Unlike many other countries, women in Japan generally feel safe when walking through the streets but now Japanese women have a new molester to worry about. He's short, he's hairy, he's vicious & he's not a foreigner, he's a monkey! It's all happening in the central Japan prefecture of Nagano, where more than 20 women have been attacked & slightly injured by a wild monkey, even though monkeys are not native to this region. Ironically, one of the victims was a 27-year-old female TV announcer, who was bitten on the back of her leg around 6:30 a.m. Things have now reached the point where town officials are issuing warnings over public loudspeakers, advising residents not to walk alone. Town employees are also searching the area, armed with tranquilliser guns & cages are for the monkey. Believe me, for a town like Shimosuwa, this is big news! Hey, even the BBC covered the story. In a country where too many monkeys are cruelly mistreated by so-called animal trainers, maybe they should look upon this as nature getting it's own back!

Say That Again . . .

Although any living language needs to adapt & grow, the death of any language is always a sad event. Many languages resist the introduction of foreign words (L'Académie française is a classic example) but not Japanese, which gathers alien terms like a kleptomaniac magpie. This led one 60 year old Japanese restaurant worker to sadly lament:

'Sometimes I feel like I need a translator to understand my own language.'

The influx of foreign words into Japanese does make life easy for we linguistically challenged residents but it does seem to suggest that Japan's language has a limited future, & although I am still struggling to learn this complex lingo, it would be sad to see it go. What if I completed my studies just in time to see it disappear!

Japan often lives up to its hi-tech reputation, as anyone who has visited Akihabara will know. The latest thing to 'benefit' from modern technology is, would you believe, cheating. Yes indeed, some students at the prestigious  Hitotsubashi University cheated in an end-of-term exam using mobile phone emails. The students in question were, appropriately enough, taking an 'e-commerce' course & were caught cheating in the final summer exam last year when an instructor noticed more or less identical answers in a number of papers. When he promised he would not punish them if they confessed, they admitted cheating by exchanging emails through mobile phones. So why didn't the invigilators notice students using mobile phones during an exam? The excuse is that there were too many students were taking the exam & some had their mobile phones on their desks, supposedly using them as clocks. Naive just isn't the word, really . . .

Some people are never satisfied! You see, not far from the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo is the Yasukuni Shrine & almost like clockwork, each year it attracts controversy when politicians visit it to pay respect to Japan's war dead, war criminals included. In an effort to avoid such controversy, someone proposed establishing a new memorial place & wouldn't you know it -- some 600 people held  a rally in Tokyo to oppose the idea. Needless to say, these were not the anti-war folk who often protest about the Yasukuni; these were the opposite, for they called upon the government 'to respect the history of Yasukuni Shrine which has been serving as the centrepiece of memorial facilities for the war dead in Japan'. As many politicians regularly upset Japan's neighbours by visiting Yasukuni, it isn't surprising that these protesters included 35 politicians from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) & other major political parties, all talking about Japanese honour & the traditions of the Yasukuni Shrine. What makes such talk ridiculously empty is the fact that although the shrine was established in 1869 (as the Tokyo Shokonsha, or Shrine for Inviting the Spirits), it wasn't until 1978 that 1,068 convicted war criminals, among them executed wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo & 13 other Class A war criminals, were secretly enshrined there. Another strange aspect of this matter is the Prime Minister's insistence that he will continue to visit Yasukuni even after a new memorial is built, which makes the new project seem less than worthwhile! Then again, who said Japanese politics was supposed to make sense!

For many years now, Japan has used its seemingly pacifist constitution as a good way of avoiding the need to have a proper army of its own -- the 'Self Defence Force' sure as hell doesn't count! However, now & again, the United States taxpayers grow a little tired of protecting a country that so often complains about the presence of foreign troops on its soil & so Japan makes a gesture toward acting like part of the international community. A recent example was the recent decision to send an Aegis-equipped high-tech destroyer to the Indian Ocean as part of logistical support for the US- led antiterrorism campaign. However, every time Japan does something like this, some idiots always come forward claiming that such a move contravenes the constitution, a document that is disregarded more often than election promises. The pacifists argument is that intelligence gathered by the destroyer in connection with antiterrorism activities could be used by the US fleet for military attacks. However, supporters claims this is an activity which can be viewed as exercising the right of collective self-defence. Another aspect that upsets some naive folk is the idea that Japan is merely following US orders but the government denies this, claiming the decision was made without US pressure. However, the pacifists have some powerful backers. One of the groups that tries hard to protect Japan's military virginity is the New Komeito, a party backed by Japan's largest lay Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai. It & others like it also claimed that by getting involved like this, Japan ran the risk of retaliatory attacks. Their logic is less than sound when one recalls that Kenya hasn't sent any ships to help the US but was still attacked. With thousands of US troops based here, terrorists won't care about a single destroyer, surely. However, if sending a single destroyer upsets so many, imagine how many will be displeased by the suggested new law that would allow Japanese troops to be deployed in in a post-Saddam Iraq. Things could get pretty stormy, sure enough!

Fancy an evening with a hostess who looks like a wrestler? Then you're in luck because believe it or not, the latest nightclub to open in Roppongi (a pretty sick place already) is run by a former female pro wrestler & most of the hostesses are, unsurprisingly, pro wrestlers. Based opposite the former Japanese Defence Agency, the club claims to offer 'a collaboration of beauty & combative sport.' One thing it doesn't offer is cheap thrills. Anyone rash enough to try anything more than admiring the muscular hostesses will soon discover the dangers of upsetting a wrestler. A reporter who tried his luck was quickly floored & told 'Sorry, no touching at this club.' So why would a pro-wrestler have a go at being a hostess, not the most logical choice of day job. Well, bear in mind that wrestlers are not overpaid, sometimes getting only ¥10,000 per bout. As one 'hostess' said, her wrestling income was only half of what she made as an office lady (OL), & even though this club is pretty reasonable by Roppongi standards (only ¥4,000 per hour plus tax & 20% service charge for chatting with the wrestlers), it does help pad out one's budget. So for those of you who think all Japanese ladies are shy, swooning Madame Butterflies,. this might be a good place to get real!

The recent fiasco over the North Korean ship seized near Yemen has revealed that if there's one thing North Korea really needs, especially its conspicuously non-starving leaders, is money! One place they have become used to getting it from is, of course, Japan. How does it get from here to there? Well, one method is the 'Man Gyon Bong', a 9,672-ton passenger liner that regularly sails between northern North Korea & Niigata in central Japan. Apart from its usual payload, this ship allegedly has a special cargo each December — smuggled cash. A Japanese politician recently raised the matter, not before time, claiming that the Japanese government has ignored the situation & has no idea of how much money has been transported this way. Some of this money even comes from the Japanese Government, officially used to help ailing banks, some of which are actually North Korean owned! Believe it or not, despite the recent admission that Pyongyang had abducted many Japanese citizens, many ethnic Koreans here still support the North, viewing Seoul as an American puppet. The pioneering Japanese newspaper, Shukan Post, interviewed an executive who had been remitting money to North Korea for many years. He claimed that they had smuggled more than one billion yen (about US$8.3 million) using the 'Man Gyon Bong.' They preferred to do it in December as the ship was often crowded at other times with school trips by Korean schools in Japan. How do you smuggle such large amounts of cash? 'We bundled ¥10,000 bills into ¥500,000 or ¥100 million rolls & packed them in colour TV boxes. Those boxes were loaded onto the ship.' Maybe the NATO ships should be patrolling the Japan Sea rather the Indian Ocean. 

Not long after this goes online, the number one Japanese holiday, New Year, will be upon us. Traditionally, this is a time for Japanese to return to their family home & also to send postcard-like New Year cards, which (thanks to the efficiency & dedication of the Japanese Post Office) are delivered precisely on January 1st! However, just as technology has altered so many aspects of Japanese life (even cheating), so it has changed the way New Year greetings are sent. Amongst the companies that are using the Internet to 'simplify' this custom is photo film & camera maker Konica, which allows people to custom-order cards using pictures supplied by the customer. Another company, 'Livin' on the Edge', has a web site called 'Ohagaki.com,' where you can arrange for them to do everything, including getting the postcards, addressing & taking them to the post office. Of course, you could design & print your own cards on your PC, thereby avoiding shopping for them, but the cheapest way is send electronic cards, although this is rather untraditional. What's more, it should be borne in mind that the traditional cards have a lottery number on, allowing lucky recipients to win some very nice prizes. However, if you wake up on New Year's Day & find you've received a card from someone you'd forgotten, the computer age can be a real godsend! 

One reason I & many other foreigners stay here is safety, backed up by the knowledge that when someone is arrested here, they generally get seriously punished. However, a recent case has revealed 2 worrying trends. The case involves the abduction & imprisonment of a 9-year-old girl in Niigata Prefecture for more than 9 years It took the police a ridiculous amount of time to find & arrest the scumbag responsible & now that he has finally been convicted & jailed, I read that the Tokyo High Court has reduced his prison term from 14 to 11 years. His defence lawyers (obviously really nice chaps) claimed that the sentence failed to recognize that their client had suffered a personality disorder. The maximum prison sentence for abduction & confinement is only 10 years & as the prosecution  rightly pointed out. this was only a little longer than the time the girl herself was held prisoner. The scumbag, Nobuyuki Sato, forced the girl into the trunk of his car at knifepoint while she was on her way home from school. Local health officials (NOT the police) found & rescued the girl from his home in January 2000, when she was 19 years old, having been held captive for 9 years & 2 months. While holding her, he repeatedly threatened her with a knife & a stun gun, beating her whenever she tried to flee. Not surprisingly, the girl suffered physical injuries, such as atrophied leg muscles, & psychological pain including post-traumatic stress disorder. So why did the court lessen his sentence? Because she wasn't their daughter, I suppose. 

On the subject of justice & 'Japan's Finest', the National Police Agency (NPA) recently published its fiscal 2002 report on public safety & guess what? The words is that everyone should be beware of possible threats from illegal immigrants. At least they're not blaming all foreigners. On a local note, they also warned about the danger of domestic groups as the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which now calls itself Aleph. In line with the way of the world, the NPA drew attention to the risk of possible terrorist acts by Islamic radicals in Japan, especially as Japan is popularly viewed as a US ally. The old idea that such things only happen to other people has long been a national doctrine here but as they have been forced to discover of late, being an island (or several islands) doesn't protect any nation from things like AIDS or 'the envy of less happier lands'. The world is a nasty place & Japan's time as an oasis is sadly limited.

Gaijin's Tip:

'Japanese rarely entertain at home, as they often live a long way from downtown & in relatively small homes. It is thereby an honour to be invited to a home, as this means that your host feels comfortable & close with you.'
(Taken from the 'Gaijin's Guide to Living in Japan')

&

Gaijin's Where-to-Go

'One of the most famous episodes in Japanese history is the tale of the 47 Ronin, samurai warriors who extracted vengeance on the official who had ruined their former master in the early 18th century . There is a museum in their honour at the temple in which these famed retainers of Lord Asano. It's within sight of Sengakuji Subway & about 15 minutes from Shinagawa JR/Keikyu station. 9-4pm daily. Free. For more information, call 3441-5560.'

'For more information, check out the 'Gaijin's Guide to Enjoying Tokyo'

Miss last month's 'Empty Seat'? Not to worry. You can check out the Gaijin's previous ramblings as easily as clicking below.

Well, the rest of the world is preparing for Christmas & here in Japan, we're preparing for New Year. Tokyo will get a LOT emptier during the days around the turn of the year, with locals heading for their family homes (few Tokyo residents are Tokyoites by birth) & most expats leaving very soon & returning in early January, meaning those of us who stay here have more chance of a seat on the train. Everything will back to normal by the middle of January so if you yearn for the latest in gripes & scandals (unlikely, I know), feel free to waste some time popping back here. Until then, I sincerely hope that your festive season is enjoyable, & wish you a safe & fulfilling 2003.

The Gaijin

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