Katakana

What's a nicestick?

I've mentioned Katakana before when explaining Kanji. It is the alphabet used to write words taken from other languages - mainly English.

Once borrowed into Japanese these words take on Japanese pronounciation: a 'truck' becomes 'to-ruck-o'; 'bus' becomes 'basu'; and so on. This often makes for an amusing decoding process in shops and restaurants as you sound through the letters, say it a few times, and wait until (and hope) the answer pops into your head. In a cocktail bar the other day: fa... zee.... nay... vu... ru. Hmmmm.... fazee-nay...vuru.... fuzynay-vuru.... Fuzzy Navel! Or: ron-gu-ii-rand-ii-su-da-tee.... Long Island Iced Tea!

However many words come from other languages too - and this often tells you something of Japan's history. For example, because the Portuguese were the first foreigners in Japan following the period of Isolation, the Portuguese names were those usually chosen when describing the strange arrivals from the West. For example in modern Japanese, bread is called パン or pan; cigarettes, cigars and so on are all called タバコ (ta-ba-co), Christians are クリスト (ku-ri-su-to) and England is イギリス (Ig-gi-ri-su) (from "Inglez" perhaps).


Having entered the Japanese lexicon, these words borrowed from other languages start to take on a life of their own. Sometimes the new word is quite ingenious, such as salaryman - a word which seems to capture the grey world of The Office, in a way that business-man, does not. Sometimes however, the result is confusing. What do these words mean for example?

Pasakon
Remokon
Combini
Skill-up
Sexu-hara
nicestick

... Well, just to easy any immediate fears, the picture should help with understanding nice-stick, but you'll find the rest of the answers in the Comments.

PS Check out www.engrish.com for an amusing website largely devoted to this subject.

Smoking Manners # 1

I thought I might start sharing these design classics with you.















Interesting and important question.

水商売 ＃３

This follows previous extracts of Joan Sinclair's book here and here.

Japan's sex industry is a sureal world. Full of fetish and the bizarre, it is a major (if not mainstream) part of Japanese culture, full of educated women, and not a lot of sex. It is, in other words, a world away from 15 year old girls in mini-skirts standing on street corners in Kings Cross.

That at least, is the impression you get from reading Sinclair's book.


When you think of the words "sex industry", the image is a seedy, underground, world populated by a small number of desperate men. Sinclair points out, however, that it is Japan's 2nd biggest industry after cars. It's also an industry worth $20 billion. That's twenty billion dollars. Another source reports that the sex industry accounts for 1% of the GNP, and equals the defense budget.

What's more, it's not really underground. Not only is taking a client to a hostess bar common practice, it's apparently even tax-deductible. You can buy guides to where to find establishments of the sex-industry in train station shops and 7-11. Inside are maps that show that every half-decent sized train station (including my local one) has numerous establishments in its vicinity.

The sex industry also has strong roots in Japanese traditions - which refuse easy labelling as prostitution. The most popular part of this industry, the hostess bar, has no sex involved. It is paying for women to entertain and flirt, and otherwise oil the conversation and between men: a descendent of the Geisha practice.


Sinclair writes:
All I ask is that viewers not assume that this profession is inherently degrading. It's more complicated than that. These women are not powerless, they are not on drugs. They have made conscious choices; they have their own dignity.

Some of the quotes in this book support this...

"I love my job. I meet powerful men and interesting executives and people I would never get to meet otherwise."
Asuka, 26

"I started working at a pink salon three years ago. I was nineteen and beauty-school student. I lived at home, but I love to shop and I wanted a part-time job. I was at a train station and they were handing out tissues. On the tissue pack, there was an advertisment for a part-time job that paid ￥4,500 per hour. It said "easy work, one time a week is okay"...

....I went to the interview and they told me what the salary was before they explained the job. But deep down I knew; it had the feel of a "pink (salon". I took a deep breath and ... auditioned on the manager."

Sinclair is right to make the case for paying attention to Japan's sex-industry as a major part of Japanese culture, and for recognising how different it is to the images and associations that would surface in most Westerners' minds upon hearing the words "red-light district".

What's more, the documentation that Sinclair's book represents is entertaining. Watching how every part of Japanese salaryman life has been systemitically fetishized is simply very funny. You can go in the all-you-can grope train carriage for example; or go to the "Sexual Harrassment Office" where one chooses the colour and make of secretary's underwear, rips it off a "secretary", and then goes home - having parted with a lot of money on the way.

Other stuff is bizarre: for example, one can rent (for not a little money), a life-size silicone doll, where one can choose the head, hair and other features, a wife away from home.

"Our customers are usually too shy to be with a real woman ... or sometimes they just don't want to hear their wives nagging anymore."

All this is pretty fascinating stuff.

However... some of the quotes are more unsettling:

"It would take a year to earn the money for my purse if I was working in an office"

"You never get real satisfaction, you never get enough... That's why I need a real girlfriend, so I don't have to spend so much money"
Teiji, 25 customer

It is surely a lamentable situation that a purse could be that important, especially when its real price is a life that makes a real relationship with a man, and the possibility of true love that represents, impossible. Also I don't have to be a penis-hating feminist to think that seeing a girl-friend as a "prostitute for free", is degrading to women, but also to the man. It is also sad that Asuka who "loves her job", is only going to meet executives and interesting people in such a situtation. And it is true that hostessing is an attractive option for so many partly because the only other main job opportunity for women is to be an office-girl: a photocopying, coffee-fetching pretty face expected to resign late 20s having married one of the older executives of the company.

It is also true that although most hostess-bars are not brothels, brothels do exist in abundance. And let's make things clear: they sell sex. Not every Japanese sex-worker is an educated, middle-class girl living a bit on the wild side before she gets married. There are some 60,000-70,000 Filipina dancers in Japan. Presuming that these girls don't speak Japanese, you have to presume that not all are here for their conversation skills.


The International Coalition against trafficking of Women also reports...

One third of all reported cases of prostitution are teenagers. (1996 National Police Agency survey) and about a quarter of female students aged from 12 to 15 have taken part in telephone chat clubs.

The legal age of consent for sex in Tokyo and Nagano was as late as 1997, 13, not 18 like the rest of the country.

and the most upsetting...

A woman was arrested for selling her 16-year old daughter to a geisha house in northwest Japan for one million yen (US$6,800). The girl escaped and sought police after her mother abused her for running away. ("Japan police say mom sold daughter to geisha house," Reuters, 7 August 1998)


However, it has to be said that most of my problems with the industry are not to do with selling sex, but with exploitation. And the truth is that you don't have to go far in Asia to find no qualms sexual-exploitation: trafficking, abduction and slavery of children as well as women. What's more, exploitation is not limited to the sex-industry.

Exploitation aside, what seems most saddening about the world that Sinclair documents is the materialism (purse vs. possibility of meaningful relationship) and making women into things, rather than treating them as people. But then again I suppose - welcome to humanity...

水商売 #2

Still reading (yes there are words) Joan Sinclair's Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex clubs

Here's some quotes:


"I go to a host club three to four times a week. One time I spent ￥１２０，０００ [£600 approx] I have a boyfriend there, but I'm not really sure if he really likes me, or if it's just business"

Yuri, 23 (herself also in the business as a hostess)




"Foreigners cause trouble and scare off the other customers. They can't understand the rules, they can't communicate with the girls, they bring in AIDS, and they are too big down below".

Doorman explaining "Japanese Only" sign.



Black lights and techno music fill the club as the girls, who are called names like "shrimp", "tuna" and "urchin" rotate every two minutes.

Kaiten Zushi Baxy - rotating sushi breast-groping pub



"Customers can pay an additional ￥2000 to play in a tub of green gel"

No explanation given.

Hitchhiking again!

School

The school where I work, (note the Halloween bats)

Autumn Leaves

ホムステァーの家族と...

Kanji #6

Crown Prince is 太子：　太　(fat) 子　(child).

Amazing shirt folding...

Not often you put the adjective "amazing" with "shirt-folding", but have a look...

Vending Machines

The land of vending machines. They are actually everywhere.

I remember once going to a beautiful little fish farm at the bottom of a river valley, at least two hours walk from the nearest public road, only to find amongst the rural scene of chickens, vegetable patches and fish being farmed, two big vending machines.

You can buy anything. Cigarettes, drinks and until very recent legal changes, alcohol too. But never food. So you can stop off your way home, buy a bottle of whiskey and some cigars but if you fancy a mars or twix? Forget it.

The cow-piss, I mean Calpis range; and what I can assure you does NOT taste anything like cider.

One can also find spiritual enlightenment and a better physique, though beware of depression.

Whales

In the news again: the Japanese like eating whales....

It seems Japan uses economic aid as a way of getting votes in the IWC (International Whaling Commission). Apparently, they gave ₤2.9m to St Kitts and Nevis (where?) in "marine aid" earlier this year.
However, they also through "marine aid" got Mongolia and Mali, both land-locked, to join the IWC and vote accordingly. Awesome.

Picture: Ghengis Khan off whaling...

Kanji # 5

Science

Biology is 生物学 or, living (生）things （物） study （学）.

Physics is 物理学： things (物), reason or logic (理), study (学）.

and Chemistry is 化学 : change (化) study (学).


All just very matter-of-fact isn't it?

水商売

A fascinating interview with photographer Joan Sinclair here, promoting her new book Pink Box.

Some highlights...














Why document the Japanese sex industry?

It’s the second largest industry in Japan (automobiles are the first). It’s too much a part of Japanese modern culture to be ignored.


It's a pretty varied scene, is it not?

I was blown away. There are train clubs with all-you-can-grope commuting women....

There's “Sexual Harassment” offices where men can tear the pantyhose off their “secretaries.”...

Then there's the ‘imprint service’, where the customer paints traditional calligraphy ink onto the woman’s anatomy. She then sits down on Japanese rice paper and leaves an imprint of her body for the customer to keep. ...

There’s also the pantyhose ripping service. The customer chooses what kind of pantyhose—beige, black or sparkly—he wants the woman to wear. He can also select fishnet tights and panties. For an extra $20, the customer gets to rip them off the woman and keep the torn material.


So, how did you actually get in the door of these places?

Basically, it took a lot of singing karaoke with unsavory characters.


Many of the girls are educated and middle class. Do their parents know?

Many clubs offered so-called ‘alibi services’. A lot of the women still lived at home, which is common in Japan for individuals even into their 30s and 40s. They would tell their parents that they were makeup artists or waitresses. If the parents called that line, the club would answer, “Hello, Denny’s”—or wherever the women were pretending to work.


That’s ingenious.

Well, the clubs compete with each other for the women so fiercely that the women themselves are the prized commodity. The managers really want to keep them so they take good care of them.




















What about their futures? Do they get stuck in the sex industry, unable to break the addiction to quick cash, like so many American performers?


A lot of the women try it for a month or two, then quit, get married, and never tell their husbands.

It’s really hard work, and the ones who do it for years don’t stay in the industry for decades. A lot of them have college degrees, since Japan boasts a 99% literacy rate.

Generally, they can’t be on drugs—they’d get fired. In Japan, you need to use the more difficult formal form of honorable language to address customers, so any drug or alcohol abuse would be obvious and quickly discouraged. Their social demands are so much more complex than ours.

Japanese Tourists

Japanese tourists feel so let down by Paris shop assistants that they need treatment for a type of depression known as "Paris Syndrome".

"There are around 20 cases a year of the syndrome and it has been happening for several years," Miyupi Kusama, an administrator at the Japanese embassy in Paris, told the Guardian. Already this year it has repatriated at least four visitors suffering from hallucinations.

"Fragile travellers can lose their bearings. When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover it can provoke a crisis," Hervé Benhamou, a psychologist, told Le Journal du Dimanche.

From the Guardian

Japanese Technology #2

Imagine a normal jacket.

Now make it reversible, so you can wear it both ways. Not an exceptional innovation: we have such jackets in England.

However... NOW make it so its zip is able to fully seal the person inside the jacket - chin, nose, face and all.

Incredible Japanese engineering.

More Charisma Man...

If these are two small ... click here

Language #1

One of the most interesting things about learning another language, is when you start finding the insufficiencies in your own language.

For example 懐かしい (natsukashii) is an adjective used to describe something that brings back memories from a long time ago. You return to your primary school, natsukashii! you think. As a one word response to such a situation, it is largely without equivalent in English.

I already find this all the time with certain Japanese trills. For example, "deshyo?", put at the end of a sentence, means "is it not?", but has the distinct equivalent of not sounding so halting as that phrase or its burberry equivalent, "innit?". In a bi-lingual environment like Linden Hall, this means lots of mixing and matching English and Japanese. We told him 16 books, deshyo?

At other times, the existence of certain words with no equivalents in English, lend a extra authority to what would otherwise be just a contestable piece of wisdom when expressed in English. For example,

幼なじみ　（osananajimi) is a friend since childhood;
親馬鹿　（oyabaka) is a parent who loves their child to the extent they lose all perspective;
子は鎹（kowakasugai) means "the child is a clamp"; in other words, having a child will keep a couple together even when they don't get along.

In English, the idea that a child is often all that keeps a marriage together, is a arguable (and sad) hypothesis about the nature of human relationships. But once it gets its own status as a word, it gains power, and seems to be as present and obvious as other incontestable things given words, like "happiness", "bicycle" or "infatuation".

Of course we do know this in English which is why we steal other language's words: "deja vu" is a perfect example. However if we start to steal Japanese words, we should be careful not to lose track of which way the traffic flows.

If we're not careful, we'll do a Bush: "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur".

On the beach...

Read Ollie's account here.

I especially like the of the huge jellyfish with the caption, "As can be seen from this photo, it was about the size of a Dave. "

すみません、英語がわかりません。

Yesterday I pretended I was Russian, and thus unable to speak English, to avoid another wearisome conversation with someone desperate to do just that. These always go something like this:

[Friend talking - meaningful and interesting conversation, ]...so then after my Mum died, I was going through a hard time when I had this amazing dream -
- WHERE ARE YOU FROM?Japanese person, interrupting, extra loud so as there is no confusion.
- [muttering] England.
- sugoi! SUGOI! (which means "amazing" basically) Big excitement - like you've just told them you're from a nearby star-system... then DAVID BECKHAM! or if slightly older, BEATLES! BEATLES! This is like an English person shouting excitedly Kareoke! KAREOKE! upon someone telling them that they are from Japan.
- [Next question] How old are you? The single most important question in Japan.
- 23
- SUGOI! SUGOI! More excitement. Sometimes they turn to their friends, nodding excitedly, 23! 23! He said 23!

From here, the questions might move to Japanese food, Do you like nato? (not the military organization, but a type of fermented bean popular in Kyushyu.) Can you use chopsticks? Or it might be a job related question, Do you teach English? and when you reply yes, more Sugoi! Sugoi! which is like expressing surprise and excitement upon a priest replying that yes, he is indeed Catholic.

Of course it's a small inconvenience. You are probably the first native English speaker they've probably ever been close to, let alone talked to. It is the flip side to C-list celebrity status that every gaijin has, which brings him or her so many small kindnesses every day. It is a small inconvenience in an otherwise charmed life.

A more gracious person would realize all this. As for me, I'm going to pretend I'm Russian.

Kanji #4

心 is heart, 学 is study; thus 心学 is psychology.

Kanji #3

As my Kanji book puts it, "many characters containing the elements for 'woman' and 'man' reflect the times in which they were created".



For example, a rice field is 田、and power or strength is 力; put them together and you get 男, the character for man, the power of the rice field.


But more amusing is the more "dated" ones:

A 女　is woman

A woman at home is 安 or "safety",

but 姦　is noisy or immoral （姦しい）.

Cambridge House Insanity

What is it about Cambridge House that sends people crazy?







Actually some really good photos there, however loops they clearly are.
Reminds me of last year

Kanji #2

日 is sun and 月 is moon. Which makes 明 "brightness" and 旦 "dawn". February is 2月or "second moon".

木　is tree; 林　is woods or copse, and 森 forest.

Japanese Girls #2 Racism #１

What explains the change to Charisma Man, as a white guy arrives in Asia?

Still puzzling over the answer, but here probably is its most shocking expression:

http://www.keikos-homepage.jp/funtime.htm
In her own words,

"Hello my name is Keiko and I live in Tokyo in Japan. I have a nice apartment in Ochanomizu and you are welcome to stay with me if you are UNDER 35 and YOU ARE NICE LOOKING and YOU ARE WHITE. You can save your hotel cost (a lot in Tokyo!) and we can have fun! – but ONLY if you are a white guy. I do not want asian men, sorry."

So what does she get? Again the lady explains,

"What do I get?? I can have some fun sex with Europen, and American guys… what I love – they are very sexy and yummy! - Japanese men are pigs. Also, I want to practise my English with you, please."

There includes a series of emails sent, of which the two I thought most funny were

"I don't know how to say it, but I meet all you are looking for plus I am well to do. What I want to do, crudely put, is to have anal sex with you. Let me know?"

The other email's subject was "Im up for some hard hitting action".

"Sounds like youre a girl whose in need of a good pounding fairly regularly. Im an aussie, im going to be heading to japan in a couple of months and im ready to give you the pounding you need."

A bit of a communication gap followed (not because he can't spell "who's") as Keico's response showed:

"I hope pounding is sex. – or I am scared! I cannot find ‘pounding' in my dictionary! let me know :-("

more here

Light festival in Dazaifu.

The lights go off, as the crowds gather around the edge of a candle-lined Tenmangu lake. Great pictures Ollie.

光明寺 - Komyoji

A zen moss garden, in 大宰府 (Dazaifu）. Stunning.

Sports Day

Just a normal sports day.... except this one has TV cameras














The event on the right is called the "who can stand straightest for the longest event"


Mr Tsuzuki pitches in.

Internet cafes - Japan style

I am currently in an internet cafe. Except this one is Asian style. Some things are normal. I have a computer, a keyboard and of course internet access. But from there the similarities start to fade. Behind me is a wall of manga comics, two metres high. In fact the whole place boasts of 10,000 volumes of big-eyed, pointy-nosed characters in every genre you might think of.

I can also get magazines, newspapers, or a dvd to entertain myself; while sipping one of an array of free drinks (including one called Calpis). I can watch TV, relax on the sofa behind me, even have a snooze with the aid of one of the pillows and sets of blankets provided. There's an array of pastel coloured slippers to put on my feet. I can have my own cubicle with massage chair and array of porn channels. There are showers, billards and darts, dark areas and bright areas, smoking and non. There's boxes of dry violently coloured crusts that turn into nutrious noodles when you add hot water. I can choose different price options: one for 10 mins, another for 9 hours, and in fact I could stay indefinitely.

Food, water, entertainment, open 24/7 - as long I've got money to pay my bill, I have no reason to ever leave. And by the looks of some of the chain-smoking, long haired characters trapsing between the manga aisles, some never do.