Wally Nes’ Blog

I miss a lot of things about Japan. In an online game I play at my LARP forum I reconnected with Shibuya Crossing.

In case you forgot just how populous Tokyo could be. This one is for you

Tokyo police have begun a week-long crackdown against the twice-daily scourge of gropers on commuter trains.

Undercover teams have been deployed on some lines in a bid to catch molesters in the act on crowded trains.

Last year more than 6,000 people were arrested on suspicion of groping or taking unsolicited photographs.

According to one survey, nearly two-thirds of young women have been groped on public transport. Some train lines have introduced women-only carriages.

Website ‘recommendations’

Tokyo police have begun what is being described as a “groping prevention week”.

There are conspicuous extra police patrols in stations handing out leaflets, and undercover teams have been deployed on trains to try to catch men in the act.

Gropers can be imprisoned for up to seven years in Japan.

Local reports say the police are particularly concerned that gropers are using the internet to co-ordinate their activities and form gangs.

Several suspects arrested in recent months are said to have told officers they had targeted particular train lines because of recommendations they had read on websites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8254389.stm

for the source.

Japan is a very nice, safe country. But this isn’t one of its better faces.

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Quote of the Day:

“You Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

- Mohandas Ghandi

In today’s society one can tell a lot about a culture by watching it’s TV programs.

I read something to that effect at least. I have also read some studies to that effect. The effects of “Sex and the City on promiscuity of Modern Women” or something to that effect. Also the influence of things like Jerry Springer on your average American and not to mention Oprah. If you want the actual studies: go read a scientific blog or smtgh.

Japan, as with many other things, is a bit weird in this respect. And while I can see certain links between western television and cultural symptoms I have a far harder time with this for Japanese shows. I have given you some taste of Japanese TV already with “Pithagoras suwichi” and the “Algorithm dance” in Wally’s Blog – the Youtube edition. But maybe I should delve a bit deeper into the subject. Now I don’t see the link partly because I don’t understand half of what’s going on, it is true, but also because well . . .

Let me just give you examples and you can tell me why I have a harder time linking Japanese TV to reality

First of all, let me show some of the influence of Japanese TV outside of Japan
The algorithm march on grand scale
OK, if I were in prison in the Philippines I would probably need to find some kind of way to spend my time. And at least they didn’t go crazy with the idea.

I’ll just point you in the direction of some other gems available on Japanese Television.

The Zuikin Girls managed to score big combining exercise and learning useful English at the same time.
Click here or here for a real show fragment. And can you really find fault with their approach? It combines a lot of things popular in Japan. Cute women, exercise, learning English and poor plots. We’re basically only missing the hentai tentacle porn in that show.

A different genre is the gameshow. Now in the west we have such things as the weakest link, wheel of fortune and (gulp) Lingo. Then there is All you need is love, the mega blubber power race and so on and so forth.

The Japanese have this. or this. And there’s this bit for the people who thought the first one isn’t funny enough. Same show.

Sport is important in Japan. Same as it is here but regarding different sports. Well, unless you are American. Seems the Japanese are as obsessed with baseball and golf as you lot are. But there are still significant differences.
as shown here.

Other interesting gameshow topics:
It’s like “wie van de 3″ but different.
There’s also the gameshow where they have to find obscure objects in people’s houses and they get shocked if the other team finds it first. But I need a link to that, can’t find the damn show on youtube.

Educational Children’s TV
Very important that they learn this properly.

OK, all of this is just wacky TV. I’ll admit that. We have plenty of those already, Japan isn’t unique in that respect. Who would, in their right mind, try to extrapolate relevance to society from that.

So I give you

Hard Gay

I dare you.
I double dare you

Analyse that!

SUPERGREEN!

Well No. Actually.

Blue.

It’s one of the small things that keeps popping up in conversations regarding Japan.
I have mentioned before that some of the culture just sorta gets assimilated into yourself and you don’t really think about it anymore ’till it somehow comes up in conversation. And then, because you haven’t been thinking about it you don’t know how to present easy proof of your claims.

Traffic lights are a good example.
Pretty much all the countries I have been to have the same colour scheme.
Red
Yellow
Green
Though the yellow is largely the same it is called orange in some countries.

See? Pretty much the same as they look where you’re reading this.

Not the Japanese though. The Japanese have Red-Yellow and BLUE lights.

Now, some of the people that read this have been to Japan.
These people may frown.

This, is a Japanese traffic light

Blue right?

OK, OK, I know I’m the colour blind one but that is definitely blue.
Blue as the grass.
Blue as the trees.

You see, the Japanese were not confronted with the concept “green” until after WWII. 青 (blue and green) was all they had and all they needed. The sea was blue, the sky was blue and so was the grass.
With the American occupation post WWII the concept of green was introduced and with it came both 緑 (green) and グリーン (guriin (Japanese phonetic green)). Actually 緑 had been around a while but it came into its own as a real colour instead of a shade of 青. And with the definition of green being in place 青 became just blue. Well. Mostly so as you can see.

Now, for those of you that remember my post regarding counting, you will remember the Japanese will count things differently depending on what it is one is counting. With colours it is much the same. A T-shirt with the colour of the go-signal on a traffic light will be 緑 whereas the traffic lights will continue to tell us that “信号機は青くなった” or “The traffic light has become blue”

For those of you of little faith btw.

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Quote of the day:

Everything you learn in Engineering school is obsolete by the time you finish. Except abstract math, and that you will never use

- Raphaelle

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — Even before one reaches the front door of Canon’s headquarters in Tokyo, one can sense the virtual stampede of employees pouring out of the building exactly at 5:30 p.m.

Japan’s birth rate of 1.34 is far below the level needed to maintain the country’s population.

In a country where 12-hour workdays are common, the electronics giant has taken to letting its employees leave early twice a week for a rather unusual reason: to encourage them to have more babies.

Japan is in the midst of an unprecedented recession, so corporations are being asked to work toward fixing another major problem: the country’s low birthrate.

At 1.34, the birthrate is well below the 2.0 needed to maintain Japan’s population, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Keidanren, Japan’s largest business group, with 1,300 major international corporations as members, has issued a plea to its members to let workers go home early to spend time with their families and help Japan with its pressing social problem.

One reason for the low birth rate is the 12-hour workday. But there are several other factors compounding the problem — among them, the high cost of living, and social rigidity toward women and parenting.

In addition, Japan’s population is aging at a faster pace than any other country in the world.

Analysts say the world’s second-largest economy faces its greatest threat from its own social problems, rather than outside forces. And the country desperately needs to make some fixes to its current social and work structures, sociologists say.

The 5:30 p.m. lights-out program is one simple step toward helping address the population problem. It also has an added benefit: Amid the global economic downturn the company can slash overtime across the board twice a week.

“It’s great that we can go home early and not feel ashamed,” said employee Miwa Iwasaki.

There are a great many things interresting about Japan.
There are a great many things exotic about Japan.

In this blog I have pointed toward some strange things, some fun things, and some non-sensical things.

It is like this. We have our habits. These are exotic to foreigners. Then there are our special interrests. These are franly kind of scary to foreigners.

Some things from Japan have made their way to Europe easy enough. We all know Sushi

But that is everyday Japanese Culture. The Japanese have their own fetishes.

OK, we’re educated gaijin. Naked women and sushi we can handle. No biggy.

But you get where I’m going with this. The Japanese have their little cultural quirks and then there’s always someone that just has to push it a bit further.
There are many parts of the culture that just take a bit of getting used to and then you just don’t think about it any more. I shudder to think of all the oppertunities I have missed for a great story just because you know . . . it’s Japan. They do that.

Then there’s the part of the Culture that takes a bit more getting used to. The working from 08:00 – 23:30 was a big one to me. But so was Tentacle porn

I dunno. small girl, big eyes, big breast and . . .  tentacled demons. Knowing my over-active imagination it stands for something I hadn’t thought of this myself before the internet introduced me to it.
Sick, SICK Japanese. You know, we have our quirks and you have yours but a subculture based on the raping of Cherubian virgins by tentacled demons. I dunno.

Then . . . .  you find out it isn’t sick.
It is art
And culture

I give you “The dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”

A woodcut made around 1820 by Katsushika Hokusai.

See? Art

Fuck it. If we can call Turks Fruit literature and the French produced the Marquis de Sade, which is on many countries’ Blacklist yet is still taught to French Schoolgirls. Then the Japanese can have their Tentacle Porn.

Next week: Soaplands.

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Quote of the day:

“An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.”

- Charles de Montesquieu