the making
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
leaves in hot water (tea time)
I have made the Tokyo-New York direct flight more times than I or my wallet cares to count, and (at it's most reasonable), $500 is way too much to pay for two microwaved meals, a can of beer and three movies. Excluding the benefits of being moved from one side of the world to the other, a trans-Pacific flight is the most expensive triple-feature on the planet.
At best the movies tend to be faintly entertaining (Along Came Polly held up surprisingly well the three times I saw it), and at worst... you get The Tuxedo starring Jackie Chan and Jennifer Love Hewitt. I really enjoyed Jackie Chan's original Hong Kong and early US stuff, he had an old Hollywood style comedian's drive to be a purely likeable entertainer, not someone who laughs at their own bitter humor. But there was one line from the end of the movie that is absolutely seared into my brain. After all the action and fighting has finished and feuding spy partners Jackie and Jennifer have reconciled, he asks her out on a date:
"So you wanna get a cup of coffee sometime?"
"I'm sorry," she replies in her snootiest voice "I only drink organic green tea." Oh cool, I thought, they're gonna go out to tea.
But, speaking for the audience, everyman Jackie replies "Come on, just get a cup of coffee with me." She relents, they walk into sunset, credits roll. Congratulations committee that wrote The Tuxedo: American hegemony and ignorance in three short lines. Or did these Hollywood writers not know that green tea wasn't invented for yuppies but is consumed daily in the world's most populous country? (Hint: Jackie Chan is from this country.)
Here in Japan (not the world's most populous country, but one whose tea I know a bit more about) going out for coffee is just as common as it is in the States. In fact it's of a much higher quality. I am amused to no end that when you see the option of "American Coffee" in a restaurant it refers to their weakest (and most watery) brew. It's only for people who don't actually like coffee. Four dollar cups of joe are more common, but the coffee is amazing, and the added value is in your surroundings, a quiet, tastefully decorated nook of a coffeeshop.
Unlike Taiwan and China, with their all night tea houses where people play cards and do business over pots of fragrant teas, Japanese green tea (o-cha) is overwhelmingly consumed in the home. One doesn't head out to get a finely roasted and blended cup of o-cha, it's an afternoon pick me up passed around the teacher's room at 3:00, it's a jar in the cupboard brought out when guests come to call, it's a souvenier brought back from an annual trip to Kyoto. Unlike Americans who guzzle watery coffee by the gallon, swilling from their liter-sized cups parked next to the PC or in the cup holder, green tea is still treated as a precious commodity.
By sheer coincidence, I have lived in all three of the most renowned tea regions in Japan (Kyoto, Shizuoka and Sayama, though the last is debatable), where good tea is as natural and everyday as tying your shoes. While my friends around the country had nothing but instant coffee to drink at work and the green tea was reserved for important guests, I was subjected to tastings of a whole spectrum of local blends. Each school employs at least one old local woman who is invariably full of smiles, speaks the coarse local dialect and whose job mostly consists of prepping the teacher's lunch and serving afternoon tea. One day at a school in Tenryu, Shizuoka I was given an exquisitely light tea that had a beautiful curling aftertaste. When I asked where it had come from, the tea lady looked out the window, squinted and stuck out her finger. "About, right over... there. Those tea bushes between the road and the river."
There is a mountain of information available on green tea's health benefits (prevents cancer, lowers blood sugar, rescues small children from burning buildings), and even more available on high end tea and tea ceremony, but I personally find all that stuff pompous and boring. I don't even like matcha, that powdered stuff used in tea ceremony; it's bitter and stays all chalky in the mouth after you swallow. I enjoy Shizuoka tea's raw, grassy aftertaste, Uji-tea's smooth mellow roundness and Sayama-tea's bold, direct flavors. I like a cup of green tea in the drowzy haze of 3:00 on a Tuesday afternoon.
But, in a bitter irony, most people here seem to choose a cup of instant coffee whitened with the disturbingly named powdered creamer "Creap" (short for Cream-powder?) over a simple cup of locally grown green tea steeped for barely half a minute in water just approaching boiling. I'm not really sure why, I think it's too easy to say "fascination with all things Western", because coffee has been here long enough that it can actually be written in kanji. I don't think it takes much guesswork though, fact is coffee is much better with cake than green tea, and who doesn't like cake? Even in Japan, nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.
At best the movies tend to be faintly entertaining (Along Came Polly held up surprisingly well the three times I saw it), and at worst... you get The Tuxedo starring Jackie Chan and Jennifer Love Hewitt. I really enjoyed Jackie Chan's original Hong Kong and early US stuff, he had an old Hollywood style comedian's drive to be a purely likeable entertainer, not someone who laughs at their own bitter humor. But there was one line from the end of the movie that is absolutely seared into my brain. After all the action and fighting has finished and feuding spy partners Jackie and Jennifer have reconciled, he asks her out on a date:
"So you wanna get a cup of coffee sometime?"
"I'm sorry," she replies in her snootiest voice "I only drink organic green tea." Oh cool, I thought, they're gonna go out to tea.
But, speaking for the audience, everyman Jackie replies "Come on, just get a cup of coffee with me." She relents, they walk into sunset, credits roll. Congratulations committee that wrote The Tuxedo: American hegemony and ignorance in three short lines. Or did these Hollywood writers not know that green tea wasn't invented for yuppies but is consumed daily in the world's most populous country? (Hint: Jackie Chan is from this country.)
Here in Japan (not the world's most populous country, but one whose tea I know a bit more about) going out for coffee is just as common as it is in the States. In fact it's of a much higher quality. I am amused to no end that when you see the option of "American Coffee" in a restaurant it refers to their weakest (and most watery) brew. It's only for people who don't actually like coffee. Four dollar cups of joe are more common, but the coffee is amazing, and the added value is in your surroundings, a quiet, tastefully decorated nook of a coffeeshop.
Unlike Taiwan and China, with their all night tea houses where people play cards and do business over pots of fragrant teas, Japanese green tea (o-cha) is overwhelmingly consumed in the home. One doesn't head out to get a finely roasted and blended cup of o-cha, it's an afternoon pick me up passed around the teacher's room at 3:00, it's a jar in the cupboard brought out when guests come to call, it's a souvenier brought back from an annual trip to Kyoto. Unlike Americans who guzzle watery coffee by the gallon, swilling from their liter-sized cups parked next to the PC or in the cup holder, green tea is still treated as a precious commodity.
By sheer coincidence, I have lived in all three of the most renowned tea regions in Japan (Kyoto, Shizuoka and Sayama, though the last is debatable), where good tea is as natural and everyday as tying your shoes. While my friends around the country had nothing but instant coffee to drink at work and the green tea was reserved for important guests, I was subjected to tastings of a whole spectrum of local blends. Each school employs at least one old local woman who is invariably full of smiles, speaks the coarse local dialect and whose job mostly consists of prepping the teacher's lunch and serving afternoon tea. One day at a school in Tenryu, Shizuoka I was given an exquisitely light tea that had a beautiful curling aftertaste. When I asked where it had come from, the tea lady looked out the window, squinted and stuck out her finger. "About, right over... there. Those tea bushes between the road and the river."
There is a mountain of information available on green tea's health benefits (prevents cancer, lowers blood sugar, rescues small children from burning buildings), and even more available on high end tea and tea ceremony, but I personally find all that stuff pompous and boring. I don't even like matcha, that powdered stuff used in tea ceremony; it's bitter and stays all chalky in the mouth after you swallow. I enjoy Shizuoka tea's raw, grassy aftertaste, Uji-tea's smooth mellow roundness and Sayama-tea's bold, direct flavors. I like a cup of green tea in the drowzy haze of 3:00 on a Tuesday afternoon.
But, in a bitter irony, most people here seem to choose a cup of instant coffee whitened with the disturbingly named powdered creamer "Creap" (short for Cream-powder?) over a simple cup of locally grown green tea steeped for barely half a minute in water just approaching boiling. I'm not really sure why, I think it's too easy to say "fascination with all things Western", because coffee has been here long enough that it can actually be written in kanji. I don't think it takes much guesswork though, fact is coffee is much better with cake than green tea, and who doesn't like cake? Even in Japan, nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.
Monday, January 17, 2005
~ a brief interlude ~
Whenever I get too cramped by this drafty little house I live in, I head down to the local Mister Donut. Mister Donut is a German chap who started the Mister Donut chain in Germany, and his photo is conveniently placed in every branch in Japan. The portrait of his geriatric face caught in the photo flash resembles nothing more than the kind of photo used at funerals. At any rate, they have a bottomless cup of coffee for 262 yen (app. $2.25 US), giving me hours to lose myself in Japanese essays on food, culture and history.
Having my first day off after three 9 hour days of straight English teaching with a 20 minute lunch break, I brought a book of essays by Haruki Murakami and a dictionary down to Mr. Donut and parked myself in a corner table by the window, watching the trains and cars go by.
As I was leisurely reviewing some new kanji I glanced out the window to a sight I had never seen before. A truck had pulled up just outside the coffee shop and parked close to the curb, and the driver in his faded blue company jumpsuit hopped out to unload the cargo. The cargo is what caught my attention though.
The back of the truck was a massive fish tank, cylindrical, but with round porthole windows that fish swam by. I craned my neck and saw that there was even a window into the cab so the fish could peer in at the driver. Talk about backseat drivers. "Fresh from nature to you: South Sea Live Fish Delivery" was written in big bold characters on the side. The driver opened a little hatch on the top and used a plastic collander to scoop eight or nine of the fish into a bucket. Once he had finished he locked the hatch and jogged upstairs to the restaurant. I sat, looking dumbfounded at the black outlines whisking around in their own habitat, smack in the middle of a busy street. They stared back at me in turn.
If there's anything more popular on Japanese TV than shows about cooking fish it's shows about catching them. Single massive tuna fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Tsukiji fish market are sent packed in ice water (not frozen) from all over Japan, but this is the first time I'd seen live fish delivery. What a way to go as a fish. Instead of being inelegantly slaughtered on a dock in Hokkaido and having your fresh carcass stuffed in a styrofoam container, you get the tourist experience of a lifetime, a driving tour of Tokyo's high end entertainment districts, a chance to peer out in amazement at these hairless apes that have remade the above-sea world into a skewed wonderland of ferro-concrete and neon.
While the water looked a little green, and the fish a bit crowded, I can't imagine it's any worse than the conditions on a trans-pacific flight in economy class. I'm reminded of that immortal scene in The Great Muppet Caper where Kermit, Fozzy and Gonzo are packed in crates in the luggage compartment of a flight to England, and when Fozzy asks: "Hey Kermit, where's the steward call button? I'm getting hungry.", Kermit replies: "Umm, I don't think they serve food in ninth class."
Definitely one of my top 5 favorite movies ever.
Having my first day off after three 9 hour days of straight English teaching with a 20 minute lunch break, I brought a book of essays by Haruki Murakami and a dictionary down to Mr. Donut and parked myself in a corner table by the window, watching the trains and cars go by.
As I was leisurely reviewing some new kanji I glanced out the window to a sight I had never seen before. A truck had pulled up just outside the coffee shop and parked close to the curb, and the driver in his faded blue company jumpsuit hopped out to unload the cargo. The cargo is what caught my attention though.
The back of the truck was a massive fish tank, cylindrical, but with round porthole windows that fish swam by. I craned my neck and saw that there was even a window into the cab so the fish could peer in at the driver. Talk about backseat drivers. "Fresh from nature to you: South Sea Live Fish Delivery" was written in big bold characters on the side. The driver opened a little hatch on the top and used a plastic collander to scoop eight or nine of the fish into a bucket. Once he had finished he locked the hatch and jogged upstairs to the restaurant. I sat, looking dumbfounded at the black outlines whisking around in their own habitat, smack in the middle of a busy street. They stared back at me in turn.
If there's anything more popular on Japanese TV than shows about cooking fish it's shows about catching them. Single massive tuna fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Tsukiji fish market are sent packed in ice water (not frozen) from all over Japan, but this is the first time I'd seen live fish delivery. What a way to go as a fish. Instead of being inelegantly slaughtered on a dock in Hokkaido and having your fresh carcass stuffed in a styrofoam container, you get the tourist experience of a lifetime, a driving tour of Tokyo's high end entertainment districts, a chance to peer out in amazement at these hairless apes that have remade the above-sea world into a skewed wonderland of ferro-concrete and neon.
While the water looked a little green, and the fish a bit crowded, I can't imagine it's any worse than the conditions on a trans-pacific flight in economy class. I'm reminded of that immortal scene in The Great Muppet Caper where Kermit, Fozzy and Gonzo are packed in crates in the luggage compartment of a flight to England, and when Fozzy asks: "Hey Kermit, where's the steward call button? I'm getting hungry.", Kermit replies: "Umm, I don't think they serve food in ninth class."
Definitely one of my top 5 favorite movies ever.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
eikaiwa
Well, I'm back. I basically knocked on fate's door and yelled at it to let me in after those last two blog posts on work, and was rewarded with five days in the spin cycle of Japanese work.
Ever since getting back to the Tokyo area I've pretty much confined myself to this rickety little house, notched next to an old couple who groan, play their TV loud, and bang on the walls when we are too loud for them. The second floor trembles in these nasty January winds and stray cats rowl in the night for food and love.
Staying inside gave me plenty of time to write my Japanese resume, create this blog, read movie reviews and pick my nose. I live with two Japanese guys who let me stay for free and pay for my groceries if I help out occasionally with translation or editing for their tour guide business, which didn't give me much of an incentive to get my ass on the street and get some gainful employment. I do, however, have a page online at findateacher.net that broadcasts my English teaching skills to the world, which leads to the topic of today's post: eikaiwa.
Eikaiwa is literally "English Conversation" but has also come to refer to the innumerable schools that teach English in Japan. After konnichiwa (hello), arigato (thank you), bakana gaijin (stupid foreigner), and chin-chin (bits and bobs, as in the male kind), eikaiwa is probably the first word a fresh young foreigner from one of the colonial countries will become familiar with. There are multi-storied English cram schools in Tokyo and family run classrooms on the second floor of the neighborhood grocery. Japan is obsessed with the idea of speaking English, and the phrase "Eigo wo shaberenai to..." (If you don't speak English then... [bad shit will go down]) is incredibly common; it's even used as the name of an NHK English education program.
English schools are a massive business in Japan, and the largest national chain, Nova, has over 640 branches around the country, all located in prime real estate: smack in front of the train station. In fact, Nova's slogan is ekimae-ryugaku, "do foreign exchange at the station", and they pump their foreign teachers for all they're worth, parading those smiling white and brown faces that promise a whole world of sexy yet platonic conversation. In my few years here I've met my share of Nova teachers, and while some enjoy the work, for the most part they hate their jobs. While the pay is alright (about $2500 US a month) they are treated pretty coarsely: shuttled from school to school, not allowed to teach the same group of students more than two or three times, working late hours (finishing 10pm standard), and generally just not given any respect or leverage at their workplace. Circumstances change from school to school, but there is a pretty basic pattern of paying wet-behind-the-ears college graduates a moderate fixed salary but giving them absolutely no control over their jobs. Bound to a textbook they are shoved into room after room of blinking Japanese students who've had four different teachers in the last two months, they do a little song a little dance and little English speaking, and are rotated to a new batch of students. All things being equal, I think mainly hate Nova because of their omnipresent, badly drawn, annoying-as-shit mascot the pink Nova rabbit.
Anyway, as the biggest eikaiwa around, Nova sets the standard for English schools here, and, with a few exceptions, until now I had only heard complaints about eikaiwa work. So I was a bit leery when I got a call last Monday from a local eikaiwa that had found my profile on findateacher.net and was interested in hiring me.
Just a 15 minute train ride away, the school is located conveniently enough, and I started feeling relaxed the minute I walked in the door. The school is a small operation run by two nice old Japanese women who had taught pre-school and kindergarten for years before opening their own eikaiwa. They had plenty of experience with foreign teachers, and were not the least bit surprised that I spoke the language well enough to conduct our interview entirely in Japanese. It was a surprise to be treated not as some touchy creature from another planet but as a professional with experience in the same field. One of their teachers had suddenly been hospitalized, and they needed an immediate replacement with teaching experience. We came to an agreement and I got myself a job.
Because of the emergency, I was rushed into three full days of teaching with no preperation, minimal briefing, and a smorgasbord of English students. Although about half my students were adults, this school specializes in the growing field of pre-school English education. Kind of like nipping a sprout to grow two stalks, the idea is to catch kids in their language developmental stage and barrage them with enough English so that it becomes a first language along with Japanese. It's a good indicator of how insane this country is about the idea of English that this has grown phenomenally popular in the past few years; so much so that Nova has been pushing the pre-school "Nova Kids" as hard as their adult classes.
While I have a slew of stories about my lessons this week, writing about them would take a few more pages with neither of us wants to slog through, so I'll just say that this week I handled a four hour pre-school class of five by myself (we drew snowmen, read story books and learned how to ask how to go to the bathroom), taught adult students phrases like "laymans terms" and "summer blockbuster", and tricked a particularly shy five year old into speaking English through puppets. From next week I'll be on the less punishing schedule of one full day a week and occasional classes, but I've had a few really wonderful conversations with the two women who run the place and I think we'll get along just fine. They also hate the Nova rabbit.
Ever since getting back to the Tokyo area I've pretty much confined myself to this rickety little house, notched next to an old couple who groan, play their TV loud, and bang on the walls when we are too loud for them. The second floor trembles in these nasty January winds and stray cats rowl in the night for food and love.
Staying inside gave me plenty of time to write my Japanese resume, create this blog, read movie reviews and pick my nose. I live with two Japanese guys who let me stay for free and pay for my groceries if I help out occasionally with translation or editing for their tour guide business, which didn't give me much of an incentive to get my ass on the street and get some gainful employment. I do, however, have a page online at findateacher.net that broadcasts my English teaching skills to the world, which leads to the topic of today's post: eikaiwa.
Eikaiwa is literally "English Conversation" but has also come to refer to the innumerable schools that teach English in Japan. After konnichiwa (hello), arigato (thank you), bakana gaijin (stupid foreigner), and chin-chin (bits and bobs, as in the male kind), eikaiwa is probably the first word a fresh young foreigner from one of the colonial countries will become familiar with. There are multi-storied English cram schools in Tokyo and family run classrooms on the second floor of the neighborhood grocery. Japan is obsessed with the idea of speaking English, and the phrase "Eigo wo shaberenai to..." (If you don't speak English then... [bad shit will go down]) is incredibly common; it's even used as the name of an NHK English education program.
English schools are a massive business in Japan, and the largest national chain, Nova, has over 640 branches around the country, all located in prime real estate: smack in front of the train station. In fact, Nova's slogan is ekimae-ryugaku, "do foreign exchange at the station", and they pump their foreign teachers for all they're worth, parading those smiling white and brown faces that promise a whole world of sexy yet platonic conversation. In my few years here I've met my share of Nova teachers, and while some enjoy the work, for the most part they hate their jobs. While the pay is alright (about $2500 US a month) they are treated pretty coarsely: shuttled from school to school, not allowed to teach the same group of students more than two or three times, working late hours (finishing 10pm standard), and generally just not given any respect or leverage at their workplace. Circumstances change from school to school, but there is a pretty basic pattern of paying wet-behind-the-ears college graduates a moderate fixed salary but giving them absolutely no control over their jobs. Bound to a textbook they are shoved into room after room of blinking Japanese students who've had four different teachers in the last two months, they do a little song a little dance and little English speaking, and are rotated to a new batch of students. All things being equal, I think mainly hate Nova because of their omnipresent, badly drawn, annoying-as-shit mascot the pink Nova rabbit.
Anyway, as the biggest eikaiwa around, Nova sets the standard for English schools here, and, with a few exceptions, until now I had only heard complaints about eikaiwa work. So I was a bit leery when I got a call last Monday from a local eikaiwa that had found my profile on findateacher.net and was interested in hiring me.
Just a 15 minute train ride away, the school is located conveniently enough, and I started feeling relaxed the minute I walked in the door. The school is a small operation run by two nice old Japanese women who had taught pre-school and kindergarten for years before opening their own eikaiwa. They had plenty of experience with foreign teachers, and were not the least bit surprised that I spoke the language well enough to conduct our interview entirely in Japanese. It was a surprise to be treated not as some touchy creature from another planet but as a professional with experience in the same field. One of their teachers had suddenly been hospitalized, and they needed an immediate replacement with teaching experience. We came to an agreement and I got myself a job.
Because of the emergency, I was rushed into three full days of teaching with no preperation, minimal briefing, and a smorgasbord of English students. Although about half my students were adults, this school specializes in the growing field of pre-school English education. Kind of like nipping a sprout to grow two stalks, the idea is to catch kids in their language developmental stage and barrage them with enough English so that it becomes a first language along with Japanese. It's a good indicator of how insane this country is about the idea of English that this has grown phenomenally popular in the past few years; so much so that Nova has been pushing the pre-school "Nova Kids" as hard as their adult classes.
While I have a slew of stories about my lessons this week, writing about them would take a few more pages with neither of us wants to slog through, so I'll just say that this week I handled a four hour pre-school class of five by myself (we drew snowmen, read story books and learned how to ask how to go to the bathroom), taught adult students phrases like "laymans terms" and "summer blockbuster", and tricked a particularly shy five year old into speaking English through puppets. From next week I'll be on the less punishing schedule of one full day a week and occasional classes, but I've had a few really wonderful conversations with the two women who run the place and I think we'll get along just fine. They also hate the Nova rabbit.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Work (paato 2)
In my last entry I tackled the mammoth topic of the work situation in modern Japan, a subject that some people devote their entire careers to studying, which I pithily tried to summarize in a blog post knocked off in around an hour. Clearly two blog posts should be sufficient to cover the primary obsession of a country of 120 million people. (I also revised yesterday's post adding a paragraph about women in the workforce and better conclusion for all of you who just can't get enough of this subject.)
Somebody (who failed to disclose their name) asked how "ganguro" kids fit into the work situation here. While I gave two educated guesses (convience stores and fashion boutiques), the question opens up the larger issue of the current state of youth and employment in Japan. The phrase parasaito shinguru (parasite single) refers to the increasing number of young folks who don't move away from home or get married, enjoying the free room and board and (according to the mass media stereotype) spend their work money on clothes, shopping and partying. Outside of the parasaito shinguru there are three major terms that have been bandied around a lot in the Japanese media that refer the irresponsibility of my generation.
The first, friita, coming from the English word "free", refers to young people who don't pursue a specific career path, instead flitting from part time job to part time job, and pursuing personal interests more than work. This may sound pretty unremarkable, but it is a brand new concept for Japan, where, since the rigid social structuring of the Tokugawa era (1603-1867), your job defines your identity. Japan's "economic miracle" was the product of a society that was soaked with memories of postwar devastation and put work ahead of all else in the hope of a better future. You sold your life to the company in long hours and total commitment, but the company would take care of you and your family through old age. The friita style of putting oneself before one's job smacks straight in the face of this system, and Japan has been tying itself in knots trying to figure out what's going on, with innumerable articles, panel discussions and economists weighing in on the economic and social damage friita are causing. Services hooking up applicants with short term work have been exploding. But as my pushing 30 cousin put it in a conversation we had about friita "Dude, sounds like me and most of my friends..."
Another trend that has wasted about as much ink and airtime as the friita issue is the emergence of "NEET" (pronounced neeto). In Japanese academia's love affair with clever English, NEET stands for No Education Employment Training, which basically sums up the NEET phenomenon. NEET sit one rung below friita on the troublesome youth scale, encompassing people who work only when they have to, disdaining higher education or any kind of commitment as a waste of time.
They are dynamoes of energy compared to the truly disturbing hiki-komori, which roughly translates as "the secluded." These are adults who for some reason or another never leave home, never find a job, and live off their parents. I have heard about this not just in the media but have several relatives of friends who are hiki-komori. I think the widespread existence of the problem points to a fundamental philosophical and spiritual malaise at the heart of the country.
The postwar era idea of being taken care of for life has lingered on, but the memories of widespread starvation and poverty during the Great War have faded, leaving no driving incentive to "rebuild Japan." Given Japan's draconian immigration laws, there are no major immigrant populations to shake the system up. With a steadily aging population and dropping birthrates, immigration is currently the only option, but not one that anyone has breached. A multicultural Japan is a subject that no one breaches, and seems almost impossible to imagine.
(Next entry more funny stories and less armchair philosophy. I promise.)
Somebody (who failed to disclose their name) asked how "ganguro" kids fit into the work situation here. While I gave two educated guesses (convience stores and fashion boutiques), the question opens up the larger issue of the current state of youth and employment in Japan. The phrase parasaito shinguru (parasite single) refers to the increasing number of young folks who don't move away from home or get married, enjoying the free room and board and (according to the mass media stereotype) spend their work money on clothes, shopping and partying. Outside of the parasaito shinguru there are three major terms that have been bandied around a lot in the Japanese media that refer the irresponsibility of my generation.
The first, friita, coming from the English word "free", refers to young people who don't pursue a specific career path, instead flitting from part time job to part time job, and pursuing personal interests more than work. This may sound pretty unremarkable, but it is a brand new concept for Japan, where, since the rigid social structuring of the Tokugawa era (1603-1867), your job defines your identity. Japan's "economic miracle" was the product of a society that was soaked with memories of postwar devastation and put work ahead of all else in the hope of a better future. You sold your life to the company in long hours and total commitment, but the company would take care of you and your family through old age. The friita style of putting oneself before one's job smacks straight in the face of this system, and Japan has been tying itself in knots trying to figure out what's going on, with innumerable articles, panel discussions and economists weighing in on the economic and social damage friita are causing. Services hooking up applicants with short term work have been exploding. But as my pushing 30 cousin put it in a conversation we had about friita "Dude, sounds like me and most of my friends..."
Another trend that has wasted about as much ink and airtime as the friita issue is the emergence of "NEET" (pronounced neeto). In Japanese academia's love affair with clever English, NEET stands for No Education Employment Training, which basically sums up the NEET phenomenon. NEET sit one rung below friita on the troublesome youth scale, encompassing people who work only when they have to, disdaining higher education or any kind of commitment as a waste of time.
They are dynamoes of energy compared to the truly disturbing hiki-komori, which roughly translates as "the secluded." These are adults who for some reason or another never leave home, never find a job, and live off their parents. I have heard about this not just in the media but have several relatives of friends who are hiki-komori. I think the widespread existence of the problem points to a fundamental philosophical and spiritual malaise at the heart of the country.
The postwar era idea of being taken care of for life has lingered on, but the memories of widespread starvation and poverty during the Great War have faded, leaving no driving incentive to "rebuild Japan." Given Japan's draconian immigration laws, there are no major immigrant populations to shake the system up. With a steadily aging population and dropping birthrates, immigration is currently the only option, but not one that anyone has breached. A multicultural Japan is a subject that no one breaches, and seems almost impossible to imagine.
(Next entry more funny stories and less armchair philosophy. I promise.)
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
resume
It's been about a week since the New Years vacation ended, and Tokyo is groggily starting to kick itself back in gear, everyone walking around with the glow of the holidays and the grim knowledge that from here on out there's nothing to look forward to but spring and those iconic cherry blossoms.
Today was Seijin no hi, "Coming of Age Day", where everyone who turned 20 this year gussies themselves up in splashy kimonos and scarves and heads down to the local shrine. They are now officially adults, finally allowed to vote, smoke, swear, fornicate and abuse alcohol. Preferably all at the same time.
In a way it was my own personal "Coming of Age Day", albiet 5 years too late: I translated my resume into Japanese, signalling yet another step into the clutches of the Japanese social system. I did a rough translation myself, then asked my friend Nori to look it over with me. First question out of his mouth:
"Where's your birthday written?"
Ageism? Check.
"Do you have a passport size photo?"
Racism, hairism, not-good-looking-enoughism, check.
Me: "Well, why don't we just take it with your digital camera and print it out onto the resume?"
Nori: "Are you kidding? Color, high quality, those things are important. You need official passport size photos. And you should probably include a section on personal interests at the end here."
Me: ". . ."
Nori: "Oh, and you have to write resume (rirekisho) in big letters at the top there. Bigger. Ok."
Getting down to it, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that resumes written in Japan would be so different from those in the US. I spent a good chunk of today finding resume writing advice online in English, and they contradicted Nori's Japanese resume model point for point: don't write resume at the top, nobody wants to hear "good with people", nobody cares about your stamp collection.
First off, what's up with divulging your birthdate, talking about your hobbies and attaching a photograph? Rhetorically, if not always in practice, the US ties itself in knots to avoid claims of racism, sexism and other forms of discriminatory hiring practices. As such, resumes, as projections of ourselves, become purely business related, pumping up the way you kicked ass at your library stacking job, increasing shelving rates by 60%. (Interestingly enough they also emphasized how you should leave out any "controversial" political connections. )Theoretically race, age, creed, gender, sexual orientation and favorite color should be irrelevant. I mean, hey, 60% increased shelving rate. We'll hire a Samoan grandmother who's queer as a 3 dollar bill and digs magenta if she can shelve books like that.
The state of employment in Japan is a bit different though. I think it is especially revealing to note that there are two words for "part time work" in Japanese. Arubaito or baito comes from the German arbiet and refers to any part time or non career oriented job for young people. Paato, coming from the English "part" is used to describe work for older women, usually married, who take on a job in addition to their husbands. More than discrimination, jobs are actually intended for specific genders and age groups. A common help wanted advertisement will list the ages suggested for the job, and many jobs for young women cut off at 30, the assumption being that a) who wants an elevator girl over 30? and b) you should be married and taken care of by then.
Last year there was a bestselling book that coined a new phrase, makeinu, "loser dogs", for single working women over 30. The author, a single working woman over 30, basically vetted the host of challenges unmarried women face, from the social stigma to the economic burden arising from both low paying jobs and a tax system hostile to single working people. The book (as I understand it) sought to dispel notions that women that old should be worried about marraige at all, and should embrace their independence and wear the makeinu label proudly and defiantly.
The stark reality of Japanese society is that not only do men receive better pay for the same work as women, but despite laws to the contrary, jobs are overwhelmingly defined by age and gender. But with the gradual decline of the Japanese economy in the last few years more and more married women are entering the workforce in service and factory jobs as paato to help make ends meet. Dad may still be the main breadwinner, but since she's been doing a few shifts a week down at the meat packing plant it's Mom who brings home the bacon.
Without saying this sense of "proper roles" extends to foreigners. While making a decent salary, Brazilians and Peruvians are generally confined to factory and occasional construction work, West Africans promoting bars and clubs, Thai and Phillipino women in the sex industry, Americans and Brits to English teaching jobs and modelling work, and Mongols to sumo wrestling. (For those of you who don't follow sumo, the current grand champion is Mongolian, as are many top ranked up-and-comers.) I am making up my resume both to score English teaching jobs to pay the bills, and restaurant jobs to keep my soul. But even finding restaurant work is tricky. Tokyo is a goldmine of foreigner friendly places, but they are the exception to the rule, most places simply would not hire me, not matter how good my Japanese was: a white face simply wouldn't fit the image.
In many ways I think the US operates on this level as well, with such intangibles as background and values mixing with race, age, gender and most importantly class in hiring practices. Instead we have developed a whole language of euphemisms to talk around these issues, whereas comfortably mono-cultural Japan has no qualms turning you down for any of the above reasons. Someone once referred an English teaching job tutoring a group of professors at a medical school who wanted to bone up on their conversational English for medical conferences, and was turned down flat "because we want a female teacher." Compared to us white folks Asian-Americans generally have a tough time getting English teaching jobs because they don't fit the blue eyed blond haired image.
Today was Seijin no hi, "Coming of Age Day", where everyone who turned 20 this year gussies themselves up in splashy kimonos and scarves and heads down to the local shrine. They are now officially adults, finally allowed to vote, smoke, swear, fornicate and abuse alcohol. Preferably all at the same time.
In a way it was my own personal "Coming of Age Day", albiet 5 years too late: I translated my resume into Japanese, signalling yet another step into the clutches of the Japanese social system. I did a rough translation myself, then asked my friend Nori to look it over with me. First question out of his mouth:
"Where's your birthday written?"
Ageism? Check.
"Do you have a passport size photo?"
Racism, hairism, not-good-looking-enoughism, check.
Me: "Well, why don't we just take it with your digital camera and print it out onto the resume?"
Nori: "Are you kidding? Color, high quality, those things are important. You need official passport size photos. And you should probably include a section on personal interests at the end here."
Me: ". . ."
Nori: "Oh, and you have to write resume (rirekisho) in big letters at the top there. Bigger. Ok."
Getting down to it, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that resumes written in Japan would be so different from those in the US. I spent a good chunk of today finding resume writing advice online in English, and they contradicted Nori's Japanese resume model point for point: don't write resume at the top, nobody wants to hear "good with people", nobody cares about your stamp collection.
First off, what's up with divulging your birthdate, talking about your hobbies and attaching a photograph? Rhetorically, if not always in practice, the US ties itself in knots to avoid claims of racism, sexism and other forms of discriminatory hiring practices. As such, resumes, as projections of ourselves, become purely business related, pumping up the way you kicked ass at your library stacking job, increasing shelving rates by 60%. (Interestingly enough they also emphasized how you should leave out any "controversial" political connections. )Theoretically race, age, creed, gender, sexual orientation and favorite color should be irrelevant. I mean, hey, 60% increased shelving rate. We'll hire a Samoan grandmother who's queer as a 3 dollar bill and digs magenta if she can shelve books like that.
The state of employment in Japan is a bit different though. I think it is especially revealing to note that there are two words for "part time work" in Japanese. Arubaito or baito comes from the German arbiet and refers to any part time or non career oriented job for young people. Paato, coming from the English "part" is used to describe work for older women, usually married, who take on a job in addition to their husbands. More than discrimination, jobs are actually intended for specific genders and age groups. A common help wanted advertisement will list the ages suggested for the job, and many jobs for young women cut off at 30, the assumption being that a) who wants an elevator girl over 30? and b) you should be married and taken care of by then.
Last year there was a bestselling book that coined a new phrase, makeinu, "loser dogs", for single working women over 30. The author, a single working woman over 30, basically vetted the host of challenges unmarried women face, from the social stigma to the economic burden arising from both low paying jobs and a tax system hostile to single working people. The book (as I understand it) sought to dispel notions that women that old should be worried about marraige at all, and should embrace their independence and wear the makeinu label proudly and defiantly.
The stark reality of Japanese society is that not only do men receive better pay for the same work as women, but despite laws to the contrary, jobs are overwhelmingly defined by age and gender. But with the gradual decline of the Japanese economy in the last few years more and more married women are entering the workforce in service and factory jobs as paato to help make ends meet. Dad may still be the main breadwinner, but since she's been doing a few shifts a week down at the meat packing plant it's Mom who brings home the bacon.
Without saying this sense of "proper roles" extends to foreigners. While making a decent salary, Brazilians and Peruvians are generally confined to factory and occasional construction work, West Africans promoting bars and clubs, Thai and Phillipino women in the sex industry, Americans and Brits to English teaching jobs and modelling work, and Mongols to sumo wrestling. (For those of you who don't follow sumo, the current grand champion is Mongolian, as are many top ranked up-and-comers.) I am making up my resume both to score English teaching jobs to pay the bills, and restaurant jobs to keep my soul. But even finding restaurant work is tricky. Tokyo is a goldmine of foreigner friendly places, but they are the exception to the rule, most places simply would not hire me, not matter how good my Japanese was: a white face simply wouldn't fit the image.
In many ways I think the US operates on this level as well, with such intangibles as background and values mixing with race, age, gender and most importantly class in hiring practices. Instead we have developed a whole language of euphemisms to talk around these issues, whereas comfortably mono-cultural Japan has no qualms turning you down for any of the above reasons. Someone once referred an English teaching job tutoring a group of professors at a medical school who wanted to bone up on their conversational English for medical conferences, and was turned down flat "because we want a female teacher." Compared to us white folks Asian-Americans generally have a tough time getting English teaching jobs because they don't fit the blue eyed blond haired image.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
staying warm
When I first moved to Japan over two years ago on an English teaching contract, I was placed in the bucolic Tenryu city in Shizuoka prefecture. 15 miles from the pacific, snuggled at the base of the Southern Japanese alps, one of the largest rivers in Japan... and hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I arrived in August, when everyone was carrying around little towels to wipe off the sweat, and people smiled with a dumb pride when they told me Tenryu "is the hottest town in all of Japan!". Even though Tenryu is located in central Japan, the south is swept by cool breezes. All those picturesque Tenryu mountains create a bonchi , which is like a valley, but where air doesn't circulate in or out, it just sits and percolates. Ugh.
So imagine my surprise when winter came along and I was freezing my ass off. I've experienced four Ohio winters, and I don't remember a single one one being as rough as my winter in the hottest town in Japan. I would come home from school to a frigid apartment with a nice brisk breeze coming in through some crack in the window. Where the hell was that breeze in August?
Central heating is extremely rare in Japan. While fairly common in office buildings and department stores, it is rarely seen anywhere else. I have never been to a house or apartment with central heating, and even schools just heat classrooms and offices with space heaters, humidifying kettles of water bubbling on top. This makes for a great site in staff rooms with all the teachers huddled around a gas heater, backs hunched and hands outstretched like a camp of hobos.
The lack of central heating makes for a myriad of alternatives. Large metal gas stoves with flat tops for kettles that humidify the room, electric coil heaters, the occasional steam coil heated floor, 6 inch high R2D2 heaters for the bathroom, and those famously elaborate toilet seats. Americans laugh at the need for an electric toilet seat, but there's nothing funny about a freezing cold toilet in February. I'm a convert.
One of the greatest winter pleasures in Japan is the kotatsu. Although most modern kotatsu are just an electric heater placed under a table, I was lucky enough to experience my first real kotatsu last year during my two months in Japan's "snow country", Yamagata. Ingenious in it's design, a proper kotatsu is a square well in the tatami matting with warmed coals made from apple branches placed at the bottom. A wooden grating is placed above the coals, then a table with a blanket between the frame and the tabletop covers up the entire structure. The whole family will tuck themselves under the blanket during dinner the coals warming bodies from the toes up as they eat dinner and watch TV. With everyone sitting on the tatami, feet tucked into the deppression on the floor with no backrest, it's no big surprise to turn around and see grandma laid out flat, a faint snore shaking her drool onto the tatami.
I actually prefer no central heating, that stuff does an Operation Infinite Justice on my sinuses. Tokyo is a temperature schizophrenic city: you can be heaving in an sweltering lobby one moment then burst out into the blistering January wind the next. It is a bit alarming however when you're huddled under the kotatsu in your living room and your breath is curling into flowery white patterns. As the parents of an English teacher friend of mine put it to her: "We were worried about you at first, but hey, it's just like you took a year off to go camping!"
So imagine my surprise when winter came along and I was freezing my ass off. I've experienced four Ohio winters, and I don't remember a single one one being as rough as my winter in the hottest town in Japan. I would come home from school to a frigid apartment with a nice brisk breeze coming in through some crack in the window. Where the hell was that breeze in August?
Central heating is extremely rare in Japan. While fairly common in office buildings and department stores, it is rarely seen anywhere else. I have never been to a house or apartment with central heating, and even schools just heat classrooms and offices with space heaters, humidifying kettles of water bubbling on top. This makes for a great site in staff rooms with all the teachers huddled around a gas heater, backs hunched and hands outstretched like a camp of hobos.
The lack of central heating makes for a myriad of alternatives. Large metal gas stoves with flat tops for kettles that humidify the room, electric coil heaters, the occasional steam coil heated floor, 6 inch high R2D2 heaters for the bathroom, and those famously elaborate toilet seats. Americans laugh at the need for an electric toilet seat, but there's nothing funny about a freezing cold toilet in February. I'm a convert.
One of the greatest winter pleasures in Japan is the kotatsu. Although most modern kotatsu are just an electric heater placed under a table, I was lucky enough to experience my first real kotatsu last year during my two months in Japan's "snow country", Yamagata. Ingenious in it's design, a proper kotatsu is a square well in the tatami matting with warmed coals made from apple branches placed at the bottom. A wooden grating is placed above the coals, then a table with a blanket between the frame and the tabletop covers up the entire structure. The whole family will tuck themselves under the blanket during dinner the coals warming bodies from the toes up as they eat dinner and watch TV. With everyone sitting on the tatami, feet tucked into the deppression on the floor with no backrest, it's no big surprise to turn around and see grandma laid out flat, a faint snore shaking her drool onto the tatami.
I actually prefer no central heating, that stuff does an Operation Infinite Justice on my sinuses. Tokyo is a temperature schizophrenic city: you can be heaving in an sweltering lobby one moment then burst out into the blistering January wind the next. It is a bit alarming however when you're huddled under the kotatsu in your living room and your breath is curling into flowery white patterns. As the parents of an English teacher friend of mine put it to her: "We were worried about you at first, but hey, it's just like you took a year off to go camping!"
room heater
This isn't actually a fan, just my plutonium powered room heater set on low. Putting it on high causes temporary loss of vision.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
solid gold nuggets
I recently stumbled upon this absolutely wonderful blog written in excellent English by a woman in Kochi, Japan. She lovingly and extensively details her daily cooking, which is an incredible sampling of contemporary Japanese cooking.
Have been enjoying the essays on edge.org. Some of the worlds biggest names in science and philosphy write short essays on a slew of topics, and in the process provide an amazing overview of the current frontiers of contemporary knowledge.
My friend Tarika sent me this link to this guy who draws cartoon skeletons. Yeah. Cartoon skeletons.
Below is a short piece on a massive underground comics convention I went to last week. My case for my not being a nerd is looking bleaker and bleaker.
Have been enjoying the essays on edge.org. Some of the worlds biggest names in science and philosphy write short essays on a slew of topics, and in the process provide an amazing overview of the current frontiers of contemporary knowledge.
My friend Tarika sent me this link to this guy who draws cartoon skeletons. Yeah. Cartoon skeletons.
Below is a short piece on a massive underground comics convention I went to last week. My case for my not being a nerd is looking bleaker and bleaker.
Nerd Metropolis
Last December 30th I had the pleasure of attending the bi-annual Comi-ke (Comic Market) underground comics convention at Tokyo Big Site, which looks like My housemate Nori went to promote his Akihabara tours, and admission was free, so I decided to tag along and see what it was all about.
Nori certainly knows his market. I noticed several coach buses parked in front of the convention center circling round the clock to Akihabara. We arrived around 10 AM, but already the flow out of convention center seemed as heavy as that going in. Nori told me that these were the people who had camped out in the snow the night before to get the first crack at especially rare and valuable comics. They were heading straight to Akihabara to sell them at around 100% profit to stores that specialize in underground comics. All this and we hadn't even walked in yet.
Japanese Dojinshi (literally "peer publications") are a massive subculture in Japan. The definition is somewhat fuzzy, having started with amateurs who made simple comics and photocopied extras for their friends, subsequently exploding into any kind of small run comic that is printed and distributed by the artist and not one of the major comics publishers. How big of a subculture are dojinshi? Nori told me that half a million people attend this bi-annual two day convention. That is a lot of nerds.
Nerds being what they will, there were costumes. Really cool costumes. People in and into costumes congregated on an outdoor deck area. Guys with outsize digital cameras sporting lenses whose cost could feed a small African nation for a month vastly outnumbered fans in costumes. Guys in full on fatigues compared makeup with teenage girls in pink wigs and skintight action suits. Cartoon pigs bummed lights from Astro Boys. There was an entire etiquette of photo taking which everyone protected scrupilously; you needed verbal consent before any photos. (Which is why there are no smoking cartoon pigs posted below). Not surprisingly the more skin shown in a girl's costume the more photographers lining up to ask for her picture. Some people were ridiculously elaborate, the two figures in red pictured below were part of a 7 person coordinated squad, where one Japanese guy had even daubed his face and ears a rich chocolate brown in order to better approximate the black guy in the group. Whoa.
But about the comics. A few years ago I attended the Underground Publishing Conference (UPC) in Bowling Green Ohio, a fairly modest coference of underground comics artists and zines of all kinds, with a heavy anarchist DIY presence. There were about 800 people in attendance and it has since fizzled away. That was my last conference. Comike had about 35,000 seperate dojinshi groups that publish their own comics. For the unitiated the sheer volume was just overwhelming, I didn't know where to begin.
While UPC zines emphasized cheap and easy formats, most as simple as folded and stapled photocopies that flaunt their DIY aesthetic, the quality of your average Dojinshi at Comike was incredibly high. Printing in several colors on high quality paper and neatly bound was the standard. Japan is flush in small neighborhood printing shops that do printing for local businesses, and small runs of dojinshi can be published fairly easily.
While the content ranged from sci-fi stories to romance comics for little girls, by far the most noticable was the adult themed stuff. Dojinshi exist in a kind of legal gray area, and aren't subject to the government restrictions and regulations on mass produced stuff, which means the porn market is huge. It was more than a little unnerving to see female dojinshi artists proudly displaying their graphically detailed S&M comics with overtones of rape. But in general the atmosphere in the adult section was congenial and talkative, and outside of the occasional customer who had his scarf wrapped over his face and his cap pulled low, I didn't sense and furtiveness or shame. While the majority of artists were men, I was more than a bit surprised to note that probably 10-20% of them were women. For non-adult themed comics I'd say it was closer to 30 or 40%.
Since they averaged at around $10 a copy I didn't end up buying any comics, and when he ran out of business cards Nori and strolled down to the train station. Which turned out to be jammed with people leaving the convention. There was a 15 minute wait just to enter the station. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, but as we shambled along in the sea of nerds I picked out dialects from all over the country. There were even a few other white guys in the crowd, some with matching nerd girlfriends, others sullen islands unto themselves, bundles of carefully wrapped comics under both arms.
Nori certainly knows his market. I noticed several coach buses parked in front of the convention center circling round the clock to Akihabara. We arrived around 10 AM, but already the flow out of convention center seemed as heavy as that going in. Nori told me that these were the people who had camped out in the snow the night before to get the first crack at especially rare and valuable comics. They were heading straight to Akihabara to sell them at around 100% profit to stores that specialize in underground comics. All this and we hadn't even walked in yet.
Japanese Dojinshi (literally "peer publications") are a massive subculture in Japan. The definition is somewhat fuzzy, having started with amateurs who made simple comics and photocopied extras for their friends, subsequently exploding into any kind of small run comic that is printed and distributed by the artist and not one of the major comics publishers. How big of a subculture are dojinshi? Nori told me that half a million people attend this bi-annual two day convention. That is a lot of nerds.
Nerds being what they will, there were costumes. Really cool costumes. People in and into costumes congregated on an outdoor deck area. Guys with outsize digital cameras sporting lenses whose cost could feed a small African nation for a month vastly outnumbered fans in costumes. Guys in full on fatigues compared makeup with teenage girls in pink wigs and skintight action suits. Cartoon pigs bummed lights from Astro Boys. There was an entire etiquette of photo taking which everyone protected scrupilously; you needed verbal consent before any photos. (Which is why there are no smoking cartoon pigs posted below). Not surprisingly the more skin shown in a girl's costume the more photographers lining up to ask for her picture. Some people were ridiculously elaborate, the two figures in red pictured below were part of a 7 person coordinated squad, where one Japanese guy had even daubed his face and ears a rich chocolate brown in order to better approximate the black guy in the group. Whoa.
But about the comics. A few years ago I attended the Underground Publishing Conference (UPC) in Bowling Green Ohio, a fairly modest coference of underground comics artists and zines of all kinds, with a heavy anarchist DIY presence. There were about 800 people in attendance and it has since fizzled away. That was my last conference. Comike had about 35,000 seperate dojinshi groups that publish their own comics. For the unitiated the sheer volume was just overwhelming, I didn't know where to begin.
While UPC zines emphasized cheap and easy formats, most as simple as folded and stapled photocopies that flaunt their DIY aesthetic, the quality of your average Dojinshi at Comike was incredibly high. Printing in several colors on high quality paper and neatly bound was the standard. Japan is flush in small neighborhood printing shops that do printing for local businesses, and small runs of dojinshi can be published fairly easily.
While the content ranged from sci-fi stories to romance comics for little girls, by far the most noticable was the adult themed stuff. Dojinshi exist in a kind of legal gray area, and aren't subject to the government restrictions and regulations on mass produced stuff, which means the porn market is huge. It was more than a little unnerving to see female dojinshi artists proudly displaying their graphically detailed S&M comics with overtones of rape. But in general the atmosphere in the adult section was congenial and talkative, and outside of the occasional customer who had his scarf wrapped over his face and his cap pulled low, I didn't sense and furtiveness or shame. While the majority of artists were men, I was more than a bit surprised to note that probably 10-20% of them were women. For non-adult themed comics I'd say it was closer to 30 or 40%.
Since they averaged at around $10 a copy I didn't end up buying any comics, and when he ran out of business cards Nori and strolled down to the train station. Which turned out to be jammed with people leaving the convention. There was a 15 minute wait just to enter the station. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, but as we shambled along in the sea of nerds I picked out dialects from all over the country. There were even a few other white guys in the crowd, some with matching nerd girlfriends, others sullen islands unto themselves, bundles of carefully wrapped comics under both arms.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
predestination
Well, happy new year, akemashite omedeto, welcome to the year of the Rooster. If you turn 12, 24, or 144 this year you are officially a rooster.
Which means that you "are a bit eccentric and often have rather difficult relationships with others." Which pretty much describes all the 12 year olds I know. But since these things can't be all negative you are also a "deep thinker, capable and talented." The web site I got these from doesn't specify the talents. Bronco busters? Amateur magicians?
I myself am a ram (sheep if you wanna be rude about it). People born in the year of the... ram, are, ahem "elegant and highly accomplished in the arts", and in addition "Ram people never have to worry about having the best in life for their abilities make money for them, and they are able to enjoy the creature comforts that they like." Hey, I just copied it off the web site. I'm afraid any of you thinking of having kids missed your chance in 2003 and will just have to wait til 2015. Every last kid born this year is growing up to be an antisocial goth who draws unbelievably detailed fantasy art.
Although all the barnyard imagery is all, like, cool and Asian, I haven't met a Japanese person yet who actually knows this animistic personality stuff. The Western Zodiac never really caught on here either; I suppose all the moons, cusps, scales and scorpions were a bit confusing. No, the official method of determining people's personality before you know them is... blood type.
This is something you catch onto fast as a newcomer to Japan, because the first question after name and birthplace is invariably "what's your bloodtype?". None of my Japanese textbooks included this in the greetings section. I didn't know the answer for a while, but dug out my American Red Cross blood donor card to find I am AB positive. Forget universal receiver, this is the blood type of geniuses baby.
I'm not exactly sure how the whole blood type theory got started, but I have to say that from sheer exposure to this I have started to give it a little credence. The basic outline is: "A's are neat freaks and sticklers for the rules, B's are relaxed, artistic types who will passionately work on one thing while forgetting to wash their socks, AB's are brooding geniuses who go their own way but always finish what they start, and O's are natural born leaders, who always keep the broad picture in mind. There is an ocean of pseudo-scientific evidence to support this. For example, it's common knowledge in Japan that the majority of Japanese are type A (the neat-freak rule-sticklers) and that the majority of Americans are type O (the American empire, it's in the blood man).
I once saw this amazing special on television that tested the blood type theory with a battery of pseudo-science. My favorite test was when the show divided a series of 1st graders into blood type groups and gave them an assignment: carry a bouquet of flowers to a teacher through a downtown shopping area. They placed three distractions along the way: free cotton candy, a busker with a dog doing tricks, and a guy in an anime character suit giving away free balloons. One by one the kids were launched onto the course, with reactions corresponding exactly to blood types. All the A's wavered indecisively before each distraction but pressed on. None of the B's ever reached the goal, most wandering off the course. The O's tried to get the best of both worlds, enjoying the free stuff but reaching the goal, albeit a little late. My fellow AB's kicked ass, not even glancing at the distractions, all heading straight to the goal.
Although lately I've been going through a rough patch, earlier this year I was predicting blood types at about 75% accuracy. Basically whether I believe in it or not is moot; this is the greatest small talk topic ever. No wonder the weather has been so freaky lately, it's just trying to get popular again.
Which means that you "are a bit eccentric and often have rather difficult relationships with others." Which pretty much describes all the 12 year olds I know. But since these things can't be all negative you are also a "deep thinker, capable and talented." The web site I got these from doesn't specify the talents. Bronco busters? Amateur magicians?
I myself am a ram (sheep if you wanna be rude about it). People born in the year of the... ram, are, ahem "elegant and highly accomplished in the arts", and in addition "Ram people never have to worry about having the best in life for their abilities make money for them, and they are able to enjoy the creature comforts that they like." Hey, I just copied it off the web site. I'm afraid any of you thinking of having kids missed your chance in 2003 and will just have to wait til 2015. Every last kid born this year is growing up to be an antisocial goth who draws unbelievably detailed fantasy art.
Although all the barnyard imagery is all, like, cool and Asian, I haven't met a Japanese person yet who actually knows this animistic personality stuff. The Western Zodiac never really caught on here either; I suppose all the moons, cusps, scales and scorpions were a bit confusing. No, the official method of determining people's personality before you know them is... blood type.
This is something you catch onto fast as a newcomer to Japan, because the first question after name and birthplace is invariably "what's your bloodtype?". None of my Japanese textbooks included this in the greetings section. I didn't know the answer for a while, but dug out my American Red Cross blood donor card to find I am AB positive. Forget universal receiver, this is the blood type of geniuses baby.
I'm not exactly sure how the whole blood type theory got started, but I have to say that from sheer exposure to this I have started to give it a little credence. The basic outline is: "A's are neat freaks and sticklers for the rules, B's are relaxed, artistic types who will passionately work on one thing while forgetting to wash their socks, AB's are brooding geniuses who go their own way but always finish what they start, and O's are natural born leaders, who always keep the broad picture in mind. There is an ocean of pseudo-scientific evidence to support this. For example, it's common knowledge in Japan that the majority of Japanese are type A (the neat-freak rule-sticklers) and that the majority of Americans are type O (the American empire, it's in the blood man).
I once saw this amazing special on television that tested the blood type theory with a battery of pseudo-science. My favorite test was when the show divided a series of 1st graders into blood type groups and gave them an assignment: carry a bouquet of flowers to a teacher through a downtown shopping area. They placed three distractions along the way: free cotton candy, a busker with a dog doing tricks, and a guy in an anime character suit giving away free balloons. One by one the kids were launched onto the course, with reactions corresponding exactly to blood types. All the A's wavered indecisively before each distraction but pressed on. None of the B's ever reached the goal, most wandering off the course. The O's tried to get the best of both worlds, enjoying the free stuff but reaching the goal, albeit a little late. My fellow AB's kicked ass, not even glancing at the distractions, all heading straight to the goal.
Although lately I've been going through a rough patch, earlier this year I was predicting blood types at about 75% accuracy. Basically whether I believe in it or not is moot; this is the greatest small talk topic ever. No wonder the weather has been so freaky lately, it's just trying to get popular again.
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