Recently in Japanese culture Category

To be honest, I love stewardesses, or female flight attendants working on the aeroplane. As is often the case with Asian airlines, Japan's airlines such as Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways have many attractive-looking stewardesses because of the history they once hired such women as flight attendants.

Nevertheless, I love them not only because they look good. It goes without saying that they aren't so much "the waitresses on the plane" as "the security staff" who maintain the security of the aircraft cabin. To satisfy passengers in normal or emergency conditions, they need to have hard training and pass tests to be qualified as flight attendants. Even after they manage to become stewardesses, they should have and pass periodic tests to avoid being disqualified. Their attractive smiles, dignified attitudes and graceful behaviour on the plane, backed up with their pride in strict training, mesmerise us very much. They are really noble and saintly women, differing from similarly good-looking women like newscasters of telly stations or campaign girls in pits of motor racing circuits.

Their brave and cool-headed actions often save many passengers. When the ANA 857 aeroplane was hijacked at Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido, Japan on 21 June 1995 by a desperate banker, a flight attendant was captured by him, being got a full nelson with a knife pointed at her, and taken in hostage in the cabin for tens of hours with the passengers and the other crew. After the criminal had been captured by police and all the passengers released, she attended a press conference and had an interview with the press corps, talking calmly in front of TV cameras what had been going on in the cabin at that time. She behaved as a real professional. A standard young girl would've been too shocked and mentally damaged to appear in public and talk in front of press staff if she had experienced such tough circumstances. The crew members were so calm, disciplined and strong-minded that the criminal didn't get so much furious, resulting in killing or injuring no personnel until arrested.

When it comes to strong-minded actions in a dangerous situation, policewomen and military servicewomen may have such professionalism as well. They don't enchant me, however, for police officers are the personnel who controls us, regulates us and exercises the power over us, and the soldiers, sailors and airwomen don't appear in our daily lives so they aren't familiar to me.

For me, stewardesses offering us their best service on board are the best women. It's the happiest time for me that, on the taxiing aeroplane preparing for takeoff, I catch the eyes of a stewardess sitting in the jump seat facing me and when our eyes meet we smile each other.

As a passenger, I always respect them. When getting aboard I don't forget to say hello to greeting crew at the entrance door. When I lift up my heavy luggage to stow it into the overhead stowage I do it by myself instead of making her do it. I order a food or drink in a polite attitude and when she serves me and clears the table, I always say thank you to her with a smile. Of course I say thank you and goodbye to them to show my most gratitude when I'm getting off the aircraft at destination.

Needless to say, annoying the cabin crew is absolutely unacceptable. Deplorably, there are such idiots that smoke in the lavatory, use a mobile phone in the cabin, yell at her for trivial matters, or even use violence or pervert actions on her. Such vulgar passengers should get off the plane, as they don't reach the level of class to be qualified to use it.

An aircraft cabin is a salon for sophisticated ladies and gentlemen. The noble hostesses will smile at only such cultivated persons that can enjoy travel in a prudent manner.

We Japanese know that English is the world's de facto standard language everyone in the world need to learn to communicate with each other in this fast-globarising society. Mastering English is, nevertheless, one of the greatest hardships for most of Japanese who were born in Japan and raised by Japanese parents within Japan. They learn English as a mandatory subject in middle school, high school and even college for up to eight years, but very few of them have a good command of it.

Quite a few analysts have given comments why most Japanese are weak in English. Some say it's because English's structure of language is quite different from that of the language they usually speak. Others point out the problem with Japan's English education policies, relying overly on teaching translation techniques from English to Japanese rather than communicative English.

It is also said that English isn't necessary for Japanese people's everyday life. Even if English is taught in school, it's what they can forget after managing to pass the entrance examination of their highest education facility at long last. Once they finish studying for exams, they can do without English for life as long as they stay within Japan. Rather, showing off English is considered in many cases as rude, affected and disgusting behaviour by other average Japanese, especially elderly people who have less chance to learn English.

Why do average Japanese living in Japan hate such people who speak English fluently, though they may neither feel rude, affected nor disgusting to good painters, professional musicians, skilled karate masters, or those who are good at something other than English? Japan has been subject to America's control in business, economy, military, culture and everything else since WWII, and various kinds of things have been brought into Japan. People in Japan have been mesmerised by such American-style things and, because it has been noised about especially for the last 15 years that all examples in America are the global standard they should follow, they have made their best efforts to try to incorporate them in their daily life. However, a few things are what they can't manage to do it ---- English is the one. Affection to what they try to get in vain turns into hatred over time, and the hatred will be expressed at those who successfully have it. Due to such nature of Japanese people, most of them don't or pretend not to speak English well so that they won't generate unexpected resentment among people. Because it's considered affected to show off speaking English in public, they have less motivation to use it.

In my humble opinion, one of the important attitudes to master English is to stop admiring America too much. English is not a language for Americans only, but a lingua franca everybody in the world learns whether or not he is a native English speaker. You'll find out that American English mainly taught in Japan is not dominant in the world if you travel countries in Europe, Middle East or Southeast Asia, where British English is widely used in conversation and signs in public. People in the UK, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia use their own local English. Even within the United States, you'll see various kinds of people from businesspersons to hotel clerks, taxi drivers and newsstand workers who speak in various kinds of accents. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Nothing is fashionable and nothing is dowdyish. They are all English.

We should be a master of English, not a slave of it. We should learn it as not so much one of American cultures as an interface language to get our views over anybody in the world, regardless of his mother tongue, representing the nation we stand. The more Japanese can do it, the more they can influence in the world, resulting in the benefit of our country.

Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I'm hanging out in Facebook and Twitter, rather than writing blog entries. Please visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/masayuki.kawagishi or follow @_Yuki_K_ on Twitter ;-)

I see that the world of mobile phones are rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing and Apple is expanding the market with iPhone, its flagship mobile phones with a music player, games and other applications all-in-one. Following apple, various mobile phone manufacturers, from Samsung to small makers in China, are releasing smartphones with Android operating system developed by Google.

In Japan, I think that mobile phones are rapidly "globalised" for recent years. A few years ago all you could see here was the "Galapagos" handphones sold only within Japan and unavailable once you brought them out of Japan. But recently in the train or on the streets you see the same devices as those seen in the rest of the world --- iPhones, Android smartphones and even Blackberry phones (very rare though).

More than that, this month I had a good news showing Japan's globalisation of the mobile phone environment. A news says that from 13 July this year you can send text messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of the different carriers from yours. That is normal in the rest of the world, but that isn't here in Japan --- if you have a mobile phone sold by NTT DoCoMo, you can send SMS only to NTT DoCoMo users, not to au, Softbank or any other carrier's users. As the SMS gateways are closed to different carriers, you can rarely see here such services as balance enquiry, network configurations, service registrations and purchasing something by sending text messages to service providers as you can see in Singapore, Hong Kong or some European countries. The opening the SMS gateways will probably enable you to have such services even in Japan in the near future.

Japan and the countries other than Japan don't stand in opposite. Japan is an extension of other countries, and any country is an extension of Japan. It is essential that anything available in the world is available in Japan too.

October is a month of fruits, readings, sports, art, and --- more than those --- festivals. There were various kinds of festivals in the Kiba Park, which was close to my house. The biggest one was the Koto Kumin Matsuri festival from the 16th through the 17th of October.

It was the third time for me to see this festival, so there was nothing new in it. Everything was almost the same as usual. All I did there were to eat Indian foods bought from stalls inside the park and to watch a performance by Vivace, a marching band consisting of only female employees of ALSOK, a Japanese security company.

In the same days, there was a festival by the students of University of the Sacred Heart, which had been built in the former residence of Empress Dowager Nagako, the previous Emperor Hirohito's wife. This university is for women only, so it's usually closed to people other than the students of it, except on special days like the festival. I wanted to get inside the university because I wanted to see the historical houses inside, such as the former house of Nagako and the chapel of the university. During the festival the university was open to public, so it was one of perfect chances to see them which wouldn't come so many times.

After seeing the Koto Kumin Matsuri, I went to Hiroo to see the festival of University of the Sacred Heart called Seishinsai. I took the subway to Shibuya and there I took a bus to Japan Red Cross Medical Center, where I got off the bus and I had a gate of the university. After ID check at the gate I got inside and walked along the path for several minutes then I had the Palace, the former house of the Prince Kuninomiya, where his daughter Nagako had been raised and lived until she had married the previous Emperor Hirohito.

The Palace

The Kuni House, the site of a main entrance of the Palace, where Empress Nagako departed to the Imperial Palace on her wedding.

The Marian Hall, an auditorium of USH. The Latin phrase on the top made me feel it was gorgeous.

The chapel, used on a daily basis for masses and prayers. An alumna of USH can use it for her wedding.

The interior of the chapel, where the student choir practiced singing. I heard their sounds reflected to multiple directions on the round ceiling and resonated fantastically. I admired its gimmick of construction to help Catholics feel God's Power.

In addition, there were an open-air stage, stalls selling foods and goods, and many kinds of events and amusements during the festival, but I left in haste because there were such young and bright boys and girls that a middle-aged man like me couldn't stay any longer :-)

First of all, I'd like to ask you if you are of AGE 18 OR UP? If so, you can continue reading. Otherwise, please leave.

I've changed my mind. In the beginning of this year I said I'd give up keeping my Japanese history website HIMEMIKO*WEB to move my content to Wikipedia, but I find it's better to keep them here than in Wikipedia or other websites.

Anyway visit http://www.himemiko.info/ for details.

Softbank has announced today that 16 types of its "2008 winter model" cell phones will be released this winter. Among them, Nokia N82 will be on sale in the middle of this November and Nokia E71 in this December.

Nokia N82 is a tiny, light cell phone with a 5 Megapixels of digital camera where an auto-focused Carl-Zeiss Tessar lens and a Xenon flashlight are equipped. HSDPA data receptions, Bluetooth v2.0 (A2DP, HFP, HSP, DUN, BPP and more profiles), wireless LAN connections (IEEE802.11 b/g) are available. You can play YouTube motion videos with it. An internal GPS antenna is equipped and navigation is available using NAVITIME for Smartphone or Nokia Maps.

Nokia E71 is a business-use smartphone with a QWERTY-style full keyboard, covered with stainless steel. It's a bit smaller than Nokia E61, the previous model, and unlike E61, this has a 3.2-Megapixel camera. HSDPA connections and wireless LAN access are also available like N82.

These phones will be released from Softbank Mobile, but unlike other Japanese typical cell phones, they has no "Softbank" logos printed on their body.nor are they named any carrier-oriented model numbers like "X03NK". They are called just "Nokia N82" or "Nokia E71", like those sold in the rest of the world.

They attract me very much. I want to get at least one of them!

Kiba Park is within a few minutes' walk from my house. Various events are performed almost every week.

Two weeks ago there was Oedo mikoshi matsuri (mikoshi festival) with tens of mikoshis.

And, Koto Kumin Matsuri (Koto Ward citizens' festival) was hold last weekend. There were many booths where staff members sold foods and items from all over the nation as well as foreign countries life Philippines, Bangladesh, Peru and more.

The Kiba-no-kakunori (riding-on-a-square-timber) show is Kiba neighborhood's traditional acrobatics.

This is Fukagawa no chikaramochi (Fukagawa strong man show). It's one of Fukagawa area's traditional entertainments. Expert can do like this:

The town of Nerima, Tokyo, where I live for seven years, is home to Japanese animation, or anime. Nerima has had one of the biggest anime studios, Toei Animation Company, as well as more than 90 intensive anime-related companies since Japan's first anime film was aired in 1958. World's famous animes such as Dragon Ball series, One Piece, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sailor Moon series, has been created in this place.

The Nerima Ward government hosted today an anime festival, Neritan Anime Project in Oizumi, around Oizumi Gakuen station of Seibu Railway, to which Toei Animation Company is close. Leiji Matsumoto, one of Japan's famous manga-anime artists and a resident of the Oizumi neighborhood, was invited to the festival. One of his works, the Galaxy Express 999, was a great anime series popular among many Japanese kids in 1980s. For those of you who don't know this manga, the story of it is set in a space-faring, high-tech future, where mechanized people with "machine bodies" are pushing humanity towards irrelevance and extinction. A street urchin, Tetsuro, wants an indestructible machine body, giving him the ability to live forever. While machine bodies are expensive, they are supposedly given away for free on the planet Andromeda, the end of the line for the space train Galaxy Express 999. He meets up with a beautiful woman, Maetel, who is the spitting image of his dead mother. Maetel offers him passage on 999 if he will be her traveling companion. Tetsuro agrees. Another notable character is the strict, mysterious alien conductor, that sometimes gets involved in Tetsuro and Maetel's adventures. (See Wikipedia) The Galaxy Express 999 was first published in 1978, so this year is the 30th anniversary.

Today Matsumoto was appointed a "one-day station master" of Oizumi Gakuen station. He settled near the station when he was 25 years old, and created the wonderful manga and anime works in Oizumi. The ward government and the Seibu Railway company granted such a honorary position on him for his long-year contribution to this neighborhood.

He said through his speech, that his habitation in the Oizumi neighborhood was destiny. When he came to Tokyo from his birthplace, Fukuoka, he just "happened to" start living there. One day when he walked around his house he found a former resident of Tomitaro Makino, a Japan's well-known botanist. At that time he began his manga artist career through his first work focusing on entomology. Matsumoto felt as if he had been lead to live near Makino, as a person working with wildlife.

When it comes to destiny, I happened to begin reading his Galaxy Express 999 comic books just two weeks ago as well as Emma, when I did not know about this festival. I think that perhaps it is also destiny that I read this comic these days and come to the festival today.

Anime is now not only a maniac hobby by otakus, geeks or nerds, but is one of Japan's important industries today. As Japan's economy has been in recession for many decades and its technology is becoming less cost-effective, anime industry may be a great messiah for the future Japanese people.

Some of the pictures are uploaded on Flickr.

These days I'm stuck with reading Emma, which isn't Jane Austin's novel but a comic by Japanese manga artist, Kaoru Mori. It's a love story of a gentleman of the gentry class and a maid servant of a lower birth in England in the Victorian era.

Emma, born in a poor seaside Yorkshire village and working at a house of a retired governess in London as a maid, is a girl who is a little bit shy and reserved but clever and hard-working. One day she met William Jones, the eldest son of the "House of Jones", a very wealthy merchant middle class family that is attempting to rise into the gentry, and then they fall in love with each other. The two meet many obstacles in their love because the marriage of persons of different classes was not allowed in England of that era, but they try to overcome it.

This manga is not just a story for "maid-moé" readers in Akihabara. It's a love story of the people of the Victorian age, under detailed historical investigation by Kaoru Mori and Rico Murakami, who is a historical consultant of 19th century's England. Emma's calm and peaceful personality attracts many Japan and other countries' men and women, not only manga-otakus. Since this comic was first released in Japan in 2002, it has been translated into English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German and many more languages. It was adapted into a TV anime series as well, and aired worldwide.

Though I'm United States fetish, after reading this comic I changed my mind to adore UK and British culture as well. I want to go to London and Yorkshire some day but I unlikely can do it because I have no money to fly there :-<