鳩山ぽっぽ饅頭


© JapanVisitor.com

Tokyo's downtown Okachimachi district is one stop on the JR Yamanote line from Ueno. Okachimachi is, like Ueno, a far cry from the classier scene a little further west represented first and foremost by Ginza. Okachimachi is represented by its Ameyokocho shopping street - a mad bustle of shoppers on the weekend shouted at by criers of all kinds trying to push the best bargain.

The supermarkets are small and crowded, and chock-a-block with often seemingly randomly arranged produce.

Scanning the shelves of one little retailer this weekend, these packets of Hatoyama Poppo Manju caught my eye. Starting from the back of that phrase: Manju are traditional Japanese sweets, small balls made of flour and rice powder dough and filled with red azuki bean paste. Poppo is a child's word for "pigeon." Hatoyama (literally "pigeon mountain") is the name of the new prime minister of Japan. So, something like "Hatoyama Pidgy-Widgy Bean Cakes," - perhaps.

The speech bubble out the Right Honorable's mouth says "Poppo po, hato-poppo," which, apparently, are some of the lyrics from a nursery rhyme about pigeons.

The diagonal red stripe at the top says "anti-bureaucratic administration," in recognition of the new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government's pledge to rein in the presently unbridled power of the Japanese bureaucracy.

Thinking this might all add up to some clever satire comprehensible only to those thoroughly steeped in the culture, I asked one or two Japanese friends what it all meant.

They said "Hato-poppo" is a children's song about pigeons. The bit at the top is about the DPJ's anti-bureaucratic policy. A refreshingly WYSIWYG revelation!


Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tokyo Vice

Tags

Japan Tokyo Okachimachi Hatoyama manju

名古屋女

On a cold early December evening, we noticed a young woman waiting for a friend just outside Kanayama Station, Nagoya.

We were waiting for someone, too, and were struck by her light red skirt, black tights and top, and white bag with pink highlights.

The station area is fairly banal: aside from the Boston Museum on the other side, it is the usual mishmash of fast food, banks, telephone wires, and pachinko.

There is a small outdoor mall just behind where the woman is standing.

A view of the mall and beyond - with the requisite love hotel and English school - can be seen below.

Not sure which (if either) of these she was headed to.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Nagoya Japanese Woman

新幹線の担当スタフ

Riding the Japanese bullet train is a comfortable, convenient, and civilized experience.

From the platform attendants who announce the arrival of the trains - and watch over camera-wielding trainspotters who wander too close to the edge - to the conductors who bow as they enter and exit each car, it is a smooth ride.

The conductor pictured right took our tickets in seconds, apologizing first for the inconvenience, and then thanking us after completing the brief procedure.

She carried an electronic device that alerted her to which passengers had yet to show their tickets. Her uniform is perfectly pressed, her scarf pinned professionally. Not a single hair is out of place.

Just before the conductor passed through the car, the "beer and nuts lady" - a young woman with a cart full of coffee, snacks, sandwiches, and beer - made an appearance.

Calling out to the passengers in the car to announce her arrival, she wore a yellow uniform, and was equally well groomed.

Prior to boarding, we took a picture of the platform attendant. He was an officious and serious man, who wielded his red flag with great aplomb and verve.

His shoe shine would make a Marine sargeant proud.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Nagoya Japanese

今週の日本

Japan Suspends Talks on Where to Move a U.S. Air Base

New York Times

Obama's Japan Headache

New York Times

Robots become reality

Guardian

Does Japan still matter?

Washington Post

Japón anuncia un plan de estímulo equivalente al 1,5% de su PIB

El Pais

Japanese ladies long for date with brutal men of history

Times Online

Japan under fire for laying low in Copenhagen

Japan Times

Au japon, une chirurgie des doigts trompe la douane

Libération

Wendy's burger chain to withdraw from Japan

BBC

Japan’s Leader Promotes $81 Billion Stimulus Plan

New York Times

World Cup 2010: Shunsuke Nakamura Has To Start On The Bench For Japan - Philippe Troussier

Yahoo Sports

Last week's Japan news


Japan Statistics

Source: Asahi Shinbun

Half of Japanese women in their 20s and thirties experience constipation. Including those who suffer from diarrhea, the figure jumps to 84%.

According to a survey by dairy products giant Morinaga, of the 10,000 women polled 52% replied yes to "Often constipated" or "Occasionally constipated."

Source: Asahi Shinbun

National CO2 Reduction Targets (Target Deemed Necessary by IEA)

Japan: 25% (10%)
USA: 4% (3%)
EU: 20-30% (23%)
Russia: 20-25% (27%)
China: 40-45% (47%)

Source: Daily Yomiuri

Beer shipments will hit the lowest level since 1992. Domestic shipments of beer and alcoholic drinks look set to fall below the 482 million cases in 2008.

Source: Kyodo News

Toyoto automobiles have been linked to 40% of the sudden-acceleration cases in the US.

Source: Kyodo News

© JapanVisitor

Book a hotel in Japan with Bookings

Japanese Fiction

Happi Coats

Tags

Japan News Japan Statistics politics

タバコ自動販売機

Neither a smoker nor a fan of second-hand smoke, we still find the ubiquitous machines a small wonder.

In appearance and technological capability, the cigarette machines are indeed amazing.

This machine was tucked in an alley just off of Kyoto's Sanjo Dori.

The contrast between the colors -and high-tech vibe of the machine - contrasts nicely with the wooden casing.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Vending Machine Japanese

Wonderful Fool

by Shusaku Endo

ISBN: 4-8053-0376-X237 pp

At first light comedy, then fast-moving thriller, Wonderful Fool gradually focuses on its Christian Japanese author's favourite theme, the suffering and redemption of the common mass of humanity, but is never bogged down by overt religiosity. Its central figure, the eponymous fool, is a Frenchman with the physique of a sumo wrestler and the heart of a child, reminiscent in his dogged innocence of Dostoyevsky's similarly named Idiot. Like Prince Myshkin, Shusako's Gaston Bonaparte is descended from noble stock, but where Myshkin is feeble in body, Gaston's lumbering form betrays no Napoleonic dignity. What Gaston shares with Myshkin, apart from a lack of wits, is an instinctive, Christ-like need to help those around them that first exasperates, then dumbfounds, and ultimately enriches the people who are fortunate enough to come in contact with him.

When devil-may-care bank-clerk Takamori, living in Tokyo, receives a letter from an old penpal, he has no idea what impact his French friend will have on the life of himself and his haughty young sister. Nor does Gaston realise that his unselfish desire to come to Japan to help others will lead him into the clutches of a ruthless killer who is out for revenge on those who framed his brother during World War II. Shusako employs cinematic-style parallel storytelling that contrasts two worlds of Japan to good effect - the quarters of comparative ease and affluence in a quickly modernising Japan of the 1950s, and the accompanying poverty- and crime-ridden shanty towns that fringe Tokyo like a crusty excretion of sin.

Perhaps the only fault of this 2000 printing is that the translation, first published in 1974, retains explanatory footnotes that are no longer necessary: who, for example, doesn't know what sushi is?! But Shusaku's style itself, at first playful and lighthearted, and then unswerving in its recording of sordid incident, is served well by Peter Owen's prose. Some may find Gaston, like prince Myshkin, a tiresome do-gooder, but Shusaku's unsentimental approach does much to give his misadventures a ring of reality. Gaston's fate is ambiguous, but his effect on those he has touched - which may well include the reader - is decidedly positive.

Richard Donovan

Buy this book from Amazon USA I UK I Japan

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tags

Japan Books Shusaku Endo Japanese literature

思いやり予算

The Japanese language has nothing equal to good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon profanity.

Insults are more often the result of using impolite verb forms, rolling your Rs in a bad imitation of a mobster, or saying to someone that s/he has for example "short legs."

However, Japanese can hold their own when it comes to subtle put-downs. Hyper aware of status and position, Japanese can be casually cutting with the best of them.

One is the infamous "sympathy budget."

Usually, this is rendered in quotation marks or as the "so-called sympathy budget" in the Japanese media.

What it refers to is the portion of the budget that is devoted to supporting US troops stationed at one of the many bases in Japan. According to politicalaffairs.net, "the total amount of Japan’s payment for the stationing of U.S. forces in the FY 2008 will be 620 billion yen (about 6 billion dollars)." (Note the lack of quotation marks.)

The term is said to originate with the late Shin Kanemaru, who in 1978 defended the payments by saying they are done "out of sympathy." He was at the time the Director-General of the Japan Defense Agency.

The money spent is a source of irritation for many Japanese, particularly in base-heavy Okinawa. Thus, the popularity of the put down.

Needless to say, the term is not popular in the US Embassy.


© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Sympathy Budget Japanese

名古屋のホステスバー

I should have realised when we went out with a Japanese business connection last night in Nagoya that we'd end up in a hostess bar - our man virtually lives in them.

If I had planned ahead, I wouldn't have worn that sweater or drank so much beforehand. I would be smoking filtered cigarettes, not roll up tobacco. I needed to look smart and be on the ball. I wasn't. I was tired and tipsy.

"You can't be stupid to be a hostess," my foreign colleague, obviously having the time of his life, declared.

Indeed not, these girls knew their stuff, as the conversation ping-ponged from European countries visited, cinema, to international marriage, to the Japanese couple, to sex (and lack of between aforementioned Japanese couple), to love, to music! This was hard work and I was struggling to keep up.



My weak whiskey soda is constantly refilled, my straggly roll ups expertly lit, a hand occasionally brushes my knee if my responses begin to lag.

Finally, it is over, we could leave. Money is exchanged. Our two beautiful and vivavious hostesses and mama-san accompany us down to the street in the elevator. "How tall you are!"



"I bet you feel like a king," I teased my colleague as we swayed into a taxi.
"Yes, these ladies are professionals. They do their job well. You can't be stupid to be a hostess."

"Who needs an expensive psychiatrist when you can feel good by drinking, smoking and chatting with beautiful (and untouchable) women?"

With that happy thought in his mind, my colleague rode his bullet train back to Kyoto and home before midnight.

リビエ－ル
Nagoya
Naka-ku, Nishiki 3-19-8
Hiro Ishikawa Bldg. 5A
460-0003
Tel: 052 961 2245

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Hostess Bar Nagoya Japanese

御在所

Mount Gozaisho (1212m) in Mie Prefecture is a perfect place to combine autumn leaf-viewing with a hot soak in an onsen.



At the base of Mount Gozaisho is the hot spring resort of Yunoyama with a number of Japanese-style inns or ryokan, where you can spend the night or just pop in during the day to take a bath.



The Hotel du Marrionier (Tel: 059 392 3210), a short walk from the cable car station, is a large onsen hotel with day entry to the baths for 1000 yen for adults and 500 yen for children. Free towels are provided. There is a lovely rotemburo (outdoor bath) with views of the cable cars going up and down the mountainside.





Here are a list of some other onsen options:

Kuranosuke (059 392 2509) 800 yen for adults; 400 yen for children

Hotel Yunoki (059 392 2141) 800 yen for adults; 400 yen for children

Shikanoyu (059 392 2141) 1000 yen for adults; 3-500 yen for children

Irodorikoyo (059 392 3135) 525 yen for adults

Bath charges range from around 500 yen to 1,000 yen for entry to the baths at the various hotels in Yunoyama Onsen, many of which have rotemburo or outdoor pools.



Access

Yunoyama Onsen can be reached in just over an hour from Nagoya Station by Kintetsu Railway (830 yen). Change at Yokkaichi and take the Yunoyama Line to Yunoyama Station. From there, there is an infrequent bus up to the spa (260 yen), taxi (over 1000 yen) or a 30 minute walk uphill.
Alternatively, there are direct Mie Kotsu buses from Nagoya Station (1280 yen) to the resort. Buses leave Nagoya at 7.52am (Weekends), 8.28am, 9.12am & 10.34am. The last bus back to Nagoya is 5.15pm. Other bus times back from Yunoyama are 2.15pm, 3.15pm and 4.15pm.
Gozaisho.co.jp
Tel: 059 392 2261
The ropeway costs 1200 yen one-way or 2100 yen return.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a hotel in Japan with Bookings

Tokyo Serviced Apartments

Budget accommodation in Japan

Happi Coats

Tags

Japan Mie Yunoyama Nagoya onsen Gozaisho