Caught this nice image on the way home the other day, the sun setting behind a cherry blossom tree. The trees are in full blossom in Tokyo now, and the trees are very popular, and are all around. It’s a beautiful time, even though the past few days of rain have subdued the trees a bit.
Something that Americans do not often think about is what it would be like to have foreign military bases in your country. Even living in Japan, knowing the bases are here, it doesn’t come to mind much, and though there are many who protest the bases in Okinawa and sometimes elsewhere in Japan, the truth is, you don’t hear about it often. But then, most Japanese people will not complain about the obnoxious politicians during campaign season with their all-day loudspeaker truck battles, so it doesn’t mean that nobody minds. I certainly know that Americans would mind if, say, England had bases across the country.
Living out in Western Tokyo, I tend to be reminded of this a bit more often. Just tonight, several jets flew over–more than usual, but still, we get them flying out of Yokota Air base, the main American base in Japan, housing the HQ for a string of military bases with as many as 50,000 American servicepeople living on them, along with about 52,000 dependents. That’s a lot of people.
Most of the forces are based in Okinawa (around 78%), including bases at Kadena, Futenma and Torii; Okinawa is a well-known island at the southernmost end of the Japanese archipelago. It’s famous for being a Hawaii-like resort, and for the fact that American bases occupy 30% of the land area on the island. Next is Tokyo, with bases in Yokota (air base), Yokosuka (naval), Zama, Sagamihara, Fuji and Atsugi. That probably does not include the U.S.-military-run area in tama, immediately behind my apartment building in fact, which houses ammunition storage and a golf course/recreation center. There’s also the naval base at Sasebo (Nagasaki), the Marine Corps base in Iwakuni (Yamaguchi, also southern Japan), and Misawa Air Base (Aomori, in northern Japan).
I remember first going to Yokota, to visit a coworker living there. You come through the gate, and suddenly you’re looking at an American landscape. The streets, the green-lawned front yards, the building styles, the shops and their contents–it’s like being suddenly transported to the U.S. In the days before Costco and other now-common import stores, the shops on base were a major attraction–if you could buy something there. You need to have base ID to do that. I remember one friend who said he’d found a way to sneak on base at Yokota–had to do with following train tracks until they intersected with a road on base, which was unguarded–and usually got away with shopping there by claiming he’d forgotten his ID cards at home.
But few Japanese know what it’s like on the base, save for those who work there or those who visit for air shows and the like. It’s something I’d be interested in talking to more Japanese people about. One time, it came up while I was visiting the local hospital. A man in his eighties, very gregarious, struck up a conversation (in Japanese), and we talk about various topics. One that came up was the bases (the entrance to the local munitions dump and rec center is right next to the hospital), and I asked him how he felt about it. He didn’t mind, he said; “we lost the war, after all.” I suppose that made a certain sense to him, having lived through that time. But I have to wonder what younger Japanese people feel about it. Strange that I’ve been in Japan close to 12 years now and have never asked. But I suspect the answer would be along the lines of not knowing much and not caring much–it’s just the way things are.
Do any of the visitors here have their own stories, conversations you can relate on the subject? I’d be interested to know.
Got hit by another quake, this one as I was winding up a class. The quake measured 5.2 (some reports say 5.4) on the Richter scale, but was centered off the coast, so it wasn’t huge in town–it never got to the we’d-better-leave-the-room scale or anything. But the class did shake and rattle some. At that point in time, a student was giving her PowerPoint presentation, and as the students in the class reacted to the quake nervously, this one student just kept going right through her presentation without so much as blinking.
Turned out, afterwards, we found out she was the only one in the class that didn’t even notice the quake! She was so focused on what she was doing–and was pretty surprised to hear that it was the room that was shaking.
I know exactly how she felt.
Last weekend, Sako and I met to discuss the goings-on at The Expat, and sat down to eat at an Italian place near Hashimoto Station. As we were being seated, I asked if there was a no-smoking section. Sorry, the waiter told us. Not here. Afterwards, we went for a drink at Starbucks, the ubiquitous U.S. coffee and snack lounge–one of the few places in Japan that is non-smoking. That contrast might show the divide between past and present in Japan, but the country is still pretty firmly on the smoking side of things.
Historically, Japan has been a smoker’s paradise. Whatever concessions that were made for non-smokers was superficial, at best, and many times they still are. For example, not long ago I stopped at a McDonald’s for a quick lunch. I was told that in the seating area, there was a non-smoking section–but before I even got there, I knew what I would find. And sure enough, the “no smoking” section was three small tables at the back end of the room (almost always opposite from the windows), and not more than five feet from several other tables filled with smokers, with no air currents favoring the no-smoking area. When I left a half hour later, my clothes and hair smelled like an ashtray.
That’s what has been called the “Menagerie Lion,” a famous child’s mispronunciation of “Imaginary Line,” a standard smoking issue in Japan. Separate areas for smoking and non-smoking are found only when they are naturally formed, like restaurants with tables on two different floors. Sometimes the floor area is great enough to allow for some actual semblance of separation. But usually, you can expect no real protection from the smoke, and precious few eating establishments have entirely no-smoking policies.
Some areas have improved, however; trains and train stations are an excellent example. Local trains are now of course no-smoking, but many trains with seat reservations (like the Narita Express) have smoking cars. That would not be so bad, but the non-smoking cars allow smoking in the areas at the ends of cars near the doors. There is a door closing that area off, but it is motion-activated, and since the smoker almost always sets it off every minute or so, the smoke rushes in–which is less of an issue anyway as the air conditioning is recycled and shared through the areas, meaning that it’s pretty much a smoking car anyway.
Train platforms are mostly non-smoking; the Keio Line recently banned smoking altogether on them. Other lines have a few smoking areas along the platform, and despite the outdoor ventilation one generally has to stand a fair distance away from them (or upwind if there’s a breeze) to stay in fresh air–not that smokers will always honor the no-smoking signs.
Things are improving, but at a snail’s pace. I do remember back in the mid-80’s having to get up from my seat at the movie theater every other time I saw a film to tell some guy five rows in front to stop smoking (it’s not just the smell, it gets in the way of the picture), and that never happens to me any more. I see fewer people taking ashtrays from smoking areas into the non-smoking areas for a few puffs. And the yakitori place I’ve been a regular at for 15 years, despite being a smoking joint, watches out for me–the guys behind the counter, knowing my preferences, kindly try to arrange seating for me so as to keep me segregated enough to make a big difference.
But it should be noted that Japan’s tobacco industry is still coddled by the government, which is still a major stockholder in Japan Tobacco, the third biggest cigarette company in the world. Warning labels, last time I checked, were still very mild (along the lines of saying, “Try not to smoke too much”). Campaign girls can still be seen handing out free sample packs on the streets near major stations. And cigarette butts decomposing on the sidewalk and streets are still more ubiquitous than cell phones. So it’ll be a while yet. But things are getting better.
The Daily Yomiuri, for all its faults, has a nice event every year with its cartoon contest. Tied for third place was this cartoon, which prompted me to laugh out loud–but I caution you that you have to be a bit familiar with things Japanese to understand it.
The Japanese government moves closer and closer to amending its American-imposed peacetime constitution so as to curtail or repeal the no-war stipulation. But it also realizes that Japan is going to need more soldiers when that happens. Not to worry; the Japanese government is on the job. What’s the strategy?
Really. The commercial features seven men dressed as sailors, prancing about the deck of a warship, singing, “Nippon Seaman Ship, Seaman Ship, For Love…For Peace.” Really. I kid you not. I mean, they might have taken the “Navy of One” route. Or perhaps, “Sea All You Can See.” But it looks like they opted for, “The Few. The Proud. The Dancing Navy.”
You gotta take a look–the Japanese Navy, called the Japan Marine Self Defense Forces, has put the commercial up on their web site (Flash plugin required), complete with high kicks and gyrating hips. It’s quite a thing.
Update: Here’s the video via YouTube:
The end of an era: Beef in a Bowl. Gyuudon, as it’s called, has long been a favorite dish for diners seeking fast food in Japan, at places like the now-famous Yoshinoya. But that is beginning to end now, after a single cow in the United States tested positive for Mad Cow Disease. The gyuudon restaurants are taking beef off the menu, as U.S. beef is banned and Aussie beef doesn’t sit as well with the customers. So beef is out, and many gyuudon lovers will have to find cheap culinary satisfaction some other way.
Of course, one has to wonder, why U.S. beef is banned. The single cow that tested positive came from Canada, and the U.S. has found no other cases in three months. You could say that they are being careful, but if that is so, then why is Japanese beef still on the market? Japan just uncovered yet another case of Japanese BSE, the eleventh so far since the first was discovered on September 10th, 2001. And all of those cows were born and raised in Japan.
Seems to me U.S. beef is safer.
You might enjoy this man-on-the-street bit from Japan Today. The question: What kind of attitude toward Japan or Japanese by foreigners don’t you like? Some pretty interesting answers there, and some discussion by mostly non-Japanese people afterwards.
Poor Mr. Aso.
One of the nice things about living where I do is that the neighborhood is very nice. I’m just 45 minutes from downtown Tokyo by train, but the town I live in is open, spacious and green. Lots of parks, great view from where I live. There are drawbacks, however–fewer stores, and my place is a good distance from the train station, so I have to depend on buses, and they usually are not very convenient.
And oh yeah, the cable TV sucks.
Cable TV in Japan is very different from back home. You don’t get fifty channels here. Nor seventy. With the most liberal count, you get 35 where I live. Only about 20 count as non-broadcast type of channels, the rest are just local stations you can get for free. And of the non-broadcast channels, few are worth watching. CNNj, Super Channel (U.S. TV shows), Movie Plus, and Discovery Channel are all that are really worth watching. MTV if you like that. But the rest are pretty much mind-numbing, like the “Go and Shogi Channel,” a channel devoted to the Japanese board games go (or “i-go,” the one with black and white stones on a grid) and shogi (Japanese chess). Not included are channels most other cable companies give their clients, like the BBC, FOX (entertainment, not news), AXN (lots more syndicated TV shows), TBS Movies, and lots of other good channels.
Every once in a while, they dangle the hope of new channels in front of you. I just got a questionnaire which asks to rate which channels you like, which you don’t, and which channels would you like to get. Last time this happened, they listed all the really good channels everyone else has–but the “results of the survey” apparently prompted them to get rid of an excellent news channel and a few other decent stations, and add pretty much just crap–including the “Go and Shogi” channel, yet another sports news channel (we already had three), and a home shopping channel. Oh, joy.
So I’m filling out the questionnaire yet again, but without hope of getting anything decent. Probably they’ll take away the Discovery Channel and give us “The Golf Network” or “The Golf Channel” (both are candidates this time, but I’d rather go with Nader on that one), “The Jidai Geki Channel” (24-hour bad samurai dramas from 30 years ago), and Yet Another Sports Channel (5 of the 20 extra choices offered are sports).
I’d go for the SkyPerfecTV satellite dish, but another apartment building is 10 meters too far in the wrong direction and is blocking the reception.
Ah, the horrible suffering I must endure.
Here in Japan, a good dentist is worth his weight in amalgam. Or, as is the case with my latest visit, composite resin.
A filling that I had filled maybe a decade ago started to chip a few days back. It didn’t hurt, but it was enough to make me worry and naturally warranted an immediate visit to the dentist. After a horrifying dental experience with a doctor close to my apartment which cost me a tooth, I looked for and found a good doctor: Dr. Nishibori, with offices in Sendagaya (very close to the JR station) and Roppongi, in central Tokyo. Dr. Nishibori was trained in the U.S., and has a very modern office–and two very important elements here are that (a) he speaks English well, and (b) he takes National Health Insurance.
I had visited Dr. Nishibori earlier for a full exam and to get a bridge put in (to fix up the disaster the other dentist had left behind), and I liked his offices–good, modern equipment, fast service, good people. He even recommended another dentist when he felt that other dentist provided better work than he, a sign of professional integrity.
When I came in for the tooth work yesterday (made the appointment just a day and a half before–but there was almost no wait), I noticed some new equipment. Every dental station was now equipped with a flat-panel computer display. From looking around the room, I could see that they were used for X-rays. I didn’t get to see it close-up because I didn’t need X-rays then, but I could see that the X-rays showed incredibly large and clear on the screen. A new system, Dr. Nishibori told me. Very cool.
He also gave me a resin filling instead of amalgam, the first time a dentist had done so for me. The composite resin filling, aside from being white and blending in better, bonds to the teeth better and contains no mercury, along with other benefits. The downside: some sensitivity after treatment–my teeth still hurt a bit a day later.
Nishibori, despite his qualifications, modern office equipment and central location, does not charge much: the whole session was completed in about an hour, and I was charged about 1,500 yen (maybe $13). That’s my 30%, with insurance picking up the other 70% of the bill. Not bad, as resin fillings are supposed to cost up to twice as much as silver fillings.
If you live in Tokyo and are interested in seeing Dr. Nishibori, the Sendagaya office phone number is (03) 3403-8885 (alternate is -8886). They’re open weekdays till 6 pm, and until noon on Saturdays.
I just wanted to let you in on a few web resources for living in Japan that I find useful.
Yahoo Trains and Jorudan
With Tokyo’s labyrinthine train system, it is a wonder anyone can make it around town–what with the dozens of train lines crisscrossing this way and that around Tokyo, with the psychedelic spaghetti that is the subway system in midtown. Should you take the Chuo, Tozai, or Marunochi line to Kichijoji, and then transfer via the Inogashira line, or should you go by the Keio instead? Which one is cheaper? Which is faster?
Well, there’s a great web utility for those in doubt. You can find it on Yahoo Japan’s web site; just enter the starting point, destination, and when you want to travel, and the engine will produce a list of possible ways to get there, citing departure and arrival times, transfer points, and total cost and transit times. Links to maps of the station areas are included. Unfortunately for those unable to read Japanese, the Yahoo site is not provided in English (though station names may by typed that way), but not to worry: the Japanese Traffic Guide by Jorudan accomplishes the same thing in English. The Yahoo version is better if you can get by the language barrier, though.
Free Maps
None of the Japanese mapping services are in English, but if you know the language enough, they are excellent for finding what you want. Both Yahoo Maps and Mapfan allow you to find a location by narrowing down by prefecture, city, and local area–or by typing in the address, station name, or postal code.
My preference is for Mapfan–their interface is easier for me, and their maps have greater detail.
Good Weather
There are many sites to give you weather reports, but the best weather site for Japan that I have seen is the one provided by TBS. Nationwide and Tokyo-specific forecasts include an every-3-hour forecast for the day, a one-week forecast, typhoon tracking, and up-to-date satellite images and radar readings–including an animated radar display that projects rainfall hour by hour up to six hours in advance. The forecasts are not always correct, as you would expect, but they are pretty reliable–and the whole thing is available in English.
Just a few… if you have any favorites, please leave a comment and point them out!
If you watched the QuickTime video I posted of the New Year’s “hatsumode” visit to the local shrine, then you undoubtedly noticed the young people in the strange masks (above and below) dancing about in a rather stylized fashion. These are known as “Hyottoko,” as you may have heard Hiromi exclaim in the video.
Hyottoko is an abbreviation fo “Hi Otoko,” or “Fire Man,” from the idea that this character blows fire from a bamboo tube (hence the mouth shaped as it is). Their dance is considered comical, and is said to have been used as long as 900 years ago to amuse troops fresh from battle. The female equivalent is known as “okame,” though I didn’t see any at the shrine. As far as I know, there is no special tie between Hyottoko and New Year’s, but it was fun to have them there; you may have noticed one of them doing the shishi-mai head-biting thing on me in the video. I’m guessing that a lot of mixing and matching of traditional entertainment was going on there. Whatever the case, it was fun!
It’s a little bit late, but distractions kept me from this project for a while.
Every year at New Year’s Eve, I go to a local shrine–somewhat of a private tradition since I first came to Japan. I really enjoy the people, the music, the local atmosphere, the free sake. One year (on the millennium, in fact) I spent New Year’s back home in the U.S., but everyone went to bed at 11 pm, and I just sat there watching Dick Clark on TV and thought, hey! I could be at a shrine right now!
When I moved to this town, I thought I had found the perfect shrine, a place atop a hill near the train station, with a view of Tokyo and a beautiful temple just below in a pocket valley (I’m a bit out in the boonies, though still close to Tokyo proper). But when I went there one New Year’s Eve, I found the place deserted–I guess they went out of business some time ago, though the shrine still stood. The temple was in business, but it was just people ringing the bell. I was about to go home, disappointed, when I saw fireworks a bit of a ways off. Well, I followed the fireworks and found the shrine I go to now.
It’s a great place. They shoot off the fireworks–real sky-reaching stuff, not the kind you buy at the store–and they have pretty much 
everything else, too. The sake (including kids’ sake, non-alcoholic and, to me, really bad-tasting), a traditional band, the shishi-mai dance, a nice bonfire, with nice trinkets, charms and arrows (for luck) on sale. The works.
This year, Hiromi made her way over to join me, and we brought a video camera along. What kept me from doing this until now, a few weeks after the fact, was that I knew that editing together the video would take several hours–but tonight I finally had enough free time, and got the darn thing done. The movie, a little over two and a half minutes long, is available on this page, for anyone who has QuickTime software installed. Be warned, the movie is a touch over 5MB in size; if you have a dial-up connection it will take forever. Broadband (DSL or cable) is recommended.
I hope you enjoy. Until next year….
Okay, I promise I’ll get back to political blogging soon. But a few more photos first. It was a very clear day today (doubtless due to the chilling cold), which afforded a very good view of Mt. Fuji. I had to go out of my way a bit to get a photo, though–what used to be a nice shot of Fuji from the riverside has become obstructed since last winter by a construction job across the river–spoiling the view for local residents at exactly this spot, sorry to say (I’m not one of them). Still, not too far away and you get a shot again. That’s progress for you.
And as I walked up to my apartment in my own building a while later, the moon was just rising over the horizon, a beautiful shade of orange. Talk about the Red Planet–here’s my own shot at that orb, or the closest imitator.
In the meantime, the first week of school is keeping me busy. And while I go easy on my own blogging, my students are starting up theirs–three sections of Introduction to Computers, and all fifty or so students have the assignment to blog once a week for the next thirteen weeks, on the topic of computers. Feel free to visit and perhaps comment, but please be kind and courteous (when was the last time you blogged in another language? These kids are amazing) if you interact.
The class I teach is pretty fun for me despite the workload; the students all get very creative with their projects, and it’s always fun to introduce a lot of the new technology and see practical advances for everyone. By the end of the semester, the page I linked to above will also sport the students’ web pages–one of the other projects they all must do.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine on New Year’s Day, something referred to as Hatsumode in Japan, visiting a shrine to pay one’s respects and to pray at the outset of the new year (I just did that myself–I’ll blog on it as soon as I get the video on to my computer). Koizumi’s visit is classed as an “official visit,” which somehow apparently makes it a political act instead of a religious one, which would violate the separation of church and state here.
Now, one might think that the prime minister visiting a shrine on New Year’s might be kind of like a U.S. president going to church on Christmas, and normally you’d be right; it’s just the choice of shrines that makes the difference. Imagine, for example, that a U.S. president visited a church that advocated white supremacy, and that it was not just one president or one time, but a string of presidents visiting the same church for more than a quarter century.
That’s kind of like what’s happening here in Japan. Yasukuni Shrine (English site), originally called Tokyo Shokonsha, was built in 1869 at the time of the Meiji Restoration, when the Tokugawa Shogunate collapsed and the Emperor was, at least nominally, reestablished as the head of the country in a constitutional monarchy with a parliament (“Diet”). Yasukuni was run by the military as a shrine for the fallen soldiers of national wars, and after WWII, many soldiers of that war were enshrined there–but in 1978, fourteen class-A war criminals from WWII, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, were interred there as well. Since that time, Yasukuni has displayed exhibits extolling the virtues of the war dead, and has taken somewhat of a 
nationalistic view of Japan’s actions during that period of time (one example is that WWII is referred to by the shrine as the “Greater East Asian War,” a name used by nationalists who rationalized the war as a movement to free Asia from European rule; other examples include the reverence paid to the war criminals and the shrine’s attitude that the war crime tribunals were a “sham”).
And there’s where the problem arises: the shrine kind of represents Japan’s reluctance to see WWII as a war of Japanese aggression, but rather as a justified war, a view in which the suffering by Japanese people and soldiers is emphasized and the atrocities committed by Japan are either de-emphasized or completely whitewashed and denied. In 1975, prime minister Miki visited the shrine, followed by Fukuda in ’78–after which the war criminals were enshrined. Then PM Suzuki visited in 1980, and Nakasone in 1983, ’84, and ’85–after which he stopped, due to the magnitude of protest from abroad, primarily from China and South Korea. Things were quiet until 1996, when Ryutaro Hashimoto visited again. In 1999, there was an attempt to band-aid the controversy by removing the war criminals, but the shrine refused to do so. (An excellent chronology of events can be found here.)
Koizumi sparked the controversy anew in 2001 when he visited the shrine, and has now done so four times since. Most visits by prime ministers have been in August during the O-bon season, in which the dead are honored; to my knowledge, this is the first New Year’s visit.
The aspect that sticks out here is that Yasukuni seems to be the shrine of choice for these prime ministers (we’re overlooking numerous visits made by other government officials); there is certainly no shortage of shrines to visit, and then there is the possibility of simply not visiting a religious institution at all. But the fact that so many prime ministers have chosen this particular shrine (instead of the more famous and innocuous Meiji Shrine, for example) seems to indicate a high-level endorsement of the nationalistic view of Japan’s wartime role–and at a time when Japan is beginning to assert a military presence overseas and is considering repealing the postwar constitution’s article on a defense-only military and the renunciation of war… well, one can see the objections that might be raised. Yes, Yasukuni is the memorial to almost all of Japan’s war dead since the shrine was erected, about 2.5 million Japanese, so it is a sort of Arlington National Cemetery. One might expect some nationalism if you regard it that way, but Japan’s history is different, and its refusal to apologize formally and definitively, make sincere reparations and take on a national attitude of remorse and disapproval for the nation’s actions (more like Germany has done) makes Japan’s situation a unique one.
The bright side to this is that there is no ongoing violence in this vein, so it is possible that Japan’s role in WWII and the decades preceding may be forgotten and forgiven over time. However, visits like Koizumi’s a few days ago are certainly not helping things much.
