Door to Door

Many foreigners living in Japan say Japanese television is boring. But I beg to differ.

Usually those who say this do not have a good command of Japanese. So they are limited to watching shows which are visually easy to understand. Some Japanese TV dramas are very good. A while back I had followed Arifureta Seikatsu (Ordinarily Found Life) about two people who meet through saving the life of another person on the verge of committing suicide. Each character had their own secret and how they coped with keeping their secrets drove much of the story.

Sometimes stories are not simply for entertainment and Japanese literature has no shortage of this. Many fine writers are also script writers. And so the quality of the stories are as good as, if not better than Western fiction (personally, I think Japanese writers and their stories are far superior).

Just tonight, for example, there was an extraordinary drama on TBS called Door to Door starring Ninomiya Kazuya, a 26 year old singer from the group, Arashi. His performance was compelling as a young man overcoming cerebral palsy to become a successful salesman. And Higuchi Kanako and Kato Rosa, in their supporting roles, had excellent performances.

According to the same source above this was the third in a series of kandou or “moving” dramas all of which starred Ninomiya. I am definitely watching the other two in this series if they ever get air time again.

Memoru – jot it down

Here is a cool Japanese word I learnt today – memoru. It is a trendy slang verb to mean to jot something down. It comes the the English noun memo but turned into a verb by adding the verb ending -ru.

Here are some of its basic verb forms: memoru, memorimasu, memoranai, memorimasen, memotta, memorimashita, memoranakatta, memorimasen deshita, memoranakute ikenai, memoranakucha… .

A packed train and a nation’s character

If you think the Japanese are kind people then think again.

We – my wife, children and I – hopped onto a packed train yesterday. And no one offered their seats to us. In Australia able people, young and old, would give up their seats for the elderly, disabled or people with young children. But not in Japan. Three young university students were sitting in front where stood. None of them even acknowledged our presence. They avoid looking at you in case they feel a twinge of guilt and have to get up and offer their seats.

Perhaps these words are too harsh. The offering of seats to those who need it more is simply not something done in Japan. Partly, if you give up your seat to someone that person owes you a debt of gratitude, and you should not put someone in that situation. Strange as that may seem there is a kind of logic to it that you cannot argue with.

Or can you?

More often than not the person to whom you offer your seat will refuse, not wanting to be indebted to a stranger. So in that sense the offering up of your seat is futile.

But I will argue still that it is important to make this effort because kindness to people you do not know is an important trait. In general, the Japanese are kind to two groups of people – to people they know, and to people who are obviously clueless foreigners.

To the first group it can be in an open form of kindness or one of the two set gift giving periods, the oseibo (end of the year) or ochugen (middle of the year). And to the second group this kindness is extended to them until they become clued in (for example, the new exchange student who is in Japan for the first time).

The custom is one that helps keep the social peace or wa in Japan. It is one that has worked for a long time. But in a changing world where, for the better or worse, more foreigners are coming to visit or stay in Japan this custom may not be so effective. So a change in attitude and thinking may be in order.

Japan is in a transition period. There are growing pains. Murder and suicide rates are up. Social order is disintegrating. Young people do not know what to do with their lives. Change is faster than before. So how the society will adjust remains to be seen.

But nonetheless I hope at least the Japanese will learn to offer up their seats, in an act of true kindness, to someone they do not know, and expect nothing in return for it.

Japanese funerals

Living in rural Japan, where the young have left for the urban areas and the old stay to continue a more traditional life, death is not far away.

I was struck by how neighbours help out at funerals of the bereaved in Japan. Like everything else this is a communal affair. The community supports each other in ways that just do not seem to happen back in Australia.

In Australia usually all the details (for the lack of a better word) of a funeral are looked after by professional funeral homes. And the service is usually in a church or the funeral home.

But here the funeral is usually in the home of the deceased itself. They do have funeral directors but the neighbours are there and stay with the bereaved for the whole day helping to console them of their loss.

Perhaps this is a rural and not a urban Japan thing. I don’t know. But I feel there is closeness in Japanese communities which I do not find back in Australia.

Classics Day

Classics Day is to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the world’s oldest novel – The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari). According to the Daily Yomiuri, about 2,400 people, including the Emperor and Empress attended the ceremony at the Kyoto International Conference Centre. Keynote speakers included Setouchi Yakucho (novelists, priestess and translator of the Genji Monogatari into modern Japanese), Donald Keene (scholar of Japanese literature) and Sen Genshitsu (a former grand master of urasenke tradition of tea ceremony).

The goal of the establishment of Classics Day is to increase awareness of Japan’s classical culture, but also to promote all cultures’ own past in the constantly fluctuating world.

The aim is to make Classics Day a national holiday.

Today’s Japan needs to remember some of it best writings and traditions. The top three books for 2007 was apparently keitai (mobile or cellular) novels. The culture is changing. It is a reminder that the past is also good, if not better.

Three years since my last sake matsuri

I went to the Saijo Sake Festival yesterday.

This time is it with my children. My youngest, being two year old, had not been born on my last trip three years ago. Certainly different when you become a parent and your kids get bigger. Both can play games now. Our son played the shooting gallery and our daughter the dice game.

My son won a toy gun. It shoots beads. This is something I am not too keen on. But it does teach him about how dangerous guns can be even if it is a toy gun. I tested it by shooting a piece of paper. It went clean through. I can just imagine how much my son would cry if he was hit by a shot. This morning I accidentally hit him with a toy plastic baseball. He was already rubbing his arm in slight pain. And it wasn’t even a fast pitch.

Coming back to the Sake Festival, I am not too keen on it these days as I don’t drink. There was nothing good in it. drunk people, greasy food, kids dancing pretending to be adults, toys of bad influence. Not a single thing I can think of which is good about it except for the business of sake. Not at all comforting.

You know it’s election time in Japan when…

You know it’s election time in Japan when you hear the thank yous from the speakers of the passing cars with its supporters trailing behind in a long convoy waving at you causing you to almost swerve from the distraction and nearly hit the huge makeshift candidate poster boards at the side of the road.

The noise is as annoying as those black ultra-nationalist propaganda trucks you see across Japan. Arrest them all – the election candidates and ultra-nationalists – is all I can say.

Friends and chatter … Western style

I had a friend come over for lunch on the weekend. This is not something that is usual for us seeing as I live in the middle of nowhere (yes, I think our town should be renamed Nowhere). This friend lives about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from us. So it isn’t exactly a stone’s throw away.

I cooked lunch for us all – my family and the friend – and relaxed. It was the first time in a long while. Not that I mind not seeing friends. I think family life is pretty good. I like spending all my free time with the kids. And my wife is good company. But still seeing friends is important I think.

“You guys can sure talk,” my wife said to me afterwards. “What did you talk about?”

“Oh, about this and that,” I replied.

Being Japanese my wife still doesn’t know it is normal for Westerners to talk like this, or rather she knows but cannot grasp the concept. You see, the Japanese don’t usually get together like this and talk. And when they do it is often between long spells of not seeing their friends, so it is more like catching up. And when they do get together it is often more formal, at least through my foreign eyes.

So my wife thinks it strange that we should have so much to talk about while I think it strange they, the Japanese, have so little. But I am now beginning to understand that it is not so strange. There is no law saying Western ways are the yardstick for cultural norms. No culture has that privilege. But nonetheless all cultures think theirs is the measure of all things. It is sometimes called ethnocentricity. But more often it is called “the strange customs” of the Other.

Justice, interrogation and Japan

I am glad I am an upstanding citizen in this country, my home for the past five years. I have heard of things like this about the police and have seen it in the movies.

But people and culture everywhere have these kinds of problems, not just Japan. It is the hidden side of things that need to be looked at most. Beauty is only what is shown, never seen is the process behind all things.

Sports Day… Japanese style

There are two things which are very different about Sports Days back in Australia and here in Japan.

Firstly, not much sport goes on Sports Days in Japan. Sure they run around and stuff but it isn’t sport. In my Australian school days we would do the usual track and field – 100m, hurdles, high jump, even shot put. But here they just do mini-versions of short-distance running and play various games… even at junior high-school level. Rather childish.

Secondly, parents go watch their kids on Sports Days here. They also participate somewhat. Back “home” neither would be done. At my kids Sports Day last weekend I had to run a relay with the other fathers. Just my luck that I had to be pitted against a teacher friend of mine, a fit soccer-playing mad guy. I took it easy for the first corner until I realized he was coming up fast. Didn’t want to look the idiot-father that I am so I put legs into fifth gear (something I hadn’t done in at least ten years) to get to my relay partner ahead of him. After that we had a good-ol’ chat.

The point I am trying to make is that Sports Days are not really for sport – they are social events. Who cares how the kids go (well we do a little) but mostly it is about how getting together and working together.

In a society like Japan where the group takes precedent over everything else this makes sense. But to the outsider, the uninitiated, this can be quite stressful. Not being used to say ‘no’ to these things is so unnatural to the Western mind-set. But like some line from a movie benefit for the many outweighs the benefit for the few.

If anything the Japanese are truly socialist without know it.