Will Miss #392 - dads do the time if they do the crime

Many moons ago, I had an American co-worker with a Japanese boyfriend who was looking at a visa that was soon to expire and no full-time job to gain sponsorship from. The boyfriend wasn't ready to get married so a spouse visa looked rather out of bounds. Fortunately for her, she got pregnant. Voila, problem solved! Most Japanese men will marry a woman if she gets pregnant and wants to keep

Read More

Won't Miss #392 - need for kid gloves

Have you ever approached a strange cat to pet it and as you approach, it is eyeing you warily with muscles tensed such that you fear it will perceive you as a threat and bolt if you make just one tiny wrong move? Often, I feel that way when it comes to talking to Japanese people (the "cats"). Twice I've said things on FaceBook which were meant to be informational, but they ended up being

Read More

Will Miss #391 - amashoku

Back in my early days in Japan, there were few foods that I liked and trusted not to present me with a filling of sweetened beans. At that time, I was pretty squeamish about any of "that Japanese stuff". One of the easily enjoyable and reliable treats is/was amashoku, a half-cookie/half cake sort of baked good which is lightly sweet and has enough dryness to give it a pleasant cookie texture

Read More

Won't Miss #391 - the smell of fish

Students often ask me about my first impression of Japan. I always give them an honest answer, and they really don't like it. The first thing I thought when I stepped off the plane in Narita was "I smell fish". When I sit at home teaching my students with the windows open, invariably, one of my neighbors will stink up the great outdoors with fish. Unfortunately, some of them seem to be

Read More

Will Miss #390 - food fads

Bagna Cauda on display, the big fad of 2011.

All countries have fads, and I'm sure many have food fads, though Japan's seem to occur with greater intensity and frequency than I recall experiencing back home. Many of them get started by a T.V. program which highlights a particular dish, restaurant or food. Sometimes it is impossible to trace, but once the ball gets rolling, everyone jumps on

Read More

Won't Miss #390 - dirty looks for English

I always get gawked at in public because of my appearance. Though I don't like seeing people do triple takes when they see me and just have to look back again and again, it's usually just basic rudeness. When my husband (who is also American) and I are out walking around, we, rather reasonably, speak English to each other. It's important to say here that we are not loud talkers. We speak at a

Read More

Will Miss #389 - civilized behavior in theaters

Since I haven't been to an American movie theater in over two decades, I had forgotten how badly behaved that some people can be. Often the absence of a bad experience does not register as a necessarily good one. I hadn't thought about how people do extremely rude things in movie theaters in the U.S. until I saw some FaceBook updates about people who talked loudly, kicked the back of seats,

Read More

Won't Miss #389 - talking to A-bomb survivors

Some posts are especially tricky to write and this one has to top them all both in terms of expressing the complexity of the feelings and the risk of being misinterpreted (willfully, in many cases, as self-righteousness needs to find an outlet even if it is an inappropriate one). I should note that the atomic bombs were dropped more than 20 years before I was born and no member of my family

Read More

Will Miss #388 - husband thanking

This is actually a thank you sign at a rikshaw ride, but it's the only picture I have with the words "thank you" on it in English.

There's a custom/habit in Japan which sometimes receives a little flak from more feminist-oriented types, and no small resistance from at least a handful of the foreign wives of Japanese men. This custom is one in which wives thank their husbands for going to the

Read More

Won't Miss #388 - coerced confessions

The obscured word is "Shut".

Sometimes I wonder if my most ardent stalkers realize the risk they take with their hostile e-mail messages and the trollish responses that they make as they follow me to every site I comment on around the web. If anything untoward were ever to befall me, from a robbery to an attack to an unfortunate fatal accident, the first finger would be pointed straight at

Read More

Will Miss #387 - tuning out incidental conversations

If you've ever sat in a coffee shop next to someone really noisy and had trouble tuning out the details of their personal life, you can understand where I'm coming from with this. I'll be the first to admit that my Japanese skill pretty much blows and that I have to pay attention to what is being said to understand. It's not the sort of thing which effortlessly enters my consciousness, but

Read More

Won't Miss #387 - whining about American portions

One of my students has a brother who lives in San Diego. He has gained 15 kg. (33 lbs.) in two years due to eating American-size meals. I suggested that he not eat everything he is served and prepare his own food more frequenlty, but she wasn't having any of that sort of crazy logic. No, it was the American food that was the problem, not his laziness about cooking or inability not to gobble

Read More

Will Miss #386 - learning (deeply) about Japanese business

OK, no matter how much I understand about Japanese business, I don't know why this video shop is named "Slum."

If you have ever gone into a video rental shop in Japan, you may note that there are often more foreign titles than domestic ones. What fairly obvious conclusion would you reach? If you're like most people (including myself), you would conclude that foreign titles are more popular

Read More

Won't Miss #386 - lack of strong flavors

One of my coworkers was a chef in Australia and he remarked that he should appreciate the fact that Japanese food is quite subtle in taste, but the truth is that he actually finds Japanese food rather bland. I'll admit that my foreign taste buds also favor intense flavors. It's not that I can't appreciate some of the subtler flavors, but my favorite things are definitely stronger (yuzu

Read More

Will Miss #385 - (relative) economic parity

I've said before that Japan conducts a sort of "soft socialism", but it's not necessarily rooted in the redistribution of wealth. There is, however, relative economic parity in Japan with a large middle class, few rich people, and few poor people. This is accomplished by not offering presidents and CEOs obscenely lavish salaries and keeping the bottom income bracket a little further from the

Read More

Won't Miss #385 - bait and switch fruit stands

Fruit in Japan is expensive, though not quite as obscenely so as most foreign folks believe. Still, many Japanese people do not routinely eat fruit except for bananas because it's on the dear side and that makes it hard to include as part of their regular diet. Fruit is often a treasured gift, unless it is persimmons that are harvested by the truckload and freely dispensed when in season.

Read More

Will Miss #384 - watching the engineers

I don't know what it's like to run a train in America, especially in a metropolis like New York in which there is a large and complex system servicing a wide area. I can say that standing behind the engineer and watching how he operates when you get on a Japan Railway train is a pretty fascinating experience. He is sitting in there alone, but follows a very rigid routine of gesturing and

Read More

Won't Miss #384 - Japanese (whatever) is "better"

Even the frozen French fries are better in Japan because, you know, they mix them with mini-weenies. 

Upon returning from a trip to Hawaii, one of my students asked me if I thought Japanese watermelon was sweeter than American watermelon. My truthful reply was that I've had sweet melon in both countries and relatively tasteless stuff in both of them. I've probably had more so-so watermelon in

Read More

Will Miss #383 - Yebisu beer (by proxy)

The Yebisu beer museum in Ebisu.

I'm a creature that fascinates most Japanese folks because I don't drink and have never drunk alcohol of any kind. When I say this, they respond with surprise and then get a strange look on their faces. That look, I'm pretty sure, relates to whatever reason they've conjured up for my avoidance of what can be seen as a magic elixir of relaxation and a lubricant

Read More

Won't Miss #383 - okonomiyaki

In theory, I should love okonomiyaki. Well, I should love it as much as you can love a food that looks like someone hurled the contents of their dinner onto a grill. For a society so obsessed with the appearance of food, it's surprising that this "Japanese savory pancake" is so popular. Okonomiyaki is a food that is prepared "as you like it", so you can customize the composition.

Read More

Will Miss #382 - not taking impersonal things personally

He's probably not even a KISS fan.

One of the drawbacks about people who live in cultures with a great emphasis on individuality is that the people who comprise that culture often don't know who they are or what they define themselves by. This results in people defining themselves by trivial matters such as the soda brands they drink, the sports teams they follow, political party, choice of

Read More

Won't Miss #382 - sugar in "everything"

When you think of Japanese food, the last thing you probably think of is sugar. It is absolutely true that the sweets have less total sugar than a lot of Western sweets. However, sugar (or artificial sweetene) is added to plenty of savory foods and traditional dishes. Sukiyaki, nimono, and other dishes have sugar and/or sweet sake as components. A great deal of savory sembei also includes

Read More