Like other developed nations, many of the products the Japanese use every day are manufactured in China, and recently the problem of counterfeit goods has been getting more attention in Japan. Right now, factories are churning out fake versions of everything from designer bags to Puma shoes to — I am not kidding — Mitsubishi elevators, but when you’re buying brake pads for your Toyota Camry you want to know that they were made according to the specs of the manufacturer and will work when you need them. Then there’s the state-run fake version of Disneyland in Beijing, with all your favorites including Mickey, Minnie and Donald as well as scary versions of Hello Kitty and Doraemon. Recently, Yamaha won a suit with a Chinese manufacturer who was making fake “Japan Yamaha Inc.” motorcycles with 100% counterfeit parts and selling them as the real McCoy. In the landmark case, they’ll receive $1 million and an apology.
In Japan, there are two types of people, those who like soy sauce dolloped over their fried eggs, and those who prefer the Bull-Dog sauce that’s known as “sauce” (ソース） in Japanese. I’m a soy sauce man myself, unless we’re talking about a fried egg sandwich, since soy sauce and bread don’t mix that well, but I do recognize the superiority of “sauce” in just about every other food category, especially fried croquettes. That self-same Japanese condiment is under attack from an American foreign investment fund called Steel Partners, which is seeking to purchase controlling interest in the Bull-Dog sauce company in a leveraged buyout, a concept that’s still quite foreign in this country where businessmen are usually polite to each other. Bull-Dog is taking some “poison pill” steps to ward off the buyout, including allowing shareholders other than Steel Partners to buy additional stock. As a general rule, companies attempting unwanted takeovers face an uphill battle in Japan and get plenty of negative press, despite the fact that takeovers are all part of how owning stock in corporations works (you know, stockowners being the owners of the company and not management, all that stuff).
As you know, Japan is a rather unique place, and sometimes it seems there’s almost no aspect of the country that can’t surprise you. As with other parts of the world, goods are transported from place to place by trucks, and truckers ply the open highways as they shuttle their cargo around the country, listening to the local version of country music, called enka. Many truckers spice up their time on the road by decking their wheels out with blinking lights, outrageously gaudy side mirrors and huge panels of traditional Japanese art, a practice called dekotora or “decoration truck.” The whole business of driving around in a truck decked out with blinking lights began in the early 1970s with truckers who hauled fish to market attaching stainless steel fairings to their vehicles to keep corrosion due to the salty air at bay. The boom in decoration trucks was helped along by a Toho movie series called Truck Yarou (Truckers) which brought the hobby to a national level. Dekotora are usually named by their owners, with names usually ending in kanko (sightseeing), since the original truck modifiers had to scavenge for lights from old sightseeing busses, or maru (circle), often used in ship names (think Kobayashi-maru, Star Trek fans). There are many varieties of these colorful trucks, including designs that resemble colored floats from the Nebuta Festival in Aomori Prefecture or shrines to right-wing Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima or Amuro Rei from Mobile Suit Gundam. Today we happen to have gotten in some cool made-in-Japan T-shirts featuring the logo from the Truck Yarou film, a killer item for anyone who loves a truck, or who just digs the way the kanji and katakana look on the shirt.
