Japan's Safe Driver Card

セーフ・ドライバー

I recently had to go to the Fuchu Driver's License Center in Chofu City, a little west of Tokyo. I needed a certification of my driving record, called an Unten Kiroku Shomeisho, covering the past five years for a bureaucratic procedure I'm currently going through.

It took the best part of an hour to get out there from central Tokyo. I went to Musashi-koganei Station on the JR Chuo Line, took the South Exit, and caught the bus at stop no. 6, on the far side of the bus area from the station. The bus took about 10 minutes.

I got there a few minutes before the opening time of 8:30 a.m., asked one of the gruff old guides where to go, was told the 3rd floor, went up there, picking my way through the seething 1st floor crowd. Fuchu Licence Center is also where people go if they have to renew a driving license that has expired either because they forgot to renew it before it expired, or because they lost their license for an infringement and have to reapply.

On the very quiet 3rd floor, I filled out the very simple application form for the certificate, and waited along with the only other customer there - an old man.

The counter I was waiting at opened on the dot of 8:30 a.m., but on this particular morning they didn't have the right key to open the sliding windows, so an apologetic middle aged woman came out to where I was and took my form. I had been told that the certificate application would cost 700 yen, but it turned out that in deflationary Japan, this was now reduced to 630 yen.

I was also told that it would take up to three weeks for the certificate to be sent to me, but I received it today, six days later. The certificate is full of wonderfully blank lines, attesting to my very safe driving record over the past five years (during which time I've probably driven for a no more than about once every 3 or 4 months!). However, it also came with an unexpected bonus, a plastic, credit card sized SD Card, or Safe Driver Card.

The back of the SD Card states that I have a clean seven-year record (actually longer - but I moved to Tokyo seven years ago, so maybe that's why), and it was accompanied by a pamphlet that lists scores of businesses and services that I can get a discount with and on using my SD Card during the 12 months following its issue.

These businesses include moving companies (a very generous 20%, useful in December when my partner and I are to move apartments), the Miyazaki car ferry (10% off), Daito Group and Toto Nisseki gasoline stands (from 5% for car parts up to 66% off for tire changes), travel agencies, car and motorbike rental companies, Odakyu Department Store, hotels, and driving schools.

Safe driving really pays in Japan!


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The Panasonic sex appeal challenge

脱いでも男前か

Panasonic is one of Japan’s biggest electronics manufacturers, especially with its buyout and absorption of Sanyo four years ago (Sanyo having been founded by the brother-in-law of the founder of Panasonic just after the war.)

Panasonic, like many other Japanese industrial giants, has been restructuring furiously to keep its head above water, and recently launched an aggressive new “Panasonic Beauty” campaign, for men and for women.
Panasonic Beauty for Men is the more conspicuous of the two campaigns at the moment, and features a striking young Japanese man with his shirt off, his jeans riding way low, and the provocative question “Still looking sexy if you take it all off?” (“Nuide mo otokomae ka”). The sub-slogan is “Full body bath time grooming.”

The Panasonic Beauty for Men line comprises home appliances focused on “hair, face and body,” i.e., electric razors, clippers, shavers, hair dryers, etc.

The above photograph was taken at a railway station in Tokyo this week, offset by a fully clothed considerably older man who, although he removed his jacket, seemed reluctant to fully rise to the challenge.

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Miyara Dounchi House & Gardens Ishigaki

宮良殿内, 石垣

Miyara Dounchi House & Gardens (also Miyaradunchi) in the center of Ishigaki city in the Yaeyama Islands of Okinawa, is the early 19th century home of a government official, who was in charge of the unification of the Yaeyama Islands.

First built in 1819 the Miyara Dounchi House & Gardens is now designated as a National Important Cultural Property.

Other things to see on Ishigaki Island include Torinji Temple and Gongendo Shrine, just a short way west of Ishigaki Port, Yonehara Beach, the Tojin Baka Memorial, Ishigaki Market, Banna Forest Park, Mt Nosoko, Maezato Beach, Mt Omoto, Uganzaki and Yonehara Palm Grove.

Miyara Dounchi House & Gardens
178 Okawa
Ishigaki
Okinawa Prefecture
907-0022

Admission: 200 yen
Hours: 9am-5pm; closed Tuesday

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Japanese Hairdresser Names II

Here are a few more odd Japanese signs for your amusement. First up is a hair salon in Nagoya, Gentille Galle, which is not referring to the historic town on the south coast of Sri Lanka, but is aiming for that "Ye Olde Worlde" effect.

The next one is, well, just nonsense: NAP hair bocco.

As is this one: Hair Plop Lump pronounced "Prop Rump" which is equally bizarre.

My favorite this month is not a hair salon but an office: Lietocourt. Surely lawyers.

Previous Japlish found on our Japan blog includes ("I will not do the bag staff"; Grom does not employ conservatives), odd English on clothing, crazy Japanese band names, signs (Titty & CO), Live Space Pecker and Bar Dick & Fucky. Oh, and this was our first installment of weird and wonderful Japanese hair salon names.

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Ishigaki Market Yu-gurena Mall

公設市場, 石垣

One place worth returning to again and again in Ishigaki city in the Yaeyama Islands of Okinawa, is the small but lively Ishigaki Market (Yu-gurena or Euglena Mall).

The market consists of only two covered arcades but sells a variety of goods including fruit and vegetables, handicrafts, clothes and souvenirs from the Yaeyama Islands such as Ishigaki salt, awamori, ceramic shiisa, sanshin and bottles of star sand.

There are also some excellent restaurants and bars here located above the shops on the ground floor. Taco rice is a specialty here.

Other attractions to visit on Ishigaki Island include Torinji Temple and Gongendo Shrine, just a short way west of Ishigaki Port, Yonehara Beach, the Tojin Baka Memorial, Yaeyama Museum,  Banna Forest Park, the Miyara Dounchi House & Gardens, Mt Nosoko, Maezato Beach, Mt Omoto, Uganzaki and Yonehara Palm Grove.

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Japan News This Week 12 May 2013

今週の日本

Japan Says It Will Abide by Apologies Over Actions in World War II

New York Times

G7 finance ministers meet amid Japan currency questions

BBC

Is Nobuyoshi Araki's photography art or porn?

Guardian

Suga: Abe not in denial over ‘wars of aggression’ stance

Japan Times

Yet Another Lost Decade? Whither Japan’s North Korea Policy under Abe Shinzō さらなる「失われた十年」？安倍晋三の北朝鮮政策

Japan Focus

Japanese yen plunges to four-year low. G7 unlikely to act.

Christian Science Monitor

Last Week's Japan News

Statistics

Over the Golden Week holiday, 1.77 million people visited Tokyo's Skytree. Of those, 193,000 went up to the observations deck.

Source: Yomiuri Shinbun

Japan's Ministry of Justice recently announced the success rate of applicants seeking asylum in Japan. 18 applicants - most of them Burmese - received asylum in 2012, in which the approval rate was 0.2%. That is the lowest since the refugee program was created in 1982.

Source: Asahi Shinbun

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A Walk Around Kyushu Day 7 Kanda to Nakatsu

A Walk Around Kyushu Day 7, January 5th, 2013
Kanda to Nakatsu

I catch the first train from Kokura, where I spent the night, to Kanda, where I ended yesterday. Today my route will pretty much follow Route 10 down and around the coast towards the border with Oita.

On my way out of Kanda I spy some shrine banners flying and so follow the lines of lanterns leading in to what seems to be the main shrine of the area. The weather is perfect, warm and sunny, and the early morning light is perfect for some shrine photography: golden light, deep blue sky, black shadows, what photographers refer to as the "magic hour".

The shrine is all dressed up for its busiest time of the year, the New Year and on display are all the lucky charms and other paraphernalia on sale. A huge temporary container is filled with last year's charms awaiting ritual burning.

I'm pleased with some of my shots so stride off down the road towards Yukuhashi. On the outskirts of the town I stop in at another shrine basking in the sunlight and then head towards Yukuhashi Station, a new, modern building.

Yukuhashi has three rivers passing through it, and south of the last one a line of hills run down the coast so I choose to take a detour off the main route and hope that I can get some nice views of the sea.

Closer to the mouth of the river is the older part of town.

Modern Yukuhashi, like many towns in Japan, has grown up around the rail station. The older parts of town are often some distance away.

The road down the coast is quiet, with just the occasional delivery truck or farmers' pick-ups passing by, but unfortunately there are no views of the sea as there is farmland and a line of trees between the road and the coast.

At the end of the line of hills a set of steps lines with statues climbs the hill. According to the sign this is temple 61 of a "New" Shikoku 88 pilgrimage. The steps are overgrown with weeds, and when I reach the simple one room building that is the temple, it appears to be not quite abandoned, but inside there are signs of recent activity. The room lacks the musty smell I associate with disintegrating tatami.

The main statues are two wonderful wooden representations of Fudo Myoo, and behind the building several more stone statues of him, one of which must be fairly new as it shows no sign of weathering.

The road heads out into flat farmland towards a low hill completely covered in trees, a pretty good indicator that it is home to a shrine, and sure enough an impressively large shrine complex is hidden in the dark interior of the woods.

Yasuura Shrine was founded over a thousand years ago and considering its size this must have been an important area, though now it is too far from Yukuhashi or Nakatsu to get many visitors.
Yasuura Shrine is the biggest shrine I've been to for the past few days and yet unlike all the others it has no banners or flags up. In front of the shrine is a big signboard with maps showing details of the heavy bombing this area received in 1944 and 1945 because of the nearby air base.

The air base is still there with its runway extending out in to the sea, and to head down the coast I have to cut inland to get around it. It's quiet with no activity, and I wonder what its function is now.

There are many in Japan who would tell you that Japan has no air-force, or no military, only a small "self-defence" force, but let's call a spade a spade, Japan has a huge military with one of the biggest military budgets in the world, larger now than that of the United Kingdom.

Its navy is the third or fourth biggest in the world, bigger than the British Navy, But like this airbase it's all pretty low key with a low profile, so easy to pretend it doesn't exist.

Off in the distance down the coast a huge smokestack is the landmark I aim for. It is Unoshima power station. Closer it's possible to see the dozens and dozens of storage tanks around it, an indication that it is powered by oil.

The sun is getting low and I still have a few hours till I reach my destination, so I ignore the sign that points to a shrine a little off the route and press on. The sun is down and the western sky is golden as I reach my hotel for the night in Nakatsu.

Jake Davies

A Walk Around Kyushu 6

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Donald Keene adopts an adult Japanese son

ドナルド・キーン　養子

Donald Keene is perhaps the world's best known living non-Japan-born scholar of things Japanese. Keene taught Japanese studies at Columbia University, his alma mater, for over fifty years, and where there is now a Japanese studies center named after him.

Last year, Keene moved to Japan to live, saying he wanted to spend the rest of his life (however many years that may be: he is now 90) with the Japanese people in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster. He expressed disappointment at so many foreigners having left Japan in the wake of the disaster, and wanted to show his solidarity by becoming a citizen, which he did by naturalization, relinquishing his American citizenship.

This reason is a little suspect. One wonders about the authenticity of an impossibly broad gesture of "solidarity" like moving to Tokyo, where he is just one in a sea of millions who generally seem to show little meaningful solidarity with the victims of the Tohoku disaster, the capital operating with close to effective disregard for what happens elsewhere in Japan. And why didn't Keene decide to make his permanent home in Japan a long time ago, after the even greater disaster that was the Pacific War?

However, the latest development in Keene's life perhaps makes some retrospective - and rather more level-headed - sense of his decision to move here. Just last week Keene adopted a 62-year-old shamisen player, Seiki Uehara, who has now taken Keene's surname as his own. Keene has never come out as being gay, but it is a pretty open secret that he is, and this adoption episode is no doubt an example of a common solution to the absence of gay civil unions or gay marriage in Japan.

The adopting of adults by adults is by no means unusual in Japan, in fact Japan has a very long history of it. Nearly all adoptions in Japan are of males in the 20s and 30s for the purpose of assuring a household an heir. Gay men who wish to live as a married couple can therefore take advantage of Japan's adoption system, one adopting the other into his registered household (such household registration, or the koseki system, being a foundation of Japanese society), and thus enjoy the taxation, and other, benefits of being members of the same family.

Out of respect for Keene's never having come out as gay, the major news organs describe this new relationship in mentor-student terms, made more plausible of course by the almost three-decade age gap between the two. Such reports only manage to sound coy, however, describing how the younger Keene will be "putting Donald Keene's extensive library in order," "doing the cooking," "organizing Donald Keene's busy schedule," and other such lampoonable phrases.

Gay relationships are not officially recognized in Japan, and the institution of the family in Japan maintains an almost feudal significance, requiring an heir. Therefore, gay relationships in Japan are seen socially as fundamentally frivolous, i.e., not truly respectable - even if there is none of the moral opprobrium in the Japanese that typifies many other peoples.

Donald Keene has lived a very privileged life, mostly as an Ivy League academic, and no doubt has a degree of princely disdain for the idea of a sexual identity - being an identity that those more prone to life's hard edges adopt as a way of finding strength in solidarity. Nevertheless, as someone who knows Japan inside out, and as someone at a stage of life when you'd think neither the praise nor disdain of others mattered anymore, Keene (and his "son") would have done well to be bolder and show some meaningful solidarity with gay men in Japan by leveraging a little of their status and reputation to help bring Japan - along with its gay community - a little closer to where it should be as a 21st century nation.

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Aya Castle Miyazaki Prefecture

綾城

Aya Castle is located in the middle of Miyazaki Prefecture 20km west of Miyazaki city.

The original Aya Castle (Aya-jo) is believed to have dated from the 14th century and was named after Koshiro Yoshito aka "Aya".

During the Sengoku ("Warring States") period of Japanese history the castle was lost to the Shimazu clan based in Kagoshima to the south in 1577. However not much later in 1615, the Tokugawa regime's policy of "One Country, One Castle" meant that Aya Castle was demolished.

The present keep (tenshu) was rebuilt in 1985 using original plans and houses a museum displaying samurai armor, weapons and historical documents.

Visitors to Aya Castle in Miyazaki Prefecture may also like to visit the Miyazaki Science Center (Cosmoland), the Miyazaki Prefectural Museum of Nature and History and Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum.

Aya Castle
1012 Kitamata
Aya-machi
Higashi-Shoken-gun
Miyazaki
Hours:
Admission: 350 yen

Access: Take a bus one hour from JR Minami-Miyazaki Station to Aya-Machiaiba Bus Stop (approx. 1 hour). Aya Castle is then a 20 minute walk.

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Akihabara Upskirt Sign

秋葉原

Akihabara (Akiba), Tokyo's electronics center, is always full of surprises.

First of all, visitors seem predominately male and, it has to be said, somewhat nerdy, herding around in small, nervous groups in the Japanese equivalents of anoraks.

Then there are the maids in their frilly skirts and long stockings touting cutely for business in "Maid Cafes" alongside their older and more worldly massage parlor sisters. (Note: no fliers for foreigners).

Next on the "Wow Scale" are the huge posters of sweaty, panting manga princesses with comically large breasts and eyes, both physical features Japanese women are not normally known for except in the escapist, unreal world of anime and comics.

Turkish kebab shops are another head-turner in Akihabara. There's lots of them.

But when many of Akiba's day-trippers are lads from out of town and foreign geeks and gorkers, there's really not that much time to sit down and chow.

Akihabara is not yet known for its cuisine, though a few ramen shops had queues forming when we last visited.

However the biggest surprise of our latest trip to Akihabara were the upskirt warning signs on the escalators in Akihabara Station. Women in mini-skirts beware for the geeks with cell phone cameras want to shoot up your dress. If you spot one phone 110.

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