Hello all. Kind of tired today, as it’s Friday and a rough one at that. But the weekend is near, so near…
Today’s J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
It’s been said that Japan is the only country that cares what its foreign population thinks, and I’ve definitely seen this to be true. Books about Japan written by foreigners who live here are often translated into Japanese and sell briskly, and the nightly broadcast of World Business Satellite wouldn’t be complete without the nerdy gaijin analyst from Morgan Stanley giving his view of the recent movements in the market to round out the Japanese commentators. I’ve definitely seen that my own comments seem to carry a lot more weight than those of the average Japanese. Smoking is common in Japan, and it’s not rare for restaurants to not even offer non-smoking sections, but two restaurants we frequent recently converted part of their space, almost definitely (according to my Japanese wife) because of polite comments I, being a foreigner, had made to the staff about cigarette smoke. Another time, I went to a restaurant and found the restroom to be a little on the smelly side. I carefully mentioned this to the manager, and when I went back a month later, I was surprised to find the restroom had been completely renovated (or as they say in Japan, “reformed”). Maybe my comment had nothing to do with this, but I have my doubts. Japanese people usually seem to hold the concept of gaman (patience, tolerance) to be a good one, stoically enduring a bad situation rather than trying to change it. Personally, I prefer to try to make the world a better place when I can…
Tokyo is the sprawling capital of Japan, home to 12 million people, a number which rises by several million during the day as people commute to their jobs from the surrounding areas. It’s not a city at all, but one of Japan’s 47 prefectures, although it’s got a special status as a “metropolis,” not unlike the District of Columbia in the U.S. Inside Tokyo there are 23 ku (wards), 26 shi (cities), 5 machi (towns) and 8 mura (villages), and my Tokyo friends tell me it’s cooler to live in one of the wards since you get a phone number that starts with 03, not one of the inferior ones that start with 04. Some of the more famous areas of Tokyo are Shinjuku, a shopping and business area with many famous anime landmarks; Shibuya, a hip area for young people and home of Japan’s most famous dog statue; Harajuku, where people dress like they do in FRUiTs magazine; stylish Ginza, home of Japan’s only Apple Store; and Akihabara, where people come to buy electronics and eat in “cosplay cafes” (where the waitress dress in interesting costumes).
One of the interesting features of Japanese are the numbers of euphemisms they use for embarrassing things. Cute slang words are usually substituted for terms referring to various parts of the body, or else kanji characters are created to make a stand-in word, like combining the characters for “shadow” and “stem” to refer to that part of a man. There are so many ways to refer to woman’s gekkei (menstruation) that I’ve actually never heard the normal term used even once. They include seiri (which simply means “biology”), okyakusama ga kiteiru (“I’ve got a guest staying with me”), hatabi (“flag day,” in reference to the Japanese flag), and from a few years back, anne no hi or Anne’s Day, something to do with the Diary of Anne Frank. A useful catch-all euphemism for just about anything is are (ah-rei), which literally means “that one over there” but can refer to any object you don’t want to name openly. Another famous Japanese euphemism, as any anime fan knows, is the letter H, pronounced with a Japanese accent (ecchi), which refers to anything to do with sex.
