The sub-title of my newest book begins “Anecdotes on the People and Culture of Contemporary Japan …”
Here are a few anecdotes which will
give you phenomenal insights into the remarkably high ethical standards and
general character of the Japanese people.
•
• •
A friend of mine, originally from New Zealand but
who lives in Japan, left her latest model Macbook Pro in a train station ladies
room. For two hours! She had left it on the counter while she washed her hands
and forgetfully walked out without it. By the way, this was one of the busiest hubs
in Japan, the Umeda JR Station in Osaka. That restroom has hundreds of people
going through it every hour. She got quite a ways along on her trip back here
to Sasayama, remembered, jumped off, and immediately got on a train back to Osaka.
She found her laptop right where she left it. Yes … two hours later!
•
• •
Every year in October, we have here in Sasayama the Festival of the Portable Shrines. It’s one of my favorites!
A gentleman arrived here from Kobe,
which is about an hour away. He came to purchase black beans, an item my home
town is famous for, but when the moment came to pay, he discovered his wallet
was missing.
There are no pickpockets around here,
so obviously he had dropped his wallet somewhere in town.
He went to the nearest Koban. There are several here in Sasayama, as there are all over Japan. A Koban is a mini-police station. In Japan, it’s considered an integral part of a functioning community. The Koban is to make sure there are friendly cops in the neighborhood to address problems which come up in the local area, situations just like this.
The policeman on duty took a report,
then got on the phone. He called all the other Kobans in the immediate area,
anywhere close to where the gentleman had parked his car, before walking into
the main part of town for the festivities.
He passed along the man’s name and a
description of the wallet.
Now get this …
While the officer was on the phone with
another Koban, someone walked in with the wallet and handed it to the policeman
on duty there.
The gentleman from Kobe then walked the
short distance to the other Koban, and retrieved his wallet. The contents —
credit cards, ID, cash — were intact. Not a single item had been taken.
•
• •
One Sunday many months ago, we went to, Rurikei, our favorite local onsen. This is one of the great joys of living here in Japan and we try to go often.
Anyway, I left my hair brush in the
mens locker room. This was not a family heirloom. This was an 89 cent piece of
plastic, dirty and full of my hair from use over many months. The only thing it
had going for it was that it was a pleasant shade of lavender.
Five weeks later, we returned to the
hot springs. On some impulse — my synapses tend to fire randomly at
times — I
asked at the counter if they had a purple hair brush in their lost-and-found
box. Stupid me. I was thinking they had a cardboard box behind the desk. The
clerk asked when I thought I had lost it. That was easy. Maybe four or five
weeks ago? He stepped into the facility’s main office, consulted with someone,
then returned with my 89-cent hair brush, safely contained in a sealed plastic
bag with a label. On the label was the date I left it in the locker room.
•
• •
Masumi reminded me of this story, one I had forgotten. One day we went to Japan Post to mail a package to the U.S. — I think it was one of my novels, sent off for a review. Shortly after we returned, the phone rang. It was the clerk who had waited on me at the post office. She first apologized. She had made a mistake and overcharged me. She was so sorry this happened! It was an honest mistake and would be happy to refund the money. How much was it? 10 yen. Unbelievable! Do you know how much 10 yen is at current exchange rates? 9.44 cents!
What did I do? I did what any
red-blooded American would do in the face of such incompetence! I went to the
post office with my AR-15 and shot the place up. I didn’t kill anyone, though
obviously I could hardly be blamed if I had. But when I got done, the place
looked like one of the Twin Towers on September 12!
Okay. Obviously, I made that up. The
truth was, I was speechless. 10 yen? After I stopped laughing — pleasant,
joyful laughing — I had Masumi tell the clerk all was forgiven and she could
keep the 10 yen. I think you can probably buy a lollipop somewhere for 10 yen.
•
• •
I could go on and on. For
example, in the news several months ago, there was the story of a person who
had found a satchel on a park bench with over 5 million yen (that’s $50,000
cash) and no identification of any kind in or on the bag. It was promptly
turned into the police.
I’m not going to moralize. Draw your
own conclusions.
But by seeing such extreme honesty
here, I see what has happened to my own country. I’m not pointing fingers. I
see it in my own thinking. It’s been quite an adjustment for me. After all, I
grew up in a tug-of-war between what I was taught at home, school and church,
and real world a prioris: ‘Finders
keepers losers weepers.’ ‘It’s every man for himself.’ ‘If I don’t take it
someone else will.’
As a kid, often it wasn’t a question of
right or wrong, but a question of whether we’d get caught.
I will say that dishonesty, regardless
of how minor or seemingly insignificant, is a slippery slope. The Japanese have
chosen to avoid taking even the first step.
I openly admit, it’s resulted in a huge
paradigm shift for me. It’s required an enormous adjustment. But an extremely
rewarding one. Just imagine … being able to trust
other people. What a concept!
Understand: This extreme level of honesty
and respect for the property of others I’m describing here is not an anomaly.
It’s the norm. And it’s nothing new.
My American friend, Scott Burley,
recently emailed me about his brief but rewarding experiences visiting Japan.
He included this story:
My girlfriend who I met sophomore year … went on a student exchange program to Tokyo for her junior year and went to school over there. She was 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 Czech and her parents were both Japanese — her mother must have married a Czech before her step father. So around Christmas I flew to Tokyo when she had Christmas break and we spent three weeks traveling by train … my girlfriend left her purse at a bus stop. I went back to look for it and it was gone. After we got back to Tokyo, one day her purse arrived in the mail. Only in Japan!
That was back in 1973. Some things
don’t change here.
We have camped all over Japan. And the campgrounds are always clean, well-organized, properly-equipped, friendly, quiet. If I have any complaint, it’s that many of them have few trees, thus the campsites have no privacy.
The notable exception to that is FBI — which stands for First-class Backpackers Inn — our favorite campground within easy driving distance of Tambasasayama.
FBI has a view of Mount Daisen, the highest volcanic peak in the area.
It’s in close proximity to Hiruzen, a town famous for its exceptional dairy products. The soft serve is to die for! So is their incredibly popular yogurt.
If you’re really in luck, you can pet Lovely, probably the most famous cow in the Eastern hemisphere, recognized and acclaimed for the white patch on her forehead in the shape of a heart.
For a complete change of pace, it’s also less than an hour from FBI to the Sea of Japan beaches. On our most recent trip, we walked along the shore and visited a still-operational lighthouse.
There is a whole range of camping options at FBI. We of course prefer to do the tent thing. But cabins and teepees are also available.
The cabins are the height of luxury for this type of facility, making me wonder why people just don’t stay in a hotel. Not quite sure how this is “camping”. In fact, there’s a term for it here in Japan. It’s called glamping — glamor camping.
I guess we do slumping . . . which would be slum camping.
FBI is very family-friendly with plenty to keep everyone occupied. There’s a trampoline, a swimming pool, restaurant, bar, hiking trails, kid’s treehouse, frogs, snakes, foxes, insects, everything needed to guarantee a splendid time for all, in the tamed wilds hunkered in the foothills of Mount Daisen.
For the maraschino cherry on top of this delicious camping experience, every evening they have a giant bonfire, very handy if you happened to bring along a 50 kg marshmallow.
Friends not familiar with Japan always express surprise when I tell them that camping is one of our favorite ways to tour the country. I have to remind them that Japan is not just cement and tall buildings with giant flat-panel displays advertising cafés, pachinko, and novelty shops. 70% of Japan is covered with forests. And we have an array of topological features which offer both stunning natural beauty and incredible variety: rivers, oceans, seas, mountains, valleys, hills, volcanoes, ponds, lakes, sand dunes, tropical rain forests (Okinawa), hundreds of kilometers of beaches, by golly even one semi-parched desert, finally, last but certainly not least, hundreds of islands. After all, Japan is an island!
Let me leave you with one last image, a side of Japan you don’t typically see . . .
Gender roles are sharply defined in Japan. The simple truth is, men rule the roost here. Yes, folks, it’s a highly patriarchal arrangement. For example, the idea that marriage is a partnership, one that requires empathy, fairness, consideration, diplomacy, mutual respect and generosity, is more the exception than the rule. The man is the head of the household. His tyranny is regarded as absolute and accepted as normal. Women do his bidding, cook the meals, clean the house, take care of the kids. The man is the primary breadwinner and that fact is never forgotten.
It is no exaggeration to say that Japan is a “traditional” society in that respect, similar to what is seen across vast swaths of the planet’s inhabited surface. I include Africa, South America, and most of Asia.
Of course, there is push back for better treatment of women, equality in both the home and the workplace, for equal rights not just as a legal window dressing, but in all actual areas of the day-to-day functioning of society: economics, politics, social relations.
Progress toward equal pay is discernible but painfully slow. Women are grossly under-represented in leadership roles, especially in the corporate world. The majority of political figures are men. Women operate within this framework, don’t like it, merely tolerate it. Younger women are certainly promoting other options, so this will change over time. Frankly from what I’m seeing, this could take a very long time.
Having said all of that, while I as a matter of principle prefer a more “liberated” society, I’m not here to judge. I’m here to accurately report what’s happening on the ground.
What I see in Japan, then, in terms of the “battle of the sexes” is what we in the West would regard as garden variety male vs. female “conservatism”.
Extreme conservatism!
Now . . . try to imagine my surprise, amazement, total belly-laughing delight, when I discovered looking over my wife’s shoulder one evening after dinner, probably the most unconservative thing I could have imagined here or anywhere, something which is not just a common occurrence, but one that doesn’t prompt any reaction from Japanese people whatsoever. To them this is as normal as raw fish on rice.
I’m referring to . . .
TVs on TV!
(Translation)
Transvestites on television!
Mind you . . .
There are hundreds of brutal homicides, the result of homophobia in less the open-minded enclaves of the West, accounts of “redneck” men who completely lose it when confronted by gender-bending of any sort. Disputes about which bathroom a transexual should use sometimes scream out as the feature story on the nightly news hour. The world having 15,000+ nuclear bombs armed and ready to destroy the human race apparently is not something to be concerned about. But the idea that the person in the next stall in a restroom is a guy with eyeliner and silicone breast implants is the real threat.
But here in Japan, as conservative as this country is in some ways, having a guy dress up as a woman, at least from what I now often see, is an acceptable practice and regarded as normal entertainment fare anytime of day or night, even for family television. Astonishing!
I’ve seen a number of transvestites on various shows over the years. But Matsuko Deluxe — you have to love that name! — is hands-down the best known TV on Japanese TV. She’s everywhere! Comedy shows and advertisements are her main venues. But I see her on billboards, in magazines. Seriously. She’s everywhere!
Correct me if I’m wrong . . . but Matsuko Deluxe is not exactly a beauty queen.
But who can argue with success?
Uh-oh . . . I just realized. Maybe the title of this article — TVs on TV — is actually a little inappropriate, though I do frankly think it’s devastatingly clever. ‘Transvestite’ is a term rarely used anymore. With the new identity politics insurgencies in full swing, genders are proliferating way beyond the basic boy-girl binary I grew up with — according to some gender bender aficionados in the U.S., there are at least 64 and as many as 81 genders. As a result, the terms ‘transsexual’ and ‘transgender’ are the preferred nomenclature of the new woke stormtroopers — aka the PC Police — prompting many folks wonder if they should demand an induced coma, perhaps the only way of avoiding the minefield of attempting to formulate an acceptable sentence.
Truth is, the term I hear used most here all throughout Asia when referring to boys who are now girls — with or without a penis — is ‘ladyboy’. Ladyboys are not just “dressing up” or play acting. They are actually embracing all that it means to be a female. Frankly, many of them are more convincing females, than many females I’ve known over the years, especially in America, where feminism has savaged the whole idea of femininity. But that’s another whole topic.
The lady pictured on the right is also a ladyboy. She is used in an English teaching program here in Japan for explaining verb tenses. No,I’m not making this up. The lesson goes like this . . .
“This is Ms. Haruna Ai. She is a girl. She was a boy.”
And yes, the ‘Ms.’ is a nice touch. A nod to the legacy feminism of the 70s. Progress, no matter how you look at it, eh?
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen — and everything in between. A glimpse into gender blurring in post-modern Japan, where the man still wears the pants in the family . . . when he’s not wearing a mini-skirt.
Alright, folks!
Tell me you’re not amazed . . . shocked . . . astounded . . . speechless.
We’ve had a few visitors here in Japan, from other parts of the world. It’s certainly always a welcome change of pace to have people come and stay with us. We have a guest room in a two-story house affording decent privacy for all, and four bicycles. Taking folks around our charming town is such a pleasure for us and usually a surprise for them. Most people’s preconceptions of Japan are like what mine were before I finally came to this fascinating country. Big crowded cities, tall buildings, lots of cement and bright lights. But the truth is, Japan is 70% covered with forest, and there is a breathtaking variety of landscapes: mountains, rivers, volcanoes, lush forests, beaches, valleys, lakes, and vast stretches of farm lands — some terraced — growing everything that can be grown here.
We are fortunate in that our traditional rural town, Tambasasayama, is situated within an hour-and-a-half of three major cities, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, each quite distinctive and offering unique charms. This affords easy access to the intensity of urban life, when we want a break from peace, quiet, fresh air, and the slow pace of a farm town. In fact, the train system in Japan makes it possible to travel just about anywhere in the country, except Okinawa which is separated from the main islands by almost 1000 km (620 miles). An auto isn’t necessary to see everything you might want to see, though the highway system is itself is spectacularly well-built, well-maintained, easily negotiated, and efficient.
Anyway, here are some of the good people who we’ve had the pleasure to host.
Gilly: My dear friend, Gilly, visited in 2012. She arrived from France, though I actually knew her from Portland, Oregon, my last hometown in the U.S. Very very sadly, Gilly has passed away, a victim of breast cancer. I’m so glad I got to see her one last time, and she got to meet Masumi. Gilly was an incredibly beautiful, highly evolved person, a respected teacher and skilled practitioner of an alternative health system called Body Talk. She was in Japan to give classes and offer treatment in Tokyo. She has certainly helped many, many people and spread a lot of love over the decade I knew her.
Owen: I met Owen at the Peace Stupa in Leh, Ladakh, in northern India. By pure coincidence, he has very strong connections to Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. He’s visited Japan a few times and we’ve buddied around. I met him in Osaka one time and we did the town. His last visit, he brought his fiancé Chi, a lovely Japanese lady, who he met in his native Australia. Owen is a very talented songwriter — another coincidence! — and in Ladakh, he and I jammed on keyboards and guitar with a Buddhist monk, a friend of the Dalai Lama. This sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s true!
Travis and Michelle: Travis and I go way back. Best friends when I lived in Portland, Oregon, he and I worked together, hung out, wrote songs, played in bands together, did a lot of recording in my studio, spent countless hours discussing politics and philosophy. Back in those days, he and I went to New York and Los Angeles on music business. Travis is a multi-talented, truly brilliant guy. He and his wife, Michelle, came to Japan spring of 2014. She is now a librarian at a public school in Vancouver, Washington, where they live. Travis is into many things these days, building buildings, renovating houses, creating a financial empire, teaching “pickleball” — a variant of tennis — mastering golf.
Alex / Alex and Corine: In 2010, I lived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for almost six months. It was there I met Alex. For his last couple weeks in the country, we got to know each other and I got to know what an incredibly special person he is. We kept in touch. In fact, July 2013 Masumi and I visited Alex in Den Haag, Netherlands where he lives. He was a phenomenal tour guide and not only showed us around the immediate area, but introduced us to Amsterdam, one of the real highlights of that holiday in Europe. Then in 2016, he brought his girlfriend Corine for two weeks here in Japan. Alex was so enamored with the country, he returned solo December 2018. We talk two or three times a month via Skype. Alex is one of my all time favorite people!
Moose and Carmen: Masumi and I met Moose — his real name is Börge — and Carmen during our trip to Russia and Scandinavia, summer of 2015. We couchsurfed their place in Stockholm for three days. They were perfect hosts! Then they came to Japan to enjoy the blossoming of cherry blossoms in 2019, and we not only showed them around town here, but took them to Himeji to see the famous castle there. At the end of their stay here, they announced that they were expecting a baby, and little Joel became a member of their family later in the year. From Tambasasayama, Moose and Carmen headed off on their own to Koyasan, Nara, Kyoto, and to attend a sumo practice in Tokyo. Morning sickness and sumo wrestling? Does that sound like a good combination?
Masumi and I have talked about opening a B&B after she retires from teaching. We love having people stay with us, love meeting people from other countries. We especially enjoy having friends come to visit. I keep the bikes oiled and tuned, make sure the tires are inflated. Nothing beats being prepared.
It’s quite a story how Sophie came into our lives.
Masumi was going to her drum lesson at the other end of town. This was at the Yamaha music education space, which happened to be across the street from a factory.
As she got out of the car, a skinny calico came running from the factory yard right up to her. The poor thing was undernourished, had runny eyes, in general looked sick and sickly. But she had lots of energy and came right up to Masumi, reached up on Masumi’s legs and cried for help. Normally, street cats are very skittish and unapproachable. This little kitty was completely the opposite. She wanted attention and affection.
Masumi’s drum lesson lasted over an hour. When she came back out, the calico was still there, waiting for her “chosen” friend. She continued to cry and rub up against Masumi, and when she opened the car door, the kitty jumped in the car!
Next I got a call. “What should I do? This poor little kitty jumped in my car. She wants me to take her home.”
We decided that whatever was to happen, we should try to help this poor creature out. She was in trouble, it was winter, no way would she survive in her condition outdoors in the yard of a factory. What was she living on? Was she getting fed?
Masumi drove with the calico in a cardboard box directly to our vet. Poor little thing was starving, had worms, and a bad cold. How could we turn her away? Masumi came home and it was no decision. If we could manage it, this new kitty would join our family.
The immediate serious issue was whether our new friend had either kitty HIV or leukemia, both of which are fatal within a couple years of infection. Both are also very contagious and are common among “street cats”. We had concern about Arthur and Jennifer catching one of these dread diseases. At the vet, at least for now, the calico tested negative for both but we’d have to wait four weeks and have her retested, in case she had just recently gotten infected. Four weeks isolated from our other two cats!
We set up a room. I spent about half my time keeping her company for the next month and grew incredibly attached. She was hysterically funny, so full of affection and appreciation. Our other cats, Arthur and Jennifer, spent countless hours at the door of the quarantine room wondering just who this mystery guest was. They heard her frolicking, jumping around the room, using me as a cat tower, slowly gaining strength, health and energy.
We decided on a name . . . Sophie!
Four weeks crawled by. It was time for a “final verdict” from our veterinarian.
I have to say that after all that time in quarantine with her, it would have broken my heart if her tests had come back positive. But she was clean! As soon as Masumi returned from the vet, she brought Sophie into the house, opened the carrier. Arthur and Jennifer got to meet the newest member of the family.
The three of them are to this day the best of friends, regularly play together, are very affectionate to one another. The perfect ending! Sophie is truly the most delightful kitty I’ve ever had. She cuddles up to me several times a day while I’m writing, brings both Masumi and I toys she wants us to play with, sleeps with us every night.
So . . .
Finally, in a long-overdue recognition of Sophie’s long, dramatic journey in becoming a member of our family, our local newspaper has published the brief notice you see above. It merely says she has brought much joy to our household. Talk about an understatement.
Sophie is definitely one-of-a-kind, an “orphan” and a real Cinderella story!
I’m proposing this in a rapid response to the BLM protests, which seem to lack coherent demands with bulletproof metrics to determine if the authorities are actually complying, or just putting up another smokescreen to pacify the mob. It may not be fully formed, complete in all the details. I welcome anyone and everyone to consider its merits, then make suggestions and improvements.
There’s a lot of anger, passion, frustration, enthusiasm, pessimism, optimism, confusion, determination, disorganization, organization, chaos and hope, out there on the streets right now. Open, exuberant display of civic concern and commitment to improvements in government in the form of mass protests is not only a constitutional right, but sometimes our duty as citizens.
But many folks are rightfully asking: What do the protesters want?
I have strong opinions about what they should want, should be demanding. It’s a long list.
But these current demonstrations are essentially about police violence, abuse of police power.
So here’s an idea. A clear, unambiguous, non-negotiable demand should be put front and center from this point forward.
There are two components to the demand . . .
Any cop abusing his position should be immediately taken out of circulation, then ultimately replaced, if he is too aggressive. Any officer of the law who is caught provoking peaceful protesters; attacking protesters and especially members of the press; attacking unarmed non-threatening citizens; using force, weapons, tear gas or so-called “non-lethal” armaments, restraining holds or equipment; bludgeoning, pepper spraying, tear gassing, even pushing; when such force is questionable, should be immediately put on indefinite leave pending investigation, and then dismissed if the errant behavior is confirmed.
That officer’s position on the police force would be turned over to a new type of law enforcement official, called a Community Facilitator. A Community Facilitator would be hired at full pay with full benefits. Hiring a such an individual would require the approval of both the police bureau and a committee selected by the communities where that Community Facilitator would be assigned or might appear for a policing incident. Every cop would be ultimately paired with a Community Facilitator. Every Community Facilitator would be paired with a regular cop. The regular cop would handle the rough stuff. The Community Facilitator would initially handle everything else, with the regular cop at his/her side.
Understand where I’m going with this: Ultimately — as soon as humanly possible — no patrol car would show up ANYWHERE to address ANY SITUATION, unless there were at least one regular cop and one Community Facilitator.
By the way, the Community Facilitator would be in uniform, very much like a regular police uniform. But there would be some aspect, shirt color, special hat, helmet, something, which would make it immediately obvious this person was not a regular cop, but a community facilitator.
We should demand that Community Facilitators be hired and deployed as quickly as possible. Since there would be pairing of a fully-trained cop with every Community Facilitator, the training would not have to be as long and rigorous for the Community Facilitator. It could be a quick course in the basics, safety, protocol, the law, etc. They don’t have to be Navy Seals to be effective at this job.
Police now view citizens as the enemy. Regular citizens now fear, often distrust and hate the police.
We need 1) to get rid of the bad cops, and 2) encourage proper, respectful, constructive communication between the everyday citizens and law enforcement.
Bad cop behavior is not hard to identify. These guys need to be pulled out of service immediately, before they further exacerbate the tensions and escalate the violence. Seeing bad cops immediately and publicly pulled off the beat when they display anything even slightly resembling the aggression we now see repeated every day in the news will demonstrate that local governments are taking seriously the demand for reform.
Having a member of the community in every patrol car and appearing on the scene when the police are called will in the future likewise reverse the adversarial dynamic which now characterizes citizen-police encounters and hopefully reduce the potential for violent confrontation.
Let’s replace half of the cops with Community Facilitators starting NOW!
If the mayor, police commissioner, city council refuse to entertain this idea, then maybe it’s time to get out the Molotov cocktails.
(PLEASE NOTE: I’m not sold on the job title. If anyone reading this has something better than ‘Community Facilitator’, I’m all for it.)
As an American, when I hear a reference to ‘school lunch’ I think of school lunch programs back in my homeland. School lunch programs are designed to help the poor. Believe it or not, every night more than 13 million children go to bed hungry in what putatively the richest country in the world — the richest nation in history! The euphemism is these kids are “food insecure”. That’s a polite way of saying neglected, victims of grotesque wealth inequality, and systemic racism. School lunch, school breakfast, and after school meals, are an attempt via various government programs at keeping these children alive and minimally healthy.
Here ‘school lunch’ has an entirely different meaning.
Yes, it refers to that time around noon when across the entire country, students from four to twenty-four are sitting down for their mid-day meal.
But here in Tambasasayama, it has another very special connotation. This weekend, in fact, Masumi-san and I had a “school lunch”. It was at a restaurant set up in one of the schools which is no longer functioning as an educational institution.
Japan’s population is in freefall. This attrition is especially significant in communities like where I live. When kids here graduate from high school, it’s either off to university, or to where the “good jobs” are, which from the prevailing perspective of local youth is surely not here. Being a farmer is not glamorous, nor does it offer the opportunity to amass a decent fortune. Or falling short of a decent fortune, getting one of those high-paying corporate positions with Panasonic or Mitsubishi.
The upshot is that our town is shrinking in numbers at a rate faster than even Japan itself. Many of the schools which once served a thriving farm community now sit empty.
Well, they sit empty unless put to other use. The former school where we had our meal not only has a restaurant, but a curios shop, an arts & crafts workshop, and an art museum for showcasing local artists. Where we sat down to have lunch was previously the office area where the school’s teachers had their individual desks, a room where they could think, create teaching plans, grade tests, get away from the noise and chaos of the students.
Inadvertently, perhaps, Tambasasayama is doing its part to reduce the human imprint. There are very few new couples starting families here. Few babies are being produced. Meaning a number of beautiful old schools will continue to sit idle, collecting cobwebs.
Here’s one. It even has an observatory on top, where elementary students a decade ago would gaze in wonder at the heavens.
Looks like a decent place to store rice. Or soybeans. That dome is a good start on a silo.
Let’s face it. Crime is universal. Wherever you find human beings, you’ll find individuals in violation of the carefully-crafted laws of the land. Why just this week here in Japan, a lady in Kyoto walked out of a pet store with a cat. Granted, it was not a heist on the scale of the Great Train Robbery. In fact, the lady was convinced the cat was actually her cat, one that had recently run away. A case of mistaken cat identity? Covid-19 derangement syndrome?
But no matter how you look at it, policing is a tough job.
The story pictured at the head of this article is a perfect example. Are they stopping waves of armed terrorists? Are they cracking down on drug traffickers and drug addicts who in need of their next fix are snatching purses from helpless old ladies? Are they interdicting elicit trade in contraband which could send the Japanese economy into a death spiral?
Actually, these officers are putting a notification on a bicycle! The owner of this bike — brace yourself — failed to lock it, a clear invitation for a hardened bicycle thief to cart it off and then God only knows. Ride it? Sell it? Ship it to North Korea as a gift to Kim Jong-un? The paper band around the tire is a reminder that it’s a good idea to lock a bike.
Of course, the world is in great turmoil right now. The coronavirus pandemic has everyone on edge. In the U.S. people understandably let off steam by burning down police stations, as a message to authorities that they should do a better job, even though now they don’t have a proper place to organize their police work.
By contrast, here in my charming home town of Tambasasayama, the police embrace a slightly different narrative. Since things that grow can offer both calm and beauty, they now have 40 flowering plants in the lobby of the main police station. Not surprisingly, people like this and some just stop by for no other reason than to enjoy the display of flora. No one has been seen outside the building with a torch and a trunk full of Molotov cocktails.
I guess some cynics would characterize this as police power merging with flower power. Or the cops trying to put an amicable face on the often unpredictable and brutal business of enforcing the law and keeping the peace. Whatever the reason, we have to recognize the harsh realities.
It’s easy for crime to take hold, spread, and run roughshod over a society. It’s important to draw the line, never make excuses or compromise.
Take jaywalking. Everyone knows that jaywalking is a “gateway crime”. Statistically, every person who has murdered, robbed, raped, dealt drugs, pimped, cheated on their taxes, or thrown someone off the top floor of a skyscraper, has jaywalked. In the minds of tough law enforcers, this is proof that jaywalking, if unchecked, leads to truly reprehensible and villainous behavior.
Thus, in the U.S. the police take a rigid stance on jaywalking. If you’re too lazy to walk the extra few steps to find a proper pedestrian crosswalk, it can end badly.
Hmm . . . I’m not sure why I brought this up.
Oh, I remember!
You see, the Japanese don’t jaywalk or cross against a signal. They dutifully seek out an official crosswalk, and even if there is absolutely no traffic in sight for several kilometers, they wait until the walk sign goes on before proceeding. Which is why there’s practically no crime here. No jaywalking. No murder or burglary, kidnapping or gang banging. Or very little. This strict regard for jaywalking law is, of course, reinforced by an abiding respect for the lives and property of others, as I’ve written about elsewhere.
Let me close this by referencing a video of the Japanese police in action here. This was a difficult “traffic management” situation which in my opinion they handled admirably.
Japanese police dealing with some jaywalkers . . . gotta be tough!
As with all of his excellent books, Dan Kovalik has packed this readable and well-researched work with an abundance of invaluable information and insight into the imperial war machine, the imperial diplomatic and PR juggernaut, the extensive predatory machinations reducing the rest of the world to rubble so that America’s corporations and its ravenous banking system can subjugate and exploit their populations and extract their material wealth.
We citizens, under the spell of the Western propaganda machine, slog through the malaise of censored news, disinformation and deceptions with our eyes wide shut, preferring to avoid at all costs acknowledging the nefarious role our “exceptional” nation plays in perpetrating some of the most sordid war crimes in history, thereby propagating unfathomable misery across the planet.
Though we might prefer to immerse ourselves in the bliss of this willful ignorance, as the folks who fund such misadventures with our tax dollars, and who implicitly support it by raising no serious objections, much less mounting actual resistance, we are ourselves responsible. We are culpable. We share the guilt of those actively engineering and promoting this tsunami of death and destruction, a reign of terror inflicted on any nation who would dare stand in our path of full-spectrum dominance and self-serving plunder.
How is it “we the people” are rendered so indifferent to these acts of aggression?
Not an excuse, but an incriminating explanation, provides the required insight: We are told — and gullibly believe — that somehow this orgy of violence, the bloodbaths and rubble which result from our military interventions, are in pursuit of a better world, one where democracy and freedom and justice for all reigns supreme. That it is the U.S.’s responsibility to stand up for and protect the citizens of other nations who are being deprived of the rights and privileges due to all of us as humans.
But as Kovalik proves beyond any doubt, for seven decades, our wars of aggression and fostering regime change around the globe have had nothing to do with the tragically laughable “cover story” that the U.S. is spreading democracy and protecting human rights, but rather are the direct, predictable, and inevitable product of America’s obsessive fixation on world conquest and unchallengeable global domination.
No More War covers a lot of ground, looking in detail at Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, the NATO aggression against former Yugoslavia, the Vietnam War. We see 1) how disruptive and counterproductive U.S. meddling in such countries is, 2) how such interference in the affairs of sovereign nations contravenes both currently accepted norms and international law, 3) how this abuse of military prowess is rapidly overextending U.S. projection of power, 4) how it is making America a pariah in the world community, and 5) how this will ultimately result in a major confrontation with countries like Russia and China, two nuclear-armed nations which genuinely have assumed the higher moral ground in the world of geopolitics. Dan Kovalik also eloquently exposes the profound hypocrisy of the U.S. claiming to be standing up for human and political rights in other countries, as it ignores and violates within its own borders many of those same rights for its own citizens.
No More War is a powerful, informative book. While the well-crafted prose reads comfortably, conferring it with NYT best seller potential, its erudition demands that it be taken seriously. This invaluable volume begs to be used as a textbook for university peace study courses. For we can’t very well chart the right course without fully understanding where we’ve gone wrong . . . so very very wrong.
Probably anyone under 25 living in the U.S. will not know what that is in the photo above. Or maybe they saw one in an old movie. You know . . . old . . . like 1987.
It’s a telephone booth. Inside is a pay telephone. A person can put a coin or two in it and make a phone call. If they put a lot of coins in it, they can make a long distance call, maybe say ‘hi’ to their grandmother in Heidelberg or Guadalajara.
The one pictured is in a fairly rural area about five minutes by bicycle from my house. Mind you, I live on the very edge of town, surrounded by bean and rice fields. This road is even further out but has houses on both sides of it, a small cluster of residences, forming one of the several villages which are the “neighborhoods” of Tambasasayama City*. Each village usually has regular meetings, puts on social functions — barbecues, holiday celebrations, bingo parties, etc — gets together to clean up and maintain the grounds and properties of the village. Most have a community center for hosting monthly meetings and various social gatherings. Some, like the one where I live, called Noma Village, have their own Shinto shrine, a valued but mostly symbolic feature — nobody goes there on a regular basis to worship, as they might a church or synagogue in America — visited on certain special holidays, e.g. New Years.
Back to the phone booth. Why is it there?
Well . . . someone just might need to make a call. And maybe their iPhone battery is down. Or they dropped their Samsung in a toilet and it’s not so waterproof after all. It’s there on the off chance someone needs it. Does this seem odd?
Actually, it reflects a typically Japanese level of forethought and consideration. Respect for redundancy. A willingness to leave some things in place — just in case.
Here’s another example: Everywhere you find a school or public building, they have what’s pictured here on the walkways.
What are they? They’re for blind people. Now I’ve been coming and going for 13 years. I’ve been up and down these streets. And I can honestly say that in all that time, I’VE NEVER SEEN A BLIND PERSON in this town. So why do they have these? Well . . . ya never know. A blind person could show up one day. And the city doesn’t want to leave them stumbling around, wandering into the street, getting hit by cars or tractors or rice harvesters.
If the city council decided that there was some reasonable possibility that space aliens could visit our town, I have no doubt they’d designate parking places for their space ships and provide electrical outlets for them to recharge. That’s just the way they think here.
Tambasasayama is far from being a rich town. In fact, some would say it’s a dying town. There are hardly any young adults. Most kids bolt once they graduate from high school, first stop university, next a nice job in the city. Very few return. Not much going on here and unless you want to be a farmer, there aren’t really many jobs.
Yet, it seems they are constantly working on improving things. Paving the roads, installing new or fixing the old curbs. Here’s a bridge they painted a few years ago. I remember this well because I was so astonished at how much care they lavished on this particular bridge, a pedestrian/bicycle bridge which I use almost every day. When the tiniest, nearly invisible signs of rust appeared, they sanded it and put FIVE COATS OF PAINT ON IT! Five! Seven years later and it still looks perfect. It could probably take a direct hit by a MOAB and survive.
We have one street which is rich with tradition, sometimes referred to as ‘merchant street’. It has many traditional shops, vegetable stands, restaurants, art galleries, ceramics stores. It’s charming in every respect but one. The electrical lines.
They are now in the process of putting all of the power lines underground. Because most of the buildings have traditional architecture, when they’re done with this, this already charming street will look very much the way it did, say 200 years ago. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn seeing this sort of commitment of time, energy, and public funds to the town’s infrastructure: For the Japanese, aesthetics are an essential part of honoring history and community life.
Politicians in the U.S. are always bloviating about the need to repair the “infrastructure” there, which they all openly admit is crumbling, if not already in shambles. Then there will be another tax cut for the rich or another war or pandemic . . . or [ fill in the blank since any excuse will do ] . . . and nothing ever gets done.
Well, building and maintaining infrastructure to keep Tambasasayama safe and operable is not just a campaign slogan or bumper sticker here. It’s an integral part of daily life. We all do a little. But the government itself does the real heavy lifting.
To put it mildly, I’m awed.
One last note. Proof that the telephone booth at the beginning is not just a fluke, here is a photo I took less than 100 meters (300 feet) away, even closer to my house. Frankly, I had never noticed it before. Yes, it’s yet another phone booth, this one sitting adjacent to a truly funky old bus stop shelter. While you’re waiting for the bus, you can call your grandmother in Heidelberg or Guadalajara. How convenient!
* Note that in May 2020 the town officially changed its name from Sasayama — the name that appears in most of the articles in this series — to Tambasasayama.
Life In Japan: Awe-Inspiring Extreme Honesty
The sub-title of my newest book begins “Anecdotes on the People and Culture of Contemporary Japan …”
Here are a few anecdotes which will give you phenomenal insights into the remarkably high ethical standards and general character of the Japanese people.
• • •
A friend of mine, originally from New Zealand but who lives in Japan, left her latest model Macbook Pro in a train station ladies room. For two hours! She had left it on the counter while she washed her hands and forgetfully walked out without it. By the way, this was one of the busiest hubs in Japan, the Umeda JR Station in Osaka. That restroom has hundreds of people going through it every hour. She got quite a ways along on her trip back here to Sasayama, remembered, jumped off, and immediately got on a train back to Osaka. She found her laptop right where she left it. Yes … two hours later!
• • •
Every year in October, we have here in Sasayama the Festival of the Portable Shrines. It’s one of my favorites!
A gentleman arrived here from Kobe, which is about an hour away. He came to purchase black beans, an item my home town is famous for, but when the moment came to pay, he discovered his wallet was missing.
There are no pickpockets around here, so obviously he had dropped his wallet somewhere in town.
He went to the nearest Koban. There are several here in Sasayama, as there are all over Japan. A Koban is a mini-police station. In Japan, it’s considered an integral part of a functioning community. The Koban is to make sure there are friendly cops in the neighborhood to address problems which come up in the local area, situations just like this.
The policeman on duty took a report, then got on the phone. He called all the other Kobans in the immediate area, anywhere close to where the gentleman had parked his car, before walking into the main part of town for the festivities.
He passed along the man’s name and a description of the wallet. Now get this …
While the officer was on the phone with another Koban, someone walked in with the wallet and handed it to the policeman on duty there.
The gentleman from Kobe then walked the short distance to the other Koban, and retrieved his wallet. The contents — credit cards, ID, cash — were intact. Not a single item had been taken.
• • •
One Sunday many months ago, we went to, Rurikei, our favorite local onsen. This is one of the great joys of living here in Japan and we try to go often.
Anyway, I left my hair brush in the mens locker room. This was not a family heirloom. This was an 89 cent piece of plastic, dirty and full of my hair from use over many months. The only thing it had going for it was that it was a pleasant shade of lavender.
Five weeks later, we returned to the hot springs. On some impulse — my synapses tend to fire randomly at times — I asked at the counter if they had a purple hair brush in their lost-and-found box. Stupid me. I was thinking they had a cardboard box behind the desk. The clerk asked when I thought I had lost it. That was easy. Maybe four or five weeks ago? He stepped into the facility’s main office, consulted with someone, then returned with my 89-cent hair brush, safely contained in a sealed plastic bag with a label. On the label was the date I left it in the locker room.
• • •
Masumi reminded me of this story, one I had forgotten. One day we went to Japan Post to mail a package to the U.S. — I think it was one of my novels, sent off for a review. Shortly after we returned, the phone rang. It was the clerk who had waited on me at the post office. She first apologized. She had made a mistake and overcharged me. She was so sorry this happened! It was an honest mistake and would be happy to refund the money. How much was it? 10 yen. Unbelievable! Do you know how much 10 yen is at current exchange rates? 9.44 cents!
What did I do? I did what any red-blooded American would do in the face of such incompetence! I went to the post office with my AR-15 and shot the place up. I didn’t kill anyone, though obviously I could hardly be blamed if I had. But when I got done, the place looked like one of the Twin Towers on September 12!
Okay. Obviously, I made that up. The truth was, I was speechless. 10 yen? After I stopped laughing — pleasant, joyful laughing — I had Masumi tell the clerk all was forgiven and she could keep the 10 yen. I think you can probably buy a lollipop somewhere for 10 yen.
• • •
I could go on and on. For example, in the news several months ago, there was the story of a person who had found a satchel on a park bench with over 5 million yen (that’s $50,000 cash) and no identification of any kind in or on the bag. It was promptly turned into the police.
I’m not going to moralize. Draw your own conclusions.
But by seeing such extreme honesty here, I see what has happened to my own country. I’m not pointing fingers. I see it in my own thinking. It’s been quite an adjustment for me. After all, I grew up in a tug-of-war between what I was taught at home, school and church, and real world a prioris: ‘Finders keepers losers weepers.’ ‘It’s every man for himself.’ ‘If I don’t take it someone else will.’
As a kid, often it wasn’t a question of right or wrong, but a question of whether we’d get caught.
I will say that dishonesty, regardless of how minor or seemingly insignificant, is a slippery slope. The Japanese have chosen to avoid taking even the first step.
I openly admit, it’s resulted in a huge paradigm shift for me. It’s required an enormous adjustment. But an extremely rewarding one. Just imagine … being able to trust other people. What a concept!
Understand: This extreme level of honesty and respect for the property of others I’m describing here is not an anomaly. It’s the norm. And it’s nothing new.
My American friend, Scott Burley, recently emailed me about his brief but rewarding experiences visiting Japan. He included this story:
My girlfriend who I met sophomore year … went on a student exchange program to Tokyo for her junior year and went to school over there. She was 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 Czech and her parents were both Japanese — her mother must have married a Czech before her step father. So around Christmas I flew to Tokyo when she had Christmas break and we spent three weeks traveling by train … my girlfriend left her purse at a bus stop. I went back to look for it and it was gone. After we got back to Tokyo, one day her purse arrived in the mail. Only in Japan!
That was back in 1973. Some things don’t change here.
Sometimes it’s best when they don’t.