Hawaii at Xmas

I am having a great time here in Hawaii. I'll give you a real update when I get home. This one is just to say Merry Christmas.
-The beaches are beautiful.
-This is my first christmas in a warm place.
-I really miss coin lockers. They are so useful. I had to carry my bag around all day because I flew into Hawaii 9 hours before my family did.
-I am terrible at surfing and doing anything wave-related, but I love the water. I have been swimming non-stop.
-I saw the new Quentin Tarantino movie.
-I miss being able to buy somewhat healthy things in convenience stores (salad with okra, etc)
-You can get Itoen brand green tea and Oi-Ocha in Hawaii, but it comes in a can and the label looks different. It's unsweetened and tastes the same, though, which is great.
-Merry Christmas!

★I love Itanji★

This is one of my favorite blogs ever! It is so entertaining and interesting. The guy who writes it has a really fun life and posts tons of great pictures. He traveled through India and Nepal meeting all sorts of fun people and posting pictures of everything he does / eats / sees. I really hope he keeps writing regularly because I really think he's great!

The profile says he's a Japanese student from Kanagawa with a part time job at a pizza delivery shop. Someday he wants to get a job in a foreign country. He made an Enlish blog to practice his English. That's a good idea because I'm sure he'll receive a lot of comments in English when more people discover his blog.

Itanji is an entertaining blog written by a cool, interesting, openminded person. I'm excited to see where he'll go next and I hope he posts lots of pictures and stories about his next trip.

Holidays are coming

Today is freezing cold. I'm so glad I'm going to Hawaii in a few days with my 6/8 family!! I love my family so much.

I was just thinking about being in China for Christmas two years ago. I went to a my friend's absolutely filthy rich friend's Xmas eve party in Hong Kong. It was on the roof of some gorgeous building and everyone did a countdown to Christmas at midnight just like it was New Year's Eve.

I feel really lucky to have so many friends from all over the world. I don't even know how I got this lucky. I have some moments when I think about my friends and I feel like I am the luckiest person I know. Atsushi sent me the longest letter from Brazil. He's doing well and he's headed to Switzerland next. Naben just sent me a baby picture of himself and it's so cute. Please don't be mad at me for posting this, Naben. It's SO CUTE and I think everyone deserves to see it because it will make everyone happy. Ahhhh so cute!! The baby in red is Naben's new nephew. The baby on the right is baby Naben. I like the younger father / older father / same pose part.

I'm wearing the necklace that Nancy made for me. I'm listening to a very old mixtape that Saelan mailed me when I lived in Geneva. I just got an email from Ross yesterday. I was looking at old pictures of Eve and I last week and getting excited for summer. My mother mailed me a 5 page letter full of great advice. I'm thinking about Asli and Thuy constantly. I'm feeling so full of love.

Isojin - Japanese people gargle to prevent H1N1 Flu

My roommate has a cold and worries that I’ll get it, so she called me to her room yesterday to give me a little plastic squirt bottle of orangey-brown liquid that she bought for me. It’s called Isojin and it’s that stuff that you see people gargling with in train station washrooms all over Japan.

It’s a low-strength Iodine solution that is only 10 times weaker than the paste iodine that doctors use to disinfect cuts in hospitals. Many Japanese people gargle with this 2/3 water 1/3 Isojin mixture every morning and night. I’d say that most children grow up gargling with it regularly. (All my friends grew up doing it.) When people become adults, they usually only use it when they think they might be getting sick, or when they’re sick, or when someone in their home/workplace is sick and they don’t want to catch it. I tried it because Masae bought it for me. It tasted really bad, obviously, but my mouth felt sort of fresh and tingly afterwards. It’s Iodine, so obviously don’t wear a white dress while you’re spitting it into the sink unless you want a rust-colored stain on it.I don’t think Japan’s Isojin gargle actually does much to prevent illness. The main thing I do to avoid getting sick is avoid touching my eyes, nose and mouth. I basically never touch them without a tissue, except in the shower. And I’m almost always healthy even when everyone else is down with a cold / flu. I think that if Japan is really worried about H1N1 Influenza, they should think about putting soap in public washrooms so that people can actually wash their hands. I dream of the day I don’t have to carry my own soap in a little bottle in my bag. Most people don’t even wash their hands, and I don’t blame them: no soap, cold water, no paper towels.

It's Japan, so obviously Isojin Iodine gargle has to have an adorable cartoon mascot.
This one is a hippo named Kaba-kun (カバくん) and he is actually pretty cute.

If you want to see some fascinating Swine Flu paranoia, Japan-style, check out the pictures of this guy’s company at the height of the Shingata Influ Fear.

Merry Christmas in Japan

Today after work, I made the most beautiful Christmas chocolates! I'm really proud of them, so here are some pictures. They are black and white layered chocolates with halved, toasted almonds in the middle and different toppings. Some of them are topped with crushed macadamia nuts and others are topped with chocolate candies. My sister is the one who is best at baking in my family. I like cooking (lately Indian food, but also Japanese breakfasts, gyoza, stews, soups and J-curries) but I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever made sweets. I'm not usually inspired to cook things I won't eat, so I need an occasion like Christmas or Valentine's Day or someone's birthday. I'm happy these turned out nicely. I was going to top the white chocolate ones with crushed candy cane because that seemed more Christmas, but I went around looking for candy canes at 6 different places in town and they didn't have them anywhere. That made me start thinking about how hard it must be for foreign people who are into foreign festive times but living in Japan. I wanted to teach a special, Christmas-themed lesson for the first time ever and I thought of a bunch of great ideas that I found out won't work in Japan. I couldn't find any egg nog or candy canes. I couldn't find the movie, "A Christmas Story" to show clips from in class. Japan does Christmas in a Japanese way: Christmas cake, KFC, love hotels and Mariah Carey. That's fine. I'm not a very festive person and I don't need to get nostalgic about Christmas, but I feel for all the people who are wishing for egg nog and candy canes and snow in Japan. It must be difficult.

I found Anna's brand ginger snaps at IKEA and one overpriced chocolate advent calendar, so I'll give that to my class. I made a "Home Alone" themed lesson about gerunds. But the best thing is that I'm finally going to meet my family for Christmas this year! (well, 6/8+) We're meeting in Hawaii. I was in Okinawa last year and Shanghai the year before, so I'm really looking forward to Christmas with people I have known my whole life.

Momus is in Japan now.

Momus is in Japan right now, which means that there’s a lot of good Japan-related writing on his website. He wrote a really fascinating article on Tokyo's Parco / Saison culture where I just learned a lot about who owns the big companies and chain stores in Shibuya. I think Momus is a gorgeous writer, so I’m just going to include a part of the article for you so that you’ll just go read it instead of reading me trying to tell you about what he wrote.

“I didn't know it at the time, but my first Japan visit was circumscribed almost entirely by a world conceived and invented by one man, Seiji Tsutsumi. A novelist, award-winning poet, and one-time member of the Japanese communist party, the young Seiji inherited the department store business from his father. Yasujiro Tsutsumi founded the Seibu empire in 1912. Typically for Japan, it consisted of a department store (Seibu) and a railway line to bring people to it (the Seibu line). Seiji's half-brother Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a much tougher cookie, inherited ten times as much as Seiji did when the old man died in 1964, and by 1990 Yoshiaki was estimated by Forbes magazine to be the richest man in the world, thanks to property and transport holdings in bubble-era Tokyo. But Seiji was the artistic one. He retired in 1991, but the Japan I first encountered bore his mark the way quattrocento Florence bore the imprint of the renaissance princes.”

Here’s another piece Momus wrote about Tokyo street fashion and street fashion in general, where he remarks that:

a) most street fashion from Tokyo is shot within cat-swinging radius of Cat Street, and

b) clever retailers dress their staff up and send them out to get photographed as a kind of free advertising, and

c) all you need to do to find a street fashion photographer is go to the corner of Meiji Dori and Omote Sando.

This is basically true. The only times I’ve ever been photographed by street fashion photographers in Tokyo were on Omotesando near Cat street. In Osaka, Orange Street (Minami Horie) during the day (near APC) is where all the photographers are. That’s where I got photographed for Soup and Nonno. It’s funny. Some people dress up and go to these places specifically to get photographed. I know one guy in Tokyo who does it almost every weekend.

Momus also writes about a children’s street fashion blog, Milk Magazine's Look De Rue. I actually love this blog. These kids are walking around Paris far better dressed than 99% of adults. His comments make me laugh:

“When it comes to expressing their individuality through clothes, children are quite possibly the least creative, least empowered consumer group known to man. How the hell can you use clothes to "say who you are" when you've just been born, have a different shape of body from month to month, don't make your own purchasing decisions, aren't considered legally or financially responsible in any way, and basically trail alongside your parents wearing whatever they pull over your head? Childhood is certainly a problematical area for cherished Western notions of individuality.”

Nara's Sento-Kun mascot is truly hideous.

Every city and area in Japan has a cartoon character to represent it. This cartoon character is usually just pure marketing because if a character is popular, people will buy souvenirs with the character printed all over it. There are also lots of people who are superfans of one particular character and have all sorts of items (towels, facecloths, pajamas, cell phone straps, dolls) of the character. I know one guy who likes Jagata-kun, a skiing potato and the mascot of Kutchan, Hokkaido.

But no mascot is more controversial than Nara's mascot, Sento-Kun. This is old news, I know, but I recently went to Nara and was reminded of how hideous their character, Sento-Kun really is. Sento-Kun was created as created as the official mascot character for Nara last year and has been hugely unpopular, for obvious reasons. His hideous horns are supposed to evoke the idea of deer antlers, like the tame ones in Nara's famous park, but I think they just look out of place. The fact that he looks like a Buddha has angered religious groups in Japan. (Japan's Buddhist society even made their own new Nara mascot, an inoffensive but forgettable little cartoon boy with black hair who looks kind of like Fujiya's Peko-Chan.)

Bloggers also created Manto-Kun, the little roly-poly guy on the left in the picture above. Manto-Kun is really popular in Nara, but Sento-Kun is well known all over Japan because he's gross. Actually, if you want a gimmick to make Japanese people talk to you, put a Sento-Kun cell phone strap on your phone and people will remark on it. Sento-Kun is a conversation starter because everyone has an opinion about him.

Also, Sento-Kun isn't cute or simple, which are probably the most basic requirements for a Japanese cartoon character. It looks like someone tried to play a joke on the city of Nara by designing the most hideous cartoon mascot possible and then seeing how much the city would pay. Sento-Kun actually cost the city of Nara 5 million yen (around 50,000 dollars) in taxpayer's money.

Sento-Kun cosplay...shudder...

Yes, we have heard that it is not popular," said Keichi Minamihata, a spokesman for Nara Prefecture. "People say that he is not cute, but 5 million yen (£24,410) was spent on the design to mark the anniversary so we have no plans to replace Sento-kun."

ノギャル ~ Shiho Fujita and her Nogyaru

Shiho Fujita is a really interesting person. She’s a Japanese gyaru with tons of ambition. Aside from being a Jpop singer with multiple albums out and a blogger with a huge following of teenaged Tokyo girls, Shiho Fujita is also a young entrepreneur. This 24 year old girl has been working her way for a long time, since starting her own marketing firm at age 19 aimed at teen girls in Tokyo. Recently, Shiho Fujita has been in the news more often because she decided to start her own rice farm in Akita prefecture and bring all sorts of young, pretty, fashion-conscious girls from Shibuya to work on the farm. The girls who work on the farm are nicknamed Nogyaru (ノギャル), a combination of the Japanese word for farm (nōjyō) and gyaru (girl/gal). In the English media, they're calling it Kawaii Agriculture. (that link has videos on it) The cute Nogyaru help publicize a brand of rice called Shibuya Rice. Shibuya Rice has a big, glittery picture of Hachiko on it. If you do an image search for ノギャル you can see all sorts of great pictures of these high-maintenance girls pulling their weight on the farm. Even with their gel tipped nails, blonde hair extensions and false eyelashes on, they seem to look happy standing in the mud.

Shiho Fujita is now my second favorite Shibuya girl after my cute little eater. I will absolutely buy her rice if I ever see it around. I like people who can market themselves effectively and this Nogyaru gimmick is a great way to get in the news. I respect people who create their own publicity and build their own little empires like this girl does. Where's the gyaruo farm?

Why are there PET bottles lined up all over the place outside of Japanese houses?

Sometimes, you people ask me questions and I like that because I often don’t know the answer either, and then I get to try to find the answer for both of us. Recently, someone asked me why there are all these big PET bottles full of water lined up around people’s homes and gardens. I asked someone and found the answer. Apparently, those bottles keep away stray cats. Cats don’t like seeing the shiny surface of the bottles in the dark, and they will avoid settling near or peeing around a home with PET bottles around it. There you go. Mystery solved. Whether or not this is true is another story, though. What do you think? Do you have any other questions for me?

Handmade Scarf = Fruitcake of Japanese Christmas Presents

I read one of the most recent translated survey results from What Japan Thinks and it was about what kinds of Christmas presents Japanese people would be the least happy to receive on Christmas. I was curious about what the “fruitcake” of Japan might be. To my surprise, hand-knitted sweaters were high on the list of unwanted presents for both male and female respondents.

Handmade sweaters? I was surprised because I think it’s a thoughtful gift and would be happy to get a hand-knitted scarf. (though I understand that my style goes well with homemade/vintage things and someone who is used to wearing Louis Vuitton wouldn’t want to look like they have Granny’s warmth around their neck all winter long.)

Anyway, yesterday, I ate dinner with one of my friends and asked him what he thinks would top Japan’s list as the least desirable Christmas present. To my surprise, he answered right away, without even thinking, “hand-knitted scarf”. I was so surprised. Is it that common in Japan for girls to give others hand-knitted scarves for Christmas?

Not surprisingly, other runner-ups for unwanted gifts were DVDs and CDs you’ve never heard of, cheap accessories and clothes that don’t suit your style. High on the list for both sexes was “dinner at a posh restaurant we don’t normally go to” and my friend said that he agreed and that he’d love being given that, too.

I think that the best presents are usually experiences. A plane ticket, a short weekend trip or a spa day are usually my absolute favorite presents. Some nice presents are things I wouldn’t normally buy for myself but appreciate so much, like the iPod Jesse got me and the Bose speakers Jack got me or the durian fruit that Atsushi got me. Now that I live in Japan, the best presents are experiences I can do with people I love, like when my dad and grandparents bought me a plane ticket home in the summer or when my mother and father flew to Japan to see me.