Mari - diary

Japanese standard

This Standard of Japan is very interesting. They show the results of Questionnaires, "simple questions about various topics of our daily life". This type of Questionnaire will show the real Japanese life For me this is a good resource when I can not find a good topic to write about too :-)

These results seem quite natural to me, When asked, "What do you use to clean your ears?" 46 people/120 use Mimikaki!, 20/120 use Mimikaki and Q-tips, Only Q-tips is 30/120. Since most Japanese have the dry type earwax, this is very natural. We have a Q-tip which has a sticky head. This would not work as well for the wet type earwax.

"If I were to say Cake! What cake do you imagine first?" for this question 111/136 answered "Strawberry shortcake" 6 people said Chocolate cake, 4 answered cheese cake. Overwhelmingly Strawberry shortcake is the exactly the cake for Japanese. BUT! Here is the point. Short cake was originally a crispy pastry made with shortening that came to Japan from Europe. However in Japan this fresh cream & puffy sponge is more typical of our strawberry short. I heard that sweets maker FUJIYA changed their strawberry cake like this first, and on the other site I read that this old cafe made this type of shortcake first in Tokyo during the 60's. I don't know which is the original, but in the 50's or 60's, there were not a lot of varieties of cake in Japan. Now there are many many many cake shops, and we can enjoy a wide assortment of cakes. There are many good Patisseries like as I've told you in this Jiyugaoka post. But still our cake is strawberry short. Now that is funny. When I searched for image files of strawberry short on Google and Yahoo, there were many cream and sponge cakes, so I wondered if this type is called strawberry short in North America too.

"How do you address your mother?" 43/142 answered "Oka-san", 18/142 replied "Ka-san". O is the polite prefix attached to the beginning of the word, so Osakan is more polite than Kasan. Then 11/142 replied "Mama" ( I call my mom, Mama), 10/142 replied Ka-Chan. San is polite and Chan is casual. In the Osaka area, Oka-chan is much popular than in the Tokyo area I think. Usually we have this kind tough image for Oka-chan.

Too much Salt and the highest average longevity

We eat Soya sauce, Miso-soup and Tsukemono quite often. All of them include a lot of salt.  Tsukemono is a kind of preserved vegetable originating in Northern Japan, which was initially consumed during winter. Although we can buy and eat vegetables anytime of the year,  in Northern Japan they still have the habit of eating a lot of  Tsukemono, not surprisingly, their rate of heart attacks and high blood pressure are higher than in Southern Japan. Anyway I've always believed the Japanese eat much more salt than the world average. When I checked the Japanese average consumption of salt on our Ministry of Health, Labour and welfare site, it was 11.4g (there has been a decrease every year, because of healthy trends ). Then the Ministry of HLW sets 8g of salt per day as our intake goal. But according to this BBC article, the UK sets their goal as 6g. So the Japanese consumption rates are twice goal of the UK. Hmm we eat a lot of salt.

However the interesting part of this BBC news, quote says "Japanese people consume four times as much salt as people in the UK, but has the highest average longevity in the world, he claimed. " I don't know where "four times" came from, but the point was correct.  Perhaps health is more of a food/balance issue. Here is a very good article form BillSardi.com. His report, on Japanese food is very informative and well written. He reports "The Japanese paradox is that many drink hard liquor (sake) and smoke tobacco, yet they still live longer and healthier overall. Japanese smokers don't develop lung cancer at the same rate as American smokers".  "She told me that the Japanese will eat as much as 35 different foods in a day."
Ah yes maybe -Balance- .... many KINDS of foods seem to be the key to good health.

Anyway, like I said, I thought the Japanese ate much more salt more than in other foreign countries, and many sites support that . But when I watched this CBS news report on my lunchtime at work yesterday. they said that American people take 40g of salt daily. Hmm that's a lot of salt,  Is that true? And the funny part was the Salt Institute of the U.S.made this comment immidiately after that NEWS story. It seems both the FDA and SI agree then. The point will be 40g of salt daily.  My friend Robert says "Maybe we should change the name to Tsukemerica". 

Popular shoe brands in Japan

Generally speaking, when you look through most  Japanese women's fashion magazine, they feature PRADA, Ferragamo, MIUMIU, Mark Jacobs, and other such big brand-name shoes. Here is the shoe shop listing  for Isetan (the biggest department store in Shinjuku) . But they are not so reasonably priced. In point of fact, popular brands for mass distribution will often have more economical lines like Himiko, Diana, Mode et Jacomo as examples of more domestic brands for working women,  With Fin, Reagal, Jelly Beans as counterparts for young girls. As a foreign brands, Charles David, Nine West have a strong market presence. ECCO has a popular line of comfort shoes for middle aged women.

Anyway I must confess I have a shoe fixation. My favorite brand is Patrick Cox. I have two pairs of Pythonn leather ( Just in case one breaks), one pair of Anaconda leather. I like the crawler leather and patterns; Shoes that have the pattern of snakeskin, crocodile, and lizard are my favorites. So everybody calls my shoes case the ZOO. ha!  I think Patrick Cox is much more popular in Japan than in North America?  On the Yahoo Japan auction site, there are 158 items. On Ebay in the U.S.I found only 77 items today. But at least I read that Madonna, and Michael Jackson (among other celebrities) like this brand very much.

Hard to guess the original title

Today was a bit  busy day. I needed to choose Movie Soundtracks for our music download content on the mobile site. I chose 100 soundtracks from 700 titles. I tried to kill my taste, but I could not choose just one from the Godfather. So I picked Love theme, plus this waltz and The immigrant!  Anyway I just read this article,  I suppose it will be more and more difficult for me to introduce feature sound in my blog.   
By the way my favorite movie title is "A Clockwork Orange". What a cool name it is! And the Soundtrack also has a great fell to it. Fortunately the Japanese title has a direct translation, "Tokei Jikake no Orange"  Apocalypse Now  is not changed much either, But I think most Japanese would not recognize the movie  by its original title, because "Apocalypse" is a very difficult word for us. I majored in English literature when I was in college, but I did not know the word until I checked this movie title recently.  I can tell you that word does not appear in the English word textbook for our entrance exams. It would depend on which subject you major in , but to enter the English course, I needed to remember over 3000 thousand English words. Hmm but still I cannot write English correctly and I cannot speak well, that is the big problem with English education in Japan.
Anyway  I really enjoy to reading the original English movie titles.  So I wrote before about the Original title and Japanese title of movies, please check it out when you have time.

Super Junk snack Umaibo & The U.S. government

Umaibo (=delicious bar) is a kind of Japanese super junk food puffed corn snack. One Umaibo costs only 10yen, and they have a lot of flavors, this is their current line up ,which is available in stores now. But I don't know how many other kinds of flavors they 've released in the past.  I have to say their flavors are very weird. Of course they have standard flavors like cheese, caramel, and Teriyaki burger. But basically they are known for their more unique ones. For example, curry flavor is not just curry, but Chicken curry. In the case of mayonnaise, they made Shrimp mayonnaise. One of their most famous flavors is Natto ( if you want to know natto is). For them, such details as flavor accuracy are important.  I heard some flavors were made by request of fans.  I mentioned Umaibo in the "what is 2 channel?" article before. The representative of 2 channel, "Hiroyuki"(his blog); likes Umaibo, and he named each of his servers for his 2 channel board after Umaibo. Umaibo can be a toy or gag. When we search for Umaibo on the internet, we can find some useless projects using Umaibo, like making objects, new style cooking, and Akihabara PC shop events. The most popular one is purchasing in bulk , everybody refers to this as an "Umaibo festival" and they enjoy it in their own style.(like some guy takes an Umaibo bath). I hope you can sense what  our concept of Umaibo is. It is geeky, otaku, cheap, junk, fake, joke and so on.

Yesterday I found another funny challenge about Umaibo. It is a "eat up 1000 bars of Umaibo in a week". One guy ate 1000 Umaibo in a week. Hmm at least 142 Umaibo in a day, this means, if he sleeps 7 hours, he eats 8 Umaibo every hour. Actually he was eating them at work, he even brought Umaibo when he visited his friend's home. Sometimes he baked them!, he boiled them!!, steamed them!!!, and then dripped them!!!! (finaly he come to the conclusion that he should not try any other methods ). At last he made the record (if we can call it that ). Did he get into Guinness or something? Of course not. So Why?  You know we don't need any reason for that kind of great stupid challenge.

Ah and the last,  perhaps most interesting topic about Umaibo. Since Umaibo is a kind of fake junk food, it's character is also dubious. Apparently the Umaibo character looks like our national idol Doraemon. This is an ironic joke by Umaibo. However the funniest part is that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission in the U.S.A) ; An independent United States government agency used a super fake Doraemon or Umaibo character on their kids zone page. That character says, "My name is Broadband".  I could laugh if he had the name Amerimon or something. But unfortunately it is nothing so humorous.  Using such a fake copyright infringed character  is okay as long as it is in an official capacity for the United States government? ha ha ha

Spring can not be beautiful season for all Japanese.

Today Tokyo has Haru Ichiban. Haru ichiban is the first southern gale of the year. After it blows, the area gets warmer day by day. Plums are beginning to bloom, the cherry blossoms will come out soon. Is everybody waiting for a warm and beautiful spring? Unfortunately recently this is the case. Look at this asahi.com news . Can you believe that nearly one in four Japanese adults is already suffering from pollen allergies (= Kafun sho in Japanese) . In the spring, they suffer from sneezing, sniffing, itching, and puffiness or hyperemia of eyes,  which causes insomnia, and tiredness. I met a guy who could not stop sneezing this morning. But I know it was no laughing matter for him. Actually sereral of my co-workers have to sneeze just from looking at this photo, and get very angry very if we open the office windows.

Since pollen allergies are such a big problem in Japan, yahoo Japan has a pollen count  warming board of  everydday. There are many protection tools on the market,  such as this big mask ( every year it looks to be getting bigger), over-sized eyewear, nose spray, tablet, drink medicine, eye wash, Candy, Gum, soft tissue to help relieve the discomfort of blowing ones nose a thousand times etc,.etc,. Here is this year's trend in protection foods. High pollen counts are inconvenient because people with allergies can't  dry their clothing and linens outside and have to take off their jacket as soon as they get home.  But why are we having such a problem now? This site explains the reason why.   As for Me? I am super no problem with allergies whatsoever.

Katamari Damacy. what a world

This morning I got mail from the U.S. He asked if I had written about the PS2 game "Katamari Damacy" before.  "What is that? What is Katamari?" I was curious and checked, and now I can tell you I LOVE it! Since I have no PS2 or Nintendo, (because I know I would devote all my life to game if I got one.) I did not know that game, but it has really nice world. Please let me introduce.

Katamari Damacy 1 was released in Japan last spring and in the U.S and other countries later. Here is their English page. Please check "What is Katamari Damacy" ( I was knocked out by their Double bye bye) and a trailer too. A little peewee prince has to make a big Block (Katamari) to make stars in cosmos. Because his father the King broke up all the stars when he was drunk. The rules are simple. The little Prince rolls a ball and spool things up on the way, then makes it bigger than the specified size in time. At first he can only get small things only like caramels or paperclips, then when the block gets larger, he can spool people, cars, buildings and other larger items. He spools everything until his block is big enough to make each star. You may read the game review here. Yes they put a good rating on this game.    Katamari Damacy will be enough fun for foreign people, but the game has a matter of mirth for Japanese especially...( I know these types of things are always very hard to explain and may not be funny for foreigners).

Tohoho Character (Weakness / faintness character)
I think Japanese love "Tohoho chara". A guy explains about tohoho here.　When we say "Tohoho chara", we have a mixture image of "poor, pathos, harmless, sympathy, love, funny, laughing". For example, Pikmin( he has to be eaten). Pichon kun ( he has to be thrown away in humid wx), they are typical Tohoho chara. Gikoneko of 2channel is tohoho chara too I think. Prince is a typical Tohoho character who has to work because of his Dad. So I can tell this type of character tickles the Japanese heart most.

The title: KATAMARI DAMACY
Katamari Damacy is of course Japanese English. It should be written Katamari Damashii, it means "Block Soul". Very hot, passionate, enthusiasm, such a strong impression we have, for the word "Tamashii (Damashii)" and also Katamari is the chinese character which has very heavy and hard image. So the Gap between such a tough name and the Tohoho character is a good essence of this nonsense game.

A domestic and self-deprecating humor of Japanese
This Hoshino family travel reports pages is in Katamari Damacy 2 site (Japanese only). Mom's low-tension reaction and the family's nonsense conversations are a kind of Japanese self-deprecating humor . And also in the game, there are so many very very domestic things like a Japanese style toilet, a Kotatsu (kotatsu is Japanese electric heater table), and then on the Kotatsu, you can see a Nengajyo (New Year card). Each person, each item seems very Japanese. Actually this game seems to be good tool to learn more about Japanese life ha ha ha.

Crazy Sound track.
I suppose while you play this game you will not be able to stop humming "Na na na na na...". Anyway the producers of game enjoyed a mismatch in sound track too. This singer and this singer are typical Enka singer, usually young people have never heard Enka, Enka singers does not sing game music.

I can imagine if I had this game, I would return to my home after work late at night, eat a late dinner, take a shower and sit down in front of the PS2. Nothing on my mind, just humming "na na na na na" and rolling the ball bigger and bigger, make today's star,  with a stupid name, then go to bed. Such a "one rolling before bed" would be my custom. :-p. I will download the wallpepr and screen saver (I like this most!).  This spring, they will release Everybody like Katamari Damacy.(Katamari Damacy 2). Please wait for a little for the New one! Anyway the King looks like an American PRIDE fighter Herring, Heath to me, What do you think?

Animation fan's costume play

Last weekend I updated my Tokyo Travel article,  this time I wrote about Sumo Town Ryogoku, Please check it out!! 

Anyway  I had a little party last night with my friends, we played the card game "grass" which one of my co-workers bought in the U.S. we also cooked and ate Takoyaki. It was enjoyable and we all drank a lot ( thee bolltes of win, three bottles of sake, some beer and maybe more) . I always enjoy having parties, It is one of life's simple pleasures.  By the way I got back home late, and today I am very very sleepy .  Even now I feel I am still deaming still now. My brain is not working well :-p.

So let me make this an easy post toady. When I wrote the Sazae-san post two days ago. I found that Sazae-san on a costume-play events site. I said most people don't seem to enjoy wearing costumes in this super stupid robbery post. However when I saw this animation costume event, I was surprised to see their passion for costume play and I enjoyed seeing them very much. Let me introduce some that I like. Okay this is the pretty girls collection!! Nausica , Harry Potter, and she is cool as Motoko Kusanagi from Kokaku Kidotai(Ghost in the shell).　Then I laughed to see this Desler of Star blazers. Final FantasyVII (original)...Great CG, take a look at their trailer. Piccolo of Dragon ball (original). And I have just found out there is the world costume play summit! A first one in 2005 was already held in Germany.

That is the photo I took last night, I love that KEDAMONO mask from my favorite DVD POPEE the performer. Yes!  it was my little costume play?

Reasonable Tokyo

I am cautious and picky about making affiliations or links to commercial services. But if I think the service is valuable for the people who visit my site, visit my Tokyo. And if it is something I might also like to use, then I am willing to cooperate with them in my way.  TokyoCoupon is the first such service which I will cooperate with.  A 50% discount for restaurants is nice actually, since I love to eat ethnic foods and unfortunately they tend to be expensive in Tokyo. A 50% discount is a good deal. So I 've decided to link to them, I will use this coupon by myself and I will write a restaurant review for my blog, They will be useful for people who visit my site and Tokyo too.

Actually I am thinking about writing "How to visit Tokyo reasonably" article. How to make reservation at a discount,  Which of the various travel passes you can use for trains and buses.  What kind of stuff is good to buy in a department store or what is okay to purchase in 100 yen shops. How to enjoy an Onsen in Tokyo without going too far, KINKEN shops (discount ticket shops) are helpful. etc,. Then this TokyoCoupons will be included in the article. 
I can tell you, I am very picky about choosing a restaurant. They should be clean, provide nice service, and be reasonably price. I am looking forward to visiting somewhere soon.

Sazae-san is a economic index for Japanese

Sometimes I wrote about Sazae-san; Sazae-san syndrome, Sazae-san ipod. It is really really just a happy family animation, no big accidents, no adventures, there 's not even an evil villain in that animation. However it has always remained very high in viewer ratings always. Look this is last week's viewer ratings for TV shows. No1 is the World Cup Qualifying,vs North Korea.(Of course we won). No2 is a News show, No3 is the TV drama"GOKUSEN"  in which Yukue Nakama appeares, No4 is Taiga drama,  2005 is Yoshitsune. Then No5 is Sazae-san. Not only the animation, we had some real dramas before. Hmm to be honest with you, I do not think it is funny, interesting, or enjoyable. I feel many Japanese automatically turn the TV channel to Sazaesan at 6:30pm on Sunday. Or maybe we have "Sazae san DNA". I am serious! Sazae-san may have something that makes us feel comfortable or relaxed. It might be close to folklore or other such traditonal stuff. At 6:30pm on Sunday, we return to the spiritual home with Sazae-san. and it does not seem so strange.

Anyway Daiwa research has an interesting report, The viewing rating of Sazae-san is related to the Tokyo market (Tokyo Stock Price Index). Their research says after Jan 2003, they compared the TOPIX and Sazae-san viewer ratings. When the viewing rate was high, the Stock prices were down, when the viewing rate was low, the stock price were up.  At least that was the correlation their findings suggested . Of course we know that TOPIX comes under the influence of the NY stock market. But the correlation between the viewing rate of Sazae-san and TOPIX is much closer to home than the Dow in NY.Ha ha ha so funny. Of course we can suppose it is , that many people watching Sazae-san means mass population in Japan ; so it naturally follows that  their activities would be of concern in regards to consumer intention, corporate performance and stock prices on the Tokyo market.

And that same study says the number of the dog-related news and topics in the media (TV, papers, magazine etc) is related to TOPIX too. The coefficient of correlation in their research is 0.96. Since 1 is perfect, TOPIX seems to correlate very closely with dogs. Okay how can I analyze this ? Hmm perhaps it means that spending increases when people have the money to spare for their dogs.? Diet Dog food, dog trimming grooming, dog clothes and bowlingual?

Anyway when I did a search for Sazae san on Google images , I found some funny files. I love this, this, this, this, this. ha ha ha.