ニホンザル


Japan has its own native species of monkey, the Macaca fuscata, commonly known as the Japanese macaque, or, in Japanese, the nihonzaru ("Japan monkey"). A subspecies, the Macaca fuscata yakui, is confined to the island of Yakushima.

Japanese macaques are 50-60cm in body length and weigh about 11kg. They range in color from yellowish brown, to brown, to gray. They have a pink face and a short stumpy tail.

Males and females of the species are distinguished by several traits such as size, the males being a little bigger; lifespan, the males living 5 or 6 times longer than the females, who usually live only about 6 years; and habitat, the males being ground-based while the females are tree-based.

The estimated nationwide population of the Japanese macaque is one million. They are found in almost every part of Japan except Hokkaido. 

Japanese macaques are not endangered, being on the "least concern" end of the endangered scale. They have natural predators such as dogs, raccoon dogs and hawks. They are also hunted when they threaten human crops. An estimated 100,000 are killed every year.

Because of their pest value, feeding monkeys in Japan is strongly discouraged. The above photo is a sign in the resort town of Hakone, and says えづけ禁止　or "Feeding prohibited."

© JapanVisitor.com


Like this blog? Sign up for the JapanVisitor newsletter

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
monkey
macaque
Yakushima

産業廃棄物会社の看板

In the hills north of Kyoto, several companies that handle industrial waste mar an otherwise pristine forest and river.

The grounds of the company are surrounded by sheet metal fences and are monitored by security cameras.

Every now and then a dump truck will roll out, loaded with only God knows what.

Illegal dumping is rife in Japan, as a quick peek into the woods and rivers that line many rural roads will attest to.

The villagers in Kumogahata, near the company pictured above, picketed and protested and even enlisted the help of the Kyoto City Communist Party to prevent the companies from setting up on this river. All to no avail. The city government went ahead and gave approval.

Below the company logo - the odd looking man with a chainsaw and cigar - is its name and license number.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
Tokyo
Kyoto
Industrial Waste
Japanese

民衆党総選挙外国人参政権

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)'s presidential election is scheduled to take place on Sept. 14, and, thanks to a provision in the party's constitution, permanent foreign residents who have registered as members or supporters of the DPJ will be able to vote.

The election is between current Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Ichiro Ozawa, who is the most powerful politician in Japan.

The DPJ is the majority party, and therefore the winner of the Party election will become the prime minister. This means in effect that the 900,000 permanent foreign residents in Japan may have some sway in the outcome of the election.

Not all of those are eligible to vote - you have to be 18 or older and either a registered party member or a "supporter" - so it statistically unlikely that foreigners will cast the deciding vote. (Moreover, as noted above, those who have yet to register with the DPJ as either a member or supporter will not be eligible to vote in the upcoming election.)

The right wing in Japan is predictably up in arms about this turn of events. Both the Sankei Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun have editorialized about the dangers of foreigners influencing the choice of the prime minister. The majority of Japan's permanent foreign residents are Koreans, who make up more than 500,000 of the total.

The opposition Liberal Democratic Party does permit all party members to participate in its party elections - but limits membership to Japanese nationals.

The DPJ's constitution however states that anybody aged 18 or older can become "party members or supporters, including Japanese living abroad and permanent foreign residents of Japan" - and all are eligible to vote in the DPJ election.

To join the Party as a member costs 6,000 for one year; supporters pay only 2,000 yen. Both have voting rights.

It is possible to register online. Doing so now will allow you to vote in the next election - not on September 14th. Elections are generally held every two years.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
Tokyo
Democratic Party of Japan
Foreign Suffrage
Japanese

グランド　オープン　ビタミン　ゴルフ


Were your testes terminated? Your lymph laid off? Your kidneys kicked? Your adenoids absented? Is your pancreas payless? Your spleen on the scrapheap?

Fret for them no more: there's an opening! And at a Vitamin Golf Course at that, providing a clearly nutiritious and supportive environment for any gland with the gumption to sign up.

But seriously, Vitamin Golf is an indoor golfing school in Tokyo's Aoyama district that opened last month. You pay 20,000 yen (USD230) to "register," then a per-hour fee of 9,000 yen (USD100) (with a junior teacher) or 12,000 yen (USD140) (with a senior teacher) who takes you through your swing on a virtual golf course, lined up along a wall with a dozen other punters in front of a screen - these fees further inflated by a miscellany of minor "facilities usage" charges and the like. Looks like it's basically Nintendo Wii golf for OL with the addition of some live young male charisma.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
Tokyo
golf
gland
vitamin

幸福実現党



The Happiness Realization Party, founded in May 2009, is the political organ of the Happy Science religious movement. Happy Science is a sci-fi religion founded by Ryuho Okawa, a former high-flying trader turned charismatic religious leader who claims to be a reincarnation of the Buddha.

The Happy Science movement has been extremely successful. With a law degree from Tokyo University and a finance degree from the City University of New York,“Master Okawa” is obviously brainy; having set himself up as a literal demi-god, he is obviously ambitious; and, having attracted enough followers to have well over 200 centers in Japan and over 30 overseas, he is obviously charismatic and convincing.

The beliefs of Happy Science as outlined on its website are an untidy package of banal New Age platitudes: basically watered down Buddhism with plenty of sci-fi seasoning: “The ‘Real World’ is multi-dimensional. Human spirits exist from the 4th dimension to the 9th, with each having different qualities.” etc etc. (Incredibly, by the way, Tokyo’s free what’s-on magazine, Metropolis, published an article on July 9 about Happy Science that lauds the organization for its “heroic attempt to inject religious values back into modern society.” What other oddball cults has Metropolis magazine raved about in the past, we wonder?)


Little can then be expected then, of the Realization of Happiness Party, and little, indeed, does it deliver. I came across the Party campaigning in Ginza and, the next week, in Akihabara. “Doctor Nakamatsu” was the candidate for the proportional representational seats for which the elections were held last week. He paraded in absurd fairytale finery while a recording of him singing his election song in a quavery voice to the tune of “Doe, A Deer” played from his election van.

His young minions paraded behind him holding to their faces the paper masks of Doctor Nakamatsu that were the feature accoutrements of his campaign: a major platform of which is to ... lower taxes! The Party also milks the Japanese public's fear of China and North Korea for all it's worth by predicting a nuclear attack on, and the colonization of, Japan by either or both of these powers.

The dignity of Japanese politics got some respite in the first half of this decade with Junichiro Koizumi, but the lid is clearly back off. The encouraging thing is that “Doctor Nakamatsu” got only 30,000 votes. Er, did we just say “encouraging”?

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
Tokyo
Happiness Realization Party
Happy Science

楷書　行書

Shodo, or shuji, is the Japanese art of calligraphy. There are several different styles of Japanese characters, corresponding to fonts in the Western alphabet.

Two of the most popular are kaisho　楷書: the regular block style that looks closest to the printed word, and gyosho 行書, a semi-cursive script slightly more fluid than kaisho, but not fluid to the point of near-illegibility - as is the case with the very free and flowing sosho 草書.

Above are two examples of the same phrase written in the two styles: kaisho on the left and gyosho on the right.

The phrase is, as most shodo phrases are, a four-character phrase (yon-moji-jukugo 四文字熟語). It is pronounced tosho hitori tanoshimu, and simply means "the solitary pleasure of reading."

Read more about Japanese calligraphy.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service
Japanese Friends
Tokyo Apartments Search
Japan Job Search
Rough Guide To Japan
Tags
Japan
calligraphy

自殺防止

The Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan concerns itself partly with the general health and safety of the Japanese population.

This spring’s Cabinet Office health campaign is a suicide prevention one, focusing on the issue of sleep deprivation, called “Nemurete-masuka?” or “Are you sleeping OK?”

According to the National Police Agency, over 30,000 people in Japan have killed themselves each year over the past 12 years, 40% of whom were males aged between 40 and 70. The suicide rate typically peaks in March, which is the end of the financial year in Japan, and which is therefore when this campaign was launched.

The message is “If you haven’t been sleeping properly for two weeks or more, you may be depressed, and liable to suicide.” Consultation with a doctor is recommended for people in this condition.

The Cabinet Office’s suicide prevention campaign video features a (typically, for Japanese TV, misty, airbrushed, romantic) after-breakfast scene at home with a puffy-eyed, exhausted-looking dad about to head out to work, and his mobile-phone texting daughter actually breaking away from her texting long and decisively enough to question dad about whether he’s been getting enough sleep or not. The campaign poster is based on the same scenario.

However, Japan’s suicide rate, while high, is not the highest in the world. It is second among the Group of Eight nations after Russia, and, according to the latest available figures, sixth highest in the world. However, there are those who believe that it may be much higher than reported, due to the Japanese government’s definition of suicide, which is rather narrower than that of the World Health Organization.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings Japanese Friends Japan Job SearchTokyo Vice
Tags
Japan Cabinet Office suicide

仕事がない会社員


The common wisdom about Japan is that it is a nation of workaholics. Indeed, Japanese people usually take their job very seriously. They are typically really into their job - whatever it is. Many of them seem to achieve the enviable state of their job being their hobby.

Needless to say, many of them are overworked, suffering chronic lack of sleep and very high levels of workload stress, spending the kind of hours at the office that you might expect of highly paid executives - but without executive-type pay or position.

And yet again, conversely, there are many, many times in Japan that you would be forgiven for thinking that work for Japanese people is as much about standing around talking and drinking tea as it is about busting a gut.

Take the scene I snapped above just down the road from the office in Tokyo's Kojimachi district. No less than four laborers were working on fixing a few paving stones in the sidewalk - a job that "back home" would take a maximum of two. No less than three people connected with the company commissioning the job and the company doing the job are standing around, arms folded or hands on hips, just watching.

Reminds me of the time I was accosted and quizzed on the street one night in Shinjuku carrying a suitcase by a carload of no less than seven policemen, or a couple of months ago when I aroused the ire of two railway station staff by asking one of them for directions when at the time both of them were vying to give directions to another customer.

As life in Japan sure brings home, while hard work and efficiency have their time and place, taking it easy has its too. Redundancy in Japan isn't just about having no job.




© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tokyo Vice

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Nagoya Japanese

試験の問題：教師の猫の名前




A high school in Yanagawa City, Fukuoka Prefecture, has made the news with the kindergarten-type questions posed in exam questions for last school year.

In both the first- and second-term exams for the third-year botany class and and first-year general science class of Sugimori Municipal High School, questions included those about the model and color of the car the teacher drove, its license plate number, and the name of the teacher's cat.

The answers were all provided, albeit jumbled, for the students to select the correct one from. The teacher also provided verbal clues during the exam.

The overall scores for students taught by the teacher in the courses involved were between 84 and 94%, over 20% higher than the average for other classes.

The principal received complaints from outside the school (supposedly parents) and there was criticism from other teachers, too. The teacher - a male in his 40s - defended the baby-style questions as a way of ascertaining if the kids had listened to him in class. (Hey, why not ask them to remember the punch lines of jokes he'd told them, too?)

The principal admitted that the the exam questions were inappropriate, that there had been insufficient checks in place, and that improvements would be made in the third term.

As anyone teaching at universities in Japan knows, the quality of students is declining in Japan, due mainly to falling demand at educational facilities. While the population is declining, the capacity of educational facilities remains much the same. Universities are therefore easing the entrance criteria in order to keep lecture halls full. However, on the other hand, with the declining numbers of students, the pressure is no doubt on teachers to perform in a profession where personnel cuts are now likely.

A teacher pampering students with questions about his cat's name is symptomatic of an education system facing redundancy that must be fed more students, and of teachers, also facing redundancy, who must produce "results."

Read more about education in Japan.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tokyo Vice

Tags

Japan education Fukuoka

小学校の野球



Baseball is just as popular in Japan as it is in the United States and, as in the US, Japanese baseball starts young. Wherever you go in Japan, you will see - and especially hear - baseball being practiced on school playgrounds.

But Japanese baseball has the typically Japanese twist of being team-oriented in the extreme, and being bound by conventions. When it comes to form, you will never see any moves made that are not strictly according to the textbook, and the element of ritual when it comes to in-team and inter-team interactions is very strong.

Check out aspects of the above in this video taken of Japanese elementary school teams having a match in Tokyo, not far from one of Japan's hallowed baseball venues, Tokyo Dome. Once the game is over, every bit as much energy is expended on the post-game rituals as on the game itself, and the hierarchy of (adult) trainers/managers and (student) players features very strongly.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tokyo Vice

Tags

Japan Tokyo baseball school

警察帽子

At a party over the New Year's holidays, the host - a somewhat tipsy older man - disappeared into another room for what seemed longer than a prostrate-induced trip to the toilet.

When he returned, he now had on his policeman's hat, which he last wore more than two decade ages while as a member of the Kyoto Prefectural Police and fighting crime and the local mob.

We all clapped and begged to be arrested on the spot. Instead of cuffing us, however, he instead encouraged all of us try it on. It was surprisingly stiff and heavy.

It has the signature chrysanthemum symbol and - dare we utter it - a visor of nearly North Korean proportions.


© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Japan Job Search

Tokyo Vice

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Police Hat Japanese

あけましておめでとうございます

Happy 2010 to all our visitors. It's the Year of the Tiger in 2010 and our nengajo (New Year's Card) shows the kanji character for the year of the tiger (寅; tora).



Join our Japan newsletter to keep up to date to all that is new on Japan Visitor for 2010.

E-mail us if you would like to receive the glossy New Year's card above (until January 20).
desk [at] japanvisitor [dot] com
Subject "new year card"
Just include your name and snail mail address, and we will promptly post it to you, written in beautiful calligraphy.

We wish you all a peaceful and healthy 2010.

© Japan Visitor

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a hotel in Japan with Bookings

Tokyo Serviced Apartments

Japan Friends

The Japanese Spa: A Guide to Japan's Finest Ryokan and Onsen

Tags

New Year nengajyo Tiger

錦糸町　お祭り



I stayed this weekend at an address in Kinshicho, a relatively impoverished town in Tokyo's east end. I was awoken Sunday by what I thought first was a crow. As I listened, I realized it was human: a constant, strident, parade-ground-type shouting of a single voice, repeating the same words over and over.

I blearily went out onto the veranda to see what the commotion was, and was surprised to see a festival in full - but somehow listless - swing, with scores of men shouldering a large, ornate omikoshi portable Shinto shrine down a deserted backstreet.

I say "surprised," because the yelling that had woken me up did not suggest a festival. The sounds of Japanese festivals are group sounds, with the loud chanting of "Wasshoi!" all in unison, and the commotion of the crowd following. This, rather, was the lone, unpleasant, amplified voice that conjured up a villainous harangue in an old war movie rather than a scene of neighborhood festivity.

The shouter was a middle-aged man wearing a huge, white megaphone, who led the procession, walking backwards hollering at it in his ugly, incessant staccato. Strangely, the "revelers" were almost silent, rhythmically hoisting the omikoshi, but with little vigor, delegating what should have been the communal festive voice to the cawing of the "sergeant major."

Stranger still, there was no one following the procession, besides an old homeless man carting his few worldly possessions and mumbling to himself, and a garbage truck: both parties, I presume, just happening to be there when I looked out.

So there it was: an almost silent crowd of seemingly duty-bound shrine-bearers following a fascist with a bullhorn down a deserted backstreet overhung by a grimy overhead highway with hardly anyone in tow outside the happi-wearing core of listless "revelers."

And that pink afro wig?!

I shot a little footage, rubbed my eyes, and went back to bed, to dream something a little sweeter.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kinshicho festival

夏ばて

Goya gourd. Photo by Dalgial

Summer in Japan is characterized by festivals, fireworks displays, and the wearing of the traditional yukata. However, on the flip side, being as hot and humid as it is, summer is also known as a season of fatigue.

If you’re a regular at a gym in Japan you will notice how it seems to empty out a little in July and August. The atmosphere inside the typical Japanese office is slightly oppressed in summer, with people taking more random days off work, and harried faces more the norm than in the cooler months. Look out from your balcony over the neighborhood on an early summer morning, and notice how bereft of the usual joggers the paths are.

A common word in Japanese for this state of summer lethary is natsubate (nah-tsu-bah-the), the natsu meaning summer, and the bate being a modified form of the verb hateru, meaning to be exhausted.

To make a verb of it: natsubate suru.

A commonly believed antidote to natsubate is the eating of the bitter gourd known as the goya (momordica charantia).

Natsubate o shitara goya o tabeyo!
If you’re feeling overcome by the summer heat, eat goya!


© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo summer heat Japanese

蜻蛉

In mid-summer, the dragonflies swirl and dive and occasionally alight on something.

After several attempts, I finally got a photo of him (?) as he rested on a tomato stake in a nearby garden.

The "tonbo" (dragonfly, in Japanese) was flying between a small river - a canal, actually - and this small garden in Kyoto.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Dragonfly Japanese

京都市動物園

Visitors from the US and their children dragged us to the Kyoto Zoo last month.

Located in the beautiful museum area of Okazaki, the zoo is fun day out - as long as you are not an animal rights activist.

Many arrive either via bus or subway, or on their bicycle. The picture above right is the main entrance. Aside from the brutal way in which the trees have been pruned - standard for all street trees in Japan - what is most striking is the mess of bikes in front of the entrance.

Once inside, the zoo is reasonably large considering that is right in the middle of a Japanese city.

The zoo houses 700 animals, of which there are more than 170 species. The zoo grounds also has a picnic area and a library.

Access

Take the Tozai subway line to Higashiyama or Keage. From either station, it is a ten-minute walk.

Okazaki, Hoshoji-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto City 606-8333
Telephone : 075 771 0210

Details

Open 9 - 5. Closed Mondays and at the end of the year.
General Fee: 500 yen
Junior High School Students: 300 yen

© JapanVisitor

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Book the Ginza Kokusai Hotel Tokyo

Tokyo Serviced Apartments

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Zoo Japanese

竹

Bamboo is strong and flexible, beautiful and delicious.

In Hong Kong （香港）and mainland China　（中国、chugoku), it is used to build scaffolding outside skyscrapers. According to engineers, it is stronger than steel - and never rusts.

In Japan, bamboo is used as a decorative element in both architecture and garden design. It is also used for more practical purposes, such as fencing and the arched projections （犬矢来、inu yarai）seen in front of traditional Kyoto homes that prevent stray dogs and cats from urinating on the house - and keep burglars from climbing inside.

Another highly practical use was for laundry poles. Though now made mostly of some plastic/rubber hybrid, the bamboo in the name lives on: saodake （竿竹）.

Bamboo is also a culinary delicacy. Soft and delectable, bamboo shoots - takenoko （竹の子）- are an integral part of an elegant Japanese meal.

In Japan, it is also said that a bamboo grove is the safest place to be during an earthquake （地震、jishin）.

In Kyoto （京都）, the most famous of all bamboo groves is to be found in Arashiyama（嵐山）. The famed bamboo forests are just off the main drag north of Tenryuji Temple（天竜寺）. The paths pictured here lead up to the Okochi Sanso Villa （大河内山荘）and many other temples and sites.

The forests are dark and cool even on the hottest day of summer. The wind rustles the majestic poles of dark green making a clack clacking noise far above us.

© Japan Visitor


Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Bamboo Japanese

女性タレント人気度・ベスト２０

The list of 20 most popular female tv personalities was recently announced in the Asahi Shinbun newspaper.

The survey is conducted every year in February in and around Tokyo Station. This year 1,130 women and men, aged 10 - 69, replied to the survey.

Surprisingly, the most popular woman was not a "tv talent" but figure skater Mao Asada (pictured right, © Wikipedia).

She is wildly popular across a wide range of ages. Part of Asada's appeal is that, unlike tv entertainers, she is perceived as being innocent and perhaps less tainted.

This has as a result lead to her becoming ubiquitous on the small screen, appearing in many television ads.

Most Popular 20 TV Talents, Female

1. Mao Asada
2. Becky
3. Sayuri Yoshinaga
4. Miho Sugano
5. Yuki Amami
5. Dreams Come True (Miwa Yoshida, lead vocalist of the band)
7. Yukie Nakama
8. Nanako Matsushima
9. Aya Ueto
9. Yuiko Takeuchi
9. Aoi Miyazaki
12. Eri Fukazu
13. Miki Maya
14. Hitomi Kuroki
15. Yuka
16. Ko Shibasaki
16. Kyoko Shinohara
18. Takako Matsu
19. Norika Fujiwara
20. Tomoko Yamaguchi

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Mao Asada TV Talents Japanese

老人

Age is quite a popular topic of everyday conversation in Japan and is much more freely discussed in Japan than in the West, in that "How old are you?" (Ikutsu desu ka?, or Nansai desu ka?) is by no means a social taboo.

A growing segment of the Japanese population is now over 65 years old (rokujuugo-sai). It is growing for two reasons: the number of children being born is rapidly declining, and longevity (nagaiki, literally "long living") is increasing.

A senior citizen is known as a rohjin, and an old people's home is a rohjin hohmu.

A recent problem with rohjin hohmu in Japan is that a growing number, while operating as de facto old people's homes, are not declaring themselves as such in order to avoid the expense of having to comply with the plethora of regulations that apply to them. They are often exposed in the course of government audits, putting themselves, the authorities, and, in particular, their residents, in a quandary.

Other age-related vocabulary includes: fukushi (福祉, welfare), kurumaisu (車椅子, wheelchair), and nenkin (年金, pension).

© JapanVisitor.com

Read more about aging Japan

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Aging Japan Tokyo Japanese

新型インフルエンザ

Japan is now at war（戦争中、senso chu）.

The enemy is swine flu（新型インフルエンザ、shingata infuruenza）, and no measure or action taken is too great or out of proportion.

Just prior to departure for a short trip to the US in early May, the President of the university（大学、daigaku）where I work sent an email to all faculty and staff. It was clearly motivated by an administrative directive （行政指導、 gyosei shido）from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare （厚生労働省、Kousei Roudo Sho）in Tokyo.

The jist of the mail was: all business trips to North America are until further notice banned （禁止、kinshi）, and all personal trips should be done "with restraint"（自粛、jishuku）- which better translates as "do NOT go."

Over the past weekend there was an outbreak（発生、hassei）of the flu in the port city of Kobe. Students who have never been abroad were infected （感染、kansen）by other students who also had no experience of traveling overseas. Schools and universities in Kobe and parts of Osaka are now closed for the week.

On our arrival back in Japan last week, the pilot informed us mid-flight that we should stay seated after landing at Kansai International Airport while Japanese authorities carried out a quarantine inspection（検疫検査、ken eki kensa）to determine the temperature of every passenger on the plane.

This took roughly 90 minutes. A team of perhaps 10 entered the plane dressed in light blue hospital scrubs, surgical gloves, and plastic face masks.

They moved around the plane and took the temperature of each passenger by pointing a heat sensor at one's forehead, collecting a health form each passenger filled out, and then noting all of the data.

After we were all cleared and allowed to leave the plane, our first human contact in Japan was with yet another "official."

A tall man standing just outside the door of the plane in yellow hospital scrubs, surgical gloves, and a plastic face mask yelled at each departing passenger: "Hands!"

As you put out your hands, he then shot of a dab of disinfectant（消毒液、shodoku eki）onto each of our palms.

Then, behind him, a woman in a mask handed each of us a mask（マスク）, which we were to wear （着用、chakuyo).

The final hurdle was walking through the quarantine station and then on to immigration.

Welcome to Japan.

The media in Japan has worked itself into a frenzy over this, bordering both on hysteria and, at times, xenophobia. Both the print media and television news are running non-stop coverage of the crisis.

There are now lines at pharmacies （薬屋さん、kusuriya san）for masks, and shortages have been reported.

Japan is now in full panic mode （パニック状態、panikku jotai）.

© JapanVisitor.com

Yahoo Japan Auction Service

Book a Japanese Hotel with Bookings

Japanese Friends

Rough Guide To Japan

Tags

Japan Tokyo Kyoto Swine Flu Japanese