Heiwa Desu Ne

In the wee hours one morning in November, I was woken by the sound of a police car siren. Living downtown, disturbances in the middle of the night are not uncommon, but this night was different. The police car sounded as if it driving slowly up and down the streets around my building, siren blaring on and off.

Unable to sleep, I got out of bed to see what the commotion was all about.

I stepped out onto the balcony and looked down at the street below, but couldn't find anything amiss. But then came wail of the siren again. This time from the west and only a block away. I went to the living room and looked out the window in the direction the sound had come, but was still unable to see anything.

What on earth was going on? I wondered. The siren had sounded so close.

Ah, there it was again. This time, I hurried out the front door to get a better look. The siren was growing louder.

Standing on the stairwell and looking down the narrow road that passed the rear of my building, I discovered a young man on a bicycle. He was riding one of those electric bikes with the fat tires that look more like off-road motorcycles than your typical mamachari. He headed down the road in my direction. A patrol car, its lights flashing, came around the corner in leisurely pursuit.

Judging by the way the bicycle was weaving, the rider was slightly drunk. When he turned onto a wider road, the patrol car pulled up even with the cyclist.

"Please stop!" the police officer called politely over the PA system.

The patrol car then pulled ahead, attempting to cut the cyclist’s off.



"Please stop!"

Did the guy on the bike stop?

Nope, he just pedaled around the front of the police car, then turned down a narrow alley and continued on his merry way. With its lights flashing, the patrol car sped down the road and was about to turn off onto a side road but ended up getting blocked by a taxi. 



I have no idea what happened after that, but judging by the silence, the drunk cyclist probably managed to slip away.

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

As long as I have lived here—thirty years and counting—the Japanese have been wringing their hands and fretting about the alarming trends the see on daytime wide shows and in the evening news. Perhaps it’s just part of the national character. But, you know, from my perspective, things are pretty darn good here.

Despite how people may feel about crime, the police’s own statistics paint a very different picture: “the total number of known cases of penal code offenses has decreased consistently since 2003. In 2021, the number was 568,104, the lowest since the end of the Second World War . . . In 2021, the rate of decrease was 7.5% over the previous year, which was lower than the level in 2020 when COVID-19 broke out.” (National Police Agency: “Crime Situation in 2021”)

Did the pandemic influence those numbers? Probably, but crime had already been on the decline since peaking in 2002. It was in the years leading up to 2002 that the “Dankai Juniors”, the cohort of Japanese born in the seventies were in their twenties and unemployment was over 5% — the Employment Ice Age (Shūshoku Hyōgaki), as it was known.

As for violent crime, why it’s so rare here that when it does on occasion happen, the more shocking cases tend to get ruminated on in nation's news shows for days if not weeks. On that sleepless morning back in November, America recorded its 500th mass shooting of the year. By comparison, there was only one shooting death in Japan in 2021. Murders, and violent crime in general, have fallen steadily since the sixties. There were 213 murders that same year, compared to over 21,000 in America. I know, apples and oranges. Then, consider England and Wales which has a population about half that of Japan’s and fairly strict gun laws. In the 2022/23 reporting year, 602 homicides were recorded, down from 697 in the previous year.

You don’t see homeless people camped out on the streets like I did all over California last spring. LA alone has some 50,000 people sleeping rough and over half a million (582,000) nationwide. In the UK, there are 365,000 homeless; in Germany, 263,000; and in Canada, 235,000. Among Japan’s neighbors, China has over 2.5 million homeless; Korea, over 11,000. In Japan, there are only 3,065, down 11.1% from last year. My adopted home of Fukuoka prefecture has just over 213 homeless, but you’d be hard pressed to actually spot any of them.

Although marijuana use among university “American football” players has been a hot topic in the news since last summer, the fact remains that drugs haven’t really been a serious problem in Japan since the end of WWII. There were, for instance, only a handful of arrests (3) in the most recent data related to heroin. Compare that to the opioid crisis in the US which has claimed over 645,000 lives due to overdoses and, well, there just is no comparison.

And because it’s so safe, stores in Japan needn’t worry about getting cleaned out by shoplifters or opportunistic rioters like they do in the US and last September in France. Cars rarely get stolen. (Bicycles, do, but if you report it to the police, they might find it in a few months just like they found my son’s bike, god bless ‘em.) Homes seldom get broken into. But, when they do, the culprits are usually found, occasionally perp-walked on national TV, then prosecuted and punished fairly swiftly.

No, Japan has the kinds of problems other nations wish they had.

Stepping back into my apartment, I discovered my wife at the genkan.

What happened, she asked sleepily. When I told her about the drunk cyclist playing cat and mouse with a patrol car, she laughed and said, “Nihon wa heiwa desu ne.” Japan’s a peaceful country, isn’t it.



“Ain’ it?”

And with that, I went back to bed and fell fast asleep.

3 Lil' Injuns

Well, there goes my career in politics.

This was taken in 1971 or 1972 at, I believe, Teddy’s birthday. That’s his home, I think.

Our birthdays were about a week and a half apart from each other—eleven days to be exact, my favorite number—which helped cement the feeling that we were "the most bestest buddies for ever and ever and nothing could ever, ever come betw . . .” (record scratching) But then my family moved to Oregon . . . (sad trombone song).

A year or so after we had moved to I-be-gone, I visited Teddy in Santa Ana and spent the night at his house. Not having any pajamas on me at the time, I slept in my skivvies, which that day happened to be white "superman underwear". Well, Teddy and his older brother John just laughed and laughed and laughed. No one in So Cal, at least no kid with any sense of sense of dignity, would be caught dead in such ugly things. Hell, you're just begging for a wedgie.

Teddy and John were, of course, wearing boxers, which is what I also wore before we moved to Woebegone, where I discovered that those rugged mountain men were wore tight-fitting Fruit of the Loom skivvies under their denim coveralls when they cut down trees.

Fukuoka Birth Clinic

Every time I hear Americans talk about socialized medicine in other countries, I can't help feeling that they are terribly misinformed. It's a shame really. If only they knew more about the reality of the healthcare systems in Europe and here in Japan, even the most conservative among them might be able to tone down the hyperbole and come to accept that compared to the U.S. people in those other countries have it so much better. 

Take childbirth. 

For one, it doesn't cost much at all to give birth in Japan. Most if not all of the modest $5000-cost of having a baby (which includes the prenatal care and a five-night stay in the hospital and subsequent check-ups) is covered by subsidies aimed at encouraging Japanese to have babies. In the past, a couple would have been asked to pay the bill upfront upon being discharged and reimbursed later by the state, but today the state pays the hospital directly. Tha was the case with our first child. Our second child didn't cost us a cent out of pocket.

In the U.S. the price of giving birth can vary greatly depending on where and how the baby is delivered--more for c-sections or other complications, of course--and whether or not the mother is insured. Some insurance plans in America do not include childbirth, forcing parents to virtually put their child on consignment. I know one woman, a Filipino-American, who moved to Japan in the final two months of her pregnancy in order to give birth here, because it was the cheaper option. (Obviously, she must be a commie pinko.) Incidentally, even foreigners are able to receive these benefits. 

What's more, visits to the pediatrician and medicine for children is covered by the prefecture up to, I believe, junior high school age, which means there is one less thing parents in Japan need to budget for. Whenever our son is sick or hurt, the cost of the treatment or drugs never comes into consideration: we head straight to the pediatrician or hospital.

And the hospital or clinic we go to is entirely our choice. 

Many Americans worry that by going the socialized medicine route, they will be giving up the freedom to choose their own doctor, but that couldn't be further from the truth here. In Japan, we go to wherever we like, see whomever we like. Yes, some of the more popular doctors and clinics can be crowded, but if you can’t bear waiting to be treated there are always other options.

We seldom have to wait anyways. My son's pediatric clinic, for example, has an online appointment system. Appointments can be made automatically by email or over the Internet, enabling parents to time their arrival to ten minutes or so prior to having their child seen by the doctor. The same is true with my dentist.

As for the clinics themselves, many of them are modern and clean. Fukuoka Birth Clinic pictured here is a new OB/GYN hospital opened in, I think, 2011 by a friend of mine. We will be having our second child delivered at this clinic.

There is a "roof balcony" on the fourth floor of the hospital allowing mothers to go outside and get some fresh air.

I haven't been to the clinic in some time, so I don't know how the plants have grown or what kinds of flowers are growing in this massive planter.

There are three types of rooms (all single occupancy) for mothers. Women generally spend five nights in the hospital during which time they are taught how to bathe, feed, and change their baby. These long stays is one reason why the infant mortality rate is so low in Japan, second only to Monaco. There are, incidentally, only 2.21 deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in Japan, compared to 6.00 in the United States. America is ranked a dismal fifty-first.

Dining room with Arne Jacobsen ant chairs. Nice touch.

Open space allows for lots of sunshine and good circulation of air.

Nurse station

Private room for the expectant mother to relax in while she is experiencing labor pains.

Delivery room.

Waiting area.

Play area for children

Our doctor and friend.

Like a number of my recent posts, this one was moved from an old blog. This one had a number of comments, one of which, I would like to share here:

“You forgot to mention that Japanese nurses don't use any gloves when drawing blood. Also, nurses cough without closing their mouths. Great way to get a newborn ill!!

“If you can't secure a decent job with benefits in the US don't knock it.”

I replied:

Our nurses washed their hands and wore gloves.

As far as the not wearing masks bit, no one on this germ-filled planet of ours wears masks like the Japanese. I am on the train right now as I write this and the man to my left and the man in front of me (2 of the 3 sitting in my area) are wearing surgical masks. Japanese nurses, too, wear masks, especially when they have colds or a bug is going around.

And regarding your rude insinuation that people without good healthcare in the US are somehow undeserving of it, this is pure nonsense. Healthcare should NOT be a privilege for the few, but a right for all. 

Japan, with its single-payer universal healthcare, while not perfect, does a remarkable job in providing quality, affordable healthcare. Infant mortality here is one of the lowest--Japan is third after Singapore and Iceland; the US comes in at a dismal 34th with twice as many deaths--and the Japanese have the longest life expectancies (America is 40th). They achieve this spending at less than half what Americans pay. The U.S. spends a whopping 17.6% of GDP on healthcare--the highest--while Japan spends only 8.3-9.5%.

Thank you for your comment, however misinformed it was.

Comment from another reader:

My daughter was born in Japan in 1995 and I believe we were reimbursed soon after delivery. Am glad to hear that changed because it made no sense for the parents to have to pay out of pocket only to get reimbursed. In the States mothers are in and out of the hospital within hours and my wife got to stay 5 days or so in a clinic that looked a lot like the one in the photos. 

In 2005 I was diagnosed (in Japan) with a malignant yet indolent cancer and no treatment was needed. I choose to go back to America ... naively thinking health coverage would not be a problem. Both my wife and I have gone long periods without coverage here in the States and may return to Japan simply because the burden is too heavy here: we currently do have coverage but with a $3000 deductible not to mention the out of pocket expenses that are quite high. We can't afford to get sick even with coverage ... 

That being said, there has been a healthy benefit to living here in the US: the vitamin and supplement market along with the natural foods industry and health and fitness industry here beats its Japanese counterpart and because of that I am healthier than before. In the European Union, citizens rights to access vitamins and supplements are being withdrawn, which is just what Big Pharma wants.

A “Lottie” had this to say:

I am from the UK and very appreciative of socialised medicine. I think Stephen Hawking made his simple and to the point case for it recently: 'I would not be alive without the NHS'. 

I have had to battle a doctor in Japan over birth rights, but I have been fortunate in that I found very good midwives. Both my boys were born in water with soft lights and music - no bright lights, invasive care, stirrups, face masks, and nurses to whisk the baby away after birth. This was my choice in socialised medicine. Perfect. Happy bubs, happy mum, and happy bank account.

Picky, Picky

I was talking to a student about the draft in Japan during the war and how her grandfather had tried to enlist but was too short. Later on, of course, the Japanese military wasn’t very picky anymore and he got sent an akagami (lit. “Red paper) from the Imperial Army informing him that his time to fight had come.

He was still only 16 or 17 at the time and Americans were now at Japan’s doorstep. No longer too small to die for his country, he was trained how to unpin a grenade and lie down before an advancing tank to literally stop it in his tracks. Imagine that.

For some reason, that got me thinking about the Selective Service. I remember having to register at the age of 18 and for the next five years the potential to be drafted always hung over my head like an ominous cloud. Every time the US attacked or bombed another country—and we did it a lot during Reagan and Bush’s administrations, I always wondered if my own time to fight had come. It had only been a decade or so earlier that boys were being drafted to fight in Vietnam.

Fortunately for me and the soldiers who volunteer, the US military figured out that it was better in the long run to just pay service members more and improve the benefits package for veterans than to conscript unwilling citizens to do your bidding.

Out of curiosity, I went to the Selective Service’s website where I found a tool to look up your draft number. After some 30 years, I was still in the system. With a few clicks of the mouse, I printed out my Selective Service card. It would have come in handy when I tried to renew my license ten years ago and didn’t have a third piece of ID, such as my Social Security card, on me.

Ho, ho, ho, Green Giant!

The other day, I was talking to some students about my high school's annual food drive when I explained that we boys would go canvassing for canned veggies and . . . they all gave me an odd, quizzical look.

Canned vegetables? What are canned vegetables.

So, I googled it and showed them some photos of the kind of thing I was talking about. It was only then that it dawned on me that after all these years in Japan, I don't think I have eaten many vegetables that weren't fresh and/or in season.

Take spinach. Yes, please take it.

Growing up in 'Merica, spinach was a common side dish on many dinner plates, but I don't think I ever saw raw spinach until I came here. It had always been canned or frozen when I was a kid.

Another staple veggie is peas and carrots. I've never had this here. And I thank my lucky stars because of it.

Now, I often grumble that the selection of fruits and vegetables at my local supermarket leaves much to be desired. (I was looking at a wimpy, woebegone pomegranate at the supermarket yesterday that was selling for almost ten bucks and thought nope.) But, what you can find here is fresh, usually locally grown, and of high quality. If only I could find a lime that didn't cost two bucks.

Looks awful.

Dollars and Scents

A few years ago, I had the girls in one of my classes make mini presentations, the purpose of which was to learn how to present data. One student gave a short presentation on how the typical Japanese student spent her money. It contained some surprises.

 As you can see from her pie chart above, the two largest expenses are social (drinking, dating, hanging out with friends) and food. The third largest expense was clothing and beauty products. What struck me as odd was that rent accounted for only 4% of their expenses, the same as what they were spending on their phone bill.

I'm not sure how the data was collected or who conducted the survey, but I assume that the reason rent does not amount to very much is because the average student even if he is living alone does not pay for his own rent. His parents do. Such is the rough life of the typical student in Japan. (Best of all, they don’t really have to study, either.)

My own college experience couldn't have been more different. 

In my second year of college, three of my friends and I shared a two-bedroom two-bath apartment in the tony neighborhood of La Jolla just north of San Diego. The rent was $800, which came to $200 each. (Peanuts today when you consider that rents in La Jolla Village are way over $4000 today.) At the time I had a "part-time" job, working 32-plus hours a week (M-Th, swing shift, and occasionally the graveyard shift as well) at the La Jolla Cove Hotel, a real dive, that paid about four bucks an hour. I took home around a hundred dollars a week after withholdings, half of which was gobbled up by rent. The remaining half had to somehow cover all my extra expenses. It was no day at the beach, let me tell you.

According to the Department of Industrial Relations, the minimum wage in California in the early 80s was $3.35 an hour. In 1988, it was raised to $4.25.

I remember taking the job, one, because of the location--it was just a few blocks down the street from the apartment--and, two, because I thought the pay and work schedule were pretty good.

One of the interesting things about the job was that in an age when computers were starting to take off, the hotel continued to do everything in completely analog fashion. For instance, we had several large boards, measuring about a two and a half feet by two feet on which all the bookings were recorded. If someone called to reserve a room we would first have to ask when and how long the guest intended to stay and in what kind of room. The usual questions, right? But, then we would have to go over these boards and see if there was an availabilty. It would sometimes take five minutes just to confirm whether a room was available or not. If we had a room and the price was right, the guest would reserve it, which consisted of my physically writing down the guest's name on the board. Surprisingly, there weren't many mistakes. Guests weren't always happy with the room they got, but we seldom forgot a reservation.

4% for rent. Sheesh. What I would have done to pay $16 to cover rent in those days.

Daisai

Checking out the Daimyo Machi Catholic Cathedral's website, as you do, I came across a Japanese word I'm sure few Japanese know: 大斎 (daisai).

It Latin, daisai translates as jejunium, or "[major] fasting" in English. Another word for fasting in Japanese is "danjiki" (断食), but that word doesn't seem to be used in reference to Catholicism. (I could be wrong, though.)

A counterpart of dasai is shosai (小斎) or “small fasting”.

Daisai (大斎) refers to the eating of one regular meal a day and two smaller meals and should be performed on Ash Wednesday (yesterday), and every Friday and Saturday of Lent, the 40-plus day period that culminates with Easter Sunday.

Shosai (小斎) refers to not eating meat and abstaining from things or activities one enjoys. (Hey! Where's the fun in that?)

If you are elderly or infirm, you get a pass. Kids, too, don't need to participate. (Ah, if only my father had known that!)

Anyways, . . .

I never cared much for Lent as a child. Who did? In our family, there was no meat on Fridays—but we had really good fish and chips then, so no big woop—long fasting from Saturday to Sunday morning Mass, only rice on Wednesdays, and worst of all: NO TV for the entire Lenten season. Talk about hell on earth for a young kid!

In this Era of COVID-19, the Daimyo Cathedral has requested those feeling ill remain at home. Ye of little faith. Tsk, tsk.

http://www.daimyomachi-c.or.jp/custom_contents/cms/linkfile/news_20200223.pdf

High Time for Summer Time

When I woke this morning, my bedroom was bathed in warm sunlight. It was not yet six in the morning and the sun was already peeking over the neighboring buildings and coming in through the windows.
“What a waste,” I thought as I crawled out of my futon.

Japan is not what I would call a morning country. Coffee shops and sports clubs don’t open until 7 or 8am at the earliest. Many of the better bakeries are still closed at 9:30am, and few restaurants bother to serve the most important meal of the day, breakfast. Contrast that with the US where you can work out at the gym from five in the morning and then promptly nullify the benefits of all that iron-pumping by gorging yourself on blueberry pancakes and bacon by six.

And yet, as the nation’s salarymen cover their heads with their pillows and try to sleep off their hangovers, the sun has been shining for two, three, and as many as four hours. This morning in Kyushu, for instance, the sun rose at 5:10am. In Tokyo, daybreak was at 4:27am. And, in Sapporo, dawn cracked at a remarkable 3:59am (around the summer solstice, sunrise comes as early as 3:30am): which begs the question: why doesn’t Japan have two time zones?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First thing’s first: Japan needs to re-adopt daylight-saving time (DST).

Re-adopt, you ask?

During the American occupation, Japan did observe DST for a spell, but abandoned it in 1951 when MacArthur left. For the average Japanese in those post-war years the extra hour of daylight in the evening equated to little more than an extra hour of labor.

But that was then and this is now.

With all fifty-four of the nation’s nuclear power plants idled indefinitely, Japan faces the daunting task of not only producing enough electricity, but also bringing consumption down during the summer months—precisely at the time when energy demand usually peaks. Failure to do so may lead to a repeat of the disruptive blackouts that plagued Japan last summer when the nation still had eleven nuclear reactors online. Daylight-saving time, specifically “double summer time,” may provide the answer.

While the energy-saving benefits of DST remain a contentious issue in the West, an interesting study conducted at the Toyohashi University of Technology by Wee-Kean Fong (Energy Savings Potential of the Summer Time Concept in Different Regions of Japan From the Perspective of Household Lighting; 2007) has shown that the implementation of a “split summer time”—whereby the southwestern half of the country moves its clocks an hour forward in April and the northeastern half of Japan, two—that is, double summer time—could provide considerable savings in energy consumption.

Were double summertime adopted, the Sapparo sun would rise at 5:59am and set at 9:05pm, providing plenty of sunlight when it is most needed. The benefits of DST, however, wouldn’t end there. According to the October 28, 2010 issue of The Economist, “adopting DST would mean a new dawn for the Japanese economy . . . boost[ing] domestic consumption, as people leave work for bars, restaurants, shopping and golf. Summer time is credited with reducing traffic accidents and crime; boosting energy efficiency as people use less lighting and heating; and even improving health as people are radiated with vitamin D.” The economic benefit, the article continues, could add as much as ¥1.2 trillion (USD $15 billion) to Japan’s GDP and generate 100,000 jobs.

Coming from America’s northwest where the sun sets as late as nine in the evening during the summer, I don’t need to be sold on the benefits of daylight-saving time. Summers, thanks to a simple biannual adjustment of the clock, have always been a time for late evening barbecues with family, twilight concerts in the parks, and relaxed meals at outdoor cafes with friends. The challenge, however, lies in convincing the average Japanese that, in addition to the conservation benefits of extra sunlight in the evening, DST could mean a better quality of life, not just more work.

Until then, all that beautiful sunlight will continue to go to be squandered. Mottai nai!

This was originally published in Metropolis, but the bastards removed my byline, so I have reclaimed it.

5 Cents Worth In 1965

Every year as Christmas approaches, I show my freshman classes "A Charlie Brown Christmas". I suspect that without exaggerating I have seen the special over a hundred times. In spite of that, the TV special hasn't gotten old for me yet. (Probably because of the music.)

In recent years, I have started paying less attention to the story and more to details, such as the quality of the animation (e.g. how backgrounds are recycled, the way movement, like walking and running, is conveyed). Considering that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was produced in 1965--it's older than me!--when animation was hand drawn, it's not surprising that by today's high standards, it can have a somewhat amateur and hurried feel. 

Anyways, this morning when I was watching it for the nth time, I got to wondering about the value of 5¢ in 1965 and learned, thanks to Dave Manuel's Inflation Calculator, that a nickel then is worth about $0.38 today. Much less than I expected. 

In case you were wondering what you could buy for one dollar in the 1960s, go here.

• Gallon of milk: 95 cents

• One regular size bottle of Heinz ketchup: 22 cents

• One dozen eggs: 53 cents

• One-ounce Hershey bar: 5 cents (Although the price remained the same, the size of the bar shrunk to 7/8 ounce in 1966 and 3/4 oz in 1968.)

• Pillsbury cake mix: 25 cents

• Pound of pork chops: $1.03

• Pound of sirloin steak: 85 cents

• Six-pack of Pepsi: 59 cents

• Package of ten Gillette razor blades: 99 cents

• Can of shaving cream: 59 cents

• Tube of toothpaste: 55 cents

• Can of hair spray: 47 cents

• Revlon lipstick: $1.25

• Revlon nail enamel: 75 cents for crème and 90 cents for frosted

• Generic cold relief capsules: 60 cents for two packages of 12

• Cough drops: 23 cents for three packages

• Cough syrup: 59 cents for a bottle

• Contact decongestant tablets: 77 cents for a package of ten

Sparta, it ain't

I have been corresponding with the sensei of the karate dōjō in Central Oregon I took my son to while we were there.

As I noted here in my State-side Observations below, I felt that teachers/instructors in America (the ones I had observed, at least) were . . . shall I say gentle? with the students. Lessons were shorter, less physically demanding than what my sons normally have to deal with in Japan. Teachers spoke in calm voices, never yelled or criticized harshly.

In Japan (again in my experience), Spartanism rules. At my sons’ dōjō, practice can sometimes go on for two or three hours. Some kids go four times a week throughout the year. The air conditioning is rarely used in summer; the heater, only sparingly in winter. The kids spar and spar and spar, sometimes to the point of becoming black and blue. Yet, when the Japanese sensei praises a student, it’s genuine praise and the kids take great pride when they do a good job. That is often the first thing my sons tell me when they come home from practice: "Sensei-ni homerareta!"

When I mentioned this to the karate sensei in Oregon, he replied that American kids wouldn't be able to endure such training. "It's a difficult balance with east vs west philosophy in karate training since our students have western upbringings. I was raised training on the eastern methods and greatly appreciate the value but most Americans wouldn't accept it. There lies the quest for balancing the two sides."