How Japan Can Restore Itself to a Glorious Nation and Save its People

Sorry for the long title, but I feel like it’s the only accurate way to describe what follows. In this post, I’ll explore some potential ideas that can be pursued by the Japanese government to return Japan to a glorious nation.

As you may or may not know, a week ago there was an interesting opinion piece about how Japan sucks. It outlines some of the problems of Japan, but mostly how the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party, the main political party of Japan) is failing. While reading this Op-Ed, I was displeased with Tamamoto for not offering any practical solutions to the problem. He just kind of points out the problem, and then expects other people to figure it out. Well, I am one of those other people and I will talk about some feasible solutions Japan could take to return itself to a glorious nation.

The first, of course, is to build an army of robots.

Miyagebanashi: The Blast

On August 6^th, 1945 the United States unleashed the power of ‘Little Boy’ onto the unsuspecting citizens and military personnel of Hiroshima. On August 9^th, 1945 the United States would drop another atomic weapon–this one dubbed ‘Fat Man’–onto Hiroshima. 60 years later, I would visit Hiroshima to witness the aftermath.

First off, let me provide some background to this story, the second in our series of Miyagebanashi (you can find the first here). On March 11^th, 2005 for whatever crazy reason, I decided it would be a good idea to spend 10 months of my sophomore/ junior year of high school living in Japan–without any previous knowledge of Japanese or Japanese culture. Sure, I knew about ninjas, samurai, and tsunamis.. but that was about it. I had never spent more than two days away from home, and had never even left the east coast of the United States. As for the end of World War II, during the course of my high school education, I had of course heard about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the destruction these bombs caused, but nothing beyond that. For all I knew, the city was still destroyed, a desolate crater in the middle of Honshu. I’m of course exaggerating but I’m sure you still get an idea of the level of my knowledge on this subject.

Hinamatsuri

Today is the 3rd day of the 3rd month, which means that, in Japan, all the girls are setting up their hina-ningyou and praying for good luck. At least, they’d better be, or else they’re screwed.

“What are hina-ningyou, and why are you screwing little girls who don’t set them up?” you ask? Well, allow me to explain before I get a surprise visit from Dateline NBC.

note: not real children

J-Blog Matsuri: Japan-style Hawaiian Food

The one rule for the J-blog Matsuri was that we were to submit “no spam posts;” but to hell with that, I said, and deliberately made most of my post about spam.

Of course, I’m talking about spam in its edible form. It stands as the ultimate food for the uncurious mind. Uncurious, I say, because if you actually know what’s in it you can barely stand the sight of it, let alone the smell. Some people love it, yes; but most people don’t. But if you’ve never had spam in the Hawaiian style, you have no right to judge it–no right at all. If you take spam and mix it with a healthy dose of Japanese-influenced Hawaiian culture, you have something altogether different, something which defies your pre-existing spammy notions. The mysterious meat-processing factory scraps shed their ignominious texture and flavor, and transform into what is known as “ono kine grinez.”

Obama offers meeting with first foreign leader to Japan’s PM

Mrs. Clinton, who in her new position is no doubt finding herself answering more phone-calls at 3 A.M. than she ever knew she wanted to, is in the far East, shaking hands and/or bowing to those countries’ head-honchos and their ministers. As I talked about in an earlier post, East Asia has been seeing some strange things going on lately–and things have only gotten stranger, with the Japanese finance minister showing up in Rome under the influence of something, and then resigning, etc. etc.

Miyagebanashi: Nikko

This is the first entry in our series of Miyagebanashi 「土産話」, or travel-stories from our various visits to Japan, and to start I’ve chosen Tochigi Prefecture’s Nikkou ｢日光」, not coincidentally the same place that Tokugawa Ieyasu chose to be buried and subsequently deified, and where, later, an incredibly elaborate shrine was built to honor him, the Toushouguu 「東照宮」. He didn’t actually commission the Toushouguu shrine; his grandson Iemitsu did, after which he immediately commissioned his own, the Taiyuin-byou. These two shrines, along with two much less ostentatious Buddhist temples–the Rinnoji and Futarasan temples–make up a close-quartered quartet of Japanese religious sites, all lying within about a 600-foot distance of each other.

Talking to Strangers

I took a trip today back to college, a 17-hour long adventure which took me halfway across the Pacific Ocean and lengthwise across the entire mainland US, going from balmy tropics to frigid New England, mid-winter.

On the last leg, I sat next to a pretty friendly guy, who started chatting away with me, and continued to do so. I was happy to talk, since he was pretty funny, but as I had been flying overnight, I began to wish he would leave me alone so I could try to sleep–which, eventually, he did on his own.

Katamari Democracy joins JapanSoc

Although we only occasionally talk about Japan-related things on our blog, I have an announcement to make.

WHEREAS, it is true that all of the authors have taken multiple years of Japanese language study, and

WHEREAS, two of us are earning Japan-related majors and are studying/intend to study in Japan, and

WHEREAS, a few of us are interested in living in Japan, if only for a brief amount of time, and

WHEREAS, at least I will be applying for JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching Programme) in the future, and

WHEREAS, the culture of Japan is deeply rooted into our little niche, and

WHEREAS, our name and header even have Japanese in them,

NOW, THEREFORE, it is hereby resolved that, because of the aforementioned facts, its authors must necessarily have some interest and will occasionally discuss said interest, Katamari Democracy shall join the group of blogs which occasionally (or exclusively) talk about Japan-related items, known as JapanSoc, or the Japan Society for the Web. This means that, once in a while, one of us might post on a fellow member’s blog, or we might have a guest poster come here, and that any Japan-related postings will be sent to the aforementioned site, which updates every time one of its member sites makes a similar blogpost.

Please visit that site if you have any interest in its content. It’s really a cool and pretty convenient place for news, opinions, and weird facts and experiences by Americans about Japan.

This doesn’t mean we’re going to be doing Japan-related stuff for even the majority of the time; we’ll still keep on posting whatever kind of stuff we post about, and the content of our content will be unaltered. It just means that when we do post about Japan, you’ll be able to find it on both the JapanSoc home page and its Twitter page, in addition to tons of other Japan-related posts.

Also, if you have a Japan-related blog and want to join, visit JapanSoc.org, the organization’s Google Group, and ask for an invitation.

Strange happenings in the Far East

While we’re over here talking about our stimulus package and the inner workings of our constant political badminton match, Asia seems to be going to hell. A volcano erupted near Tokyo. A war is about to restart between the two Koreas. And someone threw a goddamn shoe at the Chinese Prime Minister. What the hell is going on over there?

First off, whoever we left in charge of Korea is doing a pretty crappy job keeping their unruly northern cousins civilized. They just called off all diplomatic agreements with the South and are about to commence another cock-off by launching an undeniably penile shaped exploding object, conveniently named Taepodong 2, into the ocean. Hopefully they aren’t taking any cues from Israel, because unlike those guys, we’re on the opposite team. Even if they do the same thing to South Korea as the Israelite are doing to the Palestinians, I hope they realize that things would be completely different, if for arbitrary reasons.

Secondly, whoever we left in charge of Japan is also doing a crappy job. They can’t seem to keep their volcanoes from blowing their tops and covering Tokyo in a thin layer of ash. We got Alaska’s volcano under control, try to keep up.

Thirdly, I am told that the shoe-throwing incident took place at a university in England, and that it was despicable. That’s what the Chinese government called it at least, although of course they didn’t mention anything about it to their own citizens, because that would imply some sort of anger was directed at China, but that’s impossible because everyone in the world loves China!

I’m assuming, of course, that by “despicable,” they’re talking about the guy’s aim. You can’t even see the shoe in the video, he was so far off the target. Now, if you’re going to be throwing shoes at international diplomats, please, please… practice your aim! And, for that matter, try to make sure that your target doesn’t actually have cat-like reflexes, like our ex-President, who, judging from his artful dodging, was trained in some form of ninjitsu just in case someone threw a shoe at him.

Say what you will about his policies, but the man’s gotta some sort of Spidey-sense, dodging like that. Too bad he couldn’t predict anything important. I’ll bet the real Spiderman would have seen the Financial meltdown coming. Or at least Katrina. Maybe?

(yeyeyeeeahh, wow!)