Archive for March, 2007

Random Japan Notes

Today I have some various Japan-related observations:

• I half-jokingly commented recently that Japan would deal with its declining birthrate by replacing its workers with robots, rather than allowing in large numbers of immigrants. Well, it’s not a joke. Recently Maria went to a work-related dinner where she was chatting with an American government official who lives and works in Tokyo (and who I shouldn’t name since he didn’t know he’d end up in my blog). He expressed the opinion that the Japanese are intensively developing robotic technology with their demographic issues in mind, and that in 10 years or so a significant portion of low-wage jobs in Japan - from factory work to care for the elderly - will be automated.
• With heavy drinking on the rise, Japan is now on the warpath against drunk driving:
  

  In the vanguard is Toyota, which plans to launch a car in 2009 that will shut down the engine if its driver is drunk, using sensors on the steering wheel to measure the alcohol level in the driver’s sweat. If the driver is wearing gloves, a camera on the dashboard will check for dilated pupils and the car’s computer will detect erratic steering. Nissan, meanwhile, is testing a breathalyser-like device into which the driver must blow before starting the car.

  In grad school I had a class taught by Jeane Kirkpatrick. One time she went off on a tangent about “coercive seat belts” - her term for automatic seat belts. It’s not hard to imagine how she’d react to this.

• Maria caught a bit of a program on Japanese TV last night on how to deal with your child when he or she cries at night. Babies typically sleep with their parents in Japan, so they don’t even get into the crib vs. co-sleeping debate here. They suggested: have daddy carry the baby around, go out on the veranda for some air, cluck like a chicken, and cry with the baby (to shock the baby out of crying). Clearly they haven’t heard of the Ferber method ;-). Actually, I think it’s partly a cultural matter and partly a practical one: Letting your baby cry may be an option in a big house in an American suburb, but it won’t make you too popular in a 1 bedroom Tokyo apartment, when you have another kid trying to sleep and neighbors sharing walls on each side. It took us about 6 weeks after we got here to finally get Eidan sleeping well again (and thankfully, sleeping on his own).
• Check out the trailer for the new Japanese Movie, Go to the Bubble (click Enter, then click Trailer, then click the one labeled 01 - be warned it plays music after you click Enter). It’s about a woman who is sent back in time by her company to the height of Japan’s bubble economy, to stop the bubble from collapsing. It’s actually billed as a romantic comedy. I like that the prop used for the time machine is nothing more than a front-loading washing machine (”timu washa,” as the man says in the trailer). Also, listen for the Japanese phrase for time travel - “timu slippu” (time slip).
• [mpiphoto=122,right,scale,250]Japan is making a late entry in the “world’s tallest man-made structure” game. The Sumida Tower (aka New Tokyo Tower) will be 2001 feet tall. It’s expected to be completed in 2011. Tokyo actually doesn’t have any remarkably tall buildings, so this will really dwarf everything else in the city. I think the structure itself has a nice design, but I think it will look ridiculously out of proportion to everything around it. The official site is Japanese only, but the trailer is cool, even if you can’t understand the narration (click the “movie” link on the top left). According to a woman in my Japanese class the old Tokyo Tower will be torn down, but I haven’t been able to confirm that anywhere.

[tags]Japan, robots, Sumida Tower, Toyota, drunk driving, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Go to the Bubble, Ferber method[/tags]

Kai’s Birthday Party at School and Hinamatsuri (Girl’s Day)

[mpiphoto=120,leftclear,scale,300]

Click for a very cute video of Kai’s classmates singing a Japanese Happy Birthday song. One of the cool things about Japanese is that it has onomatopoeic words for feelings, not just sounds (like “bang!” in English). The kids sing “uki uki” which is for feeling excited.

Kai’s birthday is in March, and yesterday at his school they had a party for all the kids in the class with March birthdays, and to celebrate Hinamatsuri (Girl’s Day, aka Doll Festival). As you can see in the pictures, the birthday kids had to stand on stage. It started with one of the teachers pretending to hold a microphone and asking each of them about their favorite food. Kai’s teacher prepped him beforehand, and he knows the Japanese word for rice - gohan - so he answered with that.

Then they each had one of their parents join them on stage, to present the child’s “treasure.” Kai had me bring a toy dinosaur (it was sent to him in Japan by my father and step-mother, and Kai and I painted it together). The night before Maria helped me write up what I would say in Japanese, as it was too complicated for me to get through it without notes. I think everyone understood me, as I definitely got a reaction out of the kids with “issho ni kazarimashita” (we decorated together - for the folks in my Japanese class, I’ve put my entire, 30 second presentation below - I wimped out and wrote it in Romaji).

After that the kids sang a very cute Japanese happy birthday song, then they did a big circle dance, and we finished up with sakura mochi, a traditioinal Girl’s Day snack.

My Presentation of Kai’s Dinosaur:

Kono kyooryuu wa Kai ni daiji na mono desu.
This dinosaur is Kai’s treasure.

Daiji to wa naze wa mitsu no riyuu ga arimasu.
There are three important reasons why.

Hitotsu: Kai wa kyooryuu suki na no desu
First: Kai likes dinosaurs (dinosaurs are Kai’s favorite)
[I don't fully understand the role of "no" here, even after Maria explained it to me...]

Futatsu: kono kyooryuu wa papa to issho ni kazarimashita
Second: he decorated this dinosaur together with his father

Mitsu: kyooryuu moderu wa America kara ojii-chan to obaa-san ga okutta mono desu
Third: the dinosaur model was sent from America by his grandfather and grandmother
[okutta is an adjective form of the verb okuru (to send) - it's outside my experience but a good explanation is here, under the "hard to understand" heading ]

Ijo desu!
That’s it!

[tags]Hinamatsuri, Girl’s Day, Japanese kindergarten[/tags]

Kichijoji, Inokashira Park, and the Ghibli Museum

[mpiphoto=107,left,scale,250]We’ve made two trips to Kichijoji in the past week. It’s about a 40 minute journey on the trains, but it’s worth it, as it’s a great place to spend time with the boys. Yesterday Kai had a short day at school, and the first plum blossoms of the year greeted us at Kichijoji’s Inokashira Park (they look similar to cherry blossoms, but plum trees bloom even earlier). There were about a dozen photographers there, with their high-powered cameras to capture the moment.

We came to the same spot last week, and the boys loved playing near the park’s lake. Given all the time we’ve spent in a completely urban environment, they were thrilled to be surrounded by water, trees, and birds. Eidan literally spent an hour just throwing leaves and rocks in the water, and Kai spent the same amount of time building bridging with sticks, and harassing a turtle that was trying to bask peacefully in the sun. They did the same exact thing in our visit yesterday (but the turtle wasn’t there this time).

Near the far end of the park is the Ghibli Museum, which is a favorite spot for kids (Ghibli movies are to Japan what Disney movies are to the US, although the museum is much more modest than a Disney Land). Normally you have to buy tickets in advance, but it wasn’t crowded on this winter weekday, so I was able to get in with the boys. Unfortunately they don’t allow taking pictures in any of the museum’s indoor areas, but I have some good exterior photos (see below) and this website has good pictures of the inside.

The park also has a modest zoo. It’s inexpensive and most of the animal cages are easily viewed from a toddler’s height, making it nice for little ones. Kai particularly enjoyed the playground, as it wasn’t old and rundown like most playgrounds in Tokyo (the decrepitness and dirtiness of many Tokyo playgrounds stand in jarring contrast to the overall modernity and cleanliness of the city).

Kichijoji station has to be the best smelling train station I’ve ever been in. It’s packed with cake, cookie, and dessert shops - you can’t get out of the station without your mouth watering.

The park is on the south side of the station. On the north side is Sun Road, which is a roughly two block area filled with small shops. It’s not as gargantuan as Tokyo’s more famous shopping areas, but I really liked it. Most of the shops were specialty stores (one was nothing but socks and stockings, another focused on bento sets for kids’ school lunches, etc.), so browsing was fun.

Just off of sun road is a I-Setan department store, which has a toy store on the 5th floor that’s unusual for Tokyo, in that there are several play areas for the kids (that’s common in US toy stores, but much harder to find here), so Eidan particularly enjoyed visiting there.

Both times we’ve gone to Kichijoji I’ve intended to visit Kichijoji 0123, which is a play hall designed specifically for the 3 and under crowd. But both times we’ve been having so much fun in the other places nearby that we’ve never made it there. Maybe next time.

[tags]Kichijoji, Tokyo, Inokashira Park, Ghibli Museum, Inokashira Park Zoo, Kichijoji 0123, Sun Road[/tags]

mPicasaIntegration Is Back

I’ve finished my emergency surgery on Markus Steinhauer’s mPicasaIntegration plugin, so it can now read the new Picasa RSS feed. I’ve created a page for it, with more information and a download link (there’s a link for it on the sidebar as well). It’s still 95% Markus’ code - most of my changes are in the RSS parsing, and I added some code to get the image dimensions and update the database, since that information is no longer in the RSS feed.

I’m disabling comments on this post, as I’d like any feedback to be on the page.

[tags]Wordpress, Wordpress plugin, Picasa[/tags]