That must of been a long pee...

Not uncommon for folks to burn one down while on the toilet in Japan. But two for a number one? That must of been a Tom Hanks in League of Their Own style release.

Perception versus reality...wait, what's reality?

I was recently asked to teach my students a thing or two about NYC as I was sharing the They Might Be Giants song "New York City" with them since they are apparently (according to the homeroom teacher) very in to music, a fact they routinely demonstrate by planting their faces firmly on their desks and closing their eyes in what I can only imagine is a sign of their deep reverence for nerd-rock...0r possibly sleeping.

So to liven things up I was asked to inform them about New York. I mentioned the major sites, it's prominence as a cultural and numerical capital of the US, home of hip-hop, Wall Street, and ESL (English as a Second Language) inspired transit methods.

The teacher then asked me to talk about the "dangerous" aspects, so I gave a quick summery of how the once-pornographic Times Square was now a capitalist orgy of Disney and MTV with crime rates around the city plummeting like the G-string of a stripper in a bygone era.

This was not the answer that was needed:

You see, the fact that New York is no longer the mug-tastic hooker bomb it once was, doesn't jive with the panic-obsessed Japanese media's portrayal, not to mention any 80's movie based in NY where the main character had to either A) get mugged (mostly for the ladies), B) philosophize with a wino, C) have a run in with a belligerent but outlandishly dressed pimp, or D) all of the above.

So I was asked to revamp my talking points for tomorrow to portray NY as something close to but not quite a 50 square mile version of Hell's Kitchen circa 1976 where booze-soaked members of a biker gang routinely look to hurl innocents from the roof of a burned out apartment block controlled by a New Jack City-esque crack lord while pimping their sister out to a heroin junkie living in a conversion van under a bridge next to a group of A Capella singing winos around a steel drum fire as America Psycho rolls by in a Cadillac with his seven pound cell phone trolling for transvestites.

Perception wins!

Damn dirty apes!

Working in a rural area provides for some unusual commuting circumstances every now and then. For example, monkeys.

While hiking the hill to school, I came across two well-relaxed monkeys who were cleaning each other. I thought it would be smashingly brilliant to snap a photo with my phone, but had to get rather close since I can't figure out the zoom function. Once I was close enough, this one decided with stunning alacrity, to demonstrate his opposition to that idea by lunging at me and showing some teeth.



For the record - monkeys are fast.

Yay Japanese Marketing Pt. II

Perhaps it is a sign that I have already become too accustomed to Japan that I stared at this object for two weeks before realizing that it was in any way odd.



That's right, it's the artificial creamer that makes you want to take a long hot shower after every cup! It's the artificial creamer that reminds you of every bad ex-boyfriend! it's the artificial creamer of choice for subway perverts! Brought to you by Radiohead!

So many untapped markets...

Genius! Part II – RoboLoo

What does Japan mean to you? Is it Hello Kitty and Pokémon? Sumo and Samurai? Bowing and disemboweling? Maybe you think of the glorious and often frightening variety of products available for sale through vending machine? Or perhaps it’s pint-sized businessmen rocking the paint off the walls with ten-beer karaoke? Whatever your impression may be, I believe one Japanese innovation stands above all others in the minds of in-the-know westerners, and that would be the space-age toilets that so efficiently deal with your waste.

For reasons I don’t even want to begin to consider, we have never really adopted this absolutely wonderful innovation in crap-nology. Why, pray tell, do we take every poorly conceived piece of manga and anime and run it ad nauseam on Adult Swim and sell it en masse at Comicon conventions? Did the overweight 40 year-old virgins with nacho-stained Yoda t-shirts do us some great favor in the past that allows them to dictate our cultural imports from the East? Was there some trade summit presided over by a guy who still lives in his parents’ basement hammering out Xena fan fiction that decreed all trade with Japan (not related to cars and TVs) would be focused around trading card games and characters with platter-sized eyes and skirts shorter than my attention span when watching a romantic comedy?

Why have we not yet adopted the wonderful toilet technology of Japan? Why?!

Imagine a toilet that kept its seat warm for you on cold winter nights. Imagine a toilet that automatically raised its lid in honor of your arrival. Imagine a toilet with a built in ass-sprayer where you could set water temperature, pressure, angle, and even select from a number of rhythmic pulsing options. Imagine a toilet that would blow warm air on your posterior after the aforementioned spraying. Imagine a toilet that (for the ladies) could produce elegant sounds so no one would have to hear you suffering the aftereffects of a seven-layer burrito you inhaled at lunch. And imagine you could control all this by remote control.

But there is more to these porcelain princes than a borderline disturbing devotion to robotizing the restroom, there is some seriously hardcore common sense being used here too. For example, all toilets have a bi-directional flush handle – one for “big” and one for “small.” Why have we not yet adopted this? In our rush to embrace low-flow toilets, why have we insisted on a one-flush-fits-all mentality? Furthermore, when the tank is refilling, it runs the refill water through a tap on the top, which empties into the tank, so you can use that water to refill the tank and wash your hands - just such a good idea

Give us this day our daily rice

Rice is big in Japan just like Tom Waits. It is the cornerstone of almost every meal and is usually as white as a yacht club. That isn’t to say there aren’t varieties of this omnipresent white short-grain carb bomb. Depending on how flush with yen you are, you can choose from dozens of strains. From the always popular Koshi hikari, to the techno-band sounding Kirara 397, to the sushi-centric Sasanishiki. Each is bred for certain properties such as resistance to disease or consistency of taste at varying temperatures.

For such a staple of daily sustenance, the price of rice is rather high – In the US, a 10kg bag (roughly 22 pounds) of basmati rice will cost you about $20. In Japan for the aforementioned Koshi Hikari (considered one of the best strains) you can pay up to 3 times that for the stuff. A 10kg bag from Niigata or Toyama (two of the prefectures well known for their rice) will set you back about $44, but you can get 10kg of the less honorable Hino hikari for as little as $25 assuming you are willing to slit your belly open in shame upon serving such swill to your guests.

One reason for the extremely high prices is that the whole industry is heavily protected. For a small country with such little arable land, producing enough rice to feed the whole population has proven to be almost impossible, and thus there have been more and more imports of rice from (shh, don’t tell) outside the country. However, to keep the market from flooding with cheaper imports, the government has thrown a massive tariff up to protect local product keeping the farmers happy. Catering to the rural farmer was the cornerstone of the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) and likely was a source of their 50 year stranglehold on the government (ended recently when Japan when Obama on the government and voted change for the first time since the US army overrode a Communist party victory shortly after WWII)

Anyhow, this isn’t just about rice, but about meals in general. The essence of Japanese eating is “Balance” (or as they say it, “baransu”) meaning that your meal should consist of a small amount a numerous kinds of food – dairy, protein, carbohydrate, etc. and not too much of any one thing, and to that end, not too much period. In case you are wondering why they are all so thin even though there are dishes like tempura and fried chicken as part of the usual rotation, it would be that when you order tempura, you get a small basket of five or six pieces, where as in the US it is usually sold as a challenge called “Tempurathon – can you finish it all?” and served in a drum typically associated with bulk commodity sales to some guy who has added six self-made notches to his belt thinking ‘it’s Japanese so it must be healthy.”

For a typical dinner you will have (of course) rice, some stir-fried vegetable, perhaps a small block of tofu, a piece of fish, a few bites of beef or pork, some seasoned root vegetable, some miso soup, and some pickled vegetables.

Here is picture of our usual evening fare:


Beef and green peppers cooked in a small fry pan at the table, a plate of breaded shrimp, some mushroom-heavy miso soup, rice with pickled Japanese plum (umeboshi - 梅干 ) some fancy pickled eggplant from Kyoto, and some chopped Mizuna.

So if you are wondering why it is that the Japanese can have such the kind of diet that would have Atkins shooting blood out of his eyes (noodles and grains galore) you may reflect on the portion sizes and mixture of foods at any given meal.

And yes, that is a table for four.

Head Cold + New Job = No posts

Not that either of those situations have much resolved themselves, but posting should resume shortly.