Update on life in Tokyo

A lot has changed for me over the past year and a half. I won’t go into too much detail, but the biggest shift has been my new job. In September 2009 I started translating for an equity research team, which means I spend my days reading and translating reports on publicly listed Japanese companies and the stock market in general.

It’s a fun and deeply interesting job, but it’s had an impact on my commitment to blogging in a big way, for a few reasons. For one thing, I came into the job with a woeful lack of knowledge about stocks and finance. I’ve been spending many nights studying to try and fill in the gaps. Only recently have I felt ready to try and start broadcasting my thoughts again.

Also, all the background research about the Japanese corporate world has had an unexpected side-effect: it more or less satisfies my urge to do the same thing on MFT. I mean, why blog about how Saizeriya serves TV dinners as restaurant food, when I already spent the better part of a day writing the same thing in an analyst report? It feels redundant. Most times, I can’t even be bothered to post something on Twitter.

Recently, I have felt a little more confident in focusing on blogging again. But when I opened the WordPress site, I had a bit of writer’s block. My thinking and interests have changed since the time when I was blogging about pillow-girlfriends and the like. At this point, I don’t know what future posts will look like, but at the very least it now seems kind of pointless to snipe at foreign press coverage of Japan. Working in the investment world with a team of veteran translators has probably skewed my perspective.  I will probably spend more time talking about things like the Gyoza no Ohsho training scandal.

Life in Tokyo in 2011

It’s been almost four years since Mrs. Adamu and I moved to Tokyo, and this September will mark the 12th anniversary of my first landing in Japan at Kansai International Airport. The me of 12 years ago probably couldn’t imagine how I’d be living today. Of course my life has taken many unexpected twists and turns, but more generally, the life of a gaijin in Japan seems much more comfortable and less alienating than it used to be, at least from my perspective.

When I was a high school exchange student, my contacts with the home country were basically limited to monthly visits with other exchange students and the occasional rented movie or episode of Full House on Japanese TV. It didn’t matter much because I was concentrating on learning Japanese to fulfill my newfound dream of one day appearing on one of those shows where Japanese-speaking foreigners argue about politics.

But on the flight home something odd happened. Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers was showing on the in-flight entertainment, and for some reason I couldn’t stop laughing at all the cheesy jokes. I had been away from American humor for so long that even a little taste of it made me crack up. It happened again during my Kyoto study abroad days, when about six months in I watched Ace Ventura Pet Detective.

I don’t have those moments anymore.

I am typing this post on a laptop connected to my home WiFi connection, a few minutes after catching up with The Daily Show and Colbert Report. I can download/stream any movie or music I want using one of the world’s fastest Internet connections, while my cable TV opens up even more possibilities. The Net has all the world’s news. Skype lets me video-chat with my parents at holidays. There are two Costcos within a reasonable driving distance, and a decent amount of import stores that allow me to easily and cheaply cook American food if I so desire. I bought a queen-size bed at Ikea. Hyogo and Kyoto in 1999 and 2002 offered none of these, for both financial and technological reasons.

In so many ways, living in Tokyo in 2011 lets me keep my feet in both Japanese and American cultures. Obviously, I would not trade these comforts, but in a lot of ways it muddies the idea of assimilating into Japanese culture and fundamentally feeling like I live in a foreign country. If it mattered to me, I guess I could tilt the balance of my media/entertainment more toward the Japanese side, but it doesn’t. When I was younger I was all about learning to understand Japanese TV and movies and reading manga. But these days I know most Japanese TV is utterly stupid, and it’s rare for me to encounter a manga title that really grabs me (the last one was Ishi No Hana). Who knows, this might be another reason some of my old go-to blog topics seem less interesting now.

35 thoughts on “Update on life in Tokyo”

  1. Of course, on the flip side, being out of Japan, it has never been easier to see/obtain whatever Japanese pop culture stuff one wants (and increasingly food, etc.). With this, blogging almost across the board has shifted to a Japan Probe style of “look at this video of what was on Japanese TV last night” rather than “look at this crazy thing that I took a picture of”.

    In another way, now I feel the same kind of casualness about Japanese things that you are describing. Perhaps it comes from more linguistic confidence after having been doing this for over a decade – I know I could run through a year’s worth of Jump titles in a weekend or every major monthly magazine article about North Korea in the last six months in an afternoon so I really can’t get that excited about it. It used to feel like an accomplishment because it was both difficult and fresh. Maybe I/we are just getting old.

    Finally, North American public culture seems WAY more interesting when one is in Japan. When you walk past a guy waving a poster of Nazi Obama on the way to work (in Canada!) even the Daily Show is just depressing.

  2. This is where I have been about Japan for quite awhile since I’ve been here for 22 years. People who haven’t been here long enough to reach this stage will start tossing around words like “gaijin bubble” because you enjoy your native entertainment more than Japanese culture, but it really is more about changing tastes than anything else. And it’s not like the Japanese themselves don’t also find their own television and manga boring past a certain age. There’s a reason that shows like 24, Sex and the City, etc. are popular here (even though I don’t care for either).

    A lot of Japanese popular culture is low-quality stuff that is derivative of other country’s entertainment or just knocked out as quickly as possible with poor production and writing. Once it no longer serves to expand your language skills or cultural knowledge, it can feel very hollow. Other countries produce a lot of crap, too. America does so with all of the hideous reality shows, but bigger countries tend to offer more diversity in order to appeal to a bigger audience and they have broader market appeal. Small country, small audience, and smaller pool of new culture so the amount of cream in the crop in Japan is small.

    As for “assimilation”, I have never understood why anyone should want to abandon who they are to fit into a conception of what it is to be Japanese. What’s the point of attempting to assimilate when it is an absolutely impossible task? Integrate, not assimilate.

  3. I have met several foreigners who for various reasons were far more assimilated and adopted more Japanese mannerisms than I would be comfortable with. It’s typically Asians but there are some gaijin types as well. Each person lives differently and I don’t think it’s fair to try and enforce an orthodoxy of behavior. The “western guy in Japan” gets stereotyped and maligned enough that we should have some tolerance when it comes to others.

    Of course, while prefacing that my own Japanese accent is nothing to brag about, an important exception to my plea for tolerance is the gaijin guys who talk like Japanese girls. It’s time to take a step back, listen to how you sound, and make a few simple adjustments. Your credibility and respectability will improve markedly, not least among the other gaijin listening.

  4. My wife is Japanese. Her favourite TV shows are British detective series shown on The Mystery Channel. What does that say about cultural preferences, and living in a Gaijin bubble?

    I agree with the “integrate, not assimilate” comment. As an obviously western looking person it’s impossible to be mistaken visually for a Japanese. You should adopt the customs and mannerisms that make the Japanese comfortable to deal with you.

  5. I think your Japanese accent is quite excellent, Adamu. (Your English is rather monotone, and so is your Japanese, and that’s how you talk — your monotone Japanese is not a result of being a non-native speaker.)

    I concur that it is excrutiating to listen to bouncy Japanese girl talk come out of a Western man’s mouth.

    I consider you, Adamu, to be a grand guru about much of Japan when it comes to politics, finance, and many aspects of culture (although definitely not cuisine).

  6. RMilner, sounds exactly like my wife. I had to switch from HikariTV to SkyPerfecTV HD just so she could watch Mystery Channel.

  7. My wife and I pretty much like the same Japanese TV shows, specifically:

    Weekdays: Ohayo Nippon in the morning, followed by the BS1 global news roundup from 8 AM until we run out the door. (I actually time my commute based on BS1: I’m early if I leave during BBC, on time if I leave during France 2, late if I leave during ZDF.) After we get home, NHK between 7 and 10 PM, unless a goofy enka show comes on around 8:30.

    Saturday nights: Fushigi Hakken on TBS. Watching Hitachi commercials for an hour gets pretty old, but the show itself is always very interesting. Then News Caster with Beat Takeshi — half of the humor of which is totally lost on everyone except Beat Takeshi himself, but the news content is a good roundup of the week, and I always find myself watching through the end to catch Ayumi Matsumoto’s ultra-cute weather segment and final parting jab at Takeshi.

    Sunday nights: NTV’s Itte Q, by far the best “talents embarrassing themselves” program since it has a lot of interesting globe-trotting scenarios in it, followed by Gyoretsu Dekiru Horitsu Sodansho which features my former boss’s current law firm partner as one of its lawyer panelists. He is hilarious on the show though generally more demure at his day job.

    That’s most of what we watch, though we also get hooked into travel documentaries on the BS channels from time to time. We watch American or European movies but never Japanese ones. So far we’ve avoided cable and CS, and though I occasionally think of subscribing the value just doesn’t seem to be there, especially considering how much of that content can be downloaded for free.

  8. Joe – that is exactly what my wife and I watch on Sunday. Which of the lawyers do you know?

    Shinsuke is funny, but I miss the days when they did a half dozen law segments, it was pretty damn informative.

  9. Imagine telling a western resident of Tokyo in the 60s or 70s that you have a daily cafe latte or espresso, drink more wine than sake, regularly eat pasta and the occasional burger, speak to friends back home every week, watch TV shows from home almost as soon as they are broadcast, usually have freshly baked bread in the house and can’t recall when you last squatted down to use a Japanese-style toilet. They’d assume you’d have to be some kind of elite expat, on a limitless budget, living in the mother of all gaijin bubbles.

    Modern city-dwelling Japanese have integrated into their own daily routines so many aspects familiar to Westerners. You could try to do without any of them but you’d end up living an old-fashioned kind of life and your Japanese friends might think you a bit peculiar.

    If someone said “I don’t really hang out with other foreigners” before about 1990, there was a fair chance they were going native is some fashion. If you hear someone say it today, there’s no real way of knowing if they are spending their time instead furiously downloading and watching bittorrent files, living on the web, and wondering whether to go to McDonald’s or have a pizza delivered.

    “Gaijin bubble”, to me, isn’t about whether you sit under a kotatsu or on a sofa at home. It’s more about the quality and extent of your engagement with the place you are living.

  10. If at home at the right times, I’m with Joe – can’t go wrong with Shinsuke.

    Mornings I rotate between Minomonta and Ohayo Asahi (I’m sure Roy knows it), and the only weekday program a regularly watch is my beloved Gaia no yoake (used to be hosted by Yakusho Koji, now Eguchi Yosuke).

    I didn’t watch Ryoma, but I’ve started watching the new Taiga Drama (江・・なんとか) and it’s been quite enjoyable. Seeing spots relatively close to where I live is also fun.

  11. “You could try to do without any of them but you’d end up living an old-fashioned kind of life and your Japanese friends might think you a bit peculiar.”

    It wouldn’t be nearly odd over here in Kyoto… Although actually even the most Kyoto/Japanese lifestyle living of expats here still probably have a fancy electric toilet, a collection of wine, and PC running bittorrent with a fiber connection to their machiya.

  12. nice post.

    don’t own a TV as it’s all such rubbish.

    instead I listen to Bush Blair Communications online,
    and the excellent THIS IS HELL radio show from Chicago.

    Also am too busy in real life to waste time blogging about anything,
    but so free at work that I have time to read and comment on blogs.
    nice balance I’d say.

    I also gave up trying to fully intergrate a long time ago as we all know where that road leads, eh Mr.Arubaito.

  13. I also don’t have a TV, and out of 6 years living in Kyoto I only had a TV for about 6 months to 1 year altogether. But I always have great Internet access so I can watch anything I want to, which doesn’t include very much Japanese TV.

    When I was living back home or in Taiwan I would actually watch Japanese TV on cable far more often than I do in Japan because I wasn’t hearing nearly as much Japanese in my daily life (especially at home, in Taiwan I had a lot of Japanese actually) so it was nice for keeping my ear from getting lazy, but I’ve never cared enough while in the country to even bother getting a TV – although I’m sure it would probably be good for me to have NHK running in the background while I work or kill time online.

  14. “what’s the current record?”

    Record for quickest mention of Debito or longest thread not to?

  15. “I don’t own a TV” is a bit like “I don’t own a watch”. Not so long ago, the phrases indicated the kind of lifestyle the speaker had, or wanted you to think he had.

    Today, you might not have a watch but if you constantly check the time on your mobile phone then you’re simply behaving the same way with a different device. If you watch YouTube clips, some other streaming media, video files or even just DVDs then not having a TV doesn’t really say as much as it once did.

  16. Yes, exactly. I don’t own any device that counts as a TV for the purposes of paying the NHK fee, but I have a widescreen LCD and an infinite supply of television programming.

  17. “To possess two traditions, as happens to Jews but not only to Jews, is a richness: for writers, but not only writers.” Primo Levi

  18. ”most Japanese TV is utterly stupid, and it’s rare for me to encounter a manga title that really grabs me (the last one was Ishi No Hana).”

    OK,but you do remember the fact that you’ve been borrowing all the five volumes
    of “Ishi No Hana”from a dude who earns living by making “utterly stupid”Japanese TV….

    Speaking of myself,I was offered a transfer from my boss to a section that makes program for the foreign audiences last week.Reading above comments above frightens me…..

  19. As you are well aware there are certain corners of the TV world I wholeheartedly back. Specifically, NHK continues to be fricking awesome, except for some stuff they produce to try and mimic the style on 民法.

    On that topic, I had to nod my head the other day when I read this Nikkei editorial on picking the new NHK chairman:

    http://r35news.blog137.fc2.com/blog-entry-76.html

    アサヒビール相談役から転じた福地会長は、視聴者を顧客とみなす風土を組織と職員に根付かせた。昨年、角界が不祥事に揺れたときに恒例の相撲中継をやめるなど、慣例にとらわれない荒療治に踏みきったのも、福地氏の指導力による。

     半面、視聴者重視を視聴率の引き上げと同義ととらえる弊害も出ている。公共放送局でありながら、民間放送局との間で視聴率競争に走るような番組づくりが散見される。視聴率至上主義があるとすれば、その是正も新会長の仕事になる。

  20. I wouldn’t do without a TV in Japan simply because of NHK – news and documentaries.

    “Reading above comments above frightens me…”

    I think that we generally have less cultural stuff to get excited about period. When I look at American film this past year and think that the consensus top three (Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit) don’t rank up there with the best work of the three (or four with both Coens) directors, I can’t help but think that pop culture production is getting tired on a global level.

  21. “except for some stuff they produce to try and mimic the style on 民法”

    I should be the last guy to point someone else’s grammatical errors,but it’s 民放.

    I have a mixed feeling on Nikkei editorial.Nikkei is in partnership with half a dozen private stations.I don’t see any problem public broadcaster competing against other stations.If that ever brings lower quality on the program,then more should be blamed are the private stations that keep airing no-brainers of which Nikkei has it’s share of responsibility.

    On gaijins who thinks “Japanese TV sucks”.

    Allow me to portray the above characters very stereotypically.
    Aren’t they the same crowd who also don’t read Japanese newspapers,weekly/monthly/bimonthly/seasonal magazines?Who also do not read books in Japanese,not liestening radio iin Japanese,not even joining Mixi group on internet and practically has no social life to speak of apart from local gaijin community and Japanese in-laws ?

    I know I’m being rather harsh,but that’s my understanding of the above kind.
    Not that I’m promoting to watch the utterly stupid Japanese TV,mind you.But one has to wonder what is the meaning of living in overseas with the kind of social and intellectual condition like that.
    At least you’ll be able to learn “in what kind of way”Japanese can be uttely stupid by watching Japanese TV,without doing that,you are just guessing it.

  22. “Aren’t they the same crowd who also don’t read Japanese newspapers,weekly/monthly/bimonthly/seasonal magazines?Who also do not read books in Japanese, not listening radio in Japanese,not even joining Mixi group on internet and practically has no social life to speak of apart from local gaijin community and Japanese in-laws ?”

    I know exactly where you are coming from, and have some sympathy with your sentiments. However, I can think of many Tokyo residents who easily fit that description but are well-balanced, have no chip on their shoulder, and are major contributors to their local communities. If you stop thinking about men and include women, then you’ll get a very different picture.

  23. “no chip on their shoulder”

    I think that Mulboyne hit it right on the nose with this.

    There are certainly lots of people, most in fact, who in their own countries, couldn’t even name the major monthly magazines and don’t care to follow politics. They shouldn’t necessarily be taken to task for maintaining this in Japan. The problem with a certain part of the Japan expat crowd is the chip that makes people go off on what are pretty complex and widely debated topics – war memory, immigration, gender – while effectively ghettoizing themselves out of Japanese debates. In my view, this becomes particularly egregious when people who couldn’t be arsed to learn Japanese feel a drive to proclaim that “the Japanese don’t talk about X” which they obviously know from breathing the same air or something. People talking about their “years” like it is evidence in a debate is one of the head-scratchers of the Japan expat experience. Sometimes, one just has to say – White dude! Japanese feminists have been making the same argument for decades! Now get down off the bar.

  24. “If you watch YouTube clips, some other streaming media, video files or even just DVDs then not having a TV doesn’t really say as much as it once did.”

    A couple of DVDs a month maybe in my case and the odd youtube clip someone sends me . .but no adverts !! and no shitty Japanese news like ooh it’s golden week, now I wonder if Haneda airport is crowded, lets go down and take a look.

    reporter: “Have you been abroad?”
    holidaymaker: “Yes”
    reporter: “Haneda airport is very busy”

    etc. etc every year, ad infinitum

    I read Japanese newspapers, magazines, listen to the radio and sometimes watch videonews.com (an alternative news site).

    Compared to magazines like the onion, private eye, the guardian, de spiegel, the daily show, even the bbc, the whole Japanese media melee is some dumbed down and base that I just can’t be arsed with it

  25. I am seeing some pretty ungenerous generalizations getting thrown around, starting with me. To clarify, Japanese TV is hardly uniformly utterly stupid, and I do not say it out of ignorance. I watch Japanese TV a lot, including the dreaded private stations. I don’t fit neatly into Ace’s stereotype, but it’s not like those pressures and temptations don’t push me in that direction, either.

    Utterly stupid can be a lot of fun. My recent favorite is the feature on チンさむロード that puts a comedian on a bus and drives him over sudden steep hills that give men a funny feeling in their nether-regions

    http://www.fujitv.co.jp/marumaru/chinsamu/index101217.html

  26. “no shitty Japanese news like ooh it’s golden week, now I wonder if Haneda airport is crowded, lets go down and take a look.”

    Well,it’s a cheesy job,but someone has to do it.It’s a lot more boring to make those report then watching them on TV.Coming from a guy who’ve done the one not from Haneda but Narita.

    “Compared to magazines like the onion, private eye, the guardian, de spiegel, the daily show, even the bbc, the whole Japanese media melee is some dumbed down and base that I just can’t be arsed with it”

    Since “The Daily Show” is thinking man’s news entertainment show,those who enjoy the program must be a smart person.
    But how much does the program covers Japan issue?Close to zero,I guess.
    I know they had that Yakuza book author on the show,but that’s because “the yakuza” happens to be on the list of “Stuff White People Like”somewhere between #150 to #200.
    Guardian had that “rent-a-friend”article from Tokyo bureau last year.Der Spiegel once resembled Abe Shinzo with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and BBC has been official mouthpiece of Greenpeace by having their reporter Jonah Fisher on board on GP boat harrasing the whaling fleet.

    I’d rather choose the dumped down Japanese media when it comes to the issue that relates with the country that I live in.But it’s me sayin’.

    “I am seeing some pretty ungenerous generalizations getting thrown around, starting with me”

    Sorry bro.Just came back from the snow dovering “There’s-too-much-deer-in the-countryside-and-we-should-just-kill-and-eat-’em”story and was a bit tired.
    You can keep the mangas as my apology for I have another set of “Ishi No Hana”.

  27. Hey,I’ve been using Japanese-English google translation to post comments on this blog for years.Pretty much everyone understood what I posted until now, Girth.

    And seems to me it still works perfectly.I just put a word “御託を並べる引きこもり”and google translation was “disgruntled expat”.

  28. “ey,I’ve been using Japanese-English google translation to post comments on this blog for years.”

    Obviously an aficionado.

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