High Time for Summer Time

   When I woke this morning, my bedroom was bathed in warm sunlight. Not yet six in the morning and the sun was already peaking over the neighboring buildings and coming in through the windows.

   “What a waste,” I thought as I pushed myself out of bed.

   Japan is not what I would call a morning country. Coffee shops and sports clubs don’t open till seven or eight at the earliest. Many of the better bakeries are still closed at nine-thirty, and few restaurants bother to serve the most important meal of the day, breakfast. Contrast that with the States where you can work out at the gym from five in the morning and promptly nullify the benefits of all that iron-pumping by gorging yourself on blueberry pancakes and bacon at six.

   And yet, as the nation’s salarymen cover their heads with their pillows and try to sleep off their hangovers, the sun has been shining for two, three, and even four hours. This morning in Kyûshû, for instance, the sun rose at 5:10. In Tôkyô, daybreak was at 4:27. And, in Sapporo dawn cracked at a remarkable four a.m.[1], which begs the question of why Japan doesn’t have two time zones.

   But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First thing’s first: Japan needs to re-adopt daylight-saving time (DST).

   Re-adopt, you ask? Yes, during the American occupation, Japan did observe DST for a spell, but abandoned it in 1951 when MacArthur left. For the average person in post-war Japan that extra hour of daylight in the evening equated with little more than an extra hour of labor.

   But that was then and this is now.

   With all fifty-four of the nation’s nuclear power plants now idled indefinitely, Japan faces the daunting task of not only producing enough electricity, but also bringing consumption down during the summer months precisely at the time when energy demand usually peaks. Failure to do so could lead to a repeat of the disruptive blackouts that plagued Japan last summer when the nation still had eleven nuclear reactors online. Daylight-saving time, and specifically “double summer time”, may provide the answer.

   While the energy-saving benefits of DST are still being debated in the West, an interesting study conducted at the Toyohashi University of Technology[2] has shown that the implementation of a “split summer time” in Japan—whereby the southwestern half of the country moves its clocks an hour forward in April; the northeastern half of Japan, two, that is, double summer time—could provide considerable savings in energy consumption.

   The benefits of DST, however, wouldn’t end there. According to The Economist, “adopting DST would mean a new dawn for the Japanese economy. One extra hour of sunlight every evening for seven months would boost domestic consumption, as people leave work for bars, restaurants, shopping and golf. Summer time is credited with reducing traffic accidents and crime; boosting energy efficiency as people use less lighting and heating; and even improving health as people are radiated with vitamin D.” The economic benefit, the article continues, could add as much as \1.2 trillion ($15 billion) to Japan’s GDP and generate 100,000 jobs.[3]

   Coming from America’s northwest where the sun can set as late as nine in the evening during the summer, I don’t need to be sold on the benefits of daylight-saving time. Summers, thanks to a simple biannual adjustment of the clock, have always been a time for late evening barbecues with family, twilight concerts in the parks, and relaxed meals at outdoor cafes with friends. The challenge, however, lies in convincing the average Japanese that, in addition to the conservation benefits of extra sunlight in the evening, DST could mean a better quality of life, not just more work.

   Until then, all that beautiful sunlight will continue to be squandered.

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[1] Around the summer solstice, sunrise comes as early as three-thirty in Hokkaidô.

[2] Fong, Wee-Kean, et al., “Energy Savings Potential of the Sumer Time Concept in Different Regions of Japan From the Perspective of Household Lighting”, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, November 2007, p.371-78.

[3] “Bright idea: a ray of hope for the land of the rising sun”, The Economist, 28 October 2010.

Jumping Dogeza

   Before you can understand what the "Jumping Dogeza" is, it is helpful to first familiarize yourself with the multitude of ways the Japanese apologize, including "the quintessential apology": dogeza (土下座).

   According to the Nico Nico Pedia, "Jumping Dogeza" is performed by first jumping high into the air and upon landing prostrating oneself on the ground. An example of "Jumping Dogeza" can be seen in the following video:

   And some examples of "Extreme Dogeza":

   Do not try this at home.

   The first two videos are part of the Nihon no Katachi (日本の形) series by the manzai duo Rahmens (ラーメンズ).

Unzarissu

Sang Som rum from Thailand   When I was having dinner at my favorite Thai restaurant, Gamlangdi, the other day, there were two men in their early twenties sitting next to me at the counter. One of them had an annoying verbal tick common among young Japanese today. Nearly every sentence he uttered consisted of one word, usually an adjective or noun, with “-ssu” (—っす) added to the end of it.

   “Ssu” is a contraction of “desu-ne” which means, among other things, “ain’t it”.

   As he ate, he kept saying, “umaissu” (うまいっす), by which he meant to say “umai desu-ne” (うまいですね), “This is really good, isn’t it.”

Salad with raw sausage. Yes, raw.   The food was good, but that’s beside the point. The knucklehead’s “sussing” didn’t stop there; he also said things like, “Chô ureshissu” (ちょー嬉しっす), “I’m so happy!”

   And:

   “Aitsu kakkô iissu” (彼奴、格好いいっす) “That guys really cool.”

   “Yabaissu” (ヤバイっす) “Woa!”

            Once upon a time, yabai used to mean “dicy”, “chancy”, or “dangerous”, but it is now used to mean just about everything from “wonderful” to “cute” to “delicious” and “scary”, you name it. I really wish the kids would take advantage of the rich vocabulary the Japanese language has provided them and stop using this stupid word. Ditto for Americans and their habit of saying everything is “awesome” or “amazing”.

   “Chô omoroissu” (ちょーおもろいっす) “That’s so funny!”

   Omoroi is a contraction of omoshiroi, which can mean “funny” or “interesting”.

   “Umaissu hito” (うまいっす人) “The guy’s really good.”

            I’d never hear “-ssu” used in this manner before, that is before a noun. They guy may have been drunk and intended to say “Umai hitossu” (うまい人っす).

   “Hetassu” (下手っす) “I suck at it.”

   “Sôssu” (そうっす) “I think so, too.”

Phuket style friend chicken

   Anyways, I think, “kono shaberi-kata hontô-ni yameta-hô ga iissu” (このしゃべり方、本当にやめた方がいいっす!) “People should really stop talking like this.”

   The title of this post "Unzarissu" is the lazy way of saying "unzari desu" (I'm sick of it!).

Authentic, no Lie

   I was reading the local English monthly Fukuoka Now today when I noticed an ad for the Jerusalem Shisha Bar. It claimed that they served "authentic Israeli food".

   I couldn’t help but wonder what that was supposed to be. Lessee: falafel? Nope, that's Egyptian. Hummus and baba ghanoush? Those are from the Levant.

   Even the shisha the bar boasts of originally came from India and Iran, the word shisha being derived from the Persian word shishe which means “glass”. 

   Hmm.

   And, to think the Israeli owner of Jerusalem Shisha Bar had kicked a Turkish friend of mine out because he was afraid his recipes would be stolen! It doesn’t get richer than that.

   Wired the way my brain is, I am reminded of a scene from that wonderful sitcom Seinfeld in which George Castanza says to his friend, "Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it."

   Last Monday, May 15^th, was the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, or the exodus/expulsion of as many as 80% of the Palestinians from their homes. Many remain in refugee camps today. The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon at one time numbered 500,000 in a country of only 1.5 million people. The notion of Israeli culture, including the idea of "authentic Israeli cuisine" which has developed since, I feel, is based not so much upon a lie, but on the mythology first promoted by the early Zionists and promulgated by politicians such as Israel’s current Prime Minister. That mythology was a seed which bloomed, turning what was once an Arab land into today’s Jewish state in a remarkably short period of time.

   "In 1947, the indigenous Palestinians were the overwhelming majority in the country and owned much of the land," writes Nur Masalha, senior lecturer and director of the Holy Land Research Project at St Mary’s College, University of Surrey, England. "The Jewish community (mainly European settlers) was about a third of the total population and owned, after fifty years of land purchases, only 6 per cent of the land." (See Center for World Dialogue)

   He continues, "The myth of 'a land without a people' is not just an infamous fragment of early Zionist propaganda: it is ubiquitous in much of the Israeli historiography of nation-building. A few weeks after the 1967 War, Israel’s leading novelist, Amos Oz, drew attention to the deep-seated inclination among Israelis to see Palestine as a country without its indigenous inhabitants:

‘When I was a child, some of my teachers taught me that after our Temple was destroyed and we were banished from our country, strangers came into what was our heritage and defiled it. The desert-born Arabs laid the land waste and let the terraces on the hillsides go to ruin. Their flocks destroyed the beautiful forests. When our first pioneers came to the land to rebuild it and to redeem it from desolation, they found an abandoned wasteland. True, a few backward, uncouth nomads wandered in it.’

   “Even in the 1990s, Israeli leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu were still propagating the myth of an underpopulated, desolate and inhospitable land to justify the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and obliviousness to the fate of its native inhabitants. Moreover, this (mythical) continuum between the ancient and the modern means this is a difficult land, one that resists agriculture and that can only be 'redeemed' and made to yield up its produce by the extraordinary effort of Jewish immigrants and Zionist pioneers. It mattered little that in reality most of Palestine, other than the Negev, was no desert but an intensely and successfully cultivated fertile land."

   It is really far too complicated a subject to try to address in a single blog post, but seeing that advertisement got me to thinking about more than just stolen recipes.

   On a lighter note, my sister-in-law suggested that the Jerusalem Shisha Bar might serve manna, which was one of the funniest things I'd heard all week.

   In my freshman Old Testament class at Jesuit High School I learned that manna might have been bird shit or possibly locusts. A more recent study has postulated that manna was a kind of psilocybin mushroom. If true, this would go a long way to explaining the burning bush and other hallucinations, such as Palestine being the Jewish homeland since time immemorial.

Touring Meiji Era Tokyo

   Akasaka Palace was built between 1899 and 1909 and originally intended as the residence for the Crown Prince. Since 1974, the palace has provided accommodations for state and official guests and a venue for international conferences.

   After the capitulation of the Shogunate following the Meiji Restoration (1868), the inhabitants of Edo Castle, including the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, were required to vacate the premises. Emperor Meiji then left the Kyoto Imperial Palace and on 26 November 1868 arrived at Edo castle, making it his new residence. It was initially renamed Tōkei Castle (東京城, Tōkei-jô) as Tôkyô had also been called Tôkei at the time, but on the emperor's return on 9 May 1869, it was renamed Imperial Castle (皇城, Kôjô).

   The head office of the Bank of Japan consists of the Old Building, New Building and Annex Building. The former main building, the oldest part of the Old Building, was completed in 1896.

   Kingo Tatsuno's ties with Shibusawa Eiichi, an industrialist and the "father of Japanese capitalism", brought him the commission to design the bank in 1890. It was the first building of its type to be designed by a Japanese architect. Once given the commission, Tatsuno immediately set off to Europe for a year to do research for the project, studying among other buildings, the Banque Nationale in Brussels by Beyaert and Janssens.

   Take a virtual tour of the building.

   Stick 'em up!

   I have written elsewhere about Nihon Bashi. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603, and the current stone bridge pictued above and below dates from 1911.

   The highway overpass ruining the view was built in 1963. What on earth were they thinking? Fortunately, there is some renewed talk about tearing down the highway as the Shuto Expressway is over forty years and showing signs of wear.

   The zero kilometer mark. It is from this point in the middle of Nihon Bashi that all distances from the capital are measured.

   A few blocks from Nihon Bashi is the Mitsukoshi Department Store. Although this store opened in 1935 (a decade into the Shôwa Period), the company itself went into business in 1673, when it was called Echigoya and dealt in fabric for kimonos. The company founder Mitsui Takatoshi would go on to establish the Mitsui zaibatsu and Mitsukoshi chain of stores.

   The two lions at the entrance of Mitsukoshi were based on the four lions found at the foot of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square in London and were made by a British company in 1914.

   In the center of the department store is a massive statue of Benzaiten (Saraswati), the goddess of everything that flows--water, words, speech, eloquence, music, and knowledge. Seems like the goddess is helping the money flow, too.

   Construction of Tôkyô Station was delayed due to the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War  (1 August 1894 – 17 April 1895) and Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905), but finally began in 1908. The three-story station building was designed by architect Tatsuno Kingo as a restrained celebration of Japan's costly victory in the Russo-Japanese War. 

   Tokyo Station opened on December 18, 1914 with four platforms; two serving electric trains (current Yamanote/Keihin-Tohoku Line platforms) and two serving non-electric trains (current Tōkaidō Line platforms). The Chūō Main Line extension to the station was completed in 1919 and originally stopped at the platform now used by northbound Yamanote/Keihin-Tōhoku trains. During this early era, the station only had gates on the Marunouchi side, with the north side serving as an exit and the south side serving as an entrance.

   Only a week or so before I went to Tôkyô, most of the scaffolding surrounding the station had been taken down. Renovation of the station continues today.

   I was surprised to find that much of the original iron and brick work at and around Tôkyô Station was still being used today.

   The former Ministry of Justice building was designed in the German neo-Baroque style by German architects, Hermann Gustav Louis Ende and Wilhelm Böckmann and completed in 1895. Although it survived the Great Kantô Earthquake of 1923 with little damage, it was destroyed in the Allied firebombings of 1945. Five years after the Pacific War's end, the building was rebuilt with some improvements to the design, most noticeably to the roof.

   Another building that doesn't quite deserve to be in this collection is the National Museum of Science and Nature which was built in 1931. It is located in Ueno Park.

   Standing at the heart of the main campus of Tôkyô University is the Yasuda Auditorium. It was constructed in 1925 thanks to a donation from Zenjiro Yasuda, who had been concerned about the absence of a building of sufficient grandeur to receive the emperor when visiting the university. (The things that motivate people.)

   On the Ueno campus of the prestigious Tôkyô University of the Arts, you'll find a number of buildings dating back to the Meij and Taishô eras, including this one which was part of the former Tôkyô School of Music (founded in 1890). In 1949, the School of Music merged with the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, forming the Tôkyô University of the Arts.

Higher Learning

   Not sure, but this may be a history class with a focus on Korea. 

   And this is just one reason why they pay me the big bucks.