Rocking in Hakata

Went to Universal Studios Japan over the weekend. It was awesome. Not the same as Universal Studios stateside, but still pretty dadgum cool. Got my amusement park fix. We took the overnight ferry from Toyo Port (near Imabari City) to Osaka, caught another ferry – the SLOWEST shuttle ferry I have every ridden on in my life – and then did the same in reverse. Left on Friday night, got there Saturday morning – rocked out for a whole day, left Saturday night, and arrived home on Sunday morning. Killer weekend. Highlights included caramel corn, the ridiculous E.T. Ride, watching Ben and Will for about 10 minutes after the final plummet on Jurassic Park, and an amazing dinner at Hard Rock Cafe Osaka. Mmmm. (My standards have fallen, I’m afraid. I used to hate Hard Rock. Overpriced, under-portioned, and thin on taste. But sometimes I’d kill for crappy western fare here. So yeah – big smiles all around.) Aileen and I agree that the coolest ride was the roller coaster, which we rode twice – first and last rides of the day, to bookmark our experience. I think it was actually my first time traveling with Japanese people in my party, come to think of it – and that was a hilarious experience in and of itself. Personality and planning clashes occurred at regular intervals, but it was all in jest at the end of the day. Good times. Thanks again, guys. Now I gotta get myself squared away for November and December trips. Why is this year so busy?

Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Photos, Trips

I had a bit of an interesting thought about health care and its image in Japan recently. Japan’s health care system is nationalized, and lacks “doctor’s offices” like I’m used to in the United States [Edit: Thomas corrected me in the comments]. When you get sick here, you go straight to the hospital. It’s sort of a hassle, and as a friend recently told me – you feel sort of asinine for going to a hospital when all you want to do is make sure you’re not coming down with something worse than the common cold. In the states, you can hit a clinic or doctor’s office and take care of it. Another thing that’s interesting to me is that the public image of diagnoses is changing. People’s health is becoming an interesting fascination in popular culture here. I first noticed this a few years ago when Takeshi Kitano (or Beat Takeshi, as he’s known on television as a comedian) started to host a show called 「最終警告!たけしの本当は怖い家庭の医学」 (さいしゅうけいこく！たけしのほんとうはこわいかていのいがく / Saishyuu keikoku! Takeshi no hontou wa kowai katei no igaku). Yes, it’s a freakishly long title. In English it means “Final Warning! Takeshi’s Seriously Frightening Family Medical Science.” It’s classified as a medical horror simulation show, on the border of a reality show and a bizarre documentary about strange diseases. I seem to recall that at the end of each show, the guest panel would be tested for their chances of contracting the odd illness of the day. The results were given live on the show. That started this weird trend of public pop-culture diagnoses.

I recently saw a show where 8 or 9 people, including “talent” and comedians (and their spouses, if applicable) got checked out. The show was almost half public service announcement, half scare the daylights out of the participants with their own mortality. Each time the show switched focus to another part of the body (nervous system, circulatory, respiratory, you name it – it was covered), they’d name how many people had problems presenting in their results, and then list them in order from best outlook to worst. Then they explained what each person’s individual problem was. I learned that one comedian (Monkiki) will likely die suddenly of an aneurysm in his brain later on in life. I learned that Dave Specter and his wife eat too much junk food and it’s putting pressure on their bodies to cope with the wacky diet. I learned that Tamura Kenji (Tamuken) is the most likely to commit suicide from a psychological questionnaire – the results of which they openly discussed on the show. To put more pressure on him, they announced that he would die first out of everyone who participated – within roughly 6 years. Geeze. I get the morbid curiosity that brings the audience to that kind of show, but what a difference a few decades make.

If you’ve ever seen the film 生きる (いきる / Ikiru / to live) by Akira Kurosawa, you might know what I’m talking about. This film, which Time Magazine listed in the 100 Best Movies of All Time 2005 list (if you give a flying leap about anything Time ranks…tend to be bogus in my opinion), is one of my favorites. I think it’s even on my Facebook profile. I obviously highly recommend it. At the beginning of the film, the main character is being tested at a hospital. You hear him thinking about the diagnosis to come, and learn about a series of events that strongly insinuate cancer. When the man goes to the doctor, the doctor lists all of the politenesses in the aforementioned series. He skillfully skirts the issue and avoids revealing the true nature of the man’s medical state. The result: the character understands that he has malignant progressive stomach cancer, despite the fact that the doctor lied to his face multiple times when asked directly. It’s actually a tense scene. But that is just the point – it was considered wrong or rude or a bad idea to tell the patient himself if he had some kind of tragic terminal disease a few decades ago. Look how far this country has come – from shielding the patient from the knowledge of their own health to broadcasting the results of morbid medical testing over the airwaves as a spectator sport. Makes your head spin a little.

Deas Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

I was recently asked for an interview by Tori from the Daily J, the blog side of the Nipponster project. If you’re so inclined, head over and check it out. It was posted over the weekend and today in three installments. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Deas Customary Drivel

I have come across the international flavor / taste barrier (different from but similar to the language barrier) a few times during my stay in Japan. It hits when you have people try foreign soft drinks – especially root beer, which I love. It happens when I suggest that people try eating Wendy’s Frosties with french fries in lieu of a spoon, or regular ice cream with pretzel sticks. It happened the other day as I was perusing the incredibly limited selection at the local convenience store. I found a small bottle of Tobasco® sauce. Taken with inspiration brought on by the slowly chilling weather, I picked it up and hollered across the room to the shopkeep. He’s my buddy. We were the only ones there. He didn’t mind. I said, “Do you know Tobasco® sauce’s secret use?” He said no. I told him. “If you put a few drops in your hot cocoa, you’d be surprised at how delicious it is.” He looked at me like I’d completely lost my marbles. His face showed that his brain couldn’t quite process the recipe and arrive at a likely conclusion. Unable to crunch the numbers, he determined that it must be unfathomably horrendous. If you reached the same conclusion, you’re very wrong.

I learned from Alton Brown of the show Good Eats (and Feasting on Asphalt) that Tobasco® plus Cocoa is a match made in heaven. The Aztecs, Mayas, and other Mesoamerican peoples were doing it ages ago – and they were big hot chocolate connoisseurs.

They sometimes flavoured chocolate with chilli, with vanilla, with Clerodendrum ligustrinum, Maya itsim-te, and with other ingredients less easy to identify. They probably liked to drink their chocolate hot, as the Maya did in Spanish colonial times.
- Chocolate in Early America

Yes indeed, cacao crazy, you might say. (That web page is worth a read if you’re curious, by the way.) Anyway, back to my friend the shopkeep, whose mouth was still agape in revulsion. I consoled him and attempted to explain the science behind it. HA. Like I have the Japanese skills to do that. I wound up likening the process to the way that salt has the ability to make something taste more like itself to some degree. What I couldn’t explain was that it electrochemically alters the receptivity of the tongue, or that supposedly the polyphenols in the chocolate play well with the capsaicin in the hot sauce while the casein in milk chocolate mellows out the heat of the peppers. I don’t feel all that bad about it, cause sheesh, that’s gotta be some 1-kyu level Japanese right there. Anyway, we had a nice chat after that. He exclaimed his surprise, I continued to extol the virtues of hot chocolate (see what I did there?), and finally I paid. He tried to get me to join Soka Gakkai again as I left. Sigh. Guess he felt the need to share something too. I’ll keep my tobascocoa, though, thanks.

Deas’s Tobascocoa Preferences:
Take a slightly thickened cocoa (go a bit over the recommended amount), add a dash of instant coffee crystals (for a nice understated mocha flavor chord), a sprinkling of ground cinnamon (and / or nutmeg), and several liberal drops of hot sauce. Stir in lightly. Consume under a blanket or at a kotatsu. Repeat regularly.

Deas Culinary, Customary Drivel

I’m not a particularly huge fan of Japanese pop music, but some of the artists appeal to me for whatever reason. I can’t help but think that artists like Otsuka Ai (大塚愛) or Ueto Aya (上戸彩) are cute and peppy – which I concede, increases my opinion of their music, even when it’s lacking… Ha ha. That’s natural. (Heck…some people even like Arashi (嵐)…for some reason…similar situation, I bet…) Well, one of the artists I liked – without any good reason – was Sawajiri Erika (沢尻エリカ). I’ve never seen her acting, though she has been in a few dramas and films recently. I actually came to like her by osmosis. For a long time, every day I went to buy lunch at the grocery store, her song was playing over the hi-fi. I learned it by accident, and found that I could sing it at karaoke without too much trouble. Therefore, I thought I liked her. Keep reading for my reasoning. Read more…

Deas Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

Ken Y-N, over at What Japan Thinks – one of my favorite daily reads, has created a new time waster site. It’s called BrainScannr, and it is an English edition of the incredibly, fantastically, almost ludicrously popular 脳内メーカー (Nounai Meekaa / Brain Contents Maker) internet meme that has been wearing out fiber optic and cable internet connections around Japan for a while. (I posted about that here.) BrainScannr uses emoticons instead of kanji, so it’s pretty universally accessible and open to interpretation. Go have fun and see what you get! Here’s another accurate real world result…

Deas Customary Drivel