A frightening moment of Japanese Xenophobia

So I was at Matsue Station, passing time while I waited for a train to Yonago so I could get my little Yakuza Tough Sticker, and this dodgy guy in a rough-looking suit sidled up to me. He had a bruise and a cut on one side of his face, and bad teeth - the latter being a very poor signifier of social class in this country, but I assume the former means something in a land of perfect grooming. He snuck up on me from nowhere too, the kind of approach which always starts a conversation with me on a bad footing.

"I am a policeman," he said to me in moderately well-pronounced English.

"I don't believe you!" I replied jauntily, assuming this was going to be another tedious foreigner-meeting conversation.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked me then, and whisked an identity card from under his coat. To my shock, he really was a policeman! The conversation then proceeded as follows:

Policeman 1 (P1): Could I see your passport please?
Me [chuckling, because that very day my passport was in the mail from Tokyo after some dispute over my eligibility]: I don't have one, but I can show you my Alien Registration card
P1: Yes, please, that would be good.
Policeman 2 (P2) [appearing out of nowhere, also in a rough suit]: Hello! Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
P2: Oh! Australia! How cool! And you speak Japanese!
Me: Not really. By the way, why are you checking my Alien Card?
P1: Because it is illegal to be in Japan [or possibly in public - I didn't catch this bit] without carrying an Alien Card or a passport, and we are checking foreigners to see if they are carrying theirs.
Me: Oh! I didn't know it was illegal!
P2: Hey, I recognise you from your haircut. I often see you around the uni with a foreign woman.
Me: Yes, that's my wife [meaning of course the Delightful Miss E, to whom I assume he is referring].
P2: She has red hair, right? What does she do?
Me: She is an English teacher at the University.
P2: Really? Cool!
P1 [with a certain glint in his eye]: I wish she would teach me English!
Me: well, you would have to return to University, right?
P1 [with the same glint]: Well, I want to return to University!
P2: Well, thank you for showing us your card and enjoy your stay in Japan. Say hello to your wife for us! Thank you very much!
P1: Thank you very much, goodbye!
Me: Um, thank you...

Another moment of Japanese xenophobia passes me by in scary technicolour...

Japan's Food "Crisis"

As I noted before, Japan has been suffering a food crisis for some time now, perhaps decades, due to its declining rate of food self-sufficiency - only 40% of Japan's calories are grown locally. This has mostly escaped the notice of the foreign press until the recent round of food crises, which have caused all manner of journalists to notice that those haughty Nipponese may face a rise in food prices.

Of course, since until now those same foreign journalists have been cheerfully ranting on about how food in Japan is so expensive that they can't even buy a boiled egg and a beer, it hardly seems reasonable for them to be bragging now about Japan's new crisis of food affordability. Particularly when articles from newspapers as widely differing as The Age (Melbourne) and The Times (London) both cover the same element of the crisis - a sudden lack of butter, which in Japan (as elsewhere) remains a luxury. I note that both these articles contain the same message - that Japan is a harbinger of the problems facing other nations. It's almost as if the two articles were run from the same script, isn't it? Those whacky journalists with their special sense of uniqueness!

So, why the sudden attention to the issue? Japan has been suffering deflation for 10 years, so food prices have not risen while those in the rest of the world have, and their staples remain cheap and easily available. The bleating of ignorant food reviewers aside, Japanese food is cheap and Japanese people eat considerably less calories than the rest of the developed world, making them much safer from the kind of food price shocks which will affect other countries. Of course, they have to import a lot of their food, particularly wheat, but a small fact these newspapers haven't bothered to note is that food exporting nations aren't necessarily protected from international price shocks by dint of their overproduction. The two most efficient exporters - Australia and New Zealand - are efficient by dint of their low levels of protectionism and efficient farm practices, but this exposure to world markets means that locals in those countries pay international prices for food they export. The price of milk in New Zealand has been skyrocketing, and as the price of rice and wheat climbs it is likely that Australia will experience the same problem with domestic stocks of those staples. Australian producers of biscuits often change the local ingredients to match their much larger markets, the latest example being the removal of iodized salt from local biscuits because Japanese import conditions require it. A small country like Australia cannot afford two sets of machinery to produce export and locally-produced biscuits, so everyone eats the Japanese recipe.

As I noted in a previous post here, Japanese rice production is inefficient and its farm sector languishing, and there is actually a lot of room for efficiency gains and improvements in rice production here which could easily increase Japanese food self-sufficiency, at least to UK levels. Given the Japanese Government's penchant for doing nothing, and its cosy relationship with the farm co-ops, it is likely that it will take more drastic measures than merely a desire to reform to encourage these changes. The coming round of food shocks could serve as exactly the impetus that Japan needs to reform its agriculture sector, perhaps encouraging the return of young people from the cities to the country to take up farming. If such were to happen, the coming round of food shocks could serve to revitalise rural areas like Tottori and Shimane which are currently dying. Rather than restricting food availability and choice as our foreign journalists so gleefully predict, it may lead to a flowering of local agricultural industries which will widen and extend food choices in this country. The key to all this, of course, would be the dismantling of Japan's current system of protectionism and rural-government cronyism, which is a bigger task than perhaps the current government can handle. But perhaps in the future it can be done...

The really interesting question, from my perspective, is the attitude of the journalists reporting on this. Why do they take such a gleeful tone, and gloat so merrily over the apparent collapse of Japanese food choices? Were the journalists predictions to come true, Japanese people would lose a wide range of western foods, and become more culinarily conservative and inward looking. Why does this please journalists who, when they are not reporting on this issue, are constantly bemoaning Japan's conservativeness and inward-looking culture? These articles are rich with a kind of jealous insecurity, in which the Japanese are seen as a super-wealthy, haughty and aristocratic race of industrialists. We poor folk in the rest of the world mine and farm their raw materials, and buy the manufactured goods they make with those raw materials. Any change in world conditions which would disadvantage an economy with a largely industrial, non-agricultural base will disadvantage Japan and advantage countries like Australia and the US; and our insecure, small-minded journalists are pleased to think of the possibility of those inscrutable, rich Asians being brought hoist on their own petard. Maybe its just paranoia from long exposure to the stupidity and mendacity of journalists, but I don't think the central play of these stories is the nature of Japanese agriculture.

Getting a Tattoo in Japan

This little note is not for those who might be interested either in my new tattoo (which I will post in time) or in what tattooing itself is like (which has been done to death on the internet) but for those who might be interested in finding a tattoo artist in Japan, and on negotiating whatever strangenesses may abound in the Japanese tattoo world. It's not, of course, the definitive guide - just a description of my experience.

Obviously, when one is in Japan one may prefer to get a tattoo in a Japanese style, particularly the traditional "irezumi" style. To do this one needs to find a good quality Japanese tattooist. Fortunately (particularly for those who are familiar with the tattooing world) these tattooists have much in common with Australian tattooists, particularly:

• they advertise
• they have folders full of pictures of their previous work in their shops
• they have web pages
• they are government certified

The latter is particularly good to know, and my experience at the tattoo shop where I went was that cleanliness and infection control procedures were broadly the same as any certified professional in Australia. This means that in choosing your tattooist you can be confident that the same measures (cleanliness, organisation, infection control) by which you might judge an Australian artist apply here too.

I found my tattooist first through walking past their Matsue branch, but confirmed their quality through a particularly useful shop: Peacemaker in Osaka. Peacemaker is a shop for officionados of death/thrash metal, runs its own clothing line, and has example artwork from many of the major tattooists in Western Japan, on display in folders in the shop. I examined several of these, and discovered that the local Tottori tattooist, knockover decorate, is quite famous and very good. So we (the Delightful Miss E and myself) went to their main shop in Yonago, to see what we could see.

It was here that we discovered just how easy the process is here. The apprentice tattoist, Miss Hotaru, was working at the counter, and speaks very good English (as you can see from the website, English is a common part of the tattoo world). Both the Delightful Miss E and I had no particular design, just an idea. We explained this to Miss Hotaru and she signed us up. We gave a 10000 yen ($100) deposit, and agreed to come back 2 weeks later to inspect the design and get the tattoo. Miss Hotaru explained what we wanted to our chosen tattooist (Mr. Takami) and when we returned the designs were ready. Neither of us were satisfied, so we conveyed our concerns to Mr. Takami and he changed the design admirably quickly, and well. The Delightful Miss E's design included art nouveau elements (of course) and he, Mr. Takami, had completely missed these on the first draft; however, when given an example of what needed to be done, he immediately produced on the spot a picture-perfect example of art nouveau for the tattoo. I suspect his ability to reproduce Western art styles is generally good, if that is what one needs.

Mr. Takami and Mr. Sohei (the resident tattooists) are both masters of the Japanese style, and given a general brief can produce a design to suit. My brief (cherry blossoms on a kind of flowing background) was pretty broad, but the design most admirable; another chap came in while I was there for a full back tattoo, all designed and laid out (and some to be done freehand!) by Mr. Sohei. A brief review of their website will show the level of their skill in the style, and I certainly have no complaints about the quintessential Japaneseness of my tattoo.

I should mention however that I think there is a limit to the flexibility of these artists. Not because they are limited as artists, but because the Japanese customer-service style often includes an element of "staff know best": the staff think they know what suits you, and aim to give it to you regardless. I have experienced this with real estate agents, among others, and I think it exists to a certain extent at this tattoo shop. I expect it is prevalent in all tattoo shops in Japan, though I have no proof. This means that the more information you can give the tattooist, the less he will be able to pull off this kind of service style. But in some instances with my tattoo, Mr. Takami's opinion was, I think, for the best - he is the expert after all. Of course the only way to manage this judgement between wise advice and personal opinion is to be very confident about what one wants, and not allow anything one doesn't want to be stuck on one's body.

I should also mention that books of tattoos in the shop included the works of female tattoo artists, so they can be found in Japan if that is one's wish. And also, I should mention that the tattoos were quite cheap comparatively - the Delightful Miss E's took about 3 times as long as my first tattoo did, and cost about 3 times as much - even though I got my first tattoo 10 years ago.

The actual tattooing was done quickly and professionally, and Mr. Takami showed appropriate concern for the Delightful Miss E, who was receiving her first tattoo and was therefore quite nervous. Miss E found his manner quite gentle, and thought he gave her just the right amount of breaks.

Finally, the manner of the shop staff and tattooists was, as always in Japan, kind, cheerful, warm-hearted and welcoming. The shop uses the usual formal language of Japanese customer service, with maybe just a tiny leavening of informality. The staff (even those who spoke no English) are friendly and welcoming and showed no reticence about engaging foreigners, and the shop itself was comfortable and well lit, with nice decorations and couches. The staff were inobtrusive during the tattooing process, genuinely interested in the design and the result, and polite and friendly throughout. Whatever gangster/yakuza associations tattooing may have in Japan (and I shan't deign to have an opinion on this), the tattoo shop environment itself retains the quintessential Japanese service traits of gentleness, politeness and inobtrusive attentiveness.

Though my tattoo hurt like buggery (and considerably more than the last one I got!) I heartily recommend the process for anyone who wants a classically Japanese, permanent reminder of their time here.

Tokyo's "apartheid of price"

Is it because journalists are generally from the upper middle class, or that they are the stupidest people who ever managed to struggle through a university course, that they are able to make ridiculous comparisons between something as trivial as the differing cost of different restaurants, and something as serious as apartheid? I don't know, nor would I ever dare crawl inside the hulking shell of stupid that is the average journalist's mind long enough to try to understand how, but this is what one of these geniuses of print managed to produce in the Sydney Morning Herald today. Matthew Thompson wrote a review of Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai's Tokyo restaurant in today's Sydney Morning Herald, but in fact most of the review consisted of a complaint about the high cost of food in Tokyo.

Since, in fact, food isn't that much more expensive in Tokyo than in Sydney, this article presents an excellent opportunity to display precisely how terrible and deliberately deceptive much reporting on Japan can be.

First we consider the basic task which Matthew Thompson set himself, which was

We had thought we could cope on a daily food and transport budget of $100 or just under ¥10,000

which anybody who knows Sydney can tell you, is a pretty much impossible task to achieve in Sydney. So why try to do it in Tokyo? So you can make your article conform to a pre-defined script, perhaps? Matthew Thompson's first observation is that "our only affordable meal seems to be tiny watery noodle meals with small servings of beer or sake", which he claims cost a combined $30 for him and his partner. Putting aside his desire to have beer with his lunch, one has to ponder if when he chose these noodle dishes he had not, perhaps, looked at the rice, tenpura and noodle sets which every such restaurant also serves, and which cost less than $30 for 2. Or perhaps he had not bothered to find a 3-course Italian lunch for $10? Every time I go to Tokyo I manage to find a 3 course Italian lunch including drink for $10; I can also find curry/soup/espresso lunch sets in snazzy malls in Shinbashi for $12. Perhaps Mr. Thompson wasn't looking?

Mr. Thompson then commences with the deception. In order to "make it through the day", they buy boiled eggs at the convenience store for 70 yen, which is less than a dollar, and

"wash them down with ¥190 convenience-store cans of beer-like alcoholic drinks; brewers keep them cheap by using pea matter instead of malt or wheat to avoid a beer levy."

Perhaps Mr. Thompson is unaware that in Japan there are these things called "supermarkets" which are cheaper than convenience stores. But in any case, even in his ignorance he can get a real beer - real beer in convenience stores starts at 157 yen, 30 cents less than the beer-like drinks he is forced to consume. The quality beers start at 200 yen. And how much is a 200 yen beer in Australian dollars? $2.10, considerably less than a single beer will cost you in Oz, where 6 packs of beer are now $20. Even buying in bulk, Australian beer is more expensive than Japanese. But by avoiding either an intra-store or international comparison, Mr. Thompson is able to pretend that he is doing something terribly expensive. How tricky!

Then Mr. Thompson tells us that at night he and his wife would raid the supermarkets for "discounted sushi". He doesn't mention the price, and why would he? A pack for 2 would set him and his wife back a combined total of $10. It's not often in Australia that two people get to eat a sushi meal for $10. In fact, toting up the total of all the food he has eaten during the day, and generously including the $30 for their watery noodle lunches, we discover that Mr. Thompson and his wife have spent a total of $50, half their allowance, on 2 meals for 2 people. He claims to be always hungry because of the "tiny" serves of noodles - perhaps he should have bought a "setto" (set meal) at the same restaurant where he bought his tiny bowl of noodles - an extra $1 will probably get him rice and some tenpura prawns. Never mind, not everyone can read a picture menu, especially if they only have a journalism degree to bolster their feeble intellect.

Having read such deceitful dross, are we really to believe Mr. Thompson when he talks about Tokyo's "prestige-obssessed consumer culture"? I think not. But moving on, we find that this man who is so shocked by the pursuit of prestige decides to finish his time in Japan with a trip to the restaurant of the famous Hiroyuki Sakai, the French Japanese chef on Iron Chef. This, I presume, is what we are reading for. Mr. Thompson reveals that the meal for both he and his partner came to a grand total of $300 - and Mr. Thompson did not choose the cheapest course, either. That puts it a staggering $90 cheaper than the only comparable restaurant in Sydney, Tetsuya's, which is $195 per person. So, in Tokyo Mr. Thompson paid $300 to eat in a world-famous restaurant; in Sydney $390 to eat in a locally famous restaurant. And the food, he tells us, was exquisite.

Is this the apartheid of price to which Mr. Thompson refers in his last paragraph? No, the apartheid of price is his comparison of the normal cost of food and the cost of his expensive restaurant experience. He and his partner struggled to eat normal food for less than $100 a day, but they could eat at one of Tokyo's world renowned and best restaurants for $300. Clearly, the discrimination in Tokyo is heartbreaking in its proportions, so heartbreaking that one can eat like a king for $400 a day, or eat like a peasant for $100 a day. I'm sure it was just such a 4-fold difference in price which led the French to the Bastille in 1792...

This is the quality of routine Western reporting on Japan, and the reason it is best to believe nothing one reads from Western newspapers about Japan.

Daily Wanker Editorial Board: Administrative Notes

Here at the Daily Wanker Editorial Board we pride ourselves on providing a timely response to customer complaints. It should come as no surprise to our loyal reader, then, that we have noticed a definite decline in output from our Japan correspondent since February. In keeping with our business motto, "Getting around to it", we feel it is high time our diligent reader received an explanation for this woeful lack of reporting.

It would appear that our correspondent in Japan has been somewhat consumed over the past 3 months with an intense and ongoing conflict with the management of his day job, and has had neither the time nor the inclination to honour the contract he signed with the esteemed managers of this humble journal. Since his holiday in Australia, however, said correspondent has managed to resolve this conflict in the time honoured fashion of men of his sterling qualities - he has run away. He has, in fact, secured himself a job with a think tank in London, and will be setting off forthwith for the United Kingdom.

This news may come as something of a shock to the reader, being imparted as it is a mere 2 weeks before your correspondent's estimated date of departure; but it has been in train for some time now, and represents the culmination of several months' planning. Our correspondent offers his apologies to those who need as much spam as they can get to fill their day job, and suggests you seek penis enlargement technology as an alternative way of filling your inbox while on holidays.

Of course, once our correspondent leaves for the UK no-one will have any interest in anything he has to say, the UK being the place it is; and he has in fact contracted to continue his despatches mostly in Japanese, for his Japanese friends. In the meantime, we can expect a few more commentaries from our only Japanese correspondent, on topics as diverse as:

• A multinational comparison of public service assistance
  
• Bullying and quality in Japanese universities
• Drinking and flower watching with the Railway staff
  
• some crazy aspects of Japanese work culture

Weighty topics, I'm sure we can agree. Our correspondent has also agreed to give one final post after his arrival in the UK, detailing some of the differences between arriving and living in the West, and living in Japan.

We here at the Editorial Board of the Daily Wanker would like to thank you all for your patience in enduring this pap for the last 2 years, and assure you that it will all soon be over - for you at least, though not for our long-suffering British Public, who do not yet know what is about to hit them...