I found an article in Itai News [in Japanese] that I spent the past week translating, just for fun.  It’s a bit of fluff that lists Japanese women’s list of the worst “unmanly qualities” they hate about Japanese men.

1.   He has no opinion, is just carried along by others.
2.   He always has someone to blame.
3.   He can never be decisive at the moment of truth.
4.   He’s always giving up (never puts in the work).
5.   He’s always relying on his parents somehow.
6.   He keeps quiet on the train even when he’s bunched up against some weirdo.
7.   Though he’s timid around other people, he only acts firm in front of me.
8.   He flip-flops around with what foods he likes and dislikes.
9.   He splits the cost of meals (with me) exactly, even in increments of ¥10.
10. He asks for favors.
11. He always whines about his work.
12. His nails are too long.
13. He does nothing but complain.
14. He checks his appearance in front of the mirror too much.
15. He uses toiletries (products) too much.
16. His body is frail and weak.

Want to know what Japanese men are like?  Imagine someone who embodies at least 10 out of 16 things in this list, and you have the typical Japanese guy.

I’m not going to go line-by-line, but I’ll give a few examples of what I observed based on advertisements, sitcoms, and train behavior.

Appearance expectations seem to be roughly equivalent when it comes to the business standard in Japan.  Men are expected to have flawless complexions and healthy flowing black hair just like the women, except that women are allowed to talk about it and possess big conspicuous boxes of products and makeup; men doing the same are “un-manly”.  (Source: TOYAMA Masao, Black Diamond in Monavie)

Train Behavior: I have never witnessed, not one single time in my 2 months there where I spent a good 2 hours on trains almost every single day including a few Tokyo rush hours, a single Japanese man or woman ever speaking up against “some weirdo”.   As if you can tell the “weirdos” apart from your typical late-40s salariman reading tentacle-porn anime ANYWAY.  NEXT!!!

Dependence on Parents: Something like 60% of Japanese men between the ages of 18 and 34 still live with their parents; about 80% of Japanese women in that age range fit that description.  Double-standard much?   (Source: Wikipedia article on “Parasite single” phenomenon in Japan)

Culture: Japanese men are not supposed to be decisive, or speak up, or have an opinion.  Guys who start having opinions rapidly find they don’t have a job.  (Source: anecdotal evidence, stories collected from pubs.)

Given all of this mental mindscrewing inflicted by Japanese culture on its own inhabitants, it’s no wonder they have problems with people jumping onto the tracks.  And it’s both telling and amusing that when these events get reported, they say things like “man jumps in front of train, inconveniences 90,000 commuters”.

The question on my mind is this:  do these suicidals pre-meditate their jumps so as to leave this world committing one final, massively heinous social crime in Japanese culture — Causing Inconvenience?  If so, that’s hilarious.

I feel an Alan Watts marathon coming on.

Technorati Tags: alan watts, fluff, japan, japanese, monavie, subways, tokyo

Kissaten-de, resuturan-de, nandemonai.  It’s all gross, and never not gross, and never in the same way twice.  I hated the coffee in Puerto Rico, but they consistently made it a certain super-strong way that had to be served with milk and sugar, and I could chalk that up to the taste preference of a different culture.

No, the “consistently the worst coffee” designation belongs to a country that stabs around wildly at coffee and espresso-brewing, having no concept whatsoever of how to produce a drinkable cup.  I had a few lattes around Shibuya that were mostly burnt in their espresso content and unbelievably hot — in one case leaving the [soy] milk utterly flat, it was so over-steamed.

In an upscale-seeming mall cafe, I was served a “cappucino” that was probably the same swill they pump out at Tim Horton’s — a powdered milk-based coffee-extract concoction jam packed with sugar.

To make something good, you have to know what good is, or at least have some idea — an ideal to uphold.  The Japanese have NO IDEA about coffee.

The ideal of coffee in Japan is simply to HAVE coffee, and to present it in a certain way.  The actual content seems, to the Japanese, completely irrelevant.

Now, TEA in this city, on the other hand… that’s another story.

Basically, if you want to give up coffee, come to Japan for a week.  If the crapfully crapful cuppa you keep getting served doesn’t get you, the $5 to $7 price tag will.

Technorati Tags: coffee, image, japan, rhetoric, tea, tokyo