j-log: Everyday Japan

"Beetle King"

If you enter any discount store in Japan these days, you may encounter a strange sight in the vicinity of the toy section or the game center. You may see a clump of children between the ages of six and ten, all standing politely in line, but craning their necks as they try to catch a glimpse of the flashing green boxes at the head of the line. On a weekend, there may be so many children in line that a staff member of the store will be designated to supervise the line and to keep the children from blocking the aisles. Each child (or sometimes the child's parent) will be clutching notebooks full of green cards imprinted with barcodes and images of beetles. And on the glowing video screens at the head of the line, you'll see constant images of battle: huge computer-generated beetles striding out into the center of a forested arena to wrestle one another to earth, to hurl one another into the air, or to envelop one another with blasts of fantastic energies.

If you see this, you are witnessing "Beetle King," the phenomenon which has swept Japan's pre-teen culture by storm this year. (Click here for lots of photos.) This video game has succeeded wildly by melding aspects of Japanese culture with some of children's most fundamental psychological needs to create a smash hit.

The Summer Vacation Industry

The Japanese school year starts in April of each year. The longest vacation during the school year runs from late July to the end of August. (Schoolchildren accordingly don't change grades when they come back from summer vacation; rather, they graduate from each grade in March.) Every year during this summer vacation period, a bonanza of expos, festivals, shows and exhibitions suddenly appears to cater to the temporary market of schoolchildren with time (and their parents' money) on their hands, and it can actually be an awful lot of fun, even if your kid isn't quite in school yet.

One More Place Bin Laden Is Not Hiding

After an excursion to the Sano Premium Outlets mall in Tochigi Prefecture, I am pleased to report that Osama bin Laden is nowhere in evidence. Furthermore, the folks at the mall make a mean dish of curry rice.

Fractured English is a favorite subject of humor among people who have just arrived in Japan, mostly because it's the only aspect of Japanese culture they feel they can fully grasp. This sign, however, isn't supposed to be English; it's just a rendition of Japanese into Roman letters. To be specific: in Japanese the word "Osama" means "King," while "no" indicates the possessive, like the word "of" or like an apostrophe-s.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the debut of j-log! I've been working on this page on and off since January, and I've finally decided it's ready.

The real purpose of j-log is to help keep in touch with family and friends. I expect you've come to the site today because you just got an e-mail message from me. (Strangers seem to have drifted in through Google searches in recent weeks, but the official launch for family and friends is today.) Please take a look around for my answer to the question that people are always asking me, namely, "So, Keith, how is Japan?"

I invite you to browse through the various posts I've written over the past few months, all of which are below. (Don't miss the story about how I became a political commentator and media star.) There's also a brief introduction and a description of how I've occupied my time on my Tokyo-area commute.

I intend to update this page regularly in the future, so check back often! I miss you all!

Keith

Summer Festivals

Summer in Japan is the time for matsuri, or festivals, and we attended our share this year. In July we attended a tiny neighborhood festival, just a few blocks from our house. In August we went to the huge Asaka city festival, with its acres of booths and attractions and crowds so large that the entire city center is choked with people. Then, just a few weeks ago we went to a medium-sized festival for North Asaka, held in front of the entrance to our local train station. Now that the summer's festivals are all over, I've posted pictures from all three of them here. Take a look and recall childhood memories of beetles and goldfish, yakisoba and shaved ice, taiko drums and the o-bon dance.

Pool

Last weekend we went to Toshima-en, a huge pool-and-amusement-park complex in northwestern Tokyo. I've posted photos here.

When we went for the first time, last summer, we didn't realize how crowded it would be. We arrived near Toshima-en at perhaps ten o'clock in the morning, and found ourselves in the midst of an enormous traffic jam caused by the park itself. Dozens and dozens of cars were lined up waiting to turn into the entrance to the park, which is on a simple two-lane road in the midst of a dense urban area in Nerima-ku. Although the park had hired guards to shepherd the cars into the park, we still had to sit in the car for around an hour.

One-Year Mass

Last weekend we attended the Buddhist houji ceremony for Rumi's aunt, who died exactly one year ago.

In Japan, most people commemorate the dead with three Buddhist ceremonies. The first, the tsuya, generally occurs within two or three days after the death and is analogous to a traditional European wake. On the day after the wake, the body is cremated and relatives take turns using chopsticks to transfer the remains to the urn (two relatives always taking care to hold the same bone at the same time). The ashes are then interred at the family grave.

Those White iPod Headphones

The iPod is conquering Tokyo. I see it every day on the commuter train, and on the sidewalks, where the number of people wearing those distinctive white-and-grey headphones has steadily increased over the past several months. Because I myself listen to NPR and audio books on an iPod every day while commuting, I notice. From news reports I understand that a "white headphone tribe" has also emerged in small towns around the globe, like New York City.

It is a conclusive sign of the iPod's coolness that now other manufacturers are trying to trade on the cachet of the white headphones.

Bush Mocked in Japanese Press

There probably aren't even a dozen people in Japan who support America's Iraq policy (not even including Prime Minister Koizumi, whom I believe has dispatched troops to Iraq principally to enhance Japan's international standing), and this has made President Bush fair game for increasingly cheap shots, including a brief video clip on last night's news that eschewed policy discussion in favor of mocking the President's mangled pronunciation.

An Open Letter to Secretary Veneman

Ever since my recent beef-bowl lunch turned me into a political commentator and media star, I've been closely following the controversy over imports of U.S. beef into Japan. So when I heard that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Ms. Ann Veneman, had decided to deny a small independent farm the right to voluntarily test its meat for Mad Cow, I got steamed and wrote her about it. Here's what I had to say: