of a pocket into my hand. The back LCD screen is very large - over 80% of the total area - and very clear, even on reasonably bright days. Since there is no optical viewfinder, anti-glare is an essential feature, and with Panasonic's patented anti-shake system built-in, worries about wobbly photos due to holding the thing at arm's length are negated. Start-up time from power-on is just over a second or two, and similarly - ahh, don't know the word, but the time to prepare for a shot: auto-focus, light balance, etc - is less than half a second, essential for many action shots.

One slight problem with the very generous back screen is that to compensate the configuration buttons are a bit small, which might be an issue for fat-fingered users! The setup menus are also a bit confusing, but that might be partially due to me having not read the manual and partially due to it all being in Japanese. For instance, one slight usability issue is that to change flash mode (auto, always on, always off, red-eye, etc) the down button must be pressed to cycle through the options, but it is all too easy to miss the correct setting and have to cycle round all six or so options again. Surely popping up a wee menu after the first press would be a better idea?

The Lumix FX-8, in common with most other new cameras, I suppose, is a bit memory-hungry in the default mode; 5 mega-pixels in fine mode creates images over 2 megabytes in size, meaning that 64 megabyte SD cards cannot even hold 30 pictures. I've set it to 3 mega-pixels in fine mode, which gives a more practical 1 megabyte file size. Similarly, the video mode records at 30 frames per second at 640x480, and since it stores files in Motion JPEG format (presumably) the same 64 megabyte SD card fills up in less than one minute!

I've not examined the software that comes with the Lumix, as I import files by popping out the SD card (located in the battery compartment, but no removal of the battery necessary) and putting it into a separate reader, and then use a third-party photo album software tool.

I also bought the official Lumix FX Series camera case at the same time, in colour-coordinated pink (more a muted burgundy) leather. They fit together well, but the case does not have a pocket for spare memory cards or batteries. Even though the specification claims 300 photos between recharges, a spare battery is always useful to have to hand. To recharge the battery it must be removed and put in an integrated wall plug charger unit. This is a multi-voltage device, so there are no worries when travelling abroad, other than the usual plug prong adapter issues.

Image quality is very good, although printed out photos are a bit blurry, although that might very well be more a problem with my printer (Pixus 550i with recycled ink cartridges) and software!

There are a whole bunch of features that I still have to read the manual to find out about, such as a baby feature - enter the date of birth, and when you select that mode the baby's age is stamped on the shop; and food mode, for the Japanese obsession with photographing their dinners.

Panasonic Lumix FX-8 Rating Score

Price	★★★☆☆	A free case would have been nice
Usability	★★★★★	No camera shake and excellent night-time performance
Image quality	★★★★☆	Perhaps I've just not learnt how to use it correctly yet?
Design and build quality	★★★★★	Everything looks well put together

Debito Arudou's tinfoil hat too tight again!

2005-11-28T23:15:00.000+09:00

The Hokkaido Crusader had another article published in the Japan Times, which was well up to his usual standard. Let's have a look at what he says:

People are still reeling from September's LDP landslide election, realizing that Koizumi can essentially legislate whatever he wants. For foreigners, that brings some bad news.

Are they? What people? Anyway, Koizumi can't, as things still have to get past the upper house, where he needs the help of New Komeito to pass anything, and New Komeito are one of the most "foreigner-friendly" parties.

Koizumi's previous Cabinet bore no fewer than three ministers who mentioned, in their introductory speeches, the alleged foreign crime wave (even though the media, including this column on Oct. 7, 2003, has long debunked this).

There is some truth in the "foreign crime wave", if you look in detail.

Their plan: Issue "IC Cards," or credit card-sized identification cards, containing computer chips to track people.

IC cards cannot really be used to track people, especially people who don't want to be tracked.

One form of IC card (the "shutsu nyuu koku" card) will be issued to anyone (Japanese or not) crossing the Japanese border, upon request and at their expense.

At whose request? That sentence reads as if it is at the expense of the traveller! Who would want to pay for that?

The other, the "zairyuu card," is obligatory and replaces the Gaijin Card. All resident aliens (except the generational "Zainichi" ethnic "foreigners," who remain unchipped) must still carry it 24/7 or face arrest.

Just the same as the existing gaijin card. Oh, and the comma there should be outside the quote, as it's not quoted speech.

This "Gaijin Chip" will contain data such as: "name, nationality, birthday, passport information, visa status, address, workplace, educational institution if student etc."

Just the same as the existing gaijin card.

But just in case, fingerprinting will be reinstated to imprint foreigners both entering and leaving the country.

Like in the USA.

They mention benefits to both foreigners and society by tracking alien visits to, quote, "museums, consultative government bodies, national art museums . . ."

I don't know where this quote comes from, and is he trying to get a cheap laugh with the word "museums" twice?

It still amounts to central control of untrustworthy elements, and treating foreigners like criminal suspects.

How? The card seems to be voluntary for tourists as suggested above. Also, demographic information about tourists (I wonder if there is a discount scheme involved?) is invaluable.

All data will be stored for a vague amount of time (perhaps indefinitely) in a bureau called (in katakana) the "Intelligence Center."

Indefinitely isn't a vague amount of time - perhaps it's just that the length of data retention hasn't been decided yet?

Orwellian overtones aside, consider the policy in practice: Workplaces, schools, hotels, etc. will be legally required to report any changes in foreigner employment, domicile, visa, etc., through swipes of IC Cards at strategically-positioned machines.

That is very similar to the current situation. Who is going to be issued with the card readers though? The infrastructure will not be cheap, so I wonder if they really will be placed in locations outwith government or police offices.

This means foreigners will now find it difficult to, say, make an anonymous inquiry at a ward office without having their data swiped.

Are public phones also going to need the card to work?

The proposal specifically considers swiping stations for apartments, weekly mansions, and other categories of lodgings, essentially expanding Japanese prison conditions nationwide.

Spoken like someone who has never been in prison!

There is a pattern here. We already know the Foreign Registry Law was set up in 1947 specifically to track the alien in our midst.

Well, that's a surprise! That's like tut-tutting about how Building Codes were set up specifically to track how houses were being constructed.

However, as this column discussed (Oct. 18), it is being applied to all foreigners. This is not only against the law, but also a breach of trust.

No it's not. I and a number of other foreign residents have not been asked when we have stayed at hotels.

My point is that no matter how sweet the LDP may make its Gaijin Chip proposal sound, there is no telling what will happen when bureaucrats get their hands on it.

Ahh, the slippery slope argument, the favourite of the tinfoil hat crowd!

Their enforcement has been most unscrupulous this year, and given the urgency of the policy putsch (and the vulnerability of foreigners), I foresee great potential for further enforcement abuse.

Now, the favourite word of Mr Arudou's, putsch! It does mean "thrust" in the original German, but he is writing in English, so the English meaning must be used, namely coup d'état.

Now, let's slide down the slippery slope...

For example, look what happened to Japan's lifetime employment system, where full-time work (especially in academia) meant lifetime work. That was replaced, after a century of guinea-pigging the foreigners, with contract employment, in the form of laws like 1997's "Sentaku Ninkisei Hou."

Ignoring his verbification of an undenounable word, I wonder if he has any actual evidence of this bizarre claim, other than his own fevered imagination?

According to the National Union of General Workers, contract labor now makes up [...] 90 percent of foreign labor in the Japanese workforce.

Considering that over 75% (I can't find a reference to the exact figure) of foreigners don't stay longer than three years, I don't really see that as a surprising figure.

Foreign residents cannot vote and thus mean little to politicians.

Read up about New Komeito.

Hamsters City!

2005-11-26T23:50:00.000+09:00

For some reason I find the Hamsters City web comic fascinating. It seems surreal, as if the mistakes are deliberately inserted in order to hook the reader.

Restaurant review: Pizza Patio, Motomachi, Kobe

2005-11-26T00:36:00.000+09:00

Pizza Patio is a nice wee Italian in Motomachi shopping street - find it by entering the big arcade that starts across the road from the west side of Daimaru, then walk less than a minute down there until you see a sign on the right for the restaurant on the second floor. Opposite is a small independent record shop, a massage parlour and Familiar children's clothing store. If you can, be sure to pick up a copy of Hot Pepper before you go as there are usually discount tickets to be found there, although it's usually for their cheese fondue. It claims some sort of Canadian heritage according to signs inside the shop, but exactly why, I just do not know!

The main selling point for this place is the cheap sets - weekday lunchtimes they have pasta sets for 800 yen to catch the office crowd, and weekends their lunch is a starter, main pasta, pizza or risotto, and a drink (including beer or wine!) for 1,150 yen, served until a very generous 5pm, after which the same menu goes up a mere 100 yen. Adding an extra 200 yen gives you a choice of three desserts.

I chose the tomato mozzarella starter, which featured some still slightly green and suspiciously crunchy tomato and what I suspect was Hokkaido mozzarella, thickly cut. It was closer to a cheddar in texture although the taste was mostly mozzarella. The oil, though, was good quality olive and delicately flavoured. If I'd not been expecting authentic mozzarella, I'd have not been as disappointed. My wife had the octopus starter, which she enjoyed, although there was just half a dozen rather thin-sliced pieces on the plate. The main course for me was a margarita pizza; they bake quite a deep-pan pizza with lots of juicy tomato to seep though into the base. Excellent stuff, although from their a la carte menu their ratatouille pizza is even better! Dessert was supposed to be cheesecake, but they were sold out, so I chose ice cream instead; my wife selected the panacota. Last time we had had a dessert set from them the pannacotta turned out to be a single bite-sized blob, so we didn't hold out much hope, but this time it was full-sized, extremely creamy serving. The ice cream, too, was not just a couple of scoops but a wee parfait topped with cream and pistachios, bottomed with cornflakes, and even a couple of small cubes of fruit thrown in for good measure.

The shop itself usually plays a lot of 80s US and UK pop (there must be a huge marketplace for supplying piped music to restaurants in Japan!) and taking a seat by the window gives a nice view onto the arcade for people watching. However, smoking and non-smoking is not segregated at all, and there is little effective ventilation, so it can get very smoky, though fortunately not this time. Also, be sure to pick up a stamp card when you pay - one stamp per 500 yen spent, and 10 stamps for a 500 yen discount, making it roughly 10% off. Service is efficient and flawless, but missing any extra effort, either sincere or fake, that most other places manage.

Food	★★★★☆
Atmosphere	★★★☆☆
Service	★★☆☆☆
Value for money	★★★★★

These dramatised reconstructions

2005-11-24T23:48:00.000+09:00

One of the more popular genre of Japanese TV involves a bunch of Z-list celebs sitting around watching a reconstruction of some nasty crime (if the subject matter is foreign) or heartwarming tale (if Japanese). Most of these reconstructions are shot on a budget of about 5000 yen, and often feature foreign faces that crop up in every other show. I have in fact once seen one guy play two roles in the same skit. I'm sure there must be a blog or web site chronicling the life and times of them, or if there isn't, perhaps I should start one.

My all-time classic bad reconstruction was one of Charles and Diana, where Diana was bulemic down a very Japanese electric toilet, followed by the royal family celebrating Christmas gathered round a totally bare table, bar a very Japanese strawberry cake.

Kobe harbour

2005-11-24T00:30:00.000+09:00

My wife took this rather nice photo of some random bloke feeding seagulls at Kobe harbour today. The harbour area is where we spent a lot of time when dating, and visit quite often these days too.

Forgive the recent hiatus!

2005-11-22T00:52:00.000+09:00

Last weekend I had an MRI scan - just a preventitive one, but the doc, considering my age, non-smoking and minimal drinking, extremely low blood pressure, etc, seemed rather confused as to why I was bothering!

Next, we had a funeral to go to, or at least a small meeting at the house of the dead afterwards. My first Japanese funeral, and when the conversation go on to the picking through the ashes for nice bits of bone - apparently, playing UFO Catcher with the skull is most auspicious - I pulled a bit of a funny face which did annoy the wife a bit. They also talked about piling up the bits of bone, and how there were no black bits left, which shows she didn't have cancer, or something like that.

Fortunately for the closest family involved, even though they are not particularly religious (but not that that stops the need for priests) the deceased aunt was Soka Gakkai, one of the selling points of this religion being that there are only laiety, so no need to get in the local money-grabbers (one million yen per priest is the norm) to do the honours.

Where are all the English beggars?

2005-11-17T23:06:00.000+09:00

Get together any group of embittered gaijin, and no doubt the conversation will soon turn to language beggars, those Japanese who approach you in the street just to practise English on you. However, the strange thing for me is that I have never once in about eight years have anyone approach me in a fashion that might resemble the stereotype we all know and hate.

I have had exactly two people randomly speak to me in the train - once was in English, but he was from and a native of Sri Lanka, and the second, the typical oyaji salaryman conversed purely in Japanese! I had one other encounter at Suzuka one year, where a couple came to chat in English and Japanese with me, but it was more due to the common interest in F1 than a burning need to practice English. Maybe it's different up in Tokyo, but Osaka seems fortunately free of these beggars.

Funnily enough, the one person who came closest to being written off as a language beggar was my wife on our very first date!

"Vee haf vays ov makink you talk"

2005-11-16T23:04:00.000+09:00

Found this rather entertaining article on Japundit about some sort of bonkers corporate English training school.

The teachers had to wear uniformed white smocks with the company’s imperial Nazi-looking eagle symbol emblazoned upon them. When it came to moving about, neither the teachers nor students could just casually stroll to class or the chow hall. We had to move quickly and with purpose even if we were lacking one. Half-remembered dirty cadences from my army training days began popping out of my mouth as I marched about the camp with a look of stern concentration to mask my utter confusion.

For two hours everyday we had Question Training, which consisted of the instructors screaming questions like drill sergeants at their frightened students. We used stopwatches to give each student an exact one-minute barrage of rapid-fire questions. I’m sure we were using a mix of techniques left over from the Cold War for flushing out North Korean spies and World War II POW interrogation procedures.

I would like to think that this sort of training had died a death, but as uncovered by the JR Amagasaki accident, these methods are still in use. The worst our company does, though, is send everyone who wants promotion to senior status off to work for a month at Joshin to experience trying to sell our ~~tat~~ fine products.

Takarazuka Light Festival

2005-11-15T22:11:00.000+09:00

It's rather annoying, but since we moved away from Takarazuka this Spring (our new location is just on the wrong side of a road defining the city limits!), there's been so many special events that we feel quite slighted that they waited until we'd gone before improving the environs!

This weekend was a Festival of Light and Water, which consisted mainly of a large display of tea candles arranged along the banks of the Mukogawa (river), and an LED thing in the middle of river, placed on an island of rocks that was formed just last year after an exceptionally heavy rainfall deposited by Typhoon Number 19 (Japan doesn't use the international typhoon names when reporting weather locally). The thing resembled some sort of luminous jellyfish, slowely pusling through various colours, with spots of light inside the skin suggesting brain synapses firing.

Of course, the artist probably has some completely different image in mind when creating it, but that's what it looked like to me anyway.

French curry

2005-11-14T22:22:00.000+09:00

Watching telly this morning, there was a segment on a breakfast show about posh curry. One thing that has always puzzled me about Japan is that they usually associate curry with France. As a European, France is the last country that comes to mind when thinking about curry, especially Japanese curry, which is more often than not rather unappetising-looking white rice with lumps of beef in a vaguely spicy brown sauce. Perhaps there is some association between the curry base and French-style demi-glace sauce?

Anyway, this segment introduced posh curries from around the Ginza area - first up was a 2,000 yen lunchtime curry (the usual price for curry lunch is under 1,000 yen); next up was a 3,000 yen one, where the roux was made from a huge 5.5 kilo slab of prime Matsusaka beef (probably a good few tens of thousands of yen's worth); and finally they had a 5,000 yen tuna curry, featuring a tuna katsu (breadcrumb battered deep-fry) made from 100 grammes of prime tuna, the sort of tuna that would sell at a sushi shop for 10,000 yen. Actually, maybe they get their tuna as left-overs from a sushi shop once it passes its expiry date?

This wee piece quite nicely sums up a lot of Japanese people's attitudes, I'm afraid. Curry to me is at its most basic a way of using up poor quality meat and veggies, especially coming from India where stuff will go off at a moment's notice. I refuse to believe that anyone could really tell the difference between a 10,000 yen slab of tuna deep-fried and drenched in curry sauce and a 100 yen offcut prepared in the same way. However, one is seen to be consuming, which is the raison-d'etre for not just many people, but also many television shows here in Japan. Much like that survey on Beaujolais Nouveau, being in on the trend is what gives people enjoyment, not the actual product itself.

Review: Bom Dia, all over the place, this one in Kawanishi

2005-11-12T23:06:00.000+09:00

This restaurant chain is a bit of a strange fish. The feel is very Family Restaurant-like, but unlike most of them, it isn't a huge barn filled with noisy families with father puffing and boozing away. The background music is usually chanson, even though "Bom Dia" is apparently Portuguese for "Good Day". The decor is a bit tatty in places, but at least it's clean. The cooking style is "Western Dining style", which typically means hamburgers of sizzling hot stoneware, and this place is no exception. The staff have an excessively obsequious script to follow, including a wee bow after everything they do. They also have badges with the logo "SMILE! GO! GO! キープスマイリング (ki-pu sumairingu, keep smiling)", but why they needed not one, but two Engrish slogans is anyone's guess! Och, but they're awfie cute wee things, so I'll let them off with it.

The nicest thing about the place is the value pair set - two slices of smoked salmon, a sizeable radish salad, two small sticks of garlic bread, two from eight possible main courses (two ome-rices, three spaghettis, three hamburger) and ice cream and tea, coffee or a soft drink to finish, all for just under 2600 yen for the two of us. Portions are sizeable, and the tomato sauce in their cheese ome-rice is particularly tasty, made with lots of tomato bits left in, not some non-descript sauce. However, the rice is rather heavily laced with chicken, which is tedious to extract. Their current Autumn menu has a warm vegetable salad full of potato, aubergine, broccoli and shimeji mushrooms, a bargain at 420 yen.

Credit cards accepted, and the smoking area (about 20% of the total size) is well fenced-off, in fact the best fenced-off area I have seen anywhere in Japan - an almost full-height partition and a heavy-duty extractor fan near the entrance to it. Make sure you pick up a stamp card, as at one stamp per 500 yen and only 15 stamps to fill up the book, it is well worthwhile.

Taste	★★★☆☆
Ambiance	★★☆☆☆
Service	★★★☆☆
Value for money	★★★★★

Bought a Panasonic Lumix FX-8

2005-11-10T22:32:00.000+09:00

As my old Kyocera FineCam unceremoniously decided to die a death last weekend - something broke in the lens retraction/extension system - I had to go out and buy a new one. Although the latest Lumix is the FX-9, I succumbed to the Japanese female shopping instinct of my wife, namely anything in pink is intrinsically more desirable. The FX-9 only has a burgundy red option, so that was quickly passed over for the pink FX-8. It also saved 6000 yen, which was the most important factor for me.

The key feature we wanted from the new camera was the anti camera shake system, but after a session trying to photograph kittie, what we actually want is an anti kittie shake feature. There must be a fast focus and fast shutter setting somewhere, but we haven't worked out how to use the thing yet.

A full review will be forthcoming once we get used to the camera.

Earthquake alert!

2005-11-09T23:19:00.000+09:00

Work is having an earthquake preparedness drill tonight from 6pm, simulating a Shindo 6 Minus. We have a new system to allow us to send emails to some mailing list to say if we are OK or not and what damage we might have suffered. I'm sending one in to say I've died...

UPDATE: I wrote this post offline earlier, and just as I was about to commit it to Blogger I remembered I forgot to send my email...

UN rapporteur misses the point

2005-11-08T22:17:00.000+09:00

According to an article on Japan Today, the UN special rapporteur Doudou Diene, who recently visited Japan to report on racism has made a public statement. However, I find his remarks totally unacceptable, as he has completely failed to address the real issues that confront us all in Japan every day. It was reported:

In his presentation, Diene highlighted the situation in Japan where the Ainu, an indigenous people from Hokkaido and those who were originally outcasts from the feudal era continue to face problems.

Also of concern to Diene is the treatment of Korean and Chinese minorities living in Japan, as well as the new immigrants originating from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

I am extremely upset and angry about how he could focus on the problems of the darkies and those from other backward nations living in Japan (no doubt most of them illegally), whilst completely overlooking the burning issues such as no-one sitting next to the gaijin on the train, or random bicycle checks, or fare-dodging, or playing no-speakie-japanesie to avoid speeding tickets, or - err, no wait...

Restaurant review: Afternoon Tea, Umeda

2005-11-07T23:18:00.000+09:00

Afternoon Tea is a chain of rather posh (and rather overpriced!) bric-a-brac, but many of their shops have a wee cafe on site. I recently visited their cafe in Umeda Whitey Mall (number 77, although if you can understand that map you're doing better than me!), sort-of close to the main entrance to Higashi Umeda subway station. Sorry I can't be any more precise than that, but the Umeda subterranean shopping system is a nightmare to navigate!

At lunchtimes they have a pasta set, with optional cake: round about 1200 yen for pasta and tea or coffee, 1600 yen to add in a cake. The normal prices for pot service and a cake is round about 1400 yen, so the set is pretty good relative value-for-money. The menu has three pasta dishes to choose from; I chose a bacon and aubergine pasta, my wife chicken and vegetables; she chose tea, I coffee; she rare cheesecake, I a pink strawberry sponge cake. After a short wait (they are very popular at lunchtime amongst the female set; around thirty tables, mostly for two, and only three other men in the place) we got our table, and after a moderately long wait along came our food. I picked out the bacon (being a veggie in Japan means never being too proud to fish meat out of dishes) and got a few of the wife's vegetables in return. Everything was cooked extremely well, with the complex flavours that one would expect in the more upmarket of restaurants. That's one thing Japan is excellent for, food preparation; even in the cheapest of places, the food is usually flawlessly served. The pasta was accompanied by perhaps freshly shop-baked rolls of a vaguely Italian style topped with rock salt.

Tea and cake soon followed; my pink sponge was not as poisonously sweet as I had feared; instead a very subtle strawberry flavour with a generous quantity of real strawberries mixed into the icing. The cheesecake had the tart after-taste I really love, accented by the biscuit base. Tea was a standard good-quality Ceylon tea, and the coffee tasted as if it was from a proper professional Italian coffee maker, but not the most skilfully prepared, but still very, very drinkable.

If you visit outside lunchtimes, the Muscat green tea is strongly recommended for the lovely strong grape aroma, although the tea itself doesn't quite live up to the promise of the nose. The menu has correct English names of all the items. Watch out as sometimes the background music is a bit intrusively loud and twice has featured rather annoying experimental Jazz. All non-smoking, credit cards accepted.

Taste:	★★★★☆
Atmosphere:	★★★☆☆
Value for Money:	★★★★☆

Japanese lesson: start of the seasons

2005-11-06T00:08:00.000+09:00

Watching TV a couple of days ago, I caught a wee Japanese learner's program on NHK after the lunchtime English show. Here I learnt four new related words: 立春, りっしゅん, risshun; 立夏, りっか, rikka; 立秋, りっしゅう, risshuu; 立冬, りっとう, rittou. These are the names for the first day of spring, summer, autumn and winter, according to the ancient solar calendar that divided the year into 24 segments. The approximate dates are, respectively, 4th of February, 6th of May, 8th of August, and 7th of November. The exact date they fall on varies year on year depending on the exact mapping of solar time to the Gregorian calendar; for instance, this year Spring and Summer both started a day earlier than listed above.

In daily life, the most important date (probably the only significant date, perhaps?) is that of 立秋. In Japan, there is the tradition of sending summer greetings cards and presents is called お中元, おちゅうげん, ochuugen, but fortunately I can avoid participating in it on the whole. However, the お中元 card or gift must be sent before 立秋, otherwise... well, otherwise nothing really, except horrendous societal shame for failing to do one's duty of observing custom.

Today is Culture Day in Japan

2005-11-03T23:09:00.000+09:00

And the blog is on holiday too. Have a kittie instead:

Seven deadly sins of Japan blogging

2005-11-02T23:54:00.000+09:00

Looking around the blogosphere (I feel dirty just typing that word!) there seems to be a lot of common blogging lazinesses doing the rounds of Japan-related blogs. Here's my seven pet hates that gets me rolling my eyes every time I encounter them:

1. J-List affiliate links

If you are running an adult-themed blog, or even just one with a lot of swearing and the like, you can get away with it, but in a standard navel-gazing blog J-List's Pocky'n'Hentai (but, what about Pocky Hentai? Now there's a genre that needs probing...) adverts just punch me in the face.

2. Cityscape keitai photos

A snatched snap from inside a train or of a lot of people walking down a street is nothing special. I suppose for those who have never been to Japan it is novel the first time one sees it, but everyone's doing it. Take some time to frame a decent picture with a decent camera (or upgrade your mobile!) as there is no shortage of interesting shots; alternatively spend some time writing up why we should be excited by generic_shot_40382.jpg.

3. Clichés

Avoid clichés like the plague. It's too easy use a cliché instead of actually forming an opinion; that's just the sort of thing a bad-breathed bar-coded Salaryman would do. Some of the clichés may actually be true, but try some original phrasing instead or add an "in my opinion/experience" disclaimer.

4. The Japanese wife

Gratuitously mentioning your J-wife is pretty pathetic. I know mine rolls her eyes whenever she reads that sort of blog entry, and she tells me that a lot of her friends do too. She says that's true, and since she's Japanese she must be correct, and her opinion trumps any view I might have. She tells me you all should stop it!

5. Shagging J-birds

Even worse than the above, my wife hates all these people who boast of their conquests. In my experience (which is not much, it must be said!) the average gaijin hang-out is oft frequented by women after a quick knee-trembler with some exotic man, for suitable values of exotic and man. Back in one of the places I worked at back in my home country, there was a woman there who would frequent the local naval base looking for seamen (I hope I spelt that correctly), and neither she nor her "clients" commanded much respect for such activities.

6. Gratuitous Japanese

So many people try to fake genkiness, or just show off their vocabulary by randomly sprinkling nihongo into their posts, with one of the worst offenders being the Hokkaido Crusader. It grates badly and creates an 内・外 atmosphere that alienates the casual reader.

7. Pulling rank

I've been here longer than most foreigners (this is true, 95% don't last three years) and I've experienced the world outside of the Engrish chain schools, so I know that the little guys starting a blog fresh off the boat for NOVA can easily fall into these traps I've listed above, so they should all listen to me and take the advice I've offered.

Pocky zombies

2005-11-01T22:58:00.000+09:00

Everyone loves Pocky. The lastest Halloween advert (sorry, I'm a day late!) is pretty good, as are most of the current series based around the catchphrase... oops, I can't quite catch it, but a web search suggests it's あなたは私のポッキー anata ha watashi no pokkii which is roughly, depending on context, intonation, day of the week, etc "You want my Pocky?!?"

Click the picture to view the CM video, or view the archives on the official Glico web site.

Spill my pint, win a British passport!

2005-11-01T22:47:00.000+09:00

Looking at the Scotsman's web site, I see a story about the new British citizenship test, costing £34 (6800 yen) to sit, in addition to a £286 (57,200 yen) citizenship fee and a £9.99 exam preparation book. One of the more strange questions is:

If you spill somebody's pint in a pub, should you: (a) Offer to buy the person another pint (b) Dry their shirt with your own (c) Challenge them to a fight in the pub car park (d) Run off

Others are vague, like:

Do many children live in single-parent families or step-families?

What percentage is many? If you come from a country with few single parents, like Japan, the answer may be Yes, but from another point of view it might seem like not as many.

Yet more are rather tricky, like:

Almost 60 million people live in the UK. By what factor do the English-born outnumber their Scots or Welsh neighbours? (a) By nine to one (b) By seven to one (c) By six to one (d) By 100 to one

The or seems strange. As far as I can remember, Scotland has just over five million inhabitants and Wales has less than two million, so that's perhaps 6 or 7 million versus 53 or 54 million, which makes the answer just over eight to one, so (a) is closer. However, what about Northern Ireland? That's another million to remove, and what about internal migration, since it mentions English-born; where does Tony Blair stand, for instance. So, we could easily be at 7 million versus 52 million, which is getting closer to (b) seven to one. Now, checking UK Gov official statistics, in mid 2004 the population was as follows:

England	50,093,800
Wales	2,952,500
Scotland	5,078,400
Northern Ireland	1,710,300
Total	59,834,900

Oops, I was wrong on both Wales and Northern Ireland, both by close on a million. So we have now 50,093,800 versus 2,952,500 + 5,078,400, which gives us a ratio of 6.238 to one, so the answer is in fact (c)!

The BBC has a sample test here and I scored a mere 7 out of 14. Damn, I'll have to hand back my passport! Also note the answer to the population question above.

UPDATE: I just thought - the question is about native-born people. The only data I can find about this is in a paper by the government on this - it says that there was only 4,865,600 non-UK born people, so to get a ratio of even just eight to one, we'd need to place over 3 million, nearly two-thirds into Scotland and Wales, making over a third of the populations of both countries born overseas. I don't think so!

Aru-aru semi-quackery

2005-10-31T23:46:00.000+09:00

Aru-Aru Daijiten (fronted by Masaaki Sakai, the man who was Monkey, a show I remember fondly from watching it in my youth) is one of the more popular health-related programs on the telly, even though it wanders infrequently into outright quackery, but its regular skirting with faddishness or dodgy medical science quite often makes me angry. I can cope with stupid programs promoting stupid stuff, but this program presents white coats as voices of authority, even when those in the white cloaks are on the fringes.

This week was dieting with caffeine (uggh, I can predict AdSense quackery ads surrounding this story!) which demonstrated with a sample of six people how drinking five cups a day of fresh coffee decreased body mass and increased the resting metabolic rate by up to 20% of some of the participants. There was a couple of warnings displayed about not overdoing the coffee, but no mention of disruption of sleep patterns or an increase of stress, both symptoms that I had quite badly up to a few years ago when I was overdoing it on coffee and coke for a good number of years.

I always wish that program would tackle a real meaty issue for once; rather than this week's fad diet (I remember the total mess they made of an Aitkins low carb one) or woman's magazine-style personality tests (putting your T shirt on head then arms instead of arms then head indicates a Mummy's boy) how about addressing anorexia (fuelled in part by endless stupid diet programs) or some other real mental health issue? I know it is the purpose of TV to entertain, but surely they can find ways to be truthful at the same time?

Gardening

2005-10-31T00:22:00.000+09:00

One of the reasons we bought this flat was due to the garden. Before you start thinking I'm boasting or something, the garden is a mere 35 square metres (377 square feet or 42 square yards, for the non-metric amongst us). We rent it from the management company for 1,000 yen per month, which really is a bargain. Also, in our three storey building, the ground floor, like almost everywhere else in Japan, is the cheapest, with the price going up by 2,000,000 yen per floor! However, the higher up floors in our block get pretty bad light pollution from the railway station right in front of us, and the rooms can be seen a bit from the platform, so all in all selecting the garden has been a plus in so many ways.

Unfortunately, since the garden is just rented, we are not allowed to plant anything other than grass, so everything has to go in planters. The pictured rose is from one of the planters, a really lovely perfectly symmetrical and flawless yellow flower. Excuse the dodgy quality but we still haven't set up our new camera yet, so I had to use my rather so-so mobile phone.

When I talked about my garden at our work lunchtime meetings (you don't want me to explain what a wwork lunchtime meeting is!) I drew heckling from the crowd (a rare occurance since they are usually as quiet as church mice); my boss complained it was bigger than her whole flat (and I forgot to mention the terrace, which is another 15 square metres), and my boss's boss complained that it was bigger than his detached houose's garden!

Reading for pleasure again!

2005-10-29T23:41:00.000+09:00

My parents dropped off a stack of books when they were here; rather than cart them all the way back home again, better for me to read them we reckoned. Most of them were picked up from charity shops, and no doubt I'll pass them on to Book Off for 10 or 20 yen each when I'm done.

After having spent the last year or so reading half the Yoshimoto Banana back catalogue and a couple of Murakami Ryus, staggering through them at 70% comprehension and 10 pages every 50 minutes (I have a 50 minute train commute), then the Kanji Kentei revision book for two months, it's nice to just relax with my native language. The book I'm going through right now is "Favo(u)rite Son" by Steve Sohmer, real airport novel trashy stuff, easily readable at a page per minute standing up in a wobbly train, and not overtaxing on my pre- or post-work brain. Next is, perhaps, a Douglas Copeland. I once tried reading Microserfs many moons ago, but barely got past the first chapter for reasons I have long since forgotton.

Prevent lung cancer with okonomiyaki

2005-10-28T23:53:00.000+09:00

According to a story on the BBC's web site, eating at least one serving a week of a vegetable from the cabbage family can cut the risk of lung cancer by a half for about half the population (in the studied region) who lack a particular enzyme.

That famous Osaka (and elsewhere) dish Okonomiyaki is cabbage-based, so perhaps frequenting your typical ciggie smoke-filled greasy caff will stave off second-hand lung cancer for a bit, although there is no guarantee that you won't expire from overdosing on fat or beer instead.

Aria and her brother

2005-10-27T23:59:00.000+09:00

Taken from the pet shop's web site...

Kittens and blogs - can't go wrong!

Passed my kanji test (I hope!)

2005-10-27T23:33:00.000+09:00

I just sat my Kanji Kentei level 6 exam this Sunday, and with a bit of luck, I should have passed it with a wee bit to spare. According to my own marking with the answer sheet provided after the test, I should have got just over 75%, with the pass mark set at 70%. For all you students of Japanese, the Kanji Kentei is actually rather a fun but challenging test of kanji skill that doesn't usually get exercised by other tests, especially by the more famous (amongst foreigners) Japan Language Proficiency Test, which I found deadly dull to revise for, slogging through a million and one obscure grammar points. I can read with a decent degree of accuracy novels and easier newspapers, yet even just level 2 of the JLPT is a tough proposition for me, and the average Japanese person knows nothing about the tests so cannot relate to them. On the other hand, the Kanji Kentei tests useful skills (and perhaps not so useful skills like radical recognition) that can be used every day, and the Japanese can easily relate to (and be impressed by!) describing your writing skills as, in my case, that of a final-year primary student.

With a bit of determination and a following wind, I want to try to pass levels 5, 4, 3 and 2.5 in rapid fire succession. There must be some tricks to remembering kanji - a lot of people swear by Heisig's book, although I think it is over-rated, but I'm making that statement from the ignorance of having never read it. I found getting readings learnt first was better for me, as kanji with common readings can be grouped then discriminated by ... ahh, describing how my memory works is rather tricky! I don't really know what I do but it seems to work to a decent degree. I just used the standard Kanji Kentei text books recommended on their web sites to do my revision. They seem to be suited to my style of learning, but note that the revision tests are a good degree harder than the actual test I took, but I suppose that just encourages you to work harder!

My boss was impressed by my (probable) passing, especially as she's caught Yon sama fever and has been failing miserably in her attempts to learn Hangul.

Alex Kerr on Debito Arudou

2005-10-26T23:31:00.000+09:00

I found an interesting interview with Alex Kerr in the Japan Times yesterday, and I'd like to highlight his comments on Debito Arudou. I've read Alex Kerr's book "Lost Japan" and enjoyed most of it (the tail end about how he saved Japanese art history rubbed me the wrong way), but I've not looked at "Dogs and Demons", although I think that a Japanese version of Godwin's Law should be formulated to say that people quoting the book have already lost the argument.

In Dogs and Demons you argue that Japan has failed to internationalize. What do you think about the work of Debito Arudou and others to combat racial discrimination in Japan?

Well, somebody has to do it. I'm glad that there is a whistle-blower out there. But, I am doubtful whether in the long run it really helps. One would hope that he could do it another way. He's not doing it the Japanese way. He's being very gaijin in his openly combative attitude, and usually in Japan that approach fails.

I fear that his activities might tend to just confirm conservative Japanese in their belief that gaijin are difficult to deal with.

That said, perhaps we who live here are slow to stick our necks out when we sense an injustice, and quick to self-censor in order to get along smoothly in our communities.

To me the most interesting aspect of Arudou Debito is that, in taking on Japanese citizenship, he has brought the dialogue inside Japan. His activities reveal the fact that gaijin and their gaijin ways are now a part of the fabric of Japan's new society. A very small part of course, but a vocal and real part.

I can empathise with Alex Kerr's opinion here - one big thing missing from Debito Arudou's campaigning is that he always seems to be going it alone; first, he seems to have a knack of falling out with people he works with, and second, although he appears to have a lot of political contacts, they don't seem to be allies. He seems very attached to the not-quite-dead-yet SDP, which doesn't help, I don't think.

It'll be interesting to see what buzz is generated from this article. I know that there are a lot of people who seem to worship both Alex Kerr and Debito Arudou as speakers of the truth, so I wonder how they can cope with the cognitive dissonance of one disagreeing with the other!

Post Script: I used Google Blog Search to find who mentions this story, and the two matches (only two? Mr Arudou needs to get with the times and start networking with bloggers!) I got were from Gen Kanai's blog and On Gaien Higashi Dori, both of whom see fit to highlight the mention of Debito Arudou, but neither pass an opinion on any part of the article, bar a non-committal "interesting", even though Kerr and Debito Arudou are two of the best-known and oft-quoted authors of all the Western-born writers on Japan. I find that, umm, interesting.

Stealing traffic with SiteMeter

2005-10-25T23:07:00.000+09:00

I was visiting another site that blogs around the same general topic of Japan, and clicked on their SiteMeter icon, and saw they were getting about 350 hits per day, with the vast majority coming through search engines. I thought it would be possible to monitor a site like that, look at the hot keywords from Google, Technorati et al, and use that as hints on what sort of articles to write and with a bit of luck, steal some of their traffic.

It's awfully unethical, and I wouldn't do it myself, but would you?

More on Osaka's image - shaanai ne!

2005-10-25T22:51:00.000+09:00

On Saturday, when taking kitty to the vet's, in the waiting room I saw a bit of Seyanen, a local Kansai Saturday morning program where they have a bunch of regulars who look at this week's news and chat aout it. They covered the story about Osaka getting upset about its poor image, but all the guys, all locals, just got stuck into Osaka city council for being so thin-skinned. They then went to a bunch of vox pops from various cities around Japan and asked them for their image of Osaka, and the things these people were saying were a hundred times worse than the mild rebuke from the guide books!

The people in the studio's reaction was しゃあない (shaanai), the local dialectic pronounciation for/corruption of 仕方がない (shikataganai), one of these difficult-to-translate phrases that literally means "there's no way", but is usually translated as "it can't be helped". In context, they were saying, and I agree, Osaka wouldn't be Osaka without its rough character and rough characters.

Found a nice vet!

2005-10-23T23:22:00.000+09:00

We took our new kitten, Aria, along to the vet's yesterday for her first jab. She was mostly well-behaved, although the train to and from the clinic was a bit unsettling for her. The place we ended up at was Satsukiyama Animal Hospital (click here for mug-shots of the clientele, but our wee Arai-chan's pic for her hospital records is far, far more cute - must ask for a copy when we go for the second dose!), a nice, rather new clinic that seems like a friendly place to take our custom.

I really want to post more kitty photos, but our digital camera bust three days ago! Kitty has a big letter M on her forehead, and looks more like some sort of Power Ranger than a moggy!

Osaka misses the point

2005-10-22T23:20:00.000+09:00

I saw this article in the Daily Yomiuri about Osaka, the city I used to live in, and still work in.

Some major foreign Web sites and guidebooks carry misleading information on Osaka Prefecture, exaggerating its negative aspects by describing it as an ugly place full of gangsters and drunks, according to a survey taken by a prefectural government-related committee.

[...]

According to the survey, one major Web site's travel section says in its first paragraph about Osaka that the city "yearns to be loved despite its ugliness."

That'll be the Rough Guide, if I remember correctly. But, what is wrong with that statement? Osaka (like, quite frankly, many other Japanese cities) is ugly - concrete buildings out the wazoo; urban motorways, giant grey snakes strangling city blocks; and tatty smelly shopping streets winding through ramshackle residential zones. But I love it - the tower block with a motorway running through it; the authentic imported (I think) church put together on the roof of the Hotel Monterey; the neon glows of the city after dark as seen from Solviva's counter.

It goes on to say, "Osakans may greet each other saying, 'Mo kari-makka?' (Are you making any money?), but they also know how to enjoy themselves once work has stopped."

Whilst "Mo kari-makka?" may be as stereotypical as saying Glaswegians may greet each other with "Hurrya dae'n hen?", I can't really see anything particularly wrong with it, and anyway what's wrong with enjoying yourself after work, which the Osakans certainly do?

Shinsaibashi, one of the major commercial districts in Osaka, is described as a place "where bequiffed lads cast their nets for mini-skirted girls on the Ebisu-bashi [bridge]."

Embarrassing but true. Not sure about the quiffs, but plenty of bad suits, perms and dye-jobs amongst the touts and scouts for the dodgy bars around Namba-bashi (chat-up bridge).

Another major encyclopedic Web site says people in Osaka are considered by other Japanese "to be rowdy and boisterous with a robust and coarse sense of humor."

And this is a negative how? Again, harking back to Glasgow, the City Fathers there don't mind, in fact they may even encourage, this image of the city.

Tsutenkaku Tower located in the Shinsekai district of southern Osaka, is mistakenly described as "Osaka Tower" on the site.

Fair enough, but we're getting into nit-picking now!

A 2003 travel guide published by a major British publisher has a boxed article titled "The Yakuza" depicting Osaka as a city of gangsters, accompanied by a photograph of man with tattoos all over his body.

I suspect that this lost something in translation from English to Japanese then back to English! The Yaks have a strong base in southern Osaka, but the average tourist need not worry for a single second about them.

Officials working for the committee will collect travel guides published in other nations to check whether the city is being similarly misrepresented.

Woo-hoo - junkets for all to bookshops around the world! I hear there are a lot of Osaka guidebooks for sale in Hawaii, Las Vegas and Bangkok.

They plan to send leaflets carrying "appropriate" descriptions of the prefecture to the publishers and Web operators in an attempt to restore the prefecture's reputation.

I'd love to see these leaflets! I've barely seen anything negative (and I'm sure a lot more cities get a lot worse write-ups) in the story above.

genre-o-matic project

2005-10-21T02:07:00.000+09:00

Following on from a comment by jeff about how no blog is complete until it gets its first cute cat, and considering the various Anti-Housewife Mafia ideas about how no Housewife Mafia blog is complete without a pink theme and baby poo entries, I got thinking there ought to be scope for developing a new site, something like http://www.genre-o-matic.com (ooh look, it's available!) that tries to do some sort of automatic genre classification of blogs. Blogflux, for instance, does some sort of fuzzy matching algorithm to find blogs that resemble others, so perhaps extending this theory into a scoring system, where posts tagged as "kitten" or "puppy" get one score; pink and pastel backgrounds get another; those silly weathergirls (the only people who really want to know the weather right now in Onehorsetown, Outer Jibrovia can just look out the window) or watch faces (which are supposed to say what exactly about you or your blog?) get another set of marks; and rittin UR postz diz whey gets your blog auto-deleted. The marks are then weighted, averaged up and otherwise fudged until a classification is arrived at, and the site is automatically inducted into the appropriate gang, be it Housewife Mafia, Baby Bores, Teenage Twee, Illiterate Ghetto or whatever.

So, in best Slashdot fashion, I finish off with a business plan:

Develop genre-o-matic™ web app
Ringfence the Housewife Mafia
???
Profit!

This post, business plan and the ideas contained herein, forthwith and henceforward © ™ Shiron Chousa 2005, patent pending and other such nonsense, and may anyone caught stealing these ideas have all their blogs Housewife Mafiafied.

Japanese the Japanese don't know

2005-10-19T23:24:00.000+09:00

Find a handy Japanese person and a handy British person and bet the Japanese person a suitable sum of money or beer that the British person knows a Japanese word that the Japanese person does not.

Once you are taken up on the bet, choose the word sudoku, 数独 and collect (hopefully) your winnings. Not for nothing was sudoku chosen as Word of the Year in the UK.

How do you photograph a lively kitten?

2005-10-19T00:16:00.000+09:00

This is as good as I can manage!

Jazzy Pixies

2005-10-18T23:34:00.000+09:00

Just last weekend I went with my wife and my sister and mother to the Takarazuka theatre to watch this silly musical. Most Takarazuka musicals are silly, which I mean in the nicest possible way, silly fluffy romances with convoluted stories of long-lost siblings and mistaken identities. This one has five Irish orphans who grew up together then emigrated to the US, where one of them ended up as a hit-man paid to bump off one of the other ones, but they all end up living happily ever after, except for the leading lady (well, the leading lady who actually plays a lady) who dies of leukemia whilst everyone, including a gang of pixies who must have stowed away on the boat, dances a happy number around her corpse, or something like that.

However, the most striking thing about Takarazuka is the energy on stage. This time we were lucky enough to get a central fourth-row seat so could see all the stars up close and personal as they strutted their stuff. This play, since the story started off in Ireland, had an opening Riverdance number (in fact, they flew in one of the first people to Riverdance as a choreograph for the show) with a line of around about 50 people fair giving it laldie, although the lack of a specialised tap floor softened the tap shoes sound a little. I've not seen the original, but my wife and mother have, and said that this far surpassed the "real" thing in terms of scale and energy!

Up until then I used to think that all the female fans were more than a little bonkers in their rabid support of the theatre and the stars, but having seen them up close and personal I begin to understand a little, even though I cannot forget that they are just women dressed up as men, but not really very manly, nor even effeminate, men, almost androgynous. Perhaps that is the secret behind the charm - the character of the part, and the costumes and make-up highlights shine through, making the audience forget the fact that it's just a girl in a suit and a tight hairdo. A book by Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan wrote what to me was quite frankly a lot of nonsense (I have inside info!), twisting the stage to fit her own preconceptions of gender identification. A fair number of the troupe members are gay (interesting question: is there any correlation between playing a man's part and sexual identity amongst the members?), but to project this private sexuality onto the public roles is going too far. Why are there virtually no male fans for the female leads, even though some of them are very delicately beautiful, and one of the most prized wife material in Japan. (That would be a good survey for Seron to translate if I could find one, the most prestigious wife material. Stewardess - sorry, Cabin Attendant - is right near the top, for some reason, so I have heard)

I have a campaign to persuade just one person to go to Takarazuka, but so far I've failed miserably. Even the most expensive seats (if you can get them) are excellent value for money, 10,000 yen for a three hour show, with usually the first half a play, the second half a song-and-dance review.

Bought a kitten today!

2005-10-16T00:54:00.000+09:00

A lovely wee American Shorthair, silver with black markings. Female, but only just over two months, but Japanese pet shops tend to wean their little ones very fast. She's still awfully nervous and was kneading my legs and crying for mother's milk, so a bit of a worry, quite frankly. She's mostly toilet trained, but with the change in home I reckon poo will be unpredictable for the next few days.

Pictures to come later...

A nation of alkies

2005-10-14T23:25:00.000+09:00

As well as being soft on the fags (on which subject I will not doubt write at length sometime soon) booze in its various forms is not seen as a particular health hazard here in Japan, especially when looked at from my Western perspective. There is no end of health-related programming on the telly here, but many gloss over the ill-effects of bevvying. My favourite program in this genre, Takeshi's Black Hospital (that's what we call it at home anyway), quite often has guests mentioning their drinking habits that back home would most likely have the guest committed forthwith to the nearest drying-out clinic, but here draw just gasps that sound more in awe than in astonishment. I've heard one guy, for instance, boast (yes, that is the right word) of knocking back almost two bottles of shochu (two litres at 25% proof) every night with zero reaction from the resident quack, and another woman on two bottles of wine at home (and remember, both were probably reporting average drinking habits, excluding quantities drunk at parties or other nights out) being told that that might be a little over the safe amount and she should think about maybe cutting down.

Last night there was another medical special, this time watching people's eating habits and predicting what illnesses may befall them in five and ten years time if they continue with the same diet, but alcohol did not feature as part of the diet in most of the celebrity guests, barring an occasional glass of beer appearing alongside the evening meal even though, judging by the other programs I see, booze fuels the whole tarento circuit.

Whilst I'm on this subject, there's also a poster doing the rounds in the train from the big brewers against under-age drinking. I can't find it online (I should snap it with my mobile!) but basically it lists a few horrendous things that beer can do to underage people that by implication suddenly stop happening the day you turn twenty. Bahh!

Note: I am a self-righteous ex-heavyish drinker (from 1.5 to 2 litres of 4% to 5% beer almost every day to three or so drinks one night every one or two months) so take all my rantings with the necessary pinches of salt.

Kitty nibbles

2005-10-13T22:47:00.000+09:00

This is a strange story about an alleged cat burglar who got away with some old lady's toes. Note that for those directly involved it is a really worrying event, and no sniggering matter, but the bizarreness of the whole incident fascinates me.

The first time we heard it it just didn't ring true to neither me nor my wife, and the more we learnt about the background, such as the cat being caught red-pawed, the more fishy it smelt. To remove a whole toe or two down to the first joint would be quite a feet, sorry, feat for a little kitty, and anyway what would motivate a cat to even try, without the victim reacting in some way to scare off the cat? There must be some abuse going on in the care facility, and the cat proved a convenient scape-goat as a cover story. Will we ever hear the conclusion of this story, though? I wonder if there will be some sort of behind-the-scenes brown envelopes full of sympathy money?

Japan so often reminds me of Monty Python sketches. This time it is the tiger sketch in the middle of the Meaning of Life.

Holiday in Osaka

2005-10-13T00:08:00.000+09:00

The last two weeks my parents were here in Japan, and they had many interesting adventures that no doubt I will relate over many blog entries in the future. First, however, there is the common misconception, one which I held too, that Japan is expensive. To the long-termer, it is not necessarily so, as we get to know all the cheap eateries and can order the value set and so on, but for the fresh off the boat person, outside ramen and soba everything is pretty pricey. I had, in fact, warned my parents that about 1500 yen for lunch and 2000 yen per head for dinner may be a fair price to budget for. Admittedly, my parents aren't big eaters, but still, I felt that was a feasible target to aim for. However, come their visit, they decided to frequent the wee restaurant street on the ground floor of their hotel in central Osaka. With their virtually zero Japanese skills they just bumbled in and pointed at the plastic food in the window and ate what came. Simple home cooking is best for them - they are seasoned travellers, and the back-street eateries of Europe are oft frequented - and they got it in abundance. Breakfast was inari sushi, lunch and dinner usually ome-rice or Japanese curry or the like, always under 1000 yen, always delicious. Funnily enough, or not too funnily enough, once you think about it, the worst meal they had was a posh lunchtime set meal at a posh golf club restaurant halfway up a mountain, which I had to pick up the tab for, grumble grumble.

Matsuken gets remarried!

2005-10-12T23:59:00.000+09:00

The latest celebrity gossip is that Ken Matsudaira, the Gay Samurai (of course, in the old-fashioned sense of the word!) and the singer and dancer of the not-at-all camp in the slightest Matsuken Samba II (and I and the recently-released III) has got married to some relatively young bimbette Yuri Matsumoto. His previous wife, who was this year one of the faces of Shanghai Reicha, is well-known to bat for the other side (she in fact tried chatting up one of my wife's female pals many years ago when they were out together in a pub in Takarazuka) and their marriage was just a paper one.

If you've heard Matsuken wax lyrical about his Samba choreographer, the camp as a row of pink tents Majima-sensei (and I mean that in the nicest possible sense, as he's always entertaining on the box), one would form some suspicions about old Ken chan, so it'll be interesting to watch the gossip columns on this one.

¡Ole!

Welcome to Shiron!

2005-10-06T23:25:00.000+09:00

This is a sister blog to my other one, Seron. The shiron here is the Japanese for personal opinion, as a contrast to seron being public opinion. Here I will have much freer rein to post my own personal nonsense and the like. The chousa bit at the end is for investigation, which doesn't really fit here, but it keeps the symmetry with the other blog. I suppose people can investigate my personal opinions by reading the blog, so it does sort-of fit, if you think about it that way. I'll have no particular theme here, it'll just be your bog-standard what-I-did-today and what-I-copied-from-more-talented-people-yesterday sort of place.