News of the Weird, Japanese Style

I’ve just come back from four days in the States, taking Daniel to summer camp. It was very strange to be home so briefly (and I can’t write about the disgusting state of my house, or I’ll start crying). There was barely time to register the culture shock or deal with the jet lag (let alone get out the industrial strength cleansing solutions) before it was time to turn around and fly back to Japan. The G8 conference took place while I was away, and one of the first things I registered back in Tokyo is that all the extra police presence is now gone.

Coming back to the apartment, I noticed a sign posted on the building’s bulletin board by the maintenance department, letting tenants know that there would be no electricity for several hours while they did routine checkups and maintenance . . . on September 15th!!! I don’t even know when the water or electricity companies are doing maintenance in Mississippi until the lights go out or the taps stop flowing. It’s so Japanese.

Also very Japanese are little news items I’ve been collecting for the last few months, the kind of quirky stuff that would qualify for those syndicated “News of the Weird” columns you see in some newspapers in the U.S. So here, in no particular order, is a sampling of strangeness from the past three and a half months in Japan:

–A customs officer at Tokyo’s Narita Airport wanted to test his drug-sniffing dog, so he put $10,000 worth of marijuana in a randomly-chosen suitcase. Unfortunately, the dog couldn’t sniff out the drugs. . . and the officer couldn’t remember which piece of luggage he put them in. So far no one has returned the pot.

–Recently released documents have revealed that right after their defeat in WWII, Japan’s Imperial Navy re-designated so-called “comfort women” (sex slaves) as “auxiliary nurses.”

–An escaped pet parrot named Yosuke was picked up by police, who didn’t know who to return him to. The parrot was taken to a vet, where he announced, “I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” and then provided his home address.

–A small chain of restaurants in Japan, called Zauo, has taken the concept of choosing your fish fresh from a tank one step further. In this restaurant, patrons catch their fish from a stream that runs through the dining area; there are ten kinds of fish and shellfish available. Once caught, the fish are taken by the staff into the kitchen to be prepared. The restaurant warns customers to be patient, since it may take a while before they nab their dinner. If you’re really hungry, they say, the easiest fish to catch is mackerel.

–An 18-year-old man in Tokyo was arrested for lacing a co-worker’s whiskey with a pipe-cleaning solution. He said he did it because the other man “warned me about the way I disposed of garbage and ignored me when I greeted him.” Well, as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, disposing of garbage in Tokyo IS pretty complicated. . .

–Sanrio, creators of Hello Kitty, are introducing new characters. Cherinacherine is “a pair of female fairy friends who live in a cherry forest.” Think toy news is trivial? In Japan, domestic toys sales were 670 billion yen (about $6.7 billion) in 2007.

–More toy news: The Bandai Corporation (makers of such trendy, iconic Japanese toys as the Tamagotchi virtual electric pets, the electric bubble wrap popper, and this year’s poppable plastic edamame) is introducing a new “piggy” bank. The toy, shaped like a big pink plastic heart, is called the Ikemen Bank (which means “handsome man bank” or “cool guy bank” or something like that). Owners choose one of five male characters programmed into the bank’s LCD screen ( “cool model,” “witty comedian,” “gentle, public-school boy,” “young athlete,” and “older man with patience”), and then conduct a virtual love affair.

The bank holds one hundred 500-yen coins (for a total of $500), and the success of the love affair depends in part on the success of the savings. For instance, if the fashion model boyfriend is ignored for five days, he writes a letter breaking off the relationship and then disappears. The thrifty girlfriends have to respond to queries from their bank beaux, and when the bank is full, the ending of the love story is revealed, its happiness determined by how well they fielded the questions.

I’m assuming the bank is meant to encourage teenage girls to save their money. But since the “ikemen” also hand out compliments when a coin is inserted (Example: “You are the best!”), another message the bank transmits is that you can pay for sex. The bank will be introduced in Japan in September, and will cost about $45. I don’t know if Bandai plans to introduce an English-speaking version in the U.S., but I’d love to see what “cool guys” they’d introduce there. For instance, I think I’d save a lot of money for “very rich and handsome husband who also cooks and is a nice guy.” Oh wait, I have that already (except for the very rich part) . . .