2009 Kanji of the Year

It’s that time again!!!

Japan Today reports that the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation has conducted it’s annual Kanji of the Year survery. And in a public opinion to find of which single character out of the 3,000 over so Chinese characters used in standard Japanese best represents and reflects the events of the past year, voters selected 新 [shin - new] as this year’s character.

With a new prime minister, new American president, and a “new flu”, 2009 has been a year of new things in both Japan and the that mystical land, known here affectionately as, 外国 [gaikoku - foreign country]. The announcement was made in Kyoto, with a priest at the famed Kiyomizu Temple ceremoniously writing the character on traditional Japanese paper. Ironically enough, the announcement was presided over by the new president of the foundation as the last was arrested for mispropriety. How’s that for “new”?

Anyway, it may be the Kanji of the Year for 2009, but I’m co-opting it for 2010. See, 2010 is a new year, one filled with endless possibilities to start over, do it better and get it right!  Here’s to 新!!!

Shitsugyoteate II

Blogging wirelessly from my bedroom at my Momma and Daddy’s house…. in Oklahoma! G-D bless their technologically striving hearts! =)

I don’t even have to tell y’all how hard it is being broke! Two years in to this recession – yes, despite whatever the J-Gov says, it’s STILL going on – we’re all very familiar with the feeling by now. I’ve mostly gotten over it for real. Instead, I, like the rest of you, have learned to scale it back to something alot less fabulous and alot more pragmatic… like “if I can’t eat it do I still need it???” :-/ LOL

So yeah, being broke…. I can manage that. But through this whole ordeal, the one thing that I’ve looked forward to has been going home to spend Thanksgiving with my family. The tickets were bought back in April so the date has been set… November 24, 2009. As the months waiting dwindled to weeks and days, my anticipation was palpable. But then a monkeywrench….

Continued after the break

Broke Gangsters III

I don’t know why but the yakuza, Japan’s infamous nine-fingered bad boys, remain one of my favorite subjects. They claim to be the last descendants of the samurai class, but live through to modernity as lords of Japan’s criminal underworld. Unlike criminal organizations elsewhere though, the yakuza operate as officially recognized corporate entities with control over not only the criminal staples of sex, drugs, and exhortion but also strong influence in finance and politics. Ummm, criminals with strong influence in finance and politics!? Sounds oddly like bankers, no?

Bankers have their exams, and now it seems the yakuza have theirs! In these tough economic times, yaks are getting their education on, hitting the books in an effort to more fully break into the greatest racket in the world… stocks! They even got a TEST! My boy, the Great Logistician, sent me this link the other day. Seems as though I’m not the only one who sees the yakuza as a barometer of economic indicator of an economy in decline.

Yakuza’s Series 7 Exam Is Harbinger for Economy
William Pesek

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s underworld can tell you a lot about what’s happening in the legitimate economy.

Gangsters are on the run as growth wanes and deflation worsens. Yet the oddest development by far involves yakuza members sitting for exams covering key aspects of their work.

If you think this is just a law-enforcement issue, think again. It’s a sign Japan’s funk will be longer than economists predict. That may surprise those betting Japan is recovering. Oddly, though, the plight of gangsters tells the story.

Huddled over legal texts and documents isn’t the popular image of Japan’s storied mobsters. When they aren’t collecting debts, shaking down shop owners, overseeing prostitution rings or rigging stocks, members of Japan’s biggest organized crime group, Yamaguchi-gumi, are studying for 12-page tests.

Surreal? Yes, but also a telltale sign of the seriousness of Japan’s deflationary cycle. The yakuza are having to work harder than ever to get by and are stepping up education efforts. This column isn’t meant to convey sympathy for them. It’s that the advent of a yakuza version of the Series 7 exam that stockbrokers take is a bad omen — very bad.

“The yakuza are a real barometer,” saysJake Adelstein, a blogger and the author of a new book, “Tokyo Vice.” “When the yakuza are doing poorly, the economy is doing poorly.”

All this hints at the harsh environment facing even the most industrious of gangsters, never mind average households. And it says lots about the need for growth opportunities. And Japan has a disturbing paucity of them at the moment.

Mob Crackdown

News of all this first appeared last month in the Mainichi newspaper. Police found the exam during a mob investigation in western Japan. Its timing coincides with the fallout from organized-crime laws that went into effect in late 2008. Gangster groups can be held responsible for actions of even the lowest street-level associates. Kobe, Japan-based Yamaguchi-gumi alone has about 40,000 members.

Areas of study include everything from phone fraud to dumping of industrial waste to auto theft to securities laws. The exercise is aimed at avoiding lawsuits as stagnation eats into profits from real estate, construction and stock trading.

This latter category has kept authorities extraordinarily busy. The yakuza invasion of Japan’s financial industry has been amazing and rapid. And intimate observers joke about feeling nostalgic for the days when the yakuza were simply thugs wearing bad suits and sporting full-body tattoos.

Yakuza as Investors

A decade ago, it wasn’t hard to spot who they were and what they might be up to. Now, they are diversified investors in Tokyo’s stock market. Observers are learning finance and forensic accounting to keep up with them. If you don’t understand Japan’s system of stock trading, issuance and manipulation, you can’t understand the modern yakuza.

That diversification often makes the yakuza a more useful economic gauge than one finds elsewhere — and explains why their plight says more about Japan’s outlook than many realize. In late 2008, Adelstein said there might be 600 “yakuza- connected companies.”

There’s no sanitizing the yakuza’s influence — it’s huge. Hence the keen focus on training members on trends in financial markets and key industries. Think of Yamaguchi-gumi’s education push as an M.B.A. for gangsters.

What’s fascinating about the yakuza is how nimble they can be. The shift from old-fashioned crime such as prostitution and drugs to finance has accelerated. Gangsters were quick to exploit a crackdown on consumer-finance companies. The government’s bungling sent more business their way, making organized crime an early beneficiary of the credit crisis.

Signs of Weakness

That was then. The economic signs are getting worse. The strong yen is weighing on Japan’s export-driven economy as the jobless rate hovers near a record high.

Japan will remain in deflation until 2012 because of “significant slack” in the economy, the International Monetary Fund said last week. Proving the point, consumer prices tumbled 2.4 percent in August, the fastest decline on record.

The other dilemma is politics. Gangsters long enjoyed getting a piece of multibillion-dollar public-works projects. That gravy train ended when Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan took over last month. The prime minister’s government is actually halting projects, never mind devising new ones.

Business opportunities are evaporating, faster than many economists say. The bar owners that members pressure for protection money can’t pay much these days. Prostitutes aren’t raking in customers the way they did two years ago. Households are reluctant to take on fresh debt, especially at extortionate rates. Stock trading and real estate are languishing.

Have no doubt gang members are brainstorming on how to survive the recession. Crime probably still pays well enough to keep some yakuza in the style they are accustomed to. The tension among Japan’s 80,000 or so yakuza is palpable, though, as evidenced by violent altercations between rival groups.

Just don’t be fooled into thinking this isn’t about the economy. It absolutely is. Gangsters studying for exams are a clear sign of where the underworld finds itself today. That goes for Japan’s broader population, too.

Shitsugyouteate

Yeahhhhh, boy!

So in my last post, I had just left the unemployment office WITHOUT the getting paid my 失業手当 [shitsugyoteate - unemployment allowance]. Yeah, I was hot ….and broke!!! The ¥1,000 that I had in my pocket was all the money I had in the world at that point, and I needed half of that just to get home! Normally in situations like this, I’d spend the next few hours yelling the F-word at the top of lungs every 5 seconds. It’s an aggressive (violent even) response to negative stimuli, which serves to focus me on the one, singular source of my anger and attack it. But these days, there just hasn’t been much fight left in me. So today, I pulled my hood low over my face and cried! ALL.THE.WAY.HOME….

I went home and got right in the bed, clothes and all, hoping to sleep straight through my birthday, straight through to Friday. My eyes were closed, but truth is I couldn’t sleep at all, mind following every thought in the darkness. But when I opened my eyes – 18 hours later!!! – I was literally blinded by the light! October 29th…. my birthday!!!

I was done crying, but maybe not quite ready to face the world. But still I did somehow feel better. Renewed. Stronger. For better or worse, I was going to HAVE to stick it out right here… at least until I finish my studies. And maybe that’s why I didn’t immediately call home. My folk back home definitely mean well but would have insisted that I come home right away, without fully accounting for everything I’ve been working for these past two years, namely my MBA program, which I’m 5 months away from completing.

So yeah, most of my birthday was spent in the apartment, studying and generally regrouping, getting myself fully in the mindset that I’mma stand tall, right here, whether I got a million yen or a single yen. By the time the Great Logistician came by to treat me to dinner, I had amped myself enough to face the world and fight another day.

Friday morning, instead of my 4 episodes of the Wire, I only watched two episodes of Omar rocking Avon’s world and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day studying for my Managerial Accounting exam. Yep, all in all, it was a productive day! What I didn’t know was the Unemployment did NOT wait until November 5th to deposit my 失業手当 [shitsugyouteate - unemployement allowance]. No, at some point doing the day, my money was deposited.

I had just chalked up the fact that I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent, and that Miss Lady that’s letting me sublet her place was just gonna have to be mad at me until Thursday. Last night, though, I decided that I’d just give go to ATM and give her whatever was there. Last time I had checked it yas ¥5!, but then this morning….

¥¥¥

Y’all know I ain’t the religious type, but this was something like heaven-sent… EXPRESS! And I had to send up some praises on that one! Praises, indeed!!!

Ninteibi

I’ve been out of work for two months now, and it goes without saying that it’s been hard times financially. I’ve had to scale it waaaay back, so much so that my friends, who are used to me showing up, livin’ it up and generally wildin’ out at every party and event, are asking where I’ve been. I want to think that it’s all because I’ve been studying, but the truth is that I’m broke and generally not in the mood to partying. No, not even on my birthday!

Backing up a bit….

My last day in the office was August 31st. I was looking forward to walking right in the unemployment office the next day to rightfully claim my benefits. But surprise surprise, I was told that I couldn’t claim any benefits without my official separation papers, and the “official” papers I had with me were NOT the papers I needed. Naturally, I made quick and angry call to Scarecrow, who had given me the papers the day before. Only then did he tell me that the papers and forms I actually needed wouldn’t come until after my last payday, and that they had to be sent from corporate headquarters in Osaka.

It took almost a month before those papers came, and not until after repeated inquiries to both my supervisor and Osaka. I was tight, and rightfully so, because I needed to get those benefit payments started right away, especially after I got seriously shortchanged by the financial aid office at school. But yeah, the forms I needed finally came, and I was off again to the unemployment office.

This time, forms in hand, they accepted my application. They explained to me that I would receive my benefits but not until after some time. First, there was a week for which I would receive no benefits at all, then I would have to come back on my 認定日 [ninteibi - certification day], then after another week I would receive payment. Seems I missed the most important part though!

I showed up to the unemployment office fully expecting to walk away with cash in hand. Imagine then my shock when they nice young office worker politely told me that I’d get my money in a week!!! WTF I had budgeted my whole month up until that day. And the ¥1,000 yen that I had in my pocket was the only money I had left! I was seeing red!!! I collected myself just long enough make it back to the train station before I fell apart. Those of you who know me personally already know… I’m emotional. But these past few weeks have really pushed me to the breaking point, and now maybe past. Life, like the moon, waxes and wanes, but I’m not sure if mentally and spiritually I can go on like this. I certainly can’t do it financially! Today is my 29th birthday, and at the end of a very long year I’m thinking maybe my adventures in the City Under Red Sun have indeed come to an end…

Broke Gangsters II

I wrote some time about the lengths the infamous Japanese mafia, also known as the mafia, have gone to to make money amidst this 世界不況 [sekai fukyou: global recession]. Skimming from poort country grannies, these dudes should be ashamed of themselves for real! SMDH Well, the boys with 9 fingers seem to have developed a new scheme! This time around they’re scamming on desperate singles looking for love. Cue the music….. “I was looking for in love in all the wrong places!” Yeah, folks, if you’re paying someone to help you find a short cut to love and eternal marital bliss, ummmm, you sorta deserve to get robbed. Is that harsh? Maybe but there really just no way to short cut your way in to truly meaningful, love-filled relationship! And when you do think you can outsmart the love gods, there’s always gonna be some goon there to try to outsmart you (and seperate you from your yen for his work)!

With Japan’s lastest 婚活 [konkatsu: marriage activity] craze, there’s more than a few suckers, errr customers, for the lil’ guys with all the tattoos!

This from Japan Today – July 18th, 2009:

Yakuza try matchmaking business to make ends meet

These are hard times for us all; hardest of all, says Spa! (July 21), for the yakuza. Once, organized crime bands pursued glory, as they saw it. Now it’s a brute, inglorious hustle for mere survival. Nothing’s beneath them, as long as it pays. Couple this fact with a surging marriage boom, and you get… yakuza infiltrating the matchmaking business? Sure enough, the magazine finds.

The buzzword is “konkatsu,” meaning literally “marriage activity” and written with characters suggesting a similarity to job-hunting. Singles once content to be that way are suddenly in the market for marriage partners, and brokerages, inevitably, are springing up to meet the demand.

In a sense, it would be strange if the yakuza wasn’t involved, so obvious is the potential. One lucrative undertaking Spa! looks into is the “marry-a-celebrity” scam. When 15 people, including a yakuza member, were arrested as suspects in May, it appeared that 200 men across the country had been bilked to the tune of 1 billion yen.

They were drawn by Internet and tabloid ads placed by “celebrity marriage producers.” The ads started appearing in 2007. Their tenor was, “Yes, even celebrities are looking for husbands, and yes, even you can qualify!” It’s interesting, notes Spa! in passing, that the libidinous pitch you’d expect is missing. The appeal is strictly to the burgeoning desire to wed.

The alleged scam is a variation of the purely sexual lures of yesteryear. Men pay a “membership fee” in the neighborhood of 100,000 yen and are fixed up with young women known as “sakura”—crudely, bait. Skillfully, the “broker” strings the client along: “She really likes you. She’s really getting serious about marriage.” Each date adds to the cost; then there are “deposits” to pay—and so on. So tempting is it all presented, so cleverly do the brokers and sakura play their parts, that some victims reportedly lost as much as 80 million yen.

The countryside offers fertile ground of a different texture. Tastes being plainer here, celebrities are redundant, and the profits to be made are consequently lower. On the other hand, victims, having lost less, are less inclined to go to the police.

Twenty years ago, there began a trend of importing brides from elsewhere in Asia to replace rural Japanese girls fleeing the hardships of farm life in favor of the big cities. That worked when Asia was mostly poor and a Japanese husband seemed a passport to an almost unimaginably better life. Asia’s growing prosperity punctured that mystique; the “better life” was available at home. “Now,” says Spa!, quoting a broker of international marriages, “with China’s economy on the rise, Chinese women aren’t interested in marrying a Japanese unless he’s making at least 10 million yen a year.”

So the yakuza and their attendant sakura go rural to fill the void. The client’s hopes are fed, and his wallet emptied, until finally, “after a month or so, contact fades out.”

By this time, the mark has typically lost 100,000-200,000 yen—“just this side of the line,” as one investigator puts it, “on which you bite your tongue and swallow your loss rather than face the embarrassment” of seeking legal redress.

Thanks, fellas! But I’ll meet my own spouse! LOL

http://cityunderredsun.com/2009/05/12/broke-gangsters/

http://cityunderredsun.com/2009/05/26/being-the-boyfriend-i-want-to-have/

Tranny Trash Burgers

Sure, I’ve been out to the random joint here or there, or for a cocktail or 10 in Ni-chome with the boys. But I haven’t REALLY hit the scene in quite a while. (I did go to one party where I met a very interesting character I’ll call “Pharrell Fan” but more on that in a different post.) Blame it on the recession! Indeed…

In my absence though, the City Under Red Sun has been taken over! Taken over, I tell you!!! Like when General Zod and his crew went and wrecked shop all up and through Metropolis! But there aren’t three, there are FIVE of them! Not since Godzilla emerged from the ocean has the City faced such a threat!

Ladies and gents (and everything in between), behold your negation! Behold, Miss Kisstress, Lady Pussy L’Amour, Princess Katarzena D’Porte, Countessa Vershuka Horkova and Captain Nonke, AKA the Tranny Trash Burgers.

Luckily for all of us – Natives and Residents alike – these devastating divas are less concerned with murder and mayhem and world domination. And more concerned with obscenely outrageous fabulousness. Your President (or Prime Minister) will not have to bow before them. Instead, they might “bow” before him. LOL All, except Captain Nonke, that is ’cause nonke don’t get down like that.

And here they are doing what they do best…

In addition to terrorizing the populace,  the TTB’s are also hitting the small screen! Peep the outrageousness! (courtesy of the Baltic Bombshell AKA Genkiserb – Thanks, babes!)

Tranny Outrageousness After the Jump

“We Will ALL Be Migrant Workers”

Each day I get closer and closer to marking 4 years here on the archipelago, and as the last of my JET-set friends prepared to head home, I am increasingly asked the same question: “So when are you going home?” Truth is, I’ve been home at least a dozen times already, and most people already know that. So what they’re really asking is:  “When are you moving back?” After everything I’ve learned, after everything I’ve been through, the answer may just be “never”. That’s right! NEVER.

Don’t get me wrong! I miss the hell out my family and my friends and the fabulous, American-sized life I  had back in the States. There is a part of me that crazy as it sounds wants nothing more than to move back to T-town and live some fantasy life of “ordinary” (no disrespect). But for me, it remains just that… a fantasy. My life is waaaaay to ummm, “complicated” to make that dream a reality.

I tend to present my life as a Resident in the City Under Red Sun as something like enchanted. But in between all the boys, the trannies and the fabulous parties, there’s been some real rough patches here and there which I’ve also tried to document in the pages of this blog. So I’m certainly not here just because it’s easy. Nah, that ain’t it at all!

I’m here because I am an (aspiring) artist, and for me this is where I’m supposed to be developing my art. It’s about going where my work is. So I want to posit this as a concept, the idea that in the 21st century we must all be a sort of global migrant worker. OK, the term “migrant worker” has a lot of negative connotations associated with it. Maybe  the term, “emigrant” might be a lil’ less socially/ethnically charged. In any case, the idea is that we must all be willing and able to go wherever in the world it is that our job [read: our innate calling, whatever that is] demands that we go.

Just as the great freedom seeking artists of yesteryear ran off  to Paris. Just as singers flock to NYC today. Just as the aspiring actors [read: waitresses and bartenders] all wind up in LA. Just as ummm, God’s fabulous Children flock to Atlanta. So too, everybody  – yes, EVERYBODY! – is going to have to seriously consider moving, and to consider moving increasingly farther and farther away from the places of origin. Indeed, given the global flight of what were once purely domestic industries, many of us may even have to move overseas. This means that we’re all going to have to get up on our foreign languages and our knowledge of foreign cultures. That also means that we’re all going to have take an ACTIVE interest in what’s going on not only in our own communities but what’s going around the world. Our new neighbors just might be Sudanese refugees. Or who knows you might have to take that position in Dubai. These days, ya’ never know!

The world has changed. And the way we think about our “place” in that world must change with it. The question for everyone though is: Are you ready?

And, incidentally, while you’re thinking about that. Check my previous post on Japan’s  expediant plan to deal with unemployment in its South American nikkei community here: http://cityunderredsun.com/2009/04/03/you-can-go-home-now-thanks/

“Man the Hell Up!”

Some time ago,  in a previous post there was a phrase that prompted some questions. The phrase – male herbivore – is apparently the latest Japanese cultural catch phrase, so much so that even CNN did a story on it. Read it>> According to CNN, male herbivores are “young, earn little and spend little, and take a keen interest in fashion and personal appearance.” In addition, they have little personal ambition and little to no interest in sex and relationships. Yep, it seems as though the post-Bubble economic realities compounded by this deep, global recession has a lot young J-boys feeling something like emasculated. Hell, some dudes are even turning to male bras, a one-time bestseller on Japan’s Rakuten online flea market, for the feeling of a little extra “support”! I kid you, not! LMAO

When I first heard the term, I was ready to dismiss it out of hand as the latest invention of the marketing and advertising machine. But I had to stop and think about it for a second: Young, check. Broke, check. Cheap, check. No interest in sex, check! Damn, my ex is a male herbivore! Yep, that explains everything!!! LOL Seriously though, I’ve met quite a guys – straight and gay – that fit the description.  All seem more than a little beaten up by life and resigned to live a life something less than fabulous.

But I say to them what I say to all their herbivorous brethren worldwide : Man the hell up!!!

Sure, the economy is in the toilet. G-d knows we’re all broke as hell. And we all have to put up with a lot ish just to make ends meet. On top of that, adult relationships are hard and time-consuming, and at the end of a long day at work the last thing anyone wants to do is to come home to deal with someone else’s ish. But for real, that’s what adult life is all about. Not to bash J-boys, because it’s not only a J-boy phenomenon really; no, it’s really a sign of a generation that’s been coddled to the point that they’re less than capable of dealing. The problem is even more acute here though because industrial output has taken a real hit in this recession and domestic output (read: the national birth rate) has been down for years. The City Under Red Sun needs all of its native sons to do their part and get it in. But noooooo… these guys’ll take the pass! I have to say it again: MAN THE HELL UP!

I feel bad enough for the pretty, young girls who have to deal with these scared (and broke) lil’ boys. But imagine my frustration as a man that loves men, only to find out that some of these men have no interest in sex (with me or anyone else). Like what is their purpose? Like what is gay man with no interest sex? Isn’t that what being gay is supposed to be all about??? SMDH

28 Days to Better Habits

I’ve come to the final conclusion that living in the City hasn’t been the best for my health – physically, mentally, spiritually and certainly not financially. Reading even a few of my posts is testament to that. With everything that’s happened in the past month or so, I’ve had to re-evaluate just what it is that I’m here in the City Under Red Sun yes, but in a much larger sense, what I’m doing here in this life.

It’s an ongoing process to be sure, but I am well on my way to answering those difficult questions. In the meantime, I’ve adopted (am adopting) some new habits to help me on the way. And here they are:

• Minimize my consumption of alcohol.
• Eat more health-consciously (less fat, sugar, red meat)
• Exercise regularly
• Devote more time to my academic studies
• Devote time to my spiritual growth
• Devote less time to trying to “get it in”
• Avoid meaningless sex
• Speak more fiercely from the Eye
• Focus more on the execution of my creative pursuits
• Live within a budget

It’s a pretty long list representing some drastic changes to the way I’ve lived my life over the past few years, particularly this past year here in the City. It’s amazing how having almost everything at your fingertips can drive a man crazy. But then again, maybe not! LOL

Most of the habits I’ve already started trying to do (with varying rates of success). It’s been about a week though since I’ve really got in to it. But if the old “28 Days to Better Habits” rule has any truth to it, I got about 3 weeks to go. When I do re-emerge from my self-imposed exile I will be that much more stronger and healthier. Here’s to living the life… and living it more abundantly!

Cheers {with a protein shake… hopefully}