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When I was watching Spiderman 3, I was reminded of something that I think represents a pretty significant difference between Japanese and American culture.

Before the movie began, they showed various previews as well as an advertisement against movie pirating. The advertisement showed a drawing of a guy in the back of a theater filming a movie while two people sitting in the row in front of him were turned around staring in disgust and horror. Then it flipped to another image of a guy sitting at his computer, apparently editing the movie file he had taken illegally at the theater, while in the background on a bed was another guy (his roommate?) looking on in disgust and horror. These images were accompanied by a message about how illegally filming and distributing movies is a nuisance to others.

When I saw this advertisement, I had to ask myself, “Is this serious? This has to be a joke…” The images were too ridiculous to me to be taken seriously. For one thing, the situations depicted in the images would never occur. I’ve never actually seen a guy in a theater illegally filming a movie but the way they do it is they go to the very last row and set up their camera there. Because they don’t want to be caught, they do things as discreetly as possible. There’s no way it could possibly become a problem to someone since it’s not blocking anyone’s vision and it makes no noise. Showing images of people turning around in their seats in shock and anger makes no sense.

Also, even more ludicrous is the image in the guy’s room as he is editing the film on his computer. Having the bed in just that position with a roommate there is extremely contrived in the first place, and why is the roommate so outraged? If I had a roommate and he brought in a dead body, I would be shocked. But watching my roommate edit random video files on his computer? Nope, not shocked or outraged.

So, considering this is a paid message, we can expect things not to be portrayed realistically. For example, when was the last time you saw someone get *that* happy just from eating fast food? But, I think the fact that the creators of this ad chose to exaggerate things in this direction, mainly other people getting upset at the individual’s actions, is reflective of the culture in which it was made.

Back in the United States, the MPAA often stresses the criminal nature of the act of illegally filming a movie or points out the large fines associated with it. While the Japanese ad stresses the annoyance done to others by one’s actions, the American counterpart stresses the individual’s badness and the negative personal financial impact (a fine). In fact, if I remember correctly, the Japanese ad I saw didn’t even mention a monetary fine at all which would have caught my attention a lot more than some images of other people getting angry because they saw some guy filming a movie.

I’ve noticed this dichotomy in other areas, too. In Japan, I often see signs that say something like “Let’s protect our beautiful environment!” while in the United States, I see signs like “No littering. $300 fine.” Quite a difference.

I believe this difference stems from Japanese culture’s stress of not offending others around oneself and stress of the group over the individual. In America, the individual is always stressed. Often a type of capitalistic scarcity is also applied to this so that the image becomes one where an individual must fight for oneself against the other individuals around oneself.

This is evidenced by the fact that ads stressing other people’s opinions of one’s actions work in Japan while these same types of ads are never seen in America. Other evidence includes Japan’s dislike of personal confrontation, especially in places where others are watching.

Further evidence is perhaps the fact that certain psychological disorders exist in Japan while they are almost non-existent in the West. For example, consider “Taijin Kyofusho” which is a disorder in which the sufferer avoids social contact. While this may sound similar to social phobia disorders in the West, the underlying reasons for the two are different. In the West, social phobia is due to the “fear of embarrassing oneself or being harshly judged by others because of one’s social ineptness”. In Japan on the other hand, Taijin Kyofusho is caused by a fear of “offending or harming other people”. The focus is shifted away from receiving harm to oneself and shifted towards harm to others.

It’s interesting that this sort of disorder does not exist in the West suggesting that this kind of thinking, mainly concern for one’s actions on the others around oneself, takes a backseat to the thinking that the individual and the individual’s worth is far more important than any of the others around him or her. In America, even in places where you would think group thought is stressed over individual thought like the Army (perhaps the epitome of stress on group rather than individual), just look at their advertising campaign, “An Army of One” which emphasizes the individuality of each soldier.

The premier commercial in January, 2001 showed a soldier saying, “Even though there are 1,045,690 soldiers just like me, I am my own force. With technology, with training, with support, who I am has become better than who I was. And I’ll be the first to tell you, the might of the U.S. Army doesn’t lie in numbers. It lies in me.” These days, even the Army has to cede to the overwhelming cultural stress on the invidual in order to recruit people.

So, while I laughed at those ads that show people enraged at the actions of an individual doing something like quietly filming a movie or editing it on his computer, perhaps some Japanese people in that same movie theater were cringing at the look of outrage on the drawn faces in the ad.

While these types of cultural differences are well documented, what interests me now is why these differences exist. Was it pure random chance that Western culture evolved one way while Japanese culture evolved another? Is there some underlying feature in the past that offered an advantage for each type of culture in its respective area? I’ll save this for a later entry…

So, I saw Spiderman 3 finally yesterday. We went to the movie theater in Roppongi Hills. Roppongi Hills is a pretty nice place, apparently some of the most expensive apartments in Tokyo are located there. It’s also where a lot of branches of American financial companies in Tokyo are located.

In any case, the movie theater is really nice. The normal price of a movie ticket is 1800yen ($15.25), but if you’re a student, it’s only 1500yen ($12.71) and on top of that, if you’re a foreign student, it’s only 1000yen ($8.47)! So I get a pretty good deal by being a foreign student.

Also, one of the things I thought was sort of unnecessary at first when I started going to movie theaters in Japan was that when you buy tickets, they assign you seats like we usually do in America at plays, sporting events, etc. But now, I realize that it’s actually a pretty good idea. For one thing, you can just buy your ticket and then not worry about having to get in early or fight for a good seat. Also, you don’t have to worry about finding enough seats in a row for you and all your friends which can get difficult when people walk in and choose seats with usually one or two seats between them and the next group over.

Actually, now that I think about it, I went to a movie theater in Taiwan a few summers ago when visiting my friend Jimmy and they did the same thing. Not only that, but the movie I saw in Taiwan was Spiderman 2. Strange how I only see Spiderman in Asian countries, lol. 

The movie was pretty good and it’s always interesting for me to read the Japanese subtitles to see how certain English phrases are translated into Japanese. A lot of the time, it’s not really translated literally since a literal translation wouldn’t make sense in Japanese. Instead, they use similar phrases that would be used in such a conversation.

The other interesting thing about movies in Japan is that at the end, the lights don’t come on until after all of the credits have finished rolling. Usually in America, as soon as the movie ends and the credits begin, the lights turn on and everyone leaves. In Japan, I was surprised that most people actually stayed in their seats as the credits were rolling. This doesn’t make much sense since the credits are written in English and the average Japanese person isn’t going to understand what is being written. The average American would most likely be able to understand what is being written and perhaps remember some of the names, yet nobody actually stays around for the credits.

It was nice to go to Roppongi Hills again and finally see Spiderman. Hopefully I’ll be able to see some more movies there before I leave Japan!

During Golden Week, a week where three Japanese holidays fall so usually the whole week is given as vacation, I tried to go see Spiderman 3 with my friend but unfortunately everyone else seemed to have the same idea… I suppose since it was Golden Week, nobody had anything better to do. Unfortunately it was sold out at the two theaters we looked at when we went for pretty much the whole day!

Anyway, now it’s a few weeks later so hopefully there’ll be fewer people going to see it and we can get tickets. That’s where I’m off to now!

In addition to yesterday’s post about pachinko, I’d like to say that I see a lot of things when riding the train. Usually people read manga, books, play video games on their cell phones, Game Boy DS or Sony PSP. The cell phones games are quite sophisticated and can be anything from racing games to complex RPGs (role playing games). So I was surprised when I once saw a businessman standing there playing a slot machine game on his cell phone. All he was doing was pressing a button that would pull the lever in the game and then he would watch the spinning to see if it landed on three items that matched.

At least in real slot machines, there’s some possibility of winning money. But seriously, playing a slot machine game on your cell phone where there’s no possibility of winning money? I’m not sure what the point is. Unless, of course, it fulfills some of those psychological needs I talked about in my last entry, lol.

Yesterday, I decided not to go to class. I only have one class on Thursdays from 4:30pm to 6:00pm. I talked a little about this class last week but basically the professor never takes attendance and there is no homework. Since it was raining heavily during the morning and early afternoon, I decided that I didn’t feel like travelling a total of two hours in the rain for a one and a half hour class. Unfortunately for my logic, it cleared up and turned out to be a sunny day sometime from 2pm on. Something still told me not to go though so I didn’t.

Well, I’m glad I didn’t go! I talked to a friend in one of my classes today and she told me that that class yesterday was only 10 minutes long. Apparently the professor came in and told everyone that he was going to cancel class since he had some personal matter to attend to so the class lasted all of 10 minutes. I would have been pretty annoyed if I had had to travel two hours for 10 minutes of class!

Speaking of long commutes, I was talking to a Japanese friend of mine a couple days ago and she told me that her commute to her college is 2.5 hours….. one way. Yes, that means she travels 5 hours when she wants to go to class. She told me that during her first or second year, she went to class everyday, so that was 5 hours on the train every day of the week. If you sleep 8 hours, that means almost 1/3 of your day is spent on the train! I can’t imagine what it must have cost to ride the train that far everyday.

On the other hand, if the train isn’t too crowded, you can sleep, do homework or read but still… I can’t imagine it’s the ideal setting to do these things.

I suppose it’s all about perspective. An hour commute to class seems way too long compared to the 5 minutes it would take me to get from my dorm room to my class at Middlebury College, while that same hour commute seems like an easy travel compared to my friend’s two and a half hour ride everyday.

Pachinko parlors are something that I heard about before going to Japan but was still surprised at when I saw the number and size of them. Pachinko is a gambling machine where one launches small silver metal balls upwards to watch them fall down through a number of pins. The point is to get them into certain holes while will produce a pay out of more silver balls to use or trade in later for prizes/money. There isn’t actually any control as to where the balls go, I believe you just press a button and it is launched upwards.

I’ve never actually played pachinko here but I’ve seen many parlors and been in one once. There are two or three parlors near my dorm actually. Parlors seem to be positioned near train stations, perhaps in order to entice businessmen as they come home from work since businessmen seem to make up the majority of the clientele when I peak through the windows.

Since I’m particularly adverse to losing money, I can’t stand gambling so it amazes me to see so many people in these parlors day after day. The parlors tend to occupy large buildings and have as many machines in them as can possibly fit so they must be doing good business. One of my friends mentioned he tried pachinko once and ended up losing 1000 yen ($8.33) in under 10 minutes and of course, there are the stories of the businessman secretly using up his family’s savings playing pachinko so I suppose parlors are a profitable business.

The question is then, why is pachinko so popular? The game is not interesting in itself. You simply press a button repeatedly and watch silver balls fall through pins. The overall monetary gain is always negative over a long enough period of time and often means you can walk in and lose hundreds of dollars in one sitting.

Obviously pachinko fulfills some other psychological need and if I had to make a guess, I’d say it relieves stress. In America, we have gambling, too. But I feel that this gambling is different. Although there are slot machines and other forms of gambling that are similar to pachinko, a lot of gambling involves some degree of player skill and risk calculation such as card games. In America, people often take vacations to Las Vegas or other places in order to gamble. As far as I know, nobody in Japan takes a vacation to gamble. So while there may be other reasons for gambling in America, pachinko seems to be much more focused.

So, why do I think pachinko is popular because it relieves stress? For one, pachinko is not fun. The game is uninteresting in itself. Also, if you watch pachinko players, nobody is ever smiling. When you see people leave, nobody looks happy. So, I don’t think people play pachinko to move from a neutral state to a happy state. The other option then is reducing a negative state.

Considering that most of the clientele in pachinko parlors are salarymen (businessmen), I would say pachinko offers a form of reducing stress from one’s job and also a sense of control. Since there is usually only one boss, most people employed at a company have to work for someone else, carrying out whatever is demanded of them. Japan’s culture differs from America’s in a way that leads to less control for these employees.

There is a phrase in Japanese, ?????? (shou ga nai), which means something like “I have no choice” or “There’s no other way”. I recently saw a comic written by an American in a series called “You know you’ve lived too long in Japan when….” and then follows with various phrases. One was “You know you’ve lived too long in Japan when you say “shou ga nai” and actually believe it”, the point being that many Japanese often will follow and do ridiculous orders asked of them under the guise of ”shou ga nai” when in fact, not only are there many ways out of it, but one shouldn’t be reasonably asked to do such a thing in the first place. This includes things like being asked to work ridiculous overtime hours, come in on weekends, miss important family events to work, complete projects with too early deadlines, etc.

Additionally, in America, it is acceptable to ask “why?” when asked to do a task or complete something. This “why” is not an opposition to the task but rather simply an inquisitiveness as to what the task is for. In Japan, people are conditioned never to ask “why” when requested to do something. Since something is being asked of you, it is assumed that there must be some valid reason for it and to ask for it would seem strange/rude. As a result, Japanese people often find Americans strange because they ask “why” so often. This cultural point is documented to the point that it showed up in my Japanese textbook back in America where an imaginary conversation featured a Japanese person musing over why her American host student asked “why” so much to her explanations about various house tasks and simply concluded that that was just how Americans were.

So, all of these factors add up to an increase in lack of control for a normal worker. The worker truly believes that he or she has no choice but to do whatever is asked of him or her, he/she is unable to ask questions about the work being demanded of him or her and also Japanese culture in general tends to disfavor confrontation of any kind. As a result, I can imagine that under these conditions stress can become quite high. Also remember that while this is changing a bit now, traditionally, Japanese people did not change jobs ever. This further fuels a worker’s sense of no control over one’s situation at work since being unemployed is not only extremely embarrassing in Japanese culture but also could potentially mean not being able to find another job since companies strongly favor fresh recruits out of university.

Pachinko is one possibililty to alleviate these problems. I think it mainly works as a way of putting someone into a different state of mind, a sort of trance. Consider the fact that it’s simplistic so it requires no real decision making. All one has to do is a small, repetitive physical motion of pushing a button. It is somewhat hypnotic in that one continually presses a button and watches these small balls fall down through the pins. By focusing on this one small movement and the same action over and over again, one can forget about the problems and stress at work for the time that one is playing and focusing on it.

Also, pachinko has no outside forces to it that affect the outcome. In this way, it lends itself to a sense of control. The field of pins is completely stationary and directly in front of the player so it’s easy to see everything that one is dealing with. The action which is the ball being launched upwards and then falling through the pins is completely controlled by the player’s pressing of the button. While at work, one is subject to the whims of one’s boss and clients, at pachinko, the player can easily see what one has to deal with and has complete control over all the action.

I think this is perhaps why pachinko, a terribly boring game that results in one losing lots of money, is so popular in Japan. This is not to say that similar things don’t happen elsewhere. Since this is a psychological exploitation, humans everywhere can be subject to it. Some studies suggest that in the United States, teenage addiction to certain video games like World of Warcraft is in some part due to a sense of lack of control over one’s life. A clearly defined game field with goals like points and accumulation of gold within the game results in a sense of achievement and control; psychological needs that cannot be fulfilled in some people’s normal lives.

A couple days ago, I came across this article: “Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently”. It’s main point is that Japanese people look towards someone’s eyes to see his or her emotions while Americans look towards his or her mouth.

“[W]hen Yuki entered graduate school and began communicating with American scholars over e-mail, he was often confused by their use of emoticons such as smiley faces and sad faces, or .

‘It took some time before I finally understood that they were faces,’ he wrote in an e-mail. In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). ‘After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,’ he said.”

This is true for me in the opposite sense. When I first started seeing smileys used in Asia like ^_^ I didn’t really understand how it was supposed to convey happiness. I don’t think it was until I saw more fleshed out pictoral depicitions of happiness from Asian media that I began to see how this was happiness.

Consider one of the most well known pictoral depictions of happiness in the United States which is that yellow circle showing the face with two black dots for eyes and a black line curving upwards on both sides for the mouth. The eyes here are just black dots so they essentially convey no information past the fact that this is, in fact, a face we are looking at. In a sad face, they would be the same shape and size. Just the mouth would be reversed and be curving downwards to represent the sadness.

Also, consider these Asian smileys:

^_^

>_<

o_O

^_^v

T_T

(b^_^)b

Notice how the mouth stays the same and conveys very little information past the fact that it is a face we are looking at. The eyes are the things that change the most with occasionally other elements thrown in.

However, was my preliminary inabililty to read Asian smileys due to the fact that the United States has a strong culture of pictorially depicting emotions through changes in the mouth or was it because Americans look to the mouth for clues to one’s emotions while Asians look towards the eyes.

In that article, the researchers went on to test Americans and Japanese who looked at digitally altered pictures of real people and found that it was the case that Americans look more towards the mouth. I suspect though that one’s ability to read abstract depicitions of emotions online is also influenced somewhat by visual culture. There was, of course, a time when I probably didn’t understand or at first glance, either and had to learn.

I’ve got to get to sleep since I have morning classes tomorrow so I’ll make this entry quick. Last week on Tuesday, my class had its first test of the semester.

Today, we got that test back. In Japan, the grading system is a bit different. Whereas in America, a 90% to 93% is an A- and a 93% and up is an A, in Japan, 80% to 100% is an A and there are no official +/- for the letter grades. This essentially means that someone who scores an 82% on a test receives the same final grade as someone who scores a 100%. In a way, this takes some of the pressure off because it just means you need to make that 80% cut off.

In any case, I got my test back and saw that I had scored a 94%. As I was about to walk out of the classroom since it was the end of class, the teacher announced that the highest score received on the test was a 94%. Not bad, eh?

Anyway, I have to get to sleep now so I’ll write more tomorrow. Until then…

As it becomes increasingly warmer, air conditioning becomes increasingly more important. Unfortunately, when I tried to use the air conditioner in my room some time ago, I realized it wasn’t working. Since I’m lazy about these sorts of things and hardly ever see the dorm manager around, I didn’t really mind it for a while. I just left my window open. One of the downsides to this was that a lot of bugs and insects seemed to have found their way into my room lol.

From what I’ve heard, the summers in Tokyo are pretty harsh. It seems the humidity really makes the heat unbearable. Already we’ve had a few hot days. One time it got really hot in my room and I went to open the window, only to realize that it was actually hotter outside than in my room. That’s when I decided to go find the dorm manager lol. I told her about the problem yesterday on Sunday and a repairman came and fixed it this afternoon so that problem got solved pretty quickly.

One of the things about the air conditioner is that the remote for it is written entirely in Japanese and it has over 15 buttons and some sort of dial. At this point, I think I know enough Japanese to be able to understand everything written on it and work it properly.

However, this knowledge of Japanese didn’t help me before, during the winter. I didn’t realize that the same unit is used to heat the room as well as cool it. Since it’s a mounted unit on the wall, I assumed it was just for air conditioning (meaning cooling only). I don’t think I’ve ever seen an air conditioner mounted on the wall that did heating as well as cooling back in the United States lol.

So, during this past winter, it was pretty cold in my room. It was early winter so it wasn’t too cold yet and I adjusted naturally to it. It wasn’t really that bad at all since the dorm itself is somewhat heated, I believe. However, it wasn’t until I visited my German friend in his room that I realized it was significantly warmer and he told me the secret of the air conditioner lol. When I looked more closely at the remote, I realized that by hitting the “change” button, it gave me a heating option.

However, there’s still one last problem that my Japanese language ability cannot help me with and that problem is the fact that the remote reports the room temperature and lets me set my desired temperature in celsius and not fahrenheit. So I really have no idea what the temperature is in my room lol. Usually if it’s too warm, I just set the temperature a couple degrees lower. If it’s too cold, I just set it a couple degrees higher. That method has been working out alright so far…

Is the United States the only country that uses fahrenheit? Are there any other countries out there not using celsius? In any case, I’m not particularly looking forward to the unbearably hot Tokyo summer to come… especially when I have to get into an enclosed train car that is so packed, I am pressed up against at least five people!

Everyone talks about the cost of life in Tokyo being high. This is probably very true for housing. There really is no room here. Also as a result of no room and high prices for housing here, a commute of one hour or more to one’s place of work or school is considered normal. Some of my teachers have commutes of 2 hours to school. That’s 4 hours everyday of travel, albeit by train so it’s not as bad as driving one’s own car but still, this amount of time is unthinkable for Americans I think.

But anyway, cost of living, outside of housing, isn’t so bad here in Tokyo. Take, for example, food. When I go to Keio University, I usually eat in their cafeteria and get chicken katsu and a bowl of rice. This costs 340 yen ($2.83) and that’s my lunch. If I don’t go to Keio University, I usually eat at one of the places around my dorm. One example is a soba place. I usually get a bowl of chuukasoba which is soba noodles, some slices of pork and some vegetables which I don’t know the names of in English and I also get yasai gyoza which is a plate of five dumplings. This all costs 550 yen ($4.58). A similar ramen place I go to is roughly the same price. I usually eat at these places for lunch and occasionally dinner.

I often eat tonkatsu/katsudon/katsu curry. When I get katsudon, which is a large piece of pork cutlet on a bowl of rice with egg and some other vegetables that I don’t know the names of in English, at my favorite place, it costs about 680 yen ($5.67).

Probably one of my biggest finds is at the sushi take-out place right near my dorm. A few weeks ago, I bought 30 pieces of sushi for 400 yen ($3.33). Admittedly, this was at around 8pm, so it had a 20% discount I think. It also wasn’t the most expensive fish. This past week, I bought 28 pieces of sushi of the more expensive fish and it was about 820 yen ($6.83).

As you can see, it isn’t too hard to eat cheaply in Tokyo. Sometimes I eat for under $10 a day here. And also remember, most of these places are restaurants which means there’s a waiter/waitress serving me, as well. There is no tipping custom in Japan, so the price you see in the menu is what you pay. There’s no tax or tip added at the end. It’s pretty remarkable that these waiters and waitresses are able to make a living without tips and when my bill is only $5! I suspect that these types of restaurants make a lot of money off of serving beer. When I go to eat dinner, I often see businessmen (salarymen) come in alone, sit down at the counter and order large bottles of beer which are perhaps five times more expensive than what is available at the many conbini (convenience stores) in Tokyo.

I also find it remarkable that despite the lack of an economic incentive for the waiter/waitress to serve the customer well (i.e. a tip), the service in the restaurants here in Japan is far better than the service in restaurants in America. Actually, I find service in general here in Japan to be much better than service in America. It’s too bad I’ll have to go back to that level of service after experiencing the possibilities here lol.

I was talking to my Japanese friend today online and he mentioned that he got a speeding ticket. He was going 145km/h in a 100km/h zone (about 90mph in a 62mph zone). He was fined 70,000 yen ($600) and he was given an option. He could either lose his license for 30 days or lose his license until he took a full day training course that would cost him an additional 14,000 yen ($120). He decided to take the training course a couple days later so he only lost his license for that time. I’m not exactly sure what the fines in the United States would be for going 90mph in a 60mph zone, but I don’t think they would be quite this harsh!

I also talked to someone else online and we were talking about Japan’s bubble economy in the 80s. She told me something that I remembered being mentioned in a video that we watched in our Economics class. I guess I didn’t quite remember it after the video because the statement seemed so illogical to me that I must have thought there were some sort of error, or at least, it didn’t register in my reality fully.

But, basically, one of the varieties of sushi available during Japan’s bubble economy was the best cut of tuna covered in…. get this, GOLD dust. And people actually ate this gold dust covered tuna.

The 80s in Japan must have been an exhilarating time. Businessmen often would go out and spend as much as tens of thousands of dollars in a single night. Because the bubble was growing due to speculation factors, it didn’t matter if there were real economic growth or not. If a business were really efficient or if it didn’t work too hard, it didn’t matter! The money would still flow in either way. For this reason, there were no wrong ways to go. Those businessmen in those days really must have felt invincible…