Perseverance

One of the words that comes to mind when I think about Japan is perseverance. As you may know, the Japanese are famous for their longevity. What might be less well known is that the population of the country is decreasing. Even with the longevity, the death rate outpaces the birth rate. Put these two things together and you have an aging population.

Everyday I see older folks out and about. Older ladies, bent nearly in half, supporting themselves with their rolling grocery carriers as they go out and do their shopping.

I admire them, and it helps me remember I ain't got it so bad. Yet.

Moron Toilets

A few days ago I talked about the bidet toilets in Asia. As I might have mentioned, the bidet part of the toilet can be added to a conventional toilet, since all the workings are built into the seat.

So, with that background ... yesterday I noticed that someone had thrown one of the bidet toilet seats out with their trash. Let me know if you're interested and I'll go back and see if it's still there.

Shopping

If you were expecting this to be about shopping Ginza for fancy brands, stop reading here. Instead it's about the likes of Ikea and Costco, both of which are in Japan these days. I haven't been to either yet, but look forward to that cultural experience someday.

Years ago I was often asked in Japan whether we have 7-11 in the US. Of course I always responded that, actually, though they are also everywhere in Japan, 7-11 is an American company. Some years later I heard that 7-11 was purchased by a Japanese company, and wondered if it was something I'd said.

Nowadays 7-11 owns a grocery store named Ito Yokado, a bank, and other properties. I think the parent brand is something like 7&I Holdings.

I had read in years past that Wal-Mart was looking for a way to get into this market. Then, the other day at Seiyu, a grocery store where we've shopped for years, I saw an advertisement for a Wal-Mart credit card, and wondered if they had entered with their credit business first. But then I noticed that there were also Wal-Mart's Great Value branded items on the shelves. I believe Wal-Mart must have bought the chain.

But the chain in Japan that's most often compared to America's Wal-Marts is called Don Quixote. It carries all sorts of things and some locations are open 24 hours. 

But I laughed when first I heard the name. Isn't that book about futility? So I guess I shouldn't expect to find what I'm looking for there? A sort of bricks and mortar understock.com, as it were.

Sponge Cake & Protein Bars

In Margaritaville Jimmy Buffett talks about "nibblin' on sponge cake" and a "frozen concoction that helps [him] hang on."

Tokyo ain't exactly Margaritaville, and I ain't exactly Jimmy Buffett. But there are those who've wondered what I eat in Tokyo, since I'm not so much a fish or a vegetable person.

I've never been quite sure why, but it surprises some people that I'm pretty fluent in Japanese language, but not particularly fluent in Japanese food. 

What might surprise other people, who've known me all my life as a meat eater, or a meat and potatoes guy, is that I don't really care much about eating meat. I do eat it; it's a safe choice for me, and sometimes the only thing edible around. But I don't crave it, and often go a week or more without it.

So, that still leaves us with the question: What do I eat in Japan?

First, let me share the secret of the three most awesome sources of protein: soybeans, cottage cheese, and protein bars. 

The other day I was in a grocery store looking for soybeans when one of the grocers happened by. He helped me find the beans, and asked me how I intended to use them. I explained that I cook them with rice and eat them plain - no seasoning at all. It's an awesome meal. (A while later the same grocer happened to see me scrutinizing a box of soy milk and with a smile said, "that looks rather appropriate.")

Cottage cheese is a little harder to find here than in the US, and a little more expensive. But it's just awesome. It's dry, and has a very fine curd, and a very mild flavor. I could eat an entire 200g carton (about a cup) for every meal.

But I would say the protein winner is still these bars. They have 10g of the stuff, no sugar, low fat and reasonable carbs and they taste awesome. One wonders why the world needs any other source of nutrition.

But if one did want to eat a mighty tasty meal now and then, one that perhaps even includes some meat, one wouldn't go wrong with this meal.

This is a deep fried pork chop on rice with a spicy curry sauce. It's been one of my favorite dishes for several decades. These days I often get it without the pork, but I will say the pork's a nice touch.

I find it impossible to talk about what I call Japanese food without discussing bread.

It typically comes in these little packs, and one can usually get between 4 and 8 slices per pack. The amount of bread is the same; the slice thickness varies. When you toast this stuff it's crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle like the snow in Wyoming early in the morning after a warm day. Not only does the bread taste much better than the snow, if you like butter, it is OK to eat yellow bread.

And, of course, I've already mentioned rice a couple times. I absolutely love the stuff. White, brown or wild, I can eat it plain, and very often do. Maybe I do like Japanese food.

Sumo

One of the best ways to say excuse me in Japanese is sumimasen. My longstanding joke has been that a large person moving through the crowd should instead say sumomasen. 

I watched sumo last night on TV. I've always enjoyed watching it when I get a chance. Last night the champion deftly stepped aside as his opponent charged right past him and out of the ring. That's all there was to the much touted championship match.

Of course there was more to it than that. There are psychological games as the matches begin, and there was some fancy hand and footwork involved in the fake out. But it was still over in about a second.

The crowd wasn't pleased. They had been waiting all evening for this match and were disappointed to not see a struggle between the two. I get it, though I do feel differently. I thought it was just awesome. 

The only reason sports are interesting, at least to me, is that they are unpredictable. On 'any given Sunday' the weak team can beat the strong one, or the champion sumo wrestler can win his bout with his head rather than his massive body.

The only thing that would have made last night's bout better is if the champion, after winning in that way, had bowed to the crowd and roared sumomasen!

Wand Wavers Local 432

I recognize that not every American's US experience is the same as my own. And certainly some - maybe much? - of what I observe in Tokyo is more about living in a city than it is about living in Japan. But then again, this is my blog, so I guess it's gonna have to be from my perspective.

Well, anyway, I was thinking about Wide Load signs. Driving along the highway in the US one is likely to see one of these now and then, usually associated with a truck pulling a load that fits the description.

I don't recall that I've ever seen a wide load sign in Japan, but what I have seen are wand wavers. They seem to appear out of nowhere when a big truck needs to take a tight turn, as are a good many of the turns a truck makes in Tokyo.

At construction sites, and parking lots one sees these wand wavers too. It's tough getting through the foot traffic and into and out of the busy lanes of motor vehicle traffic. The wand wavers help protect the public and keep traffic moving.

So all this got me thinking. It's not as though we don't also have wand wavers in the US, but the only places I've seen them were airports. 

If you're a wand waver who's looking for work, you might try Japan. There appear to be plenty of jobs in your line around here.

Lazy Machines

Years ago in Japan it was sometimes difficult to find a cash machine where one could use a foreign ATM card. I recall that I stayed at one hotel where I found such a machine on the lowest floor in the meeting room area. But, alas, the next time I needed it it was closed. The machine, as it turns out, had the night off, every night. And I thought the purpose of an ATM was so one could get money at any time of night or day...was I wrong?

The most inconveniently lazy machines I ever encountered, however, we not in Japan at all, but rather in France, that land of far too few toilets. And, as you might have guessed, some of the pay toilets take the night off. I seem to remember one in particular, that knocked off around 6 PM, and I really, really needed to pee at about 6:03.

Well, anyway, these days in Japan it's pretty easy to find a foreign friendly ATM. Most convenience stores have them, and are open all night long.

But I did encounter another lazy machine today. The grocery store across the street has, out front, a machine for collecting PET bottles. It gives you one point for each bottle, and when you get to 500 you can trade your points in for 50 Yen worth of merchandise, or about 40 cents. Clearly there's not much of an economic incentive to use the machine, but one still feels as though he's doing the right thing when he does so. Still, if I find that machine sleeping on the job too many more times, my PET bottles are liable to end at the curb on plastics trash day. That'll teach it.

The Subway - Like a Sandwich, but with More Layers

Unless you've actually ridden on one, you may think the stories of the Tokyo subways are urban legends. They're not. Or, to be more precise, it's quite possible there are urban legends regarding the subways, but all the stories I've heard I have verified personally.

Yes, during rush hours there are white glove wearing men on the platforms of the busy stations who help push people aboard. 

Yes, when the door opens and there's no room you still reach inside and grab something solid and pull yourself aboard. 

Yes, when you need to leave the train and there's no path -- excuse me, or sumimasen, its equivalent in Japanese, doesn't help since others also have no path -- you just have to push through the crowd, often knocking others off the train with you. Those who didn't want to exit just pull themselves back aboard as if nothing happened.

You may have heard that on a crowded subway you needn't hold onto your briefcase to keep it at your side. Yes, I have tried this successfully, but it only works in the most crowded trains, of course.

But even after my thirty five years experiencing all of that, I witnessed something new tonight. I actually saw someone fall asleep standing up in the subway. It wasn't packed, so the only things holding him up were his own two feet and his two-handed grasp on the thing I call the monkey tail - you know, the dangly gizmo that one hangs onto when standing in a subway or bus.

Anyway, he was standing there, eyes closed, and then his knees sagged. I wonder if he had one of those dreams where you're falling and you try to scream but no sound comes out. If so, it might have been useful in this case; maybe that woke him, or maybe it was the intense pressure on his hands and arms when his knees gave way. 

Anyway, he didn't fall. Instead he opened his eyes, for a moment, re-positioned himself, and then closed them again. I lost track of him after that, but had he fallen all the way down I probably would have noticed. So, let's just assume he got home safely, put on his bunny pajamas and fell fast asleep. 

But most likely he's subscribed to this blog and will hear a chime when I hit the publish button, wake up, read it, smile, and fall back asleep.

Mexican Food

When I lived in Tokyo in the 1980s, one of items I missed almost as much as hot chocolate was Mexican food. There didn't seem to be any of it anywhere. I remember being thrilled when 7-11 started selling ham and cheese burritos. The only resemblance to Mexican food was the tortilla, but I loved them.

In more recent years one of the family restaurant chains had added tacos to the menu, and I'd ordered them a couple times. The first time they served them cold. The second time, at a different location, they were warm, and decent.

We were in Tokyo a year ago when the first Taco Bell opened here. Actually, I think Taco Bell has been in Japan before, closed, and now returned. We didn't go when the new one opened because TV was showing lines around the building. But, in the meantime, another location has opened, and we did visit the original, which we found to be pretty credible, though minus the ultra cheap meal deals, and with a somewhat smaller, and somewhat Japanized menu than one finds in the US.

While it has only peripherally to do with the topic, Carl's Jr. has also opened a store in Tokyo recently. We'll try it too when the lines die down. Doesn't look like they have Hardee's biscuits though, which is one of the best things about Carl's in the US.

Anyway, before coming to Tokyo this time, we had done research and found a number of Mexican restaurants. Some have probably been around a while, but the Internet makes it so much easier to find things nowadays. 

Still, we did bring with us taco and fajita seasoning. And then, the first day we arrived, we went to the store across the street to buy groceries, and found that they had taco shells, and seasonings. Almost every store has tortillas now. In thirty-some years Japan has come a long way in this regard.

Oh, and on the hot chocolate, it is everywhere in Japan now, though I no longer drink much of it. Thirty years ago on my way home from Japan I ordered two cups in San Francisco only to find them so sweet I couldn't make it through all of the first one. (One's taste buds change with a sugar deprived diet.)

Schoolmates

At a recent funeral in my hometown I saw some old schoolmates, some of whom I hadn't seen in decades. It was fun, but none of us made any effort to stay in touch. We'll see each other, or not, at the next funeral, and that will be the end of it.

That's not to say none of us ever stay in touch with any of our schoolmates; the point is that it's not at all unusual when we don't.

But Asia is different. Schoolmates have lifelong commitments to each other, and tend to see one another often, and take care of each other.

My most recent example took place in Korea, but I've seen similar in Japan too. I was at a industry event with a Korean business partner only to have a number of his school chums stop by to say hi. Some of them seemed to accept me immediately as a part of the gang, since I was a friend of their friend.

They told me stories of their joint activities -- getting together for dinner, joint business activities, etc. My partner, on this occasion and others, has told me about how they use their network of school friends to help each other in business. I even witnessed it first hand when I stayed at a hotel where one of his schoolmates was a high-ranking manager. My partner notified his schoolmate, in this case one he wasn't in quite as close touch with, and a bottle of wine and fruit basket was sent to my room. (I appreciated the gesture, but don't use wine or most fruits, so shared the items with others.)

One of my partner's friends told me it's easier for them to do this in a smaller country like Korea than it would be for us to do in the US. His point is well taken, but there's also a beautiful cultural element there that we probably lack, even if our country were smaller.

Your Japanese is Excellent!

Learn a word or two of Japanese, use them now and then, and sooner or later someone will tell you your Japanese is excellent.

Although I am always pleased when I hear it, I never forget two things:

1) I've been getting this compliment for 35 years. It's not so much a evaluation of one's ability as it is an appreciation for one's effort.

2) They never use this compliment on one another.

Sugar & Creap?

For 35 years now I've been getting a chuckle out of some of the Englishish words I've encountered in Japan, just as I'm sure they get one out of some of the backward, upside down, or silly sounding kanji characters they see tattooed on Western people.

A friend sent me a picture of the menu of an ice cream shop in Japan that had amongst it's flavors one called Lamb Raisin. Here the problem is that both the word lamb and the word rum have come into Japanese in the same way - ramu - and not everyone knows just which one to choose on the way back toward English.

Today, for the first time, I encountered this product on a convenience store shelf:

It's coffee creamer, or creamy powder, but they cleverly replaced the m from cream with the p from powder. 

Although admittedly more appetizing than lamb raisin ice cream, one still wonders how many folks just decide to drink their coffee black.

"Why Japanese People?!"

There is a foreign comic here, by the name of Jason, who begins his routine in Japanese discussing some element of language or culture that he's observed. At some point, perhaps when he's exposed some logical inconsistency, he goes into a rant, in English. He brings his clenched fists to his face and shouts, "Why Japanese People, Why?!"

I found it funny the first time. And continue to find it funny that others continue to find it funny. "Why Japanese people?" It's really a single joke following a changing and intricate set up. The setup itself is interesting because it exposes Japan through a foreign eye. It's the sort of thing I'd like to read in an essay, or perhaps even a blog. Now that I've seen the rant once, I can just remember that part.

Actually, I suspect part of his appeal is that, even with his single joke, he's still funnier than some of the local talent. Add that to the interesting set up, and viola, a star is born.

I do think Jason's line of questioning is natural though, for a foreigner. When you've spent your entire life thinking one way of doing things is normal, and then encounter others who do something quite different, it can be startling.

In the particular case of language inconsistencies, Guy Deutscher points out in his masterpiece, The Unfolding of Language, that part of what causes languages to evolve is the human desire to regularize things. Schoolmarms insist that funner is not a word, but most of us think it should be, based upon the rest of the language, so gradually it is gaining acceptance, much to their chagrin. 

This is a normal process, but in our native languages the inconsistencies don't strike us as all that odd, we've lived with them since birth. In a foreign language though, time is compressed, you're seeing in a short time myriad odd things so it's easy to find some that you might have done differently, had you designed the language from scratch. Fodder for the likes of Jason, I suppose.

A Toilet by Any Other Name would Smell Like . . .

If I remember my Hamlet, the character of that name said to the ghost of his father, "from the tables of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond memories, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there, and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter." (As you'll see below, Shakespeare was right on point, as usual.)

The good King Claudius was lucky - to the extent a poisoned man could be - that he didn't have me for a son. I'm afraid I'd have been entirely unable to avoid mixing in the baser matter. "At least I know it may be so" in today's post; I am inclined to talk about toilets.

In the old days one was lucky to find a sit down toilet in Japan. Many were porcelain fixtures mostly flush with the surrounding floor, pun intended. 

We used to call those "squatters." Not the same as an unwelcome individual camping on your property, but about the same degree of desirability. 

But then, there were two types of those. One that actually did flush, and another that sat above a cavity under the house in a sort of septic system meets latrine sort of way. Every month a guy came around to clean out the holding bin, and you were more than happy to pay his charges, given the alternatives. This type of toilet was known by some of us a the "dropper."

Well, times have really changed for the humble toilet. One can scarcely visit any part of Asia today without encountering a bidet toilet, complete, so it would seem, with an operating system and a dozen buttons, generally in a language you either can't read, or are not inclined to at those particular moments.

Many of these units include a seat warmer. Desirable though it may seem in the unheated bathrooms you're also likely to encounter, I find it a bit disconcerting, as though I may have followed a little too closely behind the previous guy.

As for the bidet, perhaps I'd see it differently if it were dedicated, but I have a hard time wanting to be that intimate with a device that's shared by others, particularly in a hotel room or public space. It's about enough to make the old squatters sound good. But I do think I can live without encountering another dropper.

What's In a Word: Adobencha-

Some of you knew, figured out, or at least suspected that the Japanese word adobencha- comes from the English word adventure.

Every language has loan words. English certainly has some from Japanese, such as karaoke and karate. What's interesting about karaoke is that English has actually borrowed the oke part back from Japanese after it was originally borrowed from English.

The kara part of both karate and karaoke is a Japanese word meaning empty. The te part of karate is a Japanese word meaning hand: empty hand.

The oke part of karaoke actually come from the English word orchestra, which was borrowed into Japanese as o-kesutora, which is then often shortened to oke. 

Here, I am using the hyphen to lengthen the duration of the preceding vowel. (We don't usually do this when writing Japanese in Roman characters, but it is the way it's done in Japanese, particularly in loan words.)

In Japanese, the vowels always have the same sound, but the duration can be different. So, for my word adobencha, it really should be adobenchaa, or adobencha-; the final vowel sound has a long duration. 

The Japanese spellings of loan words are usually chosen so the spelling comes out similarly, rather than trying to make the sounds match. Even if the sounds were made to match as much as possible, they wouldn't be perfect. But the focus on spelling makes the pronunciation even farther off. And then, too often, Japanese speakers think of the word as close enough to the English pronunciation to be understood. It's one of things that complicates communication between Japanese and English speakers.

More on My Brush with Infamy

I wrote earlier about some brushes with fame, one of which involved a police headquarters I happened to have walked past the other night. 

It turns out there was a murder in Tokyo 7 months ago, and an arrest was made in Fukushima a couple of days ago. The police headquarters that I walked past appears to be the one for the locale of the original event. So, it's possible this guy was in the car I saw leaving the headquarters a couple days ago. I haven't been able to verify when he might have been at the HQ, or transferred from it, but it's a good enough story I think we ought to go with it. 

(Unfortunately, I don't see any blobs in the shot that are likely to be me...)

Almost Famous

We tend to be night owls, or early morning owls rather, and jet lag only compounds it. We were up at 2 the other morning, and decided to go out to one of the few 24 hour grocery stores nearby. 

Since I'm not much of a shopper, I was outside walking around and saw a dozen police officers in front of their area headquarters. They didn't detain or divert me, so I walked on thinking they must be up to some sort of training exercise -- they didn't seem anxious or agitated. But later, when I returned, they were putting someone in a police car and there were 6 or 8 reporters around, and a news truck with a satellite dish on top. 

Again, they didn't divert or detain me and I walked past again as one of the reporters took a picture of the police car as it departed with its back seat occupant. 

So, if you see a dark blob in the corner of some Japanese crime story photo, you might as well assume it's me.

Later that same day we went to a convenience store, one of the few around that has a parking lot. As arrived, we saw someone drive up in a Cadillac Escalade, one of the new ones that's the size of a Suburban. My wife, Miwako, marveled that anyone in Japan even has such a car, as tight as space can be. I mentioned that this is a $50,000 car in the US, and probably 3 times that here. 

As we left the store though, Miwako told me that she'd figured it out. Inside she'd seen a Japanese TV personality, and realized it was he who had driven up in the Escalade.

So, imagine that, two brushes with fame in the same day, and we've not yet been here a week. This really is an adobencha.

Oh, and the next day she saw the same guy on TV and pointed him out to me.

Life is Old There

Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver wrote about West Virginia that "Life is old there, older than the trees, Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze." I've never been sure exactly what that means, but it just sounds so good, so right, that it must be true in some way.

Often that song has made me think of my own country home in Wyoming where life is a little more basic. It's a constant battle for survival, against the elements, for example. Gives you a different perspective.

Tokyo is a bit that way too, for different reasons:

1) We don't have a car, by choice. We can rent one when we need it, but mostly a car is an expense and a hassle. They're great when you need to move things, or buy something large, or go out in the country, but they're by no means the quickest or easiest way to move around the inner part of the city where roads are congested and parking is not only scarce but expensive.

2) Space is tight. Again, you can do something about this with money, but the typical and reasonable situation is different than the US suburbs. 

3) Disposal of garbage requires some effort.

Given all that, when you buy something in Tokyo you have to think about the logistics of getting it home, of where you plan to store it, and of how you plan to dispose of it when finished. It's like you must take more responsibility for your things than one typically worries about in the burbs. It's not at all unwelcome, just takes some getting used to.

Case in point. We're in a furnished apartment that doesn't have adequate storage. So we bought some metal storage shelves. The shelves and hardware were in a box and the rails in a separate package. It probably didn't weigh more than 20 pounds, but was bulky. And we bought some other things too. 

My plan had been to hail a taxi if needed, but we first put the other items in our backpacks, and then slung the box of shelves on the pack of rails which we then put on our shoulders. She walked in front, I behind and made it the mile back to our apartment without issue.

But all the while, of course, thinking about needing to move this shelf somewhere else, since our situation is temporary. I think I'll just rent a pickup when that day comes. I can get one for a few hours for $40 bucks or so. I'll let you know how that goes a few months from now.

Rusty's Tokyo Adobencha

Adobencha (actually, adobenchaa, but that's a topic for another day) is one of the ways to say adventure in Japanese. It's also a good way to describe what I'm doing right now. My wife and I arrived in Tokyo a few days ago, intending to stay for a while if all goes as planned. 

We had both lived in Tokyo and other parts of Japan before, and both speak, read and write the language, so it's not a total shock. 

Here is the view from our apartment:

Does that look like Tokyo to you? Actually, if you haven't explored Tokyo previously, you might be surprised by the diversity in the cityscape here. Ancient buildings next to modern ones; two story structures next to skyscrapers.

I am sitting on two cushions called zabuton (two because they're both flat as pancakes) and working at a low table. Picture this, if you want, but then downgrade it a few notches for my actual circumstances -- not that I'm complaining at all, just that I'm cheap, but then many of you knew that. 

I am dressed like this, except downgrade it 17 notches because it's me wearing it rather than a couple of pretty girls. Also my pants are long; the jinbe (this outfit) I bought on sale from Amazon.co.jp had both long and short pants. It's currently cold here, and I'm wearing the long ones.

There is, of course, no law requiring that I dress this way. But we moved here with a few suitcases and I made the decision to buy this instead of bringing something to lounge around the house in. I've wanted a jinbe for 20 years, so it's about time.

I will write, sporadically, about my activities. No obligation to read, of course, but you're welcome back anytime.