Coming-of-Age Day

Today was Coming-of-Age Day in Japan.  It's called 成人の日（Seijin no Hi, せいじんのひ）, held on the second Monday of each January.  The official age for adulthood is twenty here--20 to legally drink, smoke, vote, drive without needing a parent or guardian's signature.  I think it makes a bit of sense to have all these things happen at one age.  Of course, not everyone turns twenty on the same day, but it seems to be understood that people who go through this rite of passage during the same one-year span can celebrate together.  I think it's kind of nice.

Some of these kimono cost serious money.  I knew a girl who asked her mother if she could have a car instead of the kimono that would be tailor made for this special day.  Her mother said no.




 

Oh Tokyo!

After spending two weeks in a couple of developing countries, Myanmar (Burma)and Laos, I came back to Tokyo and, as often happens after I come back from trips, I noticed and appreciated some of the conditions here that I might ordinarily take for granted.  Being able to drink tap water, even if the chlorine taste is a bit strong.  Being able to use credit cards.  Convenience stores on every block.  Supermarkets.  Clean public restrooms stocked with toilet paper. 
 
A lot of it is excessive, and certainly in societies of abundant resource there is waste.  Someone told me that with the energy you use to power a vending machine you could light up an entire block; and there are seriously a lot of vending machines here.  (Of course, I'm sure there are variables, such as the size of the block and how lit up you need it to be.)  


But for these first few days back, I'll let myself find comfort in convenience.  It's not that I think life in Japan is better than in these other countries, but I ought to to appreciate things as the feeling spontaneously arises.  One of the things I marvel at is Tokyo's train system.  Days ago, I was biting my lip in frustration as I waited for the monorail in Kuala Lumpur, where I spent the day in transit.  I stood in line at the ticket (actually, token) machines, which were touchscreen and clearly mapped out.  They looked quite modern and nicely designed.  But the touchscreen aspect really slowed things up; people were missing the spots they wanted to touch and having to go back and forth to navigate the monorail map.  I tried timing the wait, and some passengers were taking over a minute to buy one token.  On top of that, some of the machines refused paper currency; all of them refused large bills.  

To be fair, certain monorail lines ran more efficiently than others.  But while I was there I noted some of the things that I take for granted with Tokyo trains/subways/monorails.  Signs on every platform telling you which station you were at, what the last station was and what the next station will be.  Where the final stop is on each train line.  A full schedule posted of all train arrivals for the day, for weekdays and weekends.  Maps above the ticket machines so that people standing in line can calculate their fares ahead of time.  (Although I have to recognize that this doesn't always do the trick here in Japan, as I've often stood behind passengers who wait until they're in front of the ticket machines to gaze up at the maps and figure out how much money to put in. . .Truth be told, it's one of my two or three pet peeves.  Sorry, I don't mean to be whiny.)  Anyway, I found myself admiring the collective effort that must have gone into making the Tokyo train and subway system the efficient juggernaut that it is today.  Tens of millions riding those sleek rails every day! 

Below are some pictures of Kuala Lumpur's monorail system.  You can compare them to Tokyo's daily grind in the video that follows.

Kuala Lumpur

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Tokyo

Glorius View

Sometimes we can see Mt. Fuji from our school. . .

音姫 (The Sound Princess)

Have you ever felt embarrassed by the natural gaseous and liquid sounds we all make while doing Number 2?  For anyone who has, the public restroom in Japan is the place to be.

Witness the Otohime:



Incredibly, there's a Wikipedia article entitled "Toilets in Japan."  I think it's pretty good.  In the "Japan-specific accessories"  section you can find "The Sound Princess."  It mentions that "many Japanese women are embarrassed at the thought of being heard by others during urination. . ." 

See article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_japan

When I first read that part of the article, my first reaction was surprise that people would be embarrassed to be heard urinating.  Really, urinating?  Well, I'm a guy, and. . .well, I don't know if gender should have anything to do with this, but I don't mind people hearing it.  I can even see being proud of it, as Tom Hanks' character Jimmy Dugan might have felt in this classic scene (if he'd been sober enough to think about it):



To be embarrassed to have someone hear one's peeing is a little messed up, was my first reaction, but I'm trying now to step back and not judge it.
 
My second reaction was that I was easily able to imagine a lot of women in Japan being embarrassed in such situations.  Many of my Japanese friends say that Japanese people are generally shy, but I don't really agree with them.  I've come to draw a distinction between shy and embarrassed, or somewhat easily embarrassed.  I see shyness as a personality trait that can exist regardless of how others see us.  When we feel shy, we feel bashful or reluctant regardless of how others react to us, or how we think they're reacting to us. . . Bashful people can meet fans or foes and still feel bashful.  Someone who is easily embarrassed, on the other hand, might possibly feel confident and grand when others hold him/her in high regard; but this person might shrink in the face of looking awkward, incompetent, uncool, or otherwise bad.  I don't know that being either shy or easily embarrassed is better or worse than the other, but I do think they're different conditions.

My third reaction was, "Why am I not embarrassed by having others hearing me urinate, but the other sounds. . .?"  Generally, I'd rather not emit gas or have others hear me doing Number 2; and yet, a Number 1 audible is no problem for me.  How arbitrary is that?  I really don't know. . .I really don't.

P.S. Otohime is also the name of a goddess in Japanese mythology, and of a character in the manga / anime series One Piece, which I love:

the autumn leaves, 紅葉 （こうよう、kouyou） and leaf peeping, 紅葉狩 (もみじがり、momijigari)

There's a single word in Japanese that describes the changing color of the leaves during autumn:

紅葉　（こうよう、kouyou）

Having grown up in Hawai'i, the autumn leaves are still kind of exciting for me.  I love seeing them in the parks, on the sidewalks as I make my way to school. . .I love stepping on them.  In Japanese culture, the term hanami describes a "cherry-blossom viewing party," for many people a reason to drink outdoors alongside hundreds of other people.  They're a pretty big deal.  I started wondering if we had corresponding autumn leaf-viewing parties.  At that point, some part of my mind recalled an episode of The West Wing (in Japan the show is called　"ザ・ホワイトハウス"), in which they use the term "leaf peeping."  I didn't know it but it's a real thing in America.  President Bartlet didn't know it either.  People go out and look at and take pictures of the changing colors of the leaves, and there's an official term for this.  The Wikipedia entry for leaf peeping is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_peeping

and in that article, I found out that there is a Japanese equivalent, called momijigari (紅葉狩).  Travel agencies offer tours. 

This video came out kind of small (taken with my i-Phone), so it might be hard to see that they're trying to catch the leaves raining down on them.  If you full-screen it you should be able to see it a little better.


                    

animate

Continuing from yesterday's entry, right after the police stopped me to go through my wallet, I went on to breakfast, and later that Sunday came upon an event courtesy of Animate, a manga/animation store that seems pretty big here.  Ikebukuro has a couple of Animate buildings, and whenever I go there it's crowded.  I'm not sure what this event was about, but there were some cars.

 

This is one of the stores.

 

I'm not sure if this bus had anything to do with Animate, but maybe. . .The lady to the left seemed pretty ecstatic to have the picture.

That night, Animate was more packed than in the day.

the cops here

I meant to post this a few days ago, on Sunday, but work called. . .
I was leaving my apartment building, heading out to get breakfast, when a police squad car pulled up beside me and one of the cops got out, smiling, “Sumimasen!”  He said sorry, but he wanted to see my ID.  I asked him if something had happened, and why he wanted to see it.  He said sorry, that they were looking for drug-users and asked me if I do drugs.  I said no, I don’t.  He asked again to see my ID.  I said that I was pretty sure it was illegal (fuhou, 不法 ) for him to ask me without a specific reason, and he said yes, and sorry, but could he see an ID?  I said again that I was pretty sure it was illegal, but he asked again to see an ID.  I let him see my ID card; he checked it out and asked if he could look through my wallet, which I permitted (saying once again that I was sure it was illegal for him to be doing this); he kept smiling and looked through it for signs of drugs or any other wrongdoing, returned it to me, said thank you, and he and his squad card were on their way.  I made it to the restaurant 15 minutes before they stopped serving breakfast.

Over the years, I’ve had a few encounters with the Japanese police.  One notable trait is how utterly polite most police officers are here.  It doesn’t seem to matter what they’re saying, but they’re cordial and almost subservient.  Of course, one could argue that a person in authority can act as subservient as s/he wants simply because s/he knows that s/he’s the one in power.  But anyway. . .I know some foreigners here who can’t stand the cops, but I don’t take great issue with how I’m treated by the police.  I find it annoying when they stop me for no reason to check my ID.  Actually, I shouldn’t say that there’s no reason.  The reason, at least sometimes, has been that I’m Chinese-American, but they don’t know the American part just by looking at me.  So they stop me, and when they see on my ID that I’m American, we’re usually done; they apologize and/or thank me for my cooperation, and I’m on my way.

So yeah, profiling isn’t a great controversy here.  There may be laws against it—I don’t know, honestly—but in any case this isn’t a very letter-of-the-law kind of country.  People don’t often sue for being approached, carded, and searched by the police.  I see good and bad in that, the good being that people don’t often game the system to extract a financial settlement with the police.  The bad is that individual rights are sometimes not given their due respect. . .I’ve been hearing stories from colleagues at work who say that the country’s changing, and they tell me stories about how (non-Japanese) Asians are more frequently being stopped and searched without cause.  I feel that it’s not hard to believe; once, when an officer stopped me on the sidewalk, he said that the police were looking for Asian (meaning Asian but not Japanese) people who might be stealing bicycles in the area.

In the end, for me it’s fairly easy to tolerate such mindsets mainly because the police are so damn polite.  Also, even if some of them are acting on prejudice and generalization, at least they don’t abuse me, and at least they’re constantly apologizing.  I suppose the politeness is the spoonful of sugar that M.Poppins once sang about.  I don't mean that my tolerance is the right way to go about it; maybe I'm supposed to draw a line and object.  I'm still trying to figure this one out.  But I wanted to make the observation that the way in which I'm asked to do things has had a pretty significant impact on my likelihood to comply.  A couple decades ago, one sleepy summer vacation day, I saw an episode of Oprah where a tabloid reporter on the show said that she felt she could ask any question of anyone, as long as she found the right way to ask it.

Funny, as I was typing this entry,  I recalled a former colleague (from Britain) telling me about his British friend who was so pissed off at the Japanese police that he had part of the Japanese Constitution ( the part that said it was illegal for police to ask for IDs without a specific reason) printed on his  shirt.  He said that if they ever asked for his ID, he’d sit on the sidewalk and refuse to provide it.  I don’t know how well that worked out for him.