I'm not a cultural anthropologist, but I play one online.

tokyo blogging / one piece blogging

(Omatase)

My name is Nate, and I'm a One Piece fanboy. I read the manga and watch the anime and movies. I own 2 tshirts and a handkerchief with One Piece logos. I sometimes read chapters of the manga on the internet prior to their publication. I even bought copies of the manga I already owned because I wanted to read them at that very moment. Hell, I learned Japanese to read the manga. How did it come to this?

My One Piece story starts in Marburg, Germany in 2001. Yeah, that's right noobs, 2001. There was a display in the window of the local comic shop that I was always passing for the newly arrived One Piece manga. I wasn't about to pick up and read a manga, but damned if that flag was not cool as hell. My girlfriend thought the same... and being a really cool person, talked with the shop owner and managed to snag me one of the mini paper flags!

Then my fanhood went dormant for a couple years... until I came to Japan under completely non-fanboy auspices. I started watching all sorts of anime for a little cultural understanding, and for a little alleviating the boredom. It wasn't long before I happened onto Kaizoku Fansubs. Soon, I found out that One Piece was pretty much the most popular manga in Japan, (with over 100,000,000 books in print as of april or so this year) and that my senpai was really into it too. It was pretty much downhill from there, with the full collapse this summer.

In the last few weeks, I've reached a level of Japanese ability where I can read the manga with no translation, and can watch the anime without subtitles pretty proficiently. As soon as I realized I could, I decided I wanted to catch up to the most current issue of the manga as soon as possible... and so I read over 3000 pages of manga in the last few weeks. And two weeks ago, I took the last step, and boarded the fantasy ship from One Piece, the Going Merry.

That was the real reason I went to Odaiba. I'm not actually a connoisseur of malls, and consumer paradises. For a few years now, Fuji TV has run a going merry cruise through the bay during their big summer festival. Below are a couple of pictures I snapped on the Going Merry, but someone else I met in the Kaizoku Fansubs forum (oh, the shame of it all!) took a lot more pictures, and often, a lot better ones.

robin is 姉さん系

zoro is packing

attacking odaiba with a water cannon

And last, another picture that's not mine. Rock bottom. Cosplay.

the real franky wears a speedo, poser.

There but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go I.

(tokyo break) let's talk recipe piracy.

I've got more photo's and thoughts to share on tokyo, but for now, let's talk about the bleeding edge of piracy. recipe piracy!

I decided when I set out for japan that dragging 200 books in my suitcase would be really unwise. So I dropped my cookbooks and brought along 194 books. It turned out to be a pretty good decision, since every recipe from every book ever seems to be on the internet.

case in point, I parted with a cookbook with a title like "world's greatest vegetarian recipes" or some such nonsense. The recipe I was really sad to part with was "kitchiri", a buttery, oily lentil and basmati pilaf. Well, one idle moment, I thought I'd check the internet, and lo and behold there's my kitchiri! Every ingredient, every proportion exactly the same as in the world's greatest veggie cookbook (I remembered most of the recipe, and several of the proportions owing to the difficulty of keeping it all in the kitchen).
Having had luck there, I searched another of my recipes, and ding ding ding! lentil bolognese, just as god intended. In fact, that link is the one I replaced my old link with when it went down. 20 more copies of the recipe could be pulled from the net, and I'd still be able to find it and a zillion other copies. I like this internet thing.

In truth, I know this isn't cutting edge. people have been lifting recipe's from other sources for ages. Slight differences in the language between the internet and book kitchiri recipe lead me to believe that there was some mitigation there as well. With indian recipes in particular, the spice proportions are so crucial, that I think many of the recipes have floated around unchanged for scores if not hundreds of years.
I'd wager that recipe piracy was actually one of the first forms of piracy, seeing as a unique and uniquely delicious recipe is made valuable only by it's scarcity. There's lots of lore out there about people desperately trying to steal their competitor's recipes...from old times and new.

There's something extra cool about cribbed recipes though. It's got that feeling of pirating something material and not just ones and zeros.

ps if you've run out of garlic, don't make the lentil bolognese without. ick.

blogging the shit out of Tokyo; part b (part 2).

Odaiba is the city of the future.

The only convenient way to get to and from the Odaiba complex is in the monorail... a real honest to goodness monorail. After a scenic, futuristic ride across the water, you'll be treated a whole bunch of perfect-looking, super clean buildings. Several are malls, but what's more interesting is Fuji Television.

that's fujitv on the right

The media giant actually keeps their headquarters open to the public. I didn't go in this time, but I understand it's packed with everything fans of their shows could want, including the studios. At fuji terebi you can attend tapings, and maybe even meet your favorite celebs. And naturally, you can buy merchandise. Right now, they're in the middle of the Odaiba adventure, a special attraction for the summer (and the reason I went, but more on that another time). During the "adventure", national acts play most every day, the shows run kind of an open house, and special limited edition shops and goods go on sale.
In this way, Fuji TV strikes me as a really progressive media company. They realize that TV plays a big role in many peoples lives, and that keeping that experience inside the home and inside a box is a missed opportunity. Not just an opportunity to sell people souvenirs and collectibles, but an opportunity to create a deeper connection between people and the products and series they love. I know it's cynical capitalism, but lately I'm especially pleased with cynical capitalism's ability to deliver meaning and meaningful experiences and connections between people.
When I first arrived, the Japanese cultural-economy felt especially heartless and empty, but as time goes on, I feel more and more attatched to it... like it's the future of capitalism.

the ride home, click for a better view

blogging the shit out of Tokyo; part b.

Odaiba is Tokyo for Japanese people.

This trip to Tokyo was also the first time I went to Odaiba. Unlike much of the rest of Tokyo, Odaiba doesn't seem to care about the Japaneseness of it's image. It's dominated by Fuji Television and a few shopping malls that are the spitting image of their American counterparts. Actually, I'd say they're better than most American malls because they aren't full of the lame stores that fill every other mall (though there is a cinnabon).

taken in odaiba

Most of the time, emulation of foreign lifestyles and trends strikes me as either forced exoticism, or a full fledged effort to be authentic (i.e. authentically hip hop, authentically hippy). Odaiba is like an unselfconscious acknowledgement that certain aspects of an American (and international) lifestyle are desirable and fun, while still understanding them as foreign. In keeping the foreign air about everything, it becomes unmistakably Japanese, and unmistakably international.

Speaking of international, there's a "little Hong Kong" inside one of the malls. It was really charming in it's own way. There incense scented air fresheners blow non-stop, as the sound of low-flying airplanes play over the loudspeaker. In the food court area the speakers play a loop of marketplace shouts in Chinese, and the clanking sounds of some utensils. Of course when you pay this much attention to detail, you've got to preserve the illusion. The place is covered in painted-on fake dirt, and carefully applied imitation wear and tear.

blogging the shit out of tokyo; part the first.

Every time I go to Tokyo, I have a different experience. I speak japanese better each time, go to different and better destinations each time, and I just grow more patient with each visit. My first few trips to Tokyo were full of rushing from place to place without really knowing where I was going or what to do when I got there.

This time, I only had one real goal in mind, the Odaiba Bouken, and going for a ride on the going merry. I accomplished that mission in a hurry, and spent the next couple days just taking in the sights, sounds and the odd smell. The next couple entries will be about that stuff, and I'll put up a some pictures. By the way, most of my pictures are links that will show the full size picture when clicked.

Today's quick observation:

They've got the dove real beauty ads that I wrote a bit about before in Japan too now. They're different in a lot of ways, but the thrust is simlar. Women don't need to fit within a small definition of beauty. But there's a really important difference.

The campaign focuses on aging, not having super white skin, not having big boobs, and not having long hair (lord, the short hair example girl is beautiful). Notice something different? That's right, they're not down with the big girls. Japan's real beauty campaign is more about loving yourself, even the things you can't change whereas the US campaign is about forgiving yourself for failing to change the things you can and probably should.
I guess that's one upside to living in a culture of self-discipline. Now if only I could get my gut to be really beautiful.

national eugenics lesson.

(very distracted, stream of consciousness entry, ご注意下さい.)

I'm back. Later on, I'll put up some of my Tokyo photos and tell some of my Tokyo stories later. Right now, I'm all in a tizzy about another tv show, again a show directed at telling children how they ought to be. This time, the show is aimed squarely at children, and concerns population control. Japan's birth rate per adult couple is 1.209. This show is about why that is a problem, and how it can be changed.
The story/lie they're telling is that the nation of Japan will cease to exist in the first half of the next millennium if they don't bring up the birth rate. I'll talk about that a little more later. After a semi-mathematical explanation about geometric progressions, they took a trip to the zoo to talk about the birth rate of other animals, which was pretty irrelevant.

Next it's time for a trip to Denmark, where they have brought their birth rate up in the last years. I think they hit the mark actually (mostly) when they say that in essence most Japanese houses are single parent households because Japanese fathers take no responsibility for child-rearing. They blame that on the father's laziness, and the adherence to traditional roles, but really gloss over the amount of time spent at work. A Japanese worker spends nearly twice as much time at work as a Dane. Danish couples are also infinitely more likely to both work, even in the upper classes. but enough of that.

Why do you teach this stuff to kids? Well, the example I gave above was actually not just a pointless extrapolation. A huge number of Japanese people think that Japan needs to keep it's birthrate up, or Japan will cease to exist (in Japanese the same as the polite word for die). Despite being one of the economically, culturally and technologically strongest countries in the world, Japan preserves the idea that they are a society of the brink of extinction. I can't help but laugh at the idea, but something does occur to me.
Japan does not keen to the idea of integrating their society with others at all. In their model for the future of Japan it's no accident that immigration is not included. A Japan that is not overwhelmingly ethnically Japanese is no Japan at all in the eyes of many people. Whereas the other countries seeing declining birthrates have in many cases welcomed an increase in immigration, Japan has not.
This is a chicken and egg suggestion, but maybe japan's historical antipathy toward it's neighbors is partly to blame as well. Where Germany doesn't view its society as all that separate from France doesn't view it's society as all that different from England, Japan has preserved a sense of racial and cultural superiority toward it's neighbors. Of course Germany and Japan both had really catastrophic flare ups of nationalism in last century, though I take those both mostly as historically isolated incidents. The broader sweep is that Japan has not had a shared culture with it's neighbors for a very long time, whereas christianity, philosophical and political movements, and even weather have bound the european countries very tightly.
That is to say that Japan is an island country and not just physically. After ww2, it's especially difficult for Japan to form strong ties with it's neighbors, but as time goes on, birthrate and immigration are another reason it will have to.

full service blogging.

I am actually going to be accomodating a reader of my blog in my apartment for the next three days. Someone I've only met once, yesterday evening.

You tell me what blogger makes a better offer than that and I will beat their offer by 5%*.

*this offer not valid.

shaking.

there was an earthquake. Everything went all wobbly, but everyone around here is ok. Sorry I don't have any big insights.

the shaking I'm refering to is "shaking off the dust of this one-horse town".

I'm going to Tokyo for a few days. Odds are I actually will make an update or two when I stop in for a breather at a manga cafe. I'll probably have a great mess of pictures coming up afterwards too. Stay tuned.

my best link.

You can watch frontline online.

nebuta wallpaper

While I tinker with that monster entry, enjoy this photo. Of the roughly 300 shots I took during the festival, this one is my favorite, and I'm using it as my desktop background right now.

nebuta

(You know, nebuta ended two weeks ago, and I've got a bunch of new stuff to write about, so I'm gonna leave this entry half-researched, and a quarter finished. My bad... still I will put up a couple more pictures for good measure. Also, a caveat, most of my information is from the official nebuta website, local people and the japanese wikipedia entry, so a grain of salt may be appropriate.)

Each year, in early August, Aomori City welcomes over 3 million people (ten times it's resident population) to watch or to take part in the Nebuta Matsuri.

The origins of Nebuta are, like a lot of history in Japan, not perfectly clear, and open to debate. The most widely accepted theory has the parade beginning as a display of power to intimidate the enemy. Hearing the boom of the dozens and dozens of taiko drums as the massive parade moves down the main streets of modern Aomori City, I find that theory more than plausible. As for the word "Nebuta", I've only heard one theory: that the local word "nemutai", itself a derivative of "nemuru" (to sleep), mutated over time into the current "nebuta" as well as "neputa" (the Hirosaki city equivalent of nebuta).

Literally months of preparation go into the parade. The buliding of the massive floats goes on silently from early in the year. The big floats are mostly built by artisans, paid for their work by corporations like mitsubishi, or the local city hall.

notice the great big Japan Rail logo

Although the floats are being built nearly year-round, it isn't until late May or early June that Nebuta really starts to take hold of the city. As the weather warms up, the taiko drummers begin to practice. As the number of practicing drum teams grows throughout the summer, their powerful rythym gradually fills the city, building to a crescendo of daily practice in the weeks preceeding the big parade.
Once the festival begins, it runs for seven nights. The first six nights, the floats and the rest of the participants parade through the center of the city on a roughly two hour circuit. On the seventh night, the floats are set on boats to parade through the bay underneath an unbelievably long fireworks display.

See my other nebuta related entries as well: beep beep; karasuzoku; sneak peak; wallpaper
Technorati Tags: nebuta, aomori, japan

major major minor minor

This nyt piece is full of the most surreal phrases.

"In California, state officials said minorities had accounted for more than half of the population since 1998, and the Census Bureau said they now made up 55.5 percent of the total."

I'm sure eventually they'll stop using the statistically-incorrect "minorities" and get around to saying what they mean: non-whites. or maybe in census parlance: non-"non hispanic whites".

damned crows, nebuta edition.

カラス賊= the crow gang　(edit: oops, wrong zoku... I think)

I learned from our local news a little known piece of Nebuta history. Karasuzoku, or the crow gang have been plaguing the festival for at least twenty years, maybe much longer. The karasuzoku take part in the parade along with everyone else, but don't dress in the traditional haneto costumes and they don't join in with the big groups. Instead, they dress in matching black outfits (hence the crow moniker), and drift from group to group, and back and forth from the crowd to the parade as they please. But if that were the only bad thing they did, they'd hardly be interesting.
What makes the crows a problem is the other trouble they get up to during and after the parade, like making lots of noise and pushing people around. Not surprisingly, they tend drink an awful lot before and after the parade, and most annoyingly, as they walk in the parade, they're known to drink beer from arms length, pouring it into their mouths, leaving a mess on the street and then tossing the not-completely-empty cans into the crowds or at the cops. It might sound bad, but that's pretty much the standard for trouble-making in Japan.

This year roughly 380 karasuzoku and hakuchouzoku (their white clad bretheren, "the swan gang") made for an interesting site to be sure, but 5 years ago their number was nearly thirty times that! My police officer coworker recalls the parade route turning into seas of black back then. He talks with some pride about getting the situation under control lately.

If I had know about the karasuzoku (and hakuchouzoku) last week, I would have gotten a couple of pictures, but all I've got is this blurry one. She is one of the trashy high school girls that accompany the kurasuzoku, usually halfway out of costume. I didn't manage to find any pictures of the karasuzoku in action, but I found a blog entry about wanting to be a karasu and another about the scary experience of getting in the same elevator with a couple of crow girls. I also found this page showing how bad it had gotten. By 2003 it was already under 1000, so kudos to the previously-maligned aomori cops.



(a more thorough entry about nebuta is coming up soon. I am trying to choose some good pictures and get things straight on the history of the festival and such)
Technorati Tags: nebuta, aomori, japan

me versus the deputy mayor!

Next week I'm scheduled to sit down and talk with the second most erai guy in town about "how well the CIR's and ALT's abilities are being used." = 2

I saw a flier on my boss' desk for one of the new private ALT companies. = 2

2 + 2 = American corporate culture, welcome to Aomori!

I suspect I'm really there as part of an investigation into the cost and benefits of having JETs. The city department of education is now responsible for 6 JETs, and threfore reserving more than $200K every year for us (closer to 300 depending on who you ask). For a backwater like us, that's a hell of a lot that could perhaps be spent much smarter.
For example, if they were to opt for the private ALT companies, the pay is lower, and the contracts much more flexible. JETs need to be compensated for all overtime, and our salary agreement means that our employer covers all of our taxes from home and from japan. Our pre-tax salaries are nothing to cough at either. Especially considering we JETs usually have no experience. Add to that generous vacation packages and the travel expenses, since all JET travel expenses to and from japan and to the various "attendance required" conferences must also be paid by the contracting organization.

As for the private ALTs, none of that is true. They can often be hired on contracts much more beneficial to the employer, eliminating overtime pay and the tax arrangements. Quite often, these are former JETs meaning that they have experience, better language skills in Japanese, and they are actually in Japan already. Even if they aren't travel expenses may not be covered.

More importantly, the corporate JETs don't have the national government in their corner. If the BOE gets fed up with a lameass JET, they can't really show him or her the door. The government enforces our contracts to the letter, and is quite often the advocate of the JET (though hardly partial to JETs over their employers).
Private ALTs have none of that "baggage". They're actually much less protected than the regular japanese employees.

So, from an amoral standpoint, I don't really know how to defend the JET program. I don't even know if I should. If you read this post and have any thoughts, lemme know.

(update: no one seems to know the point of this meeting, but it looks more likely to be the opposite of what I thought. My boss thinks the deputy mayor wants to know how the city can best encourage our jets to recontract, and wants to know my thoughts.)
Technorati Tags: japan, jet program, ALT

liveblogging a stupid tv show!

not really.

But there's a certain kind of tv show that seems to come on once every month or two that always fuels the ameteur sociologist in me. A group of 100 japanese people are polled on various questions, and everyone goes "えーー" to all of the answers. The formula changes... sometimes it's 1000 people, sometimes, like tonight, it's 100 high school girls.

I'm watching it now, and can't help think a bunch about the culture. for example, among the current 100, 71 have a boyfriend now, and 75 have ever kissed a boy. 53 have ever had sex. These revelations are followed by some really heavy handed social messages.
The messages make me doubt the numbers

(maybe I am liveblogging)
Tonights show isn't the usual poll and response. It's actually Hozoki Kazuko, the terrible fortune teller responding to them individually and criticising audience members from the podium.

The terrible obaasan fortune teller is currently telling the girls that they are dead wrong for thinking boys and girls are the same. If the 16 year old girl in the audience is not willing to fight a guy twice her size, then clearly women and men can't live the same lives, according the baasan.

--Well, she certainly outdid that. She says that war is for boys, taking care of the home, cooking and raising the children is for women.

Maybe the obaasan is not such an important opinion maker as I thought, but lots of people I know love her. I hope it's because she's an irrascible, backward old bag, and not because she says she can see the future, and knows the gospel answer to every moral question.

Correction, maybe not so many people I know love her. The office people seem to "kirai" her. Sort of makes sense since her primary job as a "fortune teller" is synonymous with "liar", that people wouldn't think much of her moral opinions.

yakuza: beep, beep.

Saturday was the last night of Nebuta, and I was out with the new Rob to watch the parade and take some photos. Having walked alongside the parade for a while, we finally reached the post-parade route, where the dancers broke formation, and the floats proceeded to their home for the night. In this area lots of people still lined the sidewalks for the chance to take pictures and meet up with their friends, and the streets were quite full of the dancers and flute and symbol players who were sticking with their groups. Good times.

From a tiny side street that crossed the parade route came a hectic "beep beep beeeep" and a shiny black car rolling along at maybe 20 mph toward a crowd of people with their backs turned. Everyone managed to get out of the way as the car turned into the parade and sped up very quickly as it honked its way into another crowded of people, and having produced a lot of screams and frightened maybe 40 people out of its way, it disappeared down another side street. While the car was hesitating, a police officer talked to the driver, seemingly tell him to be careful, and that the road was actually closed.

Then from the same street comes another series of beeps and a big shiny SUV. This time one cop stands his ground in front of the vehicle, and the SUV rolls to a stop. At first, the driver of the car tries to nudge the cop out of the way (yes, actually deliberately strikes a cop with a car), but as more and more police gather around (maybe 10 in all), the driver seems to understand that he's got no choice. He sits for maybe five minutes listening to the cops tell him that the road is actually closed and that he ought to be careful before violently turning the car around, and beeping his way off in the other direction, nearly running over some other people.

I tried to get some pictures of the guy, but by the time I had though of it, the cops were so swarmed as to make it hard to get a picture. Sadly, this is the best I can offer:


Technorati Tags: nebuta, aomori, japan, yakuza

too many monkeys! oh crazy!

too many monkeys in the monkey house. At least one of the monkeys made delicious yellow curry for me, and gave me a back rub earlier. Now if only the monkeys would learn to knock.

you gotta be kidding.

too hot to sleep.

too hot to sleep. gang arguing with a scotsman about swastikas.

also, today I had a looong moment appropriate to a ben stiller character. Ever been bit by bit forced by a crowd to admit you had diarrhea? Then you know.

underachiever and proud of it.

Slate.com is writing about dove's new ad campaign (with the best article title possible). So is salon, and now so am I.
In case you're not in America, it's just "regular" women in white cotten panties and bra's with really nice skin. Concerning soap and skin products, I gotta say, more ads should look like this, and look this good. I think they're damned good ads, especially since they've attracted so much attention.
I gotta go all pat on the coverage though. Everyone wants to hail this advertising scheme as really great for women and "ohh self-esteem" and blah blah blah. But is it really healthy for society to dole out so much self-esteem boosting to the underachievers? Some of the women in the ads really do have average, healthy bodies, but more than a couple are well into the unhealthy territory (as are some of the skinniest models to be certain).
I think it's a good thing for a people to have media images to which they can aspire, but these aren't about aspiration, they're about contentment. Why laud those who don't achieve what is both the social standard, and the mark of good health?
I'm a skinny kid of two fat-ish parents, and I know it's hard to lose weight, but I see being overweight as a indicator of something amiss in one's lifestyle. It can be as simple as diet, but often isn't. It often has to do with stress management, free time and snowballing lethargy.

Why encorage unhealthy bodies on the chubby end of the spectrum when the unhealthy skinny bodies are so decried by the media (the talking media, not the visual media)?

Here's where I get really nasty... This is a further symptom of America losing it's "hunger". As the rest of the world grows more and more competitive, and striving for better lives, America literally and figuratively grows fat and complacent. These dove ads, although sweet in their own way are just more American decadence.

nebuta 2005!

Today was the first day of the nebuta matsuri! I went and took a ton of pictures to practice using my camera, and came out with a few good ones. This is my sneak preview post, but I'll be taking a bunch more pictures and making another post with a bit more explanation.

achewood, scary go round, everyone!

"When I want your opinion, I will cut out your brain and eat it and crap your opinion back in your skull."
--nice pete

That's achewood. It's going in my links today, along with marxy, momus, kol and scary go round. I meant to put them there a long long time ago. omatase.