asazuke

Life in Japan, food, music, whatever…

The Wrecker 4 September, 2010

Filed under: news,politics — johnraff @ 3:12 pm
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Ichirō Ozawa got that nickname “こわしや” a long time ago, and I still remember him saying there was no way he could work with the Japanese Socialist Party, whom he was supposed to be in a coalition with, back in 1993, when a guy called Hosokawa (now a potter) led a historic non-LDP government for about half a year. The Socialists were shortly after visited by a beezebub from the LDP who whispered in leader Murayama’s ear asking how he’d like to be Prime Minister. The subsequent LDP-Socialist coalition got back power from the first successful attempt to break the LDP’s monopoly on power since the war, and the now completely discredited Socialist party dwindled away to their current irrelevance. Since leaving the LDP years ago Ozawa has been involved in the formation, and breakup, of numerous parties – hence his nickname.

He’s actually a rather conservative polititian with a somewhat nationalistic attitude to foreign policy – this is what caused the fallout with the Socialists. Even today he’s well to the right in the generally progressive Democratic Party of Japan, and a lot of people resent the power he weilds. Add to this that he’s under a cloud over some suspicious land dealings that he claims to be innocent in. Few people believe him and he is not popular at all in the country in general, compared with Prime Minister Kan who seems to have more popular support, if anything, than his DPJ party.

So what’s Ozawa up to, standing against Kan in the upcoming DPJ leadership election? If he won, the DPJ would almost certainly fall further in the opinion polls and quite possibly lose to the LDP in the next election. Unfortunately he still has a lot of support in the party behind the scenes, among the more conservative members. While poor at speaking in public he’s a brilliant “old school” politician who thrives in meetings and grass-roots work, and a lot of new DPJ Diet members, the “Ozawa children” owe their seats to him and will probably vote for him.

Moreover, rumour has it he wouldn’t care too much if his election as leader led to the breakup of the DPJ, because he’d be able to go on to form a coalition with fed-up LDP members with political views more to his taste.

The Wrecker strikes again.

 

Longevity 7 August, 2010

Filed under: news — johnraff @ 2:21 pm
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Japan has one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranked up with those yoghurt-eating Bulgarians and clean-living Scandinavians (socialism is good for your health). It can’t be the laid-back lifestyle, except maybe in Okinawa which does indeed come at the top in Japan, so a lot of people put it down to the healthy Japanese diet, which is low in animal fat, high in fish, fibre, grains, vegetables… all that stuff that’s supposed to be good for you. The main thing wrong with traditional Japanese food is that it’s a bit salty, causing a lot of stomach cancer, especially in the north where a lot of pickles get them through the cold winter. Or, rather, got them through. Now there’s a Macdonalds on every street corner (ugh! I’ll tell you how much I hate that stuff some other time), young Japanese are raised on all kinds of prepackaged junk and no-one expects the next generation to live to 100 like the current lot.

Even so, you don’t yet see the kind of obesity problem here that’s hit the US and northern Europe in the last 20 years or so, and there are now some 40,000 centenarians here. Of course, carrying on an active lifestyle into old age has its limits and a lot of these old folk tend to live quietly, not going out so much… One such in Tokyo last week reached 110 I think it was, and some people from the local ward office went round to offer their congratulations, and a small present. Apart from his old age pension, this old guy had also got a little something on turning 100 but at that time his family said he didn’t want to talk to anyone, so the officials had just left it with them. This time however they were let in to Granddad’s room and there he was, but obviously not in a talkative mood.

He’d been dead for thirty years.

 

Beef Wars 9 April, 2010

Filed under: food & drink,news — johnraff @ 10:44 am
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In the paper and on the radio yesterday, now on TV today: the “beef bowl” chain Yoshinoya have cut their main standard bowl from ¥380 to ¥270 for a limited period, and the two other big chains, Matsuya and Sukiya, are taking it down to ¥250. ( All these “something-ya”… “ya” means “shop”, also in Nagoya. ) Cooked beef on rice is qite tasty really, much better than a Mac in my humble opinion, and was already quite cheap anyway.

Yoshinoya has been around for years – I would drop in sometimes after drinking beer till 3:00 back in the days… (They’re open all night.) The other two are newer, but I wonder if there’ll be a limit on how low prices can go around here?

We’ve got deflation, folks.

 

Queuing for Doughnuts 4 April, 2010

Filed under: city,news — johnraff @ 2:23 am
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If you live in the US you presumably know all about Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but here in Japan they’re an exotic import, like sushi over there perhaps. I’ve never tried one but apparently it’s the crispy sugar glaze over the soft doughnut inside that does it. When KK opened a shop in Tokyo they had some 500 people queued up for 5 hours on the opening day to be among the first to sample this delicacy, so when the first Nagoya branch opened the other week they were well prepared for something almost as big here (Nagoya is about a fifth the size of Tokyo).

As it turned out, they had some 900 people waiting for eight hours for their first taste of a Krispy Kreme Doughnut.

Nagoyans like to queue apparently.

 

Our Mayor 20 March, 2010

Filed under: city,news,politics — johnraff @ 2:27 pm
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Takashi Kawamura‘s a bit of a character. He first crossed the radar when he was running as Diet member for a constituency round here – his trademarks were riding around on a bicycle and speaking with a broad Nagoya accent, the kind nobody except him actually uses these days. He got elected and bicycle canvassing caught on, but nobody else tries that Nagoya accent… It’s OK for a bit, but he does lay it on a bit thick. It’s all about the Common Touch no doubt, and he’s doing something right because now he’s the Mayor of Nagoya.

There are other reasons for that, though, a big one being his promise to cut Nagoya city tax by 10%. Of course 20% would have been even better, but you can see the appeal of that idea – for those on low incomes (like us) city tax can be quite heavy as it doesn’t have as many allowances as national income tax. Of course for those whose incomes are too low to be taxed at all the 10% reduction has no meaning. For them, more important might be the social services that would have to be cut to pay for that tax reduction.

Kawamura has laid on a distraction though – his plan to halve the number of city councillors from 75 to 38 or so, and halve their salaries too, as well as stopping their expense allowances! Here he has rather more support among the general Nagoya population than in the city council, where the overpaid leeches are fighting him tooth and nail, understandably. Even at half, they’d still get much more than I do so I’m with Kawamura on this one, and it has to be admitted he’s already halved his own salary. He’s going to try to dissolve the council if they don’t pass his motion, and I’m sure they won’t, but needs to collect a huge number of signatures in order to do a “recall”. He’ll probably succeed, but it will take some time, during which the councillors can continue drawing their inflated salaries and collecting their expenses…

So is he a genuine man of the people or a right-wing demagogue in disguise? We’ll see eventually…

 

The birds again.

Filed under: countryside,news — johnraff @ 2:00 pm
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Those birds were on TV yesterday, flying around in huge flocks in Gujo Hachiman – a town in Gifu, a bit north of our country place. According to the announcer they were bramblings (アトリ in Japanese), which seemed about right, except that I thought they had a crest on their heads… Anyway they were flying around in these huge flocks – some 900,000 said the local expert – making an amazing whooshing noise. Our flock might not have been quite that big but there were certainly enough of them. Migrants from the Asian continent apparently, so we won’t be seeing any more for a while once they head back for the summer.

 

Crows nests 18 March, 2010

Filed under: city,Uncategorized — johnraff @ 2:18 am
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It’s nesting time for crows again, and the power-cut warnings have gone out. This time of year they’re caused by urban crows building their nests on top of electricity poles, using metal coat-hangers to supplement the meagre supply of twigs they’d otherwise use. You know, those hangers that come back from the dry-cleaners and people use to dry shirts on the balcony. Turn your back for a moment and the crows are off with them, and they make short-circuits on the power lines. The electricity company are kept busy clearing them out, and meanwhile we’re warned not to leave unused coat-hangers lying about.

The city crow population has been going up and up, so in Tokyo they’re becoming a major problem, but they’re fascinating birds actually – one of the few species to have free time after making a living just to play. Putting golf balls on railway lines just to see what happens, dropping things on people they don’t like… last year I saw a crow funeral for one who had maybe been electrocuted – lying on the ground under a pole anyway. I wish I could speak their language.

 

Toyota Shock, part two

Filed under: news — johnraff @ 2:12 am
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We don’t need this. Just as with GM, what’s good for Toyota is good for Japan, and, more specifically, good for Nagoya. The economy of Aichi prefecture and Nagoya revolves around Toyota – the network of suppliers and sub-suppliers, and all the people selling things to their workers all feel the pinch when Toyota take a hit, and the effect percolates through to the rest of us. Just as the Lehmann shock seemed to be wearing off, and the big T seemed to have got in ahead of the competition with the eco-car Prius, we get this quality-control, rip-off-the-customers thing, and all the bonuses due out this Spring have been cut.

I don’t want to say anybody’s just Japan-bashing, because there does seem to be some truth in some of the issues: the accelerator-floormat thing, and the half-second delay before the brakes kicked in under some circumstances that some people noticed here, for example, but clear evidence of fatally serious defects in the system is not plentiful. To some extent it’s been whipped up by the media, and I’m sure lots of people whose livelihood does not depend on Toyota’s prosperity were not particularly bothered to see them brought down a peg or two. Their response wasn’t that skillful either, PR-wise. Toyota are pretty good at customer service generally, at least here, so that came as a surprise.

Anyway, something we could have done without.

 

Whale Meat Again 20 January, 2010

Filed under: food & drink,news,politics — johnraff @ 1:00 am
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The whaling season got off to a good start with a collision between the Japanese ship and the Sea Shepherd hi-tech speedboat that sank the pirates. The Japanese media refer to the protesters as something like terrorists, and can’t seem to understand why the Australians, and most of the rest of the world, should have any objection to this lawful “research” culling of several hundred whales every year.

On paper they’re right of course, but the ironical thing is that most Japanese people wouldn’t care at all if they never ate whalemeat again. Many have probably never tried it, and it’s certainly not a prized delicacy like “toro” tuna belly for example. Whalemeat is more like what it was in Britain: something people had to eat when times were hard just after the war. There seems to be a mountain of the stuff in a big freezer somewhere which they’re doing their best to sell off with TV advertising. You still don’t see it in the supermarket though, or anywhere else for that matter.

So what’s all the fuss about? Why don’t they just quietly pack it in? The only thing I can think of is just plain stubbornness – noone like to be ordered around and the Japanese are no exception. The more they’re told to stop the more they’ll carry on… unless there’s some hidden vested interest here which I’m not aware of…

 

Well, it’s a start 26 September, 2009

Filed under: politics — johnraff @ 2:16 pm
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Since Hatoyama became prime minister just over a week ago, every day’s TV news has been dominated by the latest actions of the new DPJ government: Hatoyama off to the USA for a gruelling series of meetings – climate change at the UN, finance in Pittsburg, summit meetings with Obama and the leaders of China, Korea …, Okada the new foreign minister also zipping around, and back here controversial dam projects cancelled, and, significantly, a start to investigations into various murky dealings involving bureaucrats and the former LDP government. Who knows what might come out there? Of course there’s a long list of expensive promises on the election manifesto that have to be paid for somehow, but they appear to be determined to carry them out, at the expense of the pork-barrel pour-more-concrete projects that have got Japan where it is today…

But image-wise the new DPJ government are looking good for the moment. They appear serious, dedicated people who really mean to clean up Japan’s act. How much of this is just media hype we will have to wait to see. Good luck to them anyway!