Imagine

Imagine a country where everyone is good at his or her job. Imagine a country where everyone has respect for elders and teachers. Imagine a country where every shop clerk treats each customer like an honored guest. Imagine a country where everyone wears expensive clothing, the food is slurpy, and there aren't any napkins because apparently nobody needs them. Imagine a country where everyone has good taste.

You've imagined Japan....The climate in Tokyo is similar to that of New York City.

Ahhh...another year ends in the Lake Wobegon* of the universe. On the day after Christmas, the 3rd day of winter of 2010-2011, as I walked around weird but wonderful Meguro trying to avoid being hit by mama-chari-ists with good taste dressed in expensive finery while I hoped that other pedestrians would allow me some sidewalk, I was able to enjoy the autumn leaves of the world’s most clearly distinct winter season which is similar to that of New York.

I must finally admit that I have been wrong for years and years. Japan is uniquely unique in some ways, one being the ability of non-Japanese (and the occasional Japanese trying to polish Japan up for the naive) to suspend all trace of common sense about Japan and the Japanese. To say anything less than complimentary about Japan is evidence that one misunderstands the country and is probably a racist. (Does Japan have a separate race from say, China? What is a race?) On the other hand preaching nothing but out of this world goodness about Japan is acceptable. Remember what CIA agent Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) said in Syriana: “It’s not racist if it’s positive.”

I have spent too much time looking at Japan-related sites and blogs (especially Tumblr) and found that this imaginary Japan is the Japan that many desperately hope exists, for if they were to actually come here and find that it does not exist, they would lose all faith in nirvana. Folks who spend time on those sites/blogs looking at the best architecture, art, manga, cute girls in Harajuku and Akihabara, believe they are seeing Japan. And many whose fantasy comes true and are able to visit see nothing to dispel them of the fantasy.

Just after 9/11, I put an ad for a private Japanese teacher in the magazine Metropolis Tokyo. Some Japanese fellow answered, not to get information about the job, but to try to instigate a fight saying things like: "I am glad that America was attacked. You people come to Japan and think it is Disneyland. I hope you get attacked again.” (paraphrased). He had sent the e-mail to dozens of people who had placed ads. He wrote in English, but his English had tell-tale signs of a less than fluent Japanese person's English. He was certainly correct about many foreigner's views (not only Americans by far) of Japan being Disneyland.

I guess the imaginary Japan is needed as the extreme "other," not an other in the sense of a bad, sneaky, devious, unscrupulous other (at least not until the next trade/whaling etc dispute), but as the "perfect" other.

*The Lake Wobegon Effect as pertains to Japan is not something that Japanese are guilty of, it is foreigners who tend to be.

Impossible in Japan

Edited 2:10 and 2:29pm

Let's laugh at the funny non-native speakers 2 NYT

A Sampling of Chinglish (Foreigners Speak Funny English! NYT post below) reached #1 on the NYT most popular e-mailed list earlier today. At one time some thought the NYT to be a newspaper with some standards. NYT readers might even had assumed themselves to be better informed, more educated, and of higher class than some gal who reads the local rag. This e-mail list certainly brings that into question, but then again maybe folks were e-mailing it to show the effects of a newspaper desperate for readership.

Imagine if a US politician, especially a Republican or someone from the Tea Party, had made fun of the language of non-native speakers or some other group. Imagine the holier-than-thou, snobbish editorial we'd have read in the NYT.

Here's a link that shows funny non-native speakers mangling the written language from a different perspective. (Thanks to Dave and another commenter)

4:45pm Edited to add: And here's a hint of how it feels to be on the receiving end.

Foreigners speak funny English! NYT

Warning: I cannot prove the part below about the movie poster. You'll have to take my word for it until I can, or just assume me crazy. If anyone else remembers it, or knows a link to the poster, I'd appreciate it if you let me know.

Ahahaha. This is so funny. I knew we were overdue for an article in a major US newspaper about the hilarious and funny English non-native speakers in East Asia use. Oh, ha, ha! LOL! Yee Haw! (I liked photo number 10 the best as it shows that even the most basic rules of photography---hold the camera still when you take a shot and use an adequate shutter speed---no longer apply to photos published by the Times.)

I guess that it is a symbol of Japan's dwindling influence (how can little to no influence dwindle?) in the world that it was not a target this time of the talented multilingual geniuses at the NYT. Of course it's all innocent, because yesterday the Times published a piece on Shanghai try to untangle "Chinglish" or some such thing. I shan't bother to link.

There was a US movie called Black Rain when I was in college. It starred Michael Douglas as your stereotypical corrupt NYC cop and his partner who came to Japan (the perfect country of the future back then) and got all involved in a culture clash. The rough, corrupt, screw-all-the-laws-and-rules ways of Americans meet the polite, rule/duty bound, alien and inscrutable Japanese. The opening scene over Osaka (never been to Osaka, but I doubt that it appears so otherworldly from an aircraft) set the stage for the rest of the bizarre movie. In the happy ending however, the surviving American departed Japan a little more introspective and maybe even a bit less corrupt, while we were left to ponder just how corrupt the American had made his Japanese partner.

Some movie posters at a local Pullman, Washington video store had Black Rain written in both English and katakana.* How international! Unfortunately, they had written the katakana backwards so that it actually read kurabu nurei(?)---or perhaps nurei kurabu? Don't remember exactly as I did not take a picture. Bahaha. Ain't it funny how those English-speakers mangle Asian languages?

*They were not locally made---I am pretty sure they were supplied by the studio. I can find no examples online either.

**Edited: 1126pm

I have continued to search for the poster on the Internet, but as of yet have not found it. Really, I am not that crazy yet. My wife remembers it too. However, we could both be crazy.

"Weird" US

It's nothing new that many folk in the US, and many in Japan, view one anothers country as exotic, weird, and so different as to be incomprehensible. Perhaps a little less so from the Japanese side, but that's just a personal observation.

Try this: Ask a Japanese friend if he/she thinks that a non-Japanese (or a Westerner) can ever understand Japan. Then ask him/her if a Japanese can understand the US (or any other Western country). Bet the answer to the first is "no" and the second is "yes."

It's been over a decade since I returned to Japan. I have rarely visited the US in that decade and it is becoming harder and harder for me to understand what is going on there. No amount of reading newspapers, watching TV news, reading books, or whatever really gives me the same feeling of grasping the "sense" of the culture and why things are happening and what people really feel and believe. Most Americans I know have been here for years too, so I don't gain much insight from talking to them.

I have not really understood the feelings in the US since Sept 11 occurred. I could read about it, I could get angry, and feel the emotions that most Americans felt that day, but I have never really grasped why we seem to have made the "un-American" choice to trade a little freedom for a little security (and theoretically lose both). I can't figure out the Tea Party; the Texas Board of Education; the extreme partisanship that seems to prevent anything from being attempted, let alone accomplished; the apparent surrender of any privacy; the suicide of the Republican Party which may be followed by their resurrection made possible by the Democrat Party (and citizens themselves who can't seem to compromise on anything).

I am much more comfortable with things Japanese---except for the exclusionist fantasy of nihonjinron---than I am with the US and I feel (right or wrong) that I have a better grasp of what is going on here than I do of the US.

I wonder just how people who have never been to the US; who have never had more than the standard media presentation of America; and have had no more than the K-12 education system view of it can assume that they know diddly-sh*t about it. But I still meet people who think that they do and are willing to debate the point. It is like---to steal former Sen. Phil Graham's words---"dueling with an unarmed man."

I really like Ms. O, my long-time friend and tutor, but like many, she seems to believe some of the Fujiwara Masahiko crap. I do enjoy pointing out the fallacies of Ol' Barcode though.

Weightless Japan Orbits the Earth

A Friday okurimono:

For a westerner, Japan might look familiar, since what is held up for us looks like a futuristic spectacle somehow grounded in a western imagination...

...There is no authenticity here [Harajuku], no western “essence” or “reality”; instead, the virtual conquers the carnal body in a purified play of surface, image and the hyperreal. This is exotic...

...in this sense Japan has always been “post-modern”...You need to read this part to figure out what he is talking about. Ten large bottles of shochu would help put you in the right frame of mind to do so.

Japan becomes weightless, shot into orbit outside the material of earth itself. Lens Culture.com

The description of Japan somehow seems to be much more intriguing and exotic than the photos, "Okurimono," being introduced. (Also viewable in a high resolution slideshow here.) Except for the giant rabbit, which apparently is part of the hyperreal that is Japan (Tokyo?), the photos fail to communicate this outer-space Japan (Tokyo?).

I have been here too long and am too much of a teetotaler to realize that this place is so bizarre. Wonder why Miyuki Hatoyama had to take a UFO to Venus when she already lives in Japan?

Rules to live by: Once someone brings up Zen in describing Japan, it's time to politely leave before you get covered with male bovine droppings. Zen is brought up in the full article at Lens Culture.

Beat Takeshi once said that when he was interviewed by the foreign press about his movies, they would predictably try to connect the movie with Zen in some way. He would just play along and pretend---or make up---some Zen influence even though none existed. Of course, the proper Japan-explainer would likely point out that Takeshi was influenced by Zen whether he knew it or not. Zen is key to Japan.

The Mind of a Japanese

One needs solid evidence to counter the claims of those who try to say that the Japanese are not different from the rest of the world. Fortunately, we can easily find such irrefutable knowledge on the Internut, in addition to Time magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.

The Mind of a Japanese. So unique and special that it is obvious even to someone in Japanese language 101.

Weird Japan to elimate cash to fight deflation!

So says the Times Online. Well, it isn't certain yet, but the journalist got some folks to (jokingly?) comment on the idea of eliminating cash in favor of electronic money to fight deflation.

With recovery elusive, a population doddering into old age and perhaps a decade of deflation in prospect, Japan may start mulling the most radical monetary policy of all — the abolition of cash.

Unorthodox, untried and, said one Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi strategist, “in the realms of economic science fiction”....

Several MPs* in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party believe the abolition of cash, though politically radioactive, might be technically feasible...

In theory, many Japanese could easily make the leap into a cashless world...

...the country remains a wholeheartedly cash-based consumer society. TimesOnline. (All emphasis added.)

That must be some good dope that the Asia Business Correspondent is smoking. What are the odds of any of this actually happening? What are the odds that any of it will be seriously considered in the near future?

1225PM: It [The BOJ] is unlikely... to brook anything as radical as abolishing cash. (From the same report.)

There is a point to the story somewhere.

4:10PM Originally linked to via the NYT freakonomics blog. "In Japan where the future comes early..."

*Well, that changes everything. A few unidentified politicians believe something may be technically feasible which means.......what?

Weirdo Japan story from the US, again......

This made the weirdo news run in Japan too, though I'd take it as the typical entertainment fluff. Could be wrong though.

And so could she:

Fukasawa [Who coined the term "Herbivore Men"] estimated some 20 percent of men are what she would call "herbivorous" and said their attitudes were influencing others. Indeed, she said, it was a return to the norm for Japanese men, rather than a departure.

"It was after World War II and the post-war economic growth that Japanese men gained the reputation as a sex animal through the competition with the West. Looking back beyond that time, older literature talks a lot about men with the kind of character we see in the herbivorous boys." CNN

After WW2? Before that men were passive guys not interested in sex? What about Genji of the Tale of Genji? Why where'd Lady Murasaki get the idea for his character? Not interested in money? How did the samurai get indebted to the merchant class if nobody was interested in money? Must of been the women's fault.