Unseen in Japan

I was talking with a friend the other day and found out that at his job it's his responsibility to pay off the yakuza. Yakuza are Japanese organized crime syndicates. He meets regularly with one of the yakuza gang leaders to hand over the payment for the company's "protection."

Actually, it works out well for him in a way. He's developed a "good" relationship with the man, who likes my friend and takes him to lunch and dinner at nice places. He gets to hear yakuza stories along with his sushi and unagi or whatever. I don't know if I should share the one story he shared, because I can imagine it coming full circle back to haunt me -- the yakuza was left in an embarassing situation at the end.

Getting back to my friend's job, I asked if he's able to save money, since he's working six or seven days a week, putting in 12 hours or more a day, and seems to have an important position. But he said, "no." Why, I asked. It turns out that my friend's job involves finding new contracts for his company in the industry that he's in. The problem is that in order to get these contracts, he has to make under the table payments, or kickbacks, to the people that he meets with. Although this is considered normal in his situation, there can't be any money trail of pay offs leading back to the company. The company simply 'doesn't pay kickbacks.' So it's up to my friend to come up with the payments himself, out of pocket. So far, his record payment has been about $10,000 (US equivalent).

All this is to say that there is much about Japanese society, the way business is carried out here, about economics and politics that is generally known but unseen. My friend's life is one example. You might wonder why he keeps the job. Why spend most of his waking hours working at a job that succeeds because he gives his own money away for the sake of the company? I don't know. He's loyal. He's needed. He's a worker there (it's in his identity). He's just a good guy (doing some bad things).

One way that I make peace with living in Japan is to stop trying to figure everything out, though I believe most things would make sense with more information. Most mysteries have answers, but not all people are in position to see them. As for my friend, he doesn't "like" his job and has decided to quit--in two years. He figures he owes the company that much... I'll be rooting for him to find something better when the time comes. He really is a great guy and could do better, I think.

The Rise of the Lesser Panda in Japan

Japan is experiencing a Lesser Panda boom. In case you didn't know, Lesser Pandas are also known as Bear Cats or Red Pandas. You've probably seen them before. Anyway, it's been in the news and all over the television. The reason: Lesser Pandas are standing up. This new and unreported fact came to light recently, and people have been flocking to zoos to see. Really. On the morning news today, they displayed a graph showing declining zoo attendance going numbers going back to the 1960's. Then the showed crowds of people at various zoos all watching Lesser Pandas standing up. That is, zoo workers inside the cages were tempting the Lesser Pandas with snacks, and the Lesser Pandas had obliged by acting like puppy dogs. The Lesser Panda boom, which is reportedly the #4 news story in Japan right now, started this week...and it's amazing how quickly the zoos, television and even the stores selling Lesser Panda merchandise responded.

I imagine that there are a number of boardrooms with people inside patting themselves on the back.

Warning to Change RSS Feeders

I have started the new photoblog at www.japanwindow.com (please check it out). This would be a good time to bookmark that page or get set up to see it via RSS. From now on I will post TEXT here and PHOTOS there. I will leave the current gallery as it is right now. Again, new photos will go to the new photo blog. I hope you will come and take a look.

If you normally read this page via RSS, it's probably best to change your RSS feed to the new location (see below), because what you are seeing now may stop working at some point. Please go to the following link(s) and then bookmark the page(s) or subscribe to RSS feed(s) from there.

Text blog -
www.japanwindow.com/blog

PHOTO blog -
www.japanwindow.com

I hope you like the new blog. I sacrificed a lot of sleep in the past 48 hours to get it running, but it should make my blogging easier and more fun again. Peace!

This Blog is Changing

In the next few days this blog will change (note the date of this post in case you're reading this after the fact). I'll start posting photos to a more pure photo blog at this URL and keeping a separate text oriented blog. Here are the links you'll need to know:

Japan Window PHOTO blog -
http://www.japanwindow.com

Japan Window TEXT blog -
http://www.japanwindow.com/blog

The second link is active now and fully functional, so you can change your bookmark or RSS feed any time and add the other bookmark when the photo blog is ready.

Why the change? I love taking photos and writing, but combining both in one blog has been self-defeating. Loading pictures in a text-oriented blog is really a pain. This makes me reluctant to take pictures sometimes, because I don't have time to deal with the ones I have. It also pushes me toward writing only when I have time to put together a complete post (with photos and text), which often keeps me from writing short posts when I have something to say.

I want to take better photos, and this photo blog will mark a step in that direction. If you come here for the photos, you should be pleased.

I also want to write well. If you come here for the writing, you should also be pleased (just note the new link above). And if you come here for both the photos and text, just be sure to check both blogs from now on.

DesignFesta 2005 - Seeing the Tokyo Art Scene

I had a great time this past weekend at Design Festa, a semi-annual gathering of artists, illustrators and, well, anyone who can get a group of friends to rent a space and "do" something suggestive of "art." That amounts to thousands of exhibitors (5700 or so, according to the official website), and about fifty thousand people show up to shop and gawk. That's Tokyo Big Site in the picture above (Design Festa took place in an area to the left of the big "room with a view"). The conference hall was roughly the size of a football field and packed. I doubt that I saw half of what was there, despite spending some ten hours wandering and weaving through the rows. As I began my journey, I noticed an abundance of postcards. Most of the artists and designers were selling them. Actually, that's about all they were selling. Most reacted with a blank look to any question about buying the original art pieces (which were often hanging there above the postcards). "I need the originals to make new postcards?" was a common reply. Even so, I enjoyed seeing the variety of cards. They ranged from photographs of childlike acrylic paintings to incredible examples of what can be done with Photoshop and an Epson printer. (Everyone I asked printed their cards and larger prints on their Epson printers at home.) Impression-wise, their work ranged from super cute and colorful to grimly violent; and morbidly sexual to simply perverted. Much of what I saw struck me as undeveloped (or not developing). Most of the participants were young (students and twenty somethings). But I found plently of work that stood out. Work that was doing something fresh and really going somewhere. You can see a few examples of various sorts above. These aren't the worst or best cards that I saw, but they're representative. I did a double take at the "cute" pictures (top right) that, on closer inspection, show a girl holding puppet strings attached to her parents and school girls tied up with a rope. I stopped and talked to the artist for a moment, a friendly girl who probably never exposes the depths of her soul to passengers on a train to the degree that those cards on the wall revealed her deeper mysteries to anyone passing by. That's one thing that I really liked about Design Festa--that many participants revealed themselves in ways that ordinarily you would never see. Obviously, some did so with much greater complexity and awareness of the process than others. I asked the artist about the piece just above (left), and she said, "It's the inside of my heart." Hmmm. I thought. Maybe someone can suggest the follow up question that I missed. (Not that I'm mocking her work. It was developing, I'd say.) I didn't meet the artist behind the display on the right. It looks like she created little badges or awards, wore them, and them took pictures of herself doing that. It's like a nostalgic moment that wasn't. "Remember how I used to dream about 'Being special' ...?" I give her bonus points for making me stop, come closer and try to figure this out. One of the stranger things you encounter at Design Festa are the dolls. Now there are all sorts of dolls. In fact, lets distinguish between "figures" and "dolls." Figures are like the little man in the bottom right picture. He's a little caricatured creation that portrays a type of person in society. A small slice of society. For the purpose at hand, let me say, Figures depict something that the artists sees. Whether that's art or design, good or bad all depends. "Dolls," on the other hand, are an extension of the creator. I'm not talking about children's dolls (although maybe Barbie dolls apply). I'm talking about the adult dolls I saw on display. Dolls with dead eyes, dressed in white dresses or kimonos. Sometimes with a touch of blood coming from their mouths. These dolls are not the final product either. Their creators pose them and take pictures that invariably depict a sprawled out corpse-like form, looking vaguely real -- though possibly dead -- with a languid gaze staring out of the darkness of her soul. Once I caught the eye of a young woman standing next to the dolls she had made, and I sensed the same darkness in her eyes with a shock and looked away. Later, I realized, I should have talked to at least one of these women and asked, "Why?" As far as the art itself goes, amidst all the youth culture and "developing" art (and design), I saw quite a bit of really great work. I could dwell on the weird, but, honestly, I appreciated the 'real' people who I met in a way that eclipsed all the rest. Most of the artists I've known don't put on costumes and assume personalities. They're refreshing and able to engage. Here in Tokyo human contact is generally held to a minimum, and when it happens people conduct themselves through masks without revealing themselves deeply. But in that gathering many people had lowered their masks. Or, at least, they acknowledged their masks. Some people wore literal masks. Others had made masks. They also displayed masks in their art, and depicted in many other ways the isolation and ugliness that makes up life in this city. Along with despair, perversion, hope and beauty...this was a whole basket of life in Japan, not just a slice. What can I say? The next Design Festa will be coming in the Fall. If you're in Tokyo, I strongly suggest going.

By the way, I haven't even talked about the food, like the Indian curry I kept going back for. I haven't mentioned the ten hours I must have spent speaking in Japanese (a whole semester's worth of conversation time at a typical language school). Nor have I described all the clothing, jewelry and other handmade stuff on display. Or the bands playing outside. Or the cheap prices (mental note: art and design school students sell their work at cost). But I've used up my quota of words for the week. So if YOU went to Design Festa please leave a comment and a link if you blogged about it. And, as always, all comments are read and appreciated!

Karuizawa Chapels, Noodles & Trees

We went to Karuizawa last month, and I finally have a chance to write about it. Karuizawa is a little town in Nagano that is just close enough for the people of Tokyo to escape there for a day. Most day trippers pile out of the JR train station, though, and walk straight into the sprawling outlet center. We drove past the outlets, up to the "Ginza" part of town (a small, brick shopping street) and stayed nearby at a friend's cabin. We didn't see many tourists, just lots of empty stores. Apparently, the crowd swell in August sustains these merchants for most of the year. We heard that millions of people visit Karuizawa in that month alone (during the long holiday week then).

Karuizawa felt almost like a small town in Colorado. The woods were thick, main street was just a few blocks long and hills thick with trees rose up as the buildings ended. There was a great shortage of leaves on those trees, though, which gave me a renewed appreciation for evergreens -- especially the Ponderosa Pines of my favorite mountains. But the bare branches all woven together with air in between (and no buildings or wires) had a character I could appreciate, and the place will be entirely green by mid-summer (when we return for another quick stay).

Karuizawa is known for many things. Every locality in Japan must be known for some kind of food or craft. If not, they make something up. A quick walk up the Ginza revealed an abundance of shops selling Sagawa jam and assorted pickled finger foods (well, chopstick foods that you eat with rice). Those were the gift stores. When Japanese people travel they often buy a some local food/snack items to bring back to their friends and neighbors. For those in the mood to consume on the spot, Karuizawa is "known for" its mocha soft serve ice cream, soba noodles and oyaki. Now I'm not convinced that mocha ice cream originated in this mountain town, or that their mocha ice cream is necessarily better than anyone else's (though it was good...). The soba is another story, which I'll get to later. Oyaki are steamed "dumplings" (kind of heavy, chewy rolls) stuffed with a veggie filling, and I like 'em.

Besides food, Karuizawa is known as the place where the current emperor of Japan met his wife (at a local tennis club). Members of the royal family apparently still go to Karuizawa for getaways, although we didn't run into any of them. Too bad.

Finally, Karuizawa is well known for its wedding chapels, or wedding INDUSTRY. Everywhere you look there are bridal shops with white dresses in the windows and cute little church-shaped buildings next door. My wife and I went to Hoshino Wedding Chapel. We actually went there because the building has a memorial inside for Kanzo Uchimura, and I wanted to take a look at that. Uchimura was a man of sincere faith and integrity who, many decades ago, gathered Japanese people to read the Bible and follow Jesus together completely outside of organized churches. They called it the "non-church" movement. Anyway, they picked a strange way to memorialize this man and his life. The chapel building is surely an architectural wonder. It's like a giant armadillo sprawled amoung the trees. An ode to concrete (intended as an ode to nature, or unity with nature -- go figure). In the lower level there is a small room with several glass cases featuring information and artifacts of Uchimura's life (like postcards and an underlined Bible).

By the way, I read online that Hoshino Chapel is the busiest wedding chapel in the world. A wedding party emerged from the building just as we arrived. After our brief look inside the chapel, we walked across the hotel grounds and I took more pictures as people emerged from another "famous" wedding chapel over there. We returned to our car in time to see wedding party number three. It was an eventful 40 minutes.

Aside from wedding chapels and the outlet center, we drove up the road and hiked (200 meters) to a beautiful waterfall one day. Another day we drove and hiked (100 meters) to a hilltop with a view. You choose short hikes when you have two year olds. I loved those places, and I'm looking forward to seeing them again when the place is green. We shopped a bit in the tourist shops, which we found surprisingly cheap. We found an extraordinary sculpture gallery (Monozukin). It deserves a blog entry in itself. Most of the welded, metal sculptures incorporate movement and, therefore, sound. It was all dark clattering teeth and motion. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough light to take pictures of my favorite pieces.

I said I'd mention more about soba later. We took my parents to have soba noodles one evening. I like soba, but I admit it's somewhat wrenching to pay $6 for a small pile of cold noodles and some sauce to dip them in. But often Japanese people don't go to restaurants hoping for a quantity of food; they go for a taste experience. Good soba takes time to make, and it has a complicated texture and taste. Well, the restaurant that was recommended to us (where we entered and sat down without checking the menu first) charged $10 for simple zarusoba (cold soba and dipping sauce), and $18 to throw in a few pieces of tempura. We were all feeling pretty hungry, and filling up there was clearly going to be a budget breaker. Plus, my parents had already experienced enough "price shock" for the day, and they aren't impressed by cold noodles no matter how you chop, dip or slice them. In the end, we ordered the minimum we could get away with to avoid slinking out of there without ordering (our group couldn't slink very well anyway). The soba was very good, by the way--in my opinion. After making an exit we walked down the street and had our second course at KFC.

Fish roasting at a road side stand just below the waterfall hike.