Foreign trainee voluntarily works self to death

just as his kindly company president was about to reduce his overtime and spread the labor to others. The unnamed president of Fuji Denka Kogyo may even have planned to pay the late Jiang Xiaodong (31) for his overtime work. Unfortunately, Jiang refused the offer to work less and died of cardiac arrest. It couldn't be helped. Nobody could expect the company president to require an employee to do anything.

Some mean people have accused the government of lax oversight of the slavery intern system. This, of course, could not be accurate.

Story in English at Japan Times.

Defective Toyotas the fault of foreigners

From the article Drivers in Japan unfazed by Toyota's global recalls:

"The cars being recalled in China and the U.S. aren't made in Japan. They were made there. Those kind of problems definitely won't happen in Japan," he [a Toyota owner in Japan] said.

Sorta like the made in Japan Mitsubishi trucks that had wheels falling off and crushing people a few years back?

(As many of the original links have disappeared, a small archive of stories on the Mitsubishi scandal are here.)

Ministry in cover up to protect corporate interests over citizens'

The farm ministry uncovered 879 cases of mislabeled food products last year but only disclosed 110 of them in order to protect the companies responsible, according to documents obtained from the ministry Saturday. Japan Times full article.

The penalties for the companies involved were warnings and guidance and the fraud was covered up to prevent "a big social blow" to the crooked companies involved? I am sure none of that will ever happen again as they have no doubt learned their lesson.

Didn't the friend-of-a-friend-of-terrorists, Kunio Hatoyama,who is now head of the Ministry of Communications, just recently issue a warning to one of the TV stations (Fuji?) for reporting something that "wasn't true"? Who will lecture and warn the bureaucrats?

Enjoy your next meal, whatever substance it is and wherever it came from.

Pre-owned shabu-shabu for sale

According to the channel 10 news this morning, a restaurant has been caught re-selling uneaten shabu-shabu from customers' plates. I am sure that this sort of thing has only occurred at that restaurant and at the now defunct Senba Kitcho. There could be no other restaurants doing similar things. Besides, it was Japanese shabu-shabu---not imported shabu-shabu---so it was probably safe and sanitary due to the uniquely pure, clean, and healthy properties of Japanese food. The unique and special cleanliness of Japan precludes any possibility of illness from eating food that another may have slobbered all over anyway.

More companies (Uohide and Shinko Gyorui Ltd. a subsidiary of Maruha Nichiro Holdings Inc.) have been caught switching labels on eels. This, although it seems to be a common practice from the frequency one sees news reports about it, is much more dangerous. The eels were not the safe and pure Japanese eels we expect, but were actually from China! Even though they were not from the plates of other people, they could not be safe being from a foreign country.

Thank goodness for the aggressive government action we have seen over the last few years to crack down on these types of problems. We can all relax now and enjoy our shabu-shabu.

Japan continues to become foreign

Once upon a time, we heard how wonderful it was that in Japan people did not sue. (Not exactly true, they could and did. It was just that they could rarely win and the case might take 20 or more years.) Japan was not like the US and selfish, self-centered Americans---and others---who placed their own needs above that of their company.

Now we see a few employees suing their companies and actually prevailing. And prevailing in a reasonable period of time:

According to Japan’s Supreme Court, the number of lawsuits filed against employers rose 45 percent from 1997 to 2005, to 2,303 cases. In 2006, that number increased 21 percent, to 2,777 cases if lawsuits heard by a newly created labor arbitration court are included.

Adding to the alienation between employee and company has been a growing sense of resentment that workers have not benefited from the nation’s economic rebound in the last half decade.

While corporate profits have soared, wages have remained stagnant, feeding a perception that companies have failed to share the good times with employees. This has led some to seek a bigger piece of the pie, say legal and labor experts.

There is also a feeling that as companies have cut costs to remain competitive with the cheaper China and South Korea, they passed too much of the burden onto employees. In particular, many of the recent lawsuits involve a practice known as “service overtime,” in which workers were silently pressured into logging long hours of unpaid overtime as a display of loyalty, say labor experts.

...the recent rise in lawsuits was also the latest step in a longer-term move toward a more American-style workplace ...(Yea, sure.)

The NYT article examines a recent lawsuit by the widow of a Toyota employee who died from over-work and the recent victory against McDonalds Japan in which McDs was ordered to pay overtime for overtime to its managers.

Shockingly, neither Toyota nor McDs Japan had any comments for the story in the New York Times.

A related New York Times article on whistle-blowers exposing company misdeeds, such as Senga Kitcho and their serving of pre-owned food, is here:

...A car company that hid dangerous flaws to avoid embarrassing recalls. A meat processor that sold ground pig hearts as beef. A fancy restaurant chain that served customers leftover sashimi from other diners.

In recent years, Japan’s faith in its corporate establishment has been shaken by a series of scandals in which companies of all sizes have been caught in frauds ranging from the merely nauseating to the patently dangerous. More shocking than the misdeeds is the fact that employees are blowing the whistle...

I admit to some skepticism about whether or not these are really trends or not. I would be a bit more inclined to believe that whistle-blowers are becoming more common as the results of their actions are readily apparent.

Mmmm...Used Food Served in Osaka

Just heard on the news that a restaurant in Osaka got caught re-serving food that had been previously served to another customer. Seems they would take such items as "untouched" tempura, refry it and serve it to another. According the the Osaka Health Department, this violated no laws as long as nobody got sick. Great!!! Let's go out to eat in Osaka! What's that? Someone has gnawed half the meat off of your chicken leg? Don't worry about it. If you get sick, the Health Department will maybe have a meeting and debate having the restaurant owner make a very sincere apology if it isn't too much trouble.

Doesn't this make you wanna barf? Would it be alarmist to say that one cannot trust any food anymore? The Japanese media has warned us off of all Chinese food. They have not warned us off Japanese food, but the repeated scandals over the last year (and remember, these are only the ones that come to light) are enough to make one hesitate to eat Japanese food. Well, not really as we'd starve, but it is enough to cause more than a little concern.

Is there a functioning government in Japan? What does it do except build roads and bridges to nowhere and debate trivia? There have been no investigations, no new regulations or laws pertaining to Japanese grown/produced/served food have there? Why not? It can't be because they are too busy trying to resolve the pension scandal as that has dropped off the radar. WTF do those old, bald-headed, gummers actually do for their salary?

I believe the name of the restaurant is *Kicho, supposedly another old and respected establishment. Sachiko Yuki was the one apologizing and a Mr. Yuki (her husband?) was also involved. I will have to confirm that later.

*6 May 2008: It is Senba Kitcho in English.

McDonalds Japan faces lawsuit

McDonalds Japan which seems to understaff their restaurants to the extent that employees cannot take the time to practice proper hygiene, has been sued once again. No, not for selling out-of-date salads as fresh as they have been caught doing, no, not for someone getting sick after eating food prepared under unhygienic conditions, but for forcing their managers (who haven't real management authority) to work unpaid overtime.

According to a McDonald's labor union, the two men worked about 70 to 90 hours overtime a month on many occasions from December 2005, and sometimes worked more than 140 overtime hours a month. Story here.

Meanwhile, I await a reply to my complaint about the filthy McDonalds in Denenchofu Tokyo.

10 days and counting

Still awaiting a response, even a "f**k you" from the Denenchofu, Tokyo McFilthys---oops, I meant McDonalds. I suspect I will get none unless I can find some way to embarrass them.

In the mean time, more food fraud from another Japanese company. I am waiting for the Japanese government to take action to clean up Japanese food companies, but I suspect that they are about as concerned about taking action to clean up domestic food as McDonalds Japan is about cleaning up the Denenchofu McDs.

A catering subsidiary of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) said it recently sold about 15,900 expired "bento" (boxed lunches), sandwiches and other food items at train stations and on bullet trains after deliberately extending their expiry times by several hours. From the Japan Times via Kyodo News.

It's supposedly only a few hours, but the responsible company is still trying to deceptively pawn off old food on customers. Good service. The customer is god.

Full story in the Japan Times Online here.

Tainted food scandals

continue. As expected, the latest case of food-related fraud by Honey Co. of Japan has been pushed completely off radar by the sensational gyoza/ pesticide case. According to today's Japan Times, Japanese officials investigating the plant which packaged the gyoza in China found no problems. Chinese investigators believe the pesticides were added after the gyoza left the plant. (Most coverage of the gyoza mess that I have seen has been relatively even-handed.)

This continues to be the biggest story in Japan. Bad food has been in the news for over a year now at about the same time that tourism has increased in Japan by people who are interested in Japanese food. Wonder how long that trend will last?

Another food scandal

Just after the problems with pesticides being found on Chinese-made gyoza (possibly intentionally added in China) another Japanese company has been caught selling old/recycled food products as new. This was intentional too, of course. The difference is that we don't know if anyone got sick because of it. One might note that according to a news article that I read a few days ago, at present the only time that a local government is required to report food poisonings is if 50 people or more are sickened, so it does raise questions about whether or not anyone has been sickened. (I don't recall where I read the article.)

A Miyazaki-based syrup maker (Honey Co.) has for decades been repackaging and reshipping snow cone syrup that had been returned due to defective cartons after reheating it and attaching new use-by dates, according to the company's president. More here.

I still have not heard of the Japanese government taking any action to increase inspections/insure the safety of Japanese food products. I doubt they ever will unless disaster hits and it cannot be blamed on foreign companies/countries/people. Bet Aso is happy that the latest Japanese food scandal is being underplayed because of the gyoza scandal.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down

Japanese good quality. No doubt the quality of products that Japan exports to the US, Europe, and other major markets is very high. Unfortunately, the same cannot always be said about its domestic products or services, a prime example being housing.

In our apartment, which rents for very high rate---even for Tokyo---there is little insulation. Water pipes are bare, as is common in Japan. (Even in Toyama where there is actually a winter with occasional temps below freezing, insulation was lacking.) We know that many of the building standards and codes in Japan are routinely ignored in order to save a few yen. As the scandal last year showed, this includes earthquake standards.

Heating systems? AHAHA. A joke. Space heaters are still common. One of the most common means of heating and cooling in apartments is a combination A/C and heater. This thing is located just below the ceiling so that much of the heat is wasted above one's head.

Last year, some of the manufacturers of siding an insulation were found to have been faking fire-resistance data. Much of this material had been used in schools. Now we find that:

A total of 529 houses in five western prefectures built by First Juken Co. of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, were found to have defects such as walls lacking the strength to withstand earthquakes or wind... Read more from the Japan Times here.

And one can bet that this is barely the tip of the iceberg, just like the number of buildings built in Tokyo which do not adhere to earthquake standards.

Government takes action against dastardly foreign airlines

The Japanese government has finally taken steps to protect the safety and purity of Japan's airspace from unsafe, poorly maintained---and most importantly---non-Japanese airlines in Japan. In addition to fingerprinting all non-Japanese passengers who, being non-Japanese, are potential terrorists, these aircraft will be subject to greater scrutiny:

The safety measures officer, who would be part of the Civil Aviation Bureau, would be tasked with gathering information about non-Japanese carriers and liaising with aviation safety officials of other countries, the sources said. Full story.

The government has not yet set up a similar office to watch Japanese airlines, even though recently JAL* and others have had some rather troublesome safety issues,

Japanese airlines reported 159 incidents of parts falling off aircraft during the year to March 31, up from 96 reported the previous year, a transport ministry survey made available Sunday showed.

or other problems:

Japan Airlines Corp. said Friday it has been selling Hugo Boss-brand wallets and commuter pass holder sets made in China as having been made in Italy on domestic flights since Oct. 1.

Three employees of a Japan Airlines Corp. cleaning subsidiary are suspected of stealing digital cameras and other items left on planes by passengers, aviation industry sources said Wednesday.

nor have they set one up for Japanese automakers even after wheels falling off Mitsubishi trucks and killing mothers or after Mistusbishi was caught hiding vehicle defect data. They have not yet set up a watchdog/inspection system for Japanese food products even after a solid year of scandals concerning mislabeled and expired food being sold by previously prestigious food producers.

There is no need for that of course, because those problems are Japanese problems and not evil like foreign things.

*JAL was put on a ministry watch list in 2005 for a string of mishaps and was subject to more inspection until 2006:

The transport ministry said Thursday it will subject the Japan Airlines Group to special safety inspections through the end of the year, following a spate of safety-related problems involving the nation's largest carrier.

There is a slight difference---only the airline with that string of problems was subject to increased inspections and only temporarily. All non-Japanese airlines will be subject to them no matter the safety record, and it appears that this will be permanent.

Japanese Cuisine, 2007

Japanese cuisine is some of the most delicious food in the world. I need not prove that, I just follow the neo-Bushidoist Fujiwara's brilliant theory of logic (or Japanese non-logic according to ol' Barcode head): It is because it is.

However, in 2007 there were numerous scandals related to food in Japan. The Japan Times in Tokyo Confidential has an interesting article by Michael Hoffman on that:

From "a certain chicken farmer," Asahi Geino hears this: "Of all the chicken on the Japanese market" — we're talking roughly 1.69 million tons of poultry per year — "at most 1 or 2 percent are genuine jidori. The rest that go by that name are fake." Read more.

Let's hope it isn't really true, but Japan is also the country in which more Blue Mountain coffee is sold than is imported. So, would it really be a surprise if the story is true?

Getting away with homicide

In April 2006, a Yokohama court awarded the family of a young mother who was killed by a wheel which fell off of a Mitsubishi truck 5.5 million yen---about US$45,000. That was the cash value of her life according to Japanese law I guess. At that time the court rejected the demand that a penalty of ￥160 million (about $1.3 million US)be imposed on Mitsubishi. After all, which is more important, a citizen's life or a company's well-being? We all know that a small financial "penalty" like that would be nothing to a huge conglomerate like Mitsubishi.

Yesterday, after an appeal by the prosecution, the full weight of the Japanese legal system struck the final blow to Mitsubishi for its intentional negligence in this case. (Yes, intentional. They knew the wheels were defective and hid and lied about the fact. The same as with other Mistubishi autos and trucks.):

The Yokohama District Court handed suspended prison terms Thursday to two former senior officials of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. for neglecting to take action to prevent a defect-linked accident in Yokohama in 2002 that killed a woman and injured her two sons.

..."The defendants caused the accident to occur by failing to recall the products and unthinkingly neglected the situation when they could have readily anticipated that the wheel hubs were not strong enough," the judge said. Read more.

This is normal for crooked executives in Japan. No jail time. Will they still be working in some capacity for Mitsubishi? Don't know, but I suspect they will be. I am sure this will send a message to all companies in Japan that this sort of thing will not be tolerated. Why, you can't just negligently kill someone and get off nearly scot-free.

I guess nobody is really at fault here. It can't be helped. Thank god that Japan is not like the US where survivors could sue and put some real teeth in the results, and the company would think twice before pulling the same thing again.

McDs Japan joins the food fraud crowd

Why not? Not mislabeling food would make a company a nail the sticks up and, as we have all heard ad nauseum, in Japan the nail that sticks up gets banged down.

We could blame this on the US. After all, McDonalds is a US company. However, McDonalds Japan is independent from McDs US. Plus, from the events of the last several months, we have to assume that mislabeling food is sort of common here. Maybe even universal. Perhaps it's just another thing that makes Japan uniquely unique.

McDonald's Japan acknowledged Tuesday that several of its franchise restaurants intentionally mislabeled the production date of salads to extend their shelf life, exacerbating food safety worries in Japan.

The company will cancel its franchise agreement with Athlete Co., a Japanese company that admitted to the mislabeling at at least two of the four McDonald's outlets that it runs in central Tokyo, according to Shotaro Shimizu, a McDonald's spokesman.

Read more at IHT.

Japan is owed yet another apology

by the US (naturally, as it is the root of all evil) and, somewhat surprisingly, by Europe. Let's just say by the West in general.

Over the last few weeks I have had several folks---Japanese, but I am sure there are plenty of non-Japanese who will agree---have told me about reading that until several years ago, Japan used a processed-on dating system on food as opposed to the use-by system now in place. Why the change? Why, according to the stories, the US and Europe pressured poor little Japan to change to make it easier to sell imported goods. The imported foods were at a disadvantage under the old system due to the shipping time required for products to reach Japan.

Obviously, had the foreigners not interfered, there would have been no food scandal in Japan, and Japan would have still been producing pure food. No manufacturer would have altered the produced-on date for their benefit. None of them would have mislabeled food or committed other frauds.

Just another bad thing going on in Japan that can be attributed to foreigners. Curiously, I remember that one of the companies involved in a recent scandal said they had been doing it for over a decade. If so, you have to assume that the evil foreigners were involved even earlier.

But anyway, so far nobody has been proved to have gotten sick from any of these products. So I hear from explainers.

False food labeling case 1 trillion

Or thereabouts it seems:

Police on Saturday raided meat packer Hinai-Dori in Odate, Akita Prefecture, on suspicion of processing and selling chickens and eggs falsely branded as the "Hinai" variety in violation of the unfair competition prevention law.

"It is too costly if we really use Hinai chicken," he (the company president) told reporters.
Full article here.

More mislabled food fraud

Just on the news this evening Senbakicho (?) has been caught selling mislabeled chicken, beef, and more. Earlier, they had been caught falsifying dates. It never ends.

Ready for the big one?

Most know Tokyo is located in a major earthquake zone. Most also know that Japan has various laws on the construction of earthquake resistant buildings. My understanding is that if you live in an apartment built after 1981, you are in one of the more modern earthquake resistant jobs. In theory. In reality, you may be living in a shoddily built piece of crap that will turn into a death trap with any sort of strong quake.

Last year a Tokyo architect was convicted of designing numerous buildings with substandard reinforcement in order to save money. He appealed and has just lost the appeal (No surprise, this is Japan, after all.):

In Wednesday's decision, presiding Judge Kunio Harada stated that the accused "not only attempted to dodge liability, but tried to put the blame on others" by lying under oath that he was pressured to fake construction blueprints. The disgraced architect also stated at the Diet that the fabrications began in 1998, when in fact they started in 1996.

The perjury "was an attempt to selfishly protect his own interests, which leaves no reason to consider extenuation," Harada told the court, adding that the false testimony resulted in delayed inspections of substandard buildings Aneha designed. (From JTonline.)

I know a few folks who are employed as architects and who have a pretty good knowledge of the industry. Most of them are Japanese. There is quite a bit of doubt among them that he actually did lie when he said he was pressure to fake the blueprints. According to one of these people, this sort of thing is not likely an isolated case, but the government cannot possibly address all of the defective buildings. I just recently heard a story from someone in this industry about a building which a US company was interested in leasing in the Shibuya area. His company was being asked to bid on the project to help the US company set up an office there. He had to decline as the building, although brand-new, was very poorly constructed with chunks of concrete already falling off the interior walls and ceiling, and massive water leaks were already weakening it. He felt the yakuza was likely involved in the construction of the building. Again, something not exactly unusual in the construction/real estate industry.

I did get to see some photos of the fine workmanship at this site. It sort of makes me a bit less confident in the earthquake resistance of buildings here. I guess if one is lucky and lives or works in a building/home designed and built by honest people who followed the law, you make come out OK. If you live in a shoddy, cheaply made piece of junk, you may have just enough time to kiss your a** goodbye before it collapses on you and yours. The wonderfully exciting thing is that there is no way to know without actually having your place professionally inspected. Since this usually requires some cutting and other invasive/damaging methods, this ain't likely to happen unless you own the house/building. And then, if you find that it is not built to standards, what are you going to do? Sell it? Sue the builder? That last option is a joke, of course. Unless you have 300 years for it to crawl through a Japanese court.

More semi-rotted food and shoddy, fraudulent products.

The scandals involving Japanese food producers continue and are now so frequent that one who is concerned about food safety might have to turn to foreign food (eeeeewwww!) of even worse Chinese food in order to have any level of confidence. At least that evil foreign food has passed some type of inspection. The same cannot be said for Japan produced "food" products.

Japan's Mister Donut chain recently got caught using old, out-of-date juice in some of its drinks. I suppose this could be understood as Mister Donut was originally an evil foreign company, so since all foreign companies do that sort of thing---unlike the pure Japanese companies---this is no surprise. Except that it only seems to have happened in Japan in shops under control of Japanese management. Well, what's a little out-of-date juice? So far, nobody is known to have died.

As to corporate fraud and greed, (NOVA has been pretty well covered recently) Toyo Tire was the second company found to have cheated on fire tests for some of their flame resistant building materials. Turns out they only used the real fire resistant materials to pass government tests, but then sold substitute material---much of which is used in schools---which were not at all fire resistant. So what's wrong if a few kids get roasted? At least Toyo Tire is not an evil foreign company, although any sort of fraud or wrongdoing that they were/are involved in is likely the result of Western (especially US) influence. Anyway, the executives apologized, so everything should turn out fine.

What about the poor kids who have to eat old, out-of-date, falsely labeled food in a school with fake fire proofing. This seems like what happens all the time in foreign countries. How could it happen in pure Japan? Damned foreigners!