"Roll Cake" Day

   If you failed to realize that yesterday, June 6th, was "Roll Cake Day" in Japan, you may still be forgiven by hurrying over to your local Bäkerei or pâtisserie and picking up a Swiss roll.

   Just as May 4th is now known by geeks the world over as Star Wars Day (May the fourth → "May the Force" be with you), there are a number of days on the Japanese calendar which by virtue of the way they appear or can be pronounced have come to be associated with certain products or events.

   The 6/6 of June the sixth, for example, looks like a Swiss roll, or "roll cake" as they are known in Japan.†

   June fourth has been known as Mushiba no Hi (Decayed Tooth Day/Cavity Day) ever since 1928 because 6/4 can be read "Mu shi". It is a day to spread awareness about dental hygiene. 

   Those of you who don't speak Japanese, but have some experience with karate may be familiar with the most basic way to count in the language: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, jū. The numbers one through ten, however, can be read in a number of ways, lending them a playful flexibility. 

   一  1, ichi, hitotsu, i, hi

   二  2, ni, futatsu, fu

   三  3, san, mitsu, mi, sa

   四  4, shi, yon, yotsu, yo

   五  5, go, ko

   六  6, roku, mutsu, mui, ro, mu

   七  7, shichi, nana, na

   八  8, hachi, yatsu, yae, yô, ya, ha

   九  9, ku, kyû, kokono, kao

   十  10, jû, tô, ji

   July the tenth is Nattô no Hi, a day to enjoy fermented soy beans. 7/10 (Na + tô).

   August second is "Pantsu no Hi", the one day of the year when Japanese wash their skivvies. (Kidding.) 8/2 (Pa + tsu, as in the Japanese pronunciation of "two"). This, I must say, is stretching it a bit.

   August the fifth is Taxi Day for some reason. I learned this while riding in a cab in Okinawa recently. Aparently taxis made their debut in Japan on August 5, 1912.

   August the eighth and October the first are both possibilities for "Megane no Hi", a day to buy glasses because 8/8 and 10/01 look like glasses.

   The twenty-ninth of any month is "Niku no Hi", a day to eat beef or go to a yakiniku Korean barbecue restaurant. x/29 (ni + ku), is Japanese for "meat". And the twenty-sixth of every month is "Furô no Hi", the day to visit your local sentô, or public bath. Senior citizens get a special discount on the day (x/26 = x/ fu + ro).

   October thirteenth was recently designated Mame no Hi (豆の日, Bean Day), because according to the ancient calendar when there were only 28 days in a month, the full moon always fell on the 13th of the month. Beans were eaten on that day to celebrate the full moon. Later, the calendar was changed such that the full moon always fell on the fifteenth of the month. This is why today the full moon festival in autumn is still called Jūgoya (十五夜, "fifteen night").

   October sixteenth is Ghibli Day, a day to watch animation by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, such as My Neighbor Totoro. 10/16 (To + to + ro) Actually, I made this one up. Mr. Miyazaki will have to pay me for the use of this.

   The eleventh of November is Pocky Day. 11/11 looks like the chocolate covered stick biscuits. 

   November twenty-second is "Ii Fûfu no Hi", a popular day for marriages because 11/22 can be read ii fûfu which means "a happily married couple".

   Strawberries, or ichigo, are promoted on January fifth. 1/5 (ichi + go).

   February twenty-second is Cat Day. 2/22 (Nya, nya, nya). Bit of a stretch, but then cat people tend to be a little nutty. I wonder if there a similar day for dogs. 11/11 would work: "Wan-wan! Wan-wan!" (That's how dogs bark in Japan. "No Woof-woof" here.)

   The tenth of February is "NEET Day". Isn't every day NEET Day for these slackers? 2/10 (ni + to)

   And finally, the third of March is a day to get your ears checked: "Mimi no Hi". 3/3 (mi + mi)

   There are probably more of these "holidays" out there. If you know of any others, send them my way!

† June 6th is also known as D-Day. "D" as in "doughnuts"?

Walkabout - Shitamachi

   Yamanote (山の手, "towards the mountain") and Shitamachi (下町, "low city") are traditional names for two areas of Tokyo, with Yamanote referring to the more affluent, upper-class areas of Tokyo west of the Imperial Palace where the samurai warrior class once lived, and Shitamachi applying to the physically lower part of the city along and east of the Sumida River where the less esteemed stratum of society--namely, merchants and artisan--lived. Today the distinction still lives on to some degree where Shitamachi continues to be associated with small business and restaurant owners, small mom-and-pop shops and workshops, and Yamanote connected to business executives, and salarymen.

   A rough scetch of the walk I made can be found here. Most of the photos were taken in Taitô Ward (台東区) as I took a meandering route from Akihabara station towards Sensô-ji in Asakusa, then walked along Kappa Dôri toward Ueno Park. It's easy to understand why some 25% of the labor force is still employed in the secondary industry (manufacturing, etc.) and a testament to "monozukuri", the Japanese "art, science and craft of making things" in an era when industries in many advanced contries are being hollowed out thanks to outsourcing. This is something I'd like to write about someday, but today is not that day.

   I wasn't all that surprised that the area would be as shabby as it was--I've been in Japan long enough to know what to expect. What did surprise me, though, were the large number of small factories (if you can call them that) and workshops that were peppered throughout the ward. 

   The Tôkyô Sky Tree rises above the humble streets of the Shitamachi. The tower opened on the 22 of May this year. When I'm in Tôkyô later next month, I'll try to go up it.

Spectacular Specs

   In the spring of 2011 I wrote about the silly fashion accessories young Japanese women were wearing. A year on, the trend has weakened somewhat, but there are still quite a few women who still believe that big lenseless eyewear makes your face look smaller. Sometimes you get the feeling that women will believe just about anything.

   Incidentally, this trend apparently started in Korea a few years back. 

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.

   The Tokiwa Bashi (bridge) located just up the river from the Nihon Bashi was built in 1877 (Meiji 10) and is the oldest bridge in Tôkyô. At the time of my visit, the bridge was closed for repairs.

   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.

   The former Dai-Ichi Seimei Building, which was built in 1933 (Shôwa 8) and is located across from the Imperial Palace, was used by Douglas MacArthur as the headquarters for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the occupation of Japan. It was designed by the Japanese architect Yoshikazu Uchida.

   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 (Taishō 14) 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.

The Reality of Self-Publishing

   After much frustration and a lot of time wasted contacting agents and publishers, I decided to go the e-publishing route and put my books on Kindle. The experience so far has been somewhat rewarding, though not always well remunerated. 

   Unless your novel is the next The Help, keep your initial expectations low. Sales of my own books were disappointingly slow at first, but over time picked up, and in the first six weeks of this year alone I sold over 1500 books. (I have earned in royalties more in January and February than I earned all last year.) Encouraging, but hardly enough to retire on my own private island in the Mediterranean. With luck, those who like the book will tell their friends, who will in turn tell their friends, and . . . (You get the picture.) 

   In addition to having a good story, shameless self promotion is key to sales. This can be a full-time job and quite the distraction when you would much rather be moving on to the next novel. I blog here assiduously in order to gain new readers and promote my works. I actively seek interviews/reviews in magazines, newspapers, and blogs, too. This gets your name out there, has people talking about you, spreading the word. Don't expect, though, that just because your name is in the morning paper book sales will go through the roof that day. It takes time. 

   Once you have steady sales, your ranking in the bestselling lists will rise. Writing for a niche market (mine is Japan/Middle East) is important here as it will enable your work to rise much faster among bestsellers. One of my works usually bobs up and down between #5 and #20 in Kindle Books on Japan. As your work climbs higher among Kindle books it will also rise in the ranks of ordinary "book-books" as well, giving it even more exposure. For example, this morning No.6, the more popular of my two books on Kindle was at #1 in Kindle books on Lebanon, #10 in Kindle books on Japan, and #20-something in book-books. 

   What else? If you're like me and your ultimate goal is to be in print, to see your novel on the shelf of a bookstore and in the hands of strangers on trains, sunbathers at the beach, then I think e-publishing can be a means to that end. Sell well enough, create enough of a sensation, and those agents and publishers who ignored you may finally take notice.

   (Knock on wood!)

Falling from Trees

   Reading Stephen E. Ambrose's excellent Band of Brothers, I've come across quite a few mistakes/misspellings. As a writer it's very encouraging to see a major publishing company like Simon & Schuster making stupid mistakes such as typing "when" instead of "went", and so on. As the Japanese say, even monkeys sometimes fall from trees.

And things I don't like about Japan #1

Enpitsu ippon de, mirai-o kaeraru. Sore-ga juken.

   This was taken from an advertisement of the Yotsuya Gakuin, a chain of cram schools. It says, "With a single pencil you can change your future. That's what the [college entrance] exam is." Or something to that effect.

   I suspect that Yotsuya is trying to appeal to the dreams of high school students and rônin, telling them that armed with nothing but a pencil, they'll be able to take command of their future. Yotsuya's advertisements usually feature a nerdy looking kid who recently passed Tôkyô University's entrance exam. The message, of course, is that if you study at Yotsuya you too will get into "Tôdai".

   It's all a load of crap, though.

   A few years ago, Kenta, a former student of mine who was studying at the prestigious Nada Kôkô (灘高校) in Hyôgo prefecture which is reputed to be Japan's very best high school, paid me a visit to ask what I thought about his applying to Harvard University.

   "What do I think? By all means," I said, "go for it!"

   And go for it he did.

   We spent the next year and a half, meeting regularly to prepare for the SATs, TOEFL, AP tests, and put together the application package which turned out to be quite an involved process. Much more so than when I was his age. In addition to submitting his test scores, academic record, letters of recommendation, Kenta also had to write several essays, produce a promotional video of himself, and interview with representatives from the universities he was applying to. He also visited the campuses, where he talked with students and admissions officers.

   In the end, the efforts paid off and Kenta was accepted by both Harvard and Yale. He settled on Yale.

   Now compare that admission process with Japan's game show-like admission test where, armed again with that single pencil, you're given only one chance to shine.

   What happens if someone decides to jump in front of your train the morning of the test, making you late for the exam? What if you have a bad cold or a stomachache? What if your parents had a fight that kept you up late the night before the test? Tough luck. That, after all, is what the college entrance exam is in Japan.

   It begs the question of whether it is the best way to choose students, many of whom will go on to become key people in the nation's bigger companies as well as in the government, by virtue of their having graduated from Tôkyô University.

   Last month while I was in Tôkyô, I paid the influential university a visit. The first student I came across could have easily been mistaken for a mentally handicapped boy. Seriously. A good portion of the students have that uncanny air about them. But, when you go back and look at how the kids are selected--by an entrance exam that doesn't test how someone thinks so much as how many arcane facts he can stuff into his noggin--it isn't all that surprising that what you end up with is a student body full of Rain Men.

   On a side note, I was suprised by how nice the campus and buildings were. I've visited quite a few national univerisities and am usually shocked at how run-down and shabby they are. Tôkyô university's core buildings pictured here are the exception and not the rule.

All the News #1

   From the Nishi Nippon Shimbun

   “A Nishi Nippon Shimbun salesman (58) was arrested in Takeo City, Saga prefecture for breaking the prefecture’s ordinance against indecent acts. The suspect allegedly approached a twelve-year old elementary school girl, who was playing inside the Takeo Velodrome, and raised his t-shirt to reveal the women’s lingerie he was wearing underneath. The suspect has admitted to the act.”

   When I first read this article, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if a middle-aged woman went up to an elementary school boy and raised her skirt to show him the Spiderman underwear she had on underneath. Would she have been arrested, too? I suspect she wouldn’t.

   Far be it for me to try to defend chikan--the flashers, streakers, gropers, and exhibitionists of Japan. I honestly can’t understand how doing such things can be sexually gratifying for them. I do realize that in this crazy world of ours, it really does take all types.

In Japan too long #1

   You know you've been living in Japan too long when 42°C bathwater is no longer hot enough for you.

IKEA Blues

Ikea opened its seventh Japanese outlet in the suburbs of Fukuoka on April 11^th.

The opening couldn’t have come at a better time. With my wife pregnant again, we needed to do a major spring-cleaning of our flat which necessitated buying new shelves and cabinets and organizing all of the junk that had accumulated since the birth of our first child.

So, early last Wednesday morning we drove out to Shingu.

The idea was to get there before the shop opened and avoid the crowds. Unfortunately, it seems everyone had the very same idea.

Although the line of people snaking around the entrance of IKEA was reminiscent of the queues in front of E-ticket rides at Disneyland[1], it moved along quickly enough and we could find the things we wanted without too much trouble.

Why they even had kids for ridiculously low prices.[2]

Where the hell's my crap!

Anyways, everything was fine until I got home and tried to put the shelves together.

I should note that IKEA does a remarkable job of designing their products and instructions in such a way that even the most unexperienced of DIYers can still hack it if they follow those instructions carefully. There is also a reason to the madness. Regrettably, it only started to make sense by the time I was on my third piece. Namely: before doing anything, open every thing up and line the pieces up. Make sure you have all your screws and pins separated so that you don’t make the easy mistake of grabbing the wrong ones. Do this first and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief. Trust me.

Not listening to my own advice, I pulled out the wrong screw and tried my damnedest to screw it in, but the little bastard wouldn’t fit into the hole. So, I took a hammer to it and gave it a few good whacks. Still no good. Looking at the instructions again, I realized I had the wrong screw. Trying the correct screw, I encountered a new problem: having tried to drive the larger screw into the hole with a hammer, the hole was now too loose to hold the smaller screw. Lucky for me, it wasn’t in a crucial spot, so I soldiered on and completed the first cabinet.

It was about nine-thirty in the evening when I started on the third piece, a cabinet I intended to use for my son’s toys and books. A few minutes later, the cops came.

I don’t care much for the police anywhere, but Japanese police are deserving of more derision than most. I find them only slightly more useful to society than Japanese university professors.

The police told me that someone in the building had complained that I was making too much noise.

Un-fucking-believable!

I live in Daimyô, Party Central of Fukuoka City. What’s more, it was in the middle of Golden Week and the drunks are out en masse causing all kinds of hell and I was the one making too much noise? Moi?

What really galled me was that it was around nine forty-five when the two police officers came meaning that the complaint had probably been called in around nine. Japanese police are not known for making haste. A call comes in and they finish drinking their green tea or filling in their Sudoku before getting off their arses and heading out of the police box.

The only people who go to bed this early are the Hashimotos, an elderly couple down the hall and my son. It was because my son was sleeping that I was putting the cabinets and shelves together in the common hallway of my apartment building. It was also my desire not to disturb my son’s sleep that I was trying to keep the noise at a minimum. No matter, the police were now here and telling me to finish up tomorrow.

I told them I would and started packing my things up. They wanted to know my particulars of course, which only infuriated me more.

All I could think about was who had made the call. Was it the Hashimotos? Was it the retired teacher downstairs? Or was it the “Kurêmah”[3] on the sixth floor? He’d been giving everyone a lot of grief lately.

Whoever it was, he or she had now made me suspicious and resentful of all of my neighbors.

I’ve been living in the building for over fifteen years for chrissakes. How about sticking your goddamn head out the door and telling me to my face to quit making such a racket? My god, what kind of coward goes and calls the cops?

Listen: several months ago, my next-door neighbor was having a party in his flat. It was well past eleven thirty and my son was asleep, the tatami floor below us was vibrating wildly with the deep hum of his woofers.

So, what did I do? Did I call the cops? Hell no. I went next door and knocked a few times. No answer. I knocked on the door a few more times. Still no answer. When my third try was ignored, I opened the door and let myself in. My neighbor drinking wine with some friends and couldn’t have been happier to see me.

“Come in! Come in!” he boomed.

“It’s the music . . .”

“Sit down! Have a drink!”

“I will. I will. It’s just the music is a little loud and . . .”

“Sorry about that,” he said and started pouring me a glass of wine. “You like wine?”

“I prefer shôchû.”

“Sorry, no shôchû,” he said. “You want some yaki-niku?”

“I . . . Well . . . Sure, why not.”

I went over to his computer, a Mac like my own, and turned the music down, then opened up the equalizer and lowered the bass.

“That’s more like it,” I said, sitting down at the table. I would end up staying until four the next morning.

We became fast friends after that little episode and now go sailing together sometimes. Imagine what would have happened if I had called the cops?

A friend mentioned that I was lucky that it was only the police. Why, he said, a person was just stabbed to death last night by a neighbor who was tired of the noise.

That unfortunate incident highlights some of the defects in the Japanese character.

The first one is putting up with something so long that it drives you over the edge. This is not healthy. A small confrontation early on--hey, could you cut the racket--would have solved the problem lickety-split. The other defect is the unwillingness to confront others, causing people to put up with an annoyance until it drives them over the edge.

So, the police left and I schlepped everything into dining room where I finished putting the shelf together. In the end, I must say it looked pretty good.

Finally, I think there’s one caveat IKEA should include in its instructions: refrain from assembling this in front of young children. My two-year-old son ended up learning the F-word thanks to IKEA.

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[1] I think I may have just dated myself there.

[2] Some assembly required. Batteries not included.

[3] クレーマー (Kurêmah) is someone who is a serial complainer and trouble maker.

Onna

            Back when I was looking into the different ways the Japanese called their wives, I was reminded of how the kanji 女 (おんな, onna), which means “woman”, is used as a part or radical of other Chinese characters.

Onna (女) woman

Yomé (嫁)

“woman” + “house”

a bride, wife, daughter-in-law

Ané (姉)

“woman” + “market”

one’s older sister

Imôto (妹)

“woman” + “the end, youngest”

        one’s younger sister

Musume (娘)

“woman” + “good”

daughter, a girl

Fujin (婦人)

“woman” + “clean?”

a woman, a lady

Shûtome (姑)

“woman” + “old”

one’s mother-in-law

Mei (姪)

“woman” + “extremely, resulting”

niece

Hime (姫)

“woman” + “great, giant”

a princess

Muko (婿)

“woman” + “?”

son-in-law

There are, I believe, 100 kanji that contain the radical 女, including one that looks like it could possibly be the Chinese character for love sandwich:

Jô/Naburu (嬲)

“男/man” + “女/woman” + “男/man”

Naburu (嬲る), actually, means to “tease” or “mock” as in:

子犬を嬲る (koinu-o naburu)

tease a little dog

彼は友達から嬲られた (kare-wa tomodachi kara naburareta)

He was made fun of by his friends.