Author: Adamu

Facts on Japanese libraries

(Updated and corrected)

If you’ve never been to one of Japan’s public libraries, I suggest you check one out. While they vary in quality from place to place, in my experience they’ve been great resources of free books and periodicals (especially magazines). The users tend to be surly older men there to get a free newspaper, kids playing with the picture books, and serious students studying for exams. While they have some odd rules (no late fees, you can actually check out periodicals, and there are draconian photocopy limitations), all in all I love them.

So that’s why I was so happy to see that Japan’s ministry of education has some numbers on Japan’s network of public libraries as part of a survey taken every three years of “social education” institutions like libraries, civic centers, and museums.

Some facts:

  • At the time of the survey, taken over 2007 and 2008, there were 3,165 public libraries in Japan, or one for every 40,349 people. In the US, there are an estimated 122,356, one for every 2,485 people. That compares to 42,204 convenience stores and 13,000 pachinko parlors. The number is up from 2,396 in 1995. (Correction: The US number included public school libraries, whereas the Japanese numbers did not. The corresponding US number is 16,604, or one for every 18,312 people.)
  • Japanese people borrowed over 600 million books in 2007.
  • There are a total of 34.03 million cardholders (26.7% of the population), who borrowed an average of 19 books apiece. Elementary school-age cardholders were more avid readers, borrowing 35.9 books each. The cardholder population is actually down from 36.9 million in 1999 but up from a sharp fall to 26.4 million in 1998.
  • However, today’s cardholders visit the library 5 times a year, vs. just 3 times in 1995.
  • Though there are only 14,981 employed librarians or assistant librarians in Japan (including those working at privately run collections), it’s estimated more than 200,000 people have passed the official librarian exam. In the US, there were 150,000 employed librarians in 2008. That’s 4.7 librarians or assistants for each library vs. just 1.2 per library in the US. I am not exactly sure what to make of this difference, but maybe it has something to do with the relatively higher qualifications needed to become a qualified librarian in the US (a masters degree in library science) vs. Japan (an undergrad degree in library science or a degree in any field plus some extra training).
  • By far the biggest library in Japan is the National Diet Library in Tokyo with a collection of 34.7 million books, compared to the US Library of Congress’s 141 million. I guess if the Diet doesn’t actually have to make any decisions, its members don’t need to do as much background research!

While I won’t get into it now, Wikipedia has some info on the history of libraries in Japan if you’re interested.

(link thanks to J-Cast)

Scratch not lest ye be scratched

Awesome site that photoshops those creepy Japanese Christian signs to change the word “God” to “cat.” Pure gold:

c7e8aa52

The kingdom of Cat is upon us.

b2040b06

Cat will judge adultery and fornication.

You see, erasing part of the word “God” (神) in Japanese will give you the word for “cat” (ネコ).

Thanks to Marxy for the link!

History on the march – Lindsay Hawker’s alleged murderer arrested

The police have finally arrested Tatsuya Ichihashi for the grisly murder of Nova teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker. You can find the details from any number of sources. I am very glad the police followed through and finally brought him to justice after initially letting him get away. He was on the run for around two and a half years.

This is a minute detail, but Ichihashi’s arrest means that from now on there will be no more wanted posters with Ichihashi’s face. Ever since I arrived in Japan around two years ago his face has been plastered just about everywhere. In fact, the murder occurred just a month before I touched down. Now I’ll miss not seeing him at every police box. It’s not that I was fond of him – I will just instinctively feel a sense of loss. Today he was there, and at some point in the next few days he’ll be gone from everywhere but the TV. And all this time, he didn’t even look like that anymore because of the plastic surgery!

It’s the same with the Tokyo Olympics 2016 signs. From the time I arrived here (as far as I can remember) until just a couple months ago they were all over the place – but now that the games were awarded to Rio they are gone, too.

Stuff I want to eat: Frijoles, a Chipotle knockoff in Azabu Juban

menu_buritto001

When I lived in Washington, DC, one of my favorite places to eat was Chipotle, the formerly McDonald’s-owned seller of giant burritos. The combination of spicy salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and seared meat all wrapped in an overstuffed tortilla made for a reasonably priced explosion of flavor, guaranteed every time.

Accordingly, a complete lack of anything comparable in Japan (or any decent Mexican food, for that matter) has been a source of considerable homesickness for me.

Until now.

Joe has pointed me to Frijoles, a restaurant in Azabu Juban with a menu essentially identical to Chipotle. I have not eaten there yet, but it has so far received some positive word of mouth. I’ll be sure to report once I’ve had the chance to try it out.

Kanae Kijima, the konkatsu killer: a black widow serial killer for the Internet age

konkatsu killer EFBD8AEFBD8A

Some of you may have heard the recent news of a black widow serial killer in Japan. The more I read about this story, the more fascinating and horrifying it gets:

Investigators probing the deaths of two acquaintances of a 34-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of fraud have found that at least four other men linked to the woman died under suspicious circumstances.

All of the men lived in the Kanto district, and in one case investigators initially thought the victim had committed suicide by burning briquettes to release deadly carbon monoxide. Police are continuing to investigate the details surrounding the men’s deaths. The name of the woman, a resident of Tokyo’s Toshima Ward, has been withheld.

Investigative sources identified two of the men who died suspicious deaths as a 70-year-old man from Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, and a 53-year-old man from the Tokyo city of Ome. Unconfirmed details remained over the deaths of other men in the Kanto district.

Her name is Kanae Kijima. Investigators apparently learned of this woman’s possible involvement after reading through one of the victims’ blog posts, which is still online here. You can see from the blog this guy was very into his plastic model kits and thus might not have been all that sophisticated around women. Perhaps understandably, he was blinded by love. Here is what his last post says:

Today I will meet my fiancee’s family. Recently I have been spending most of my time looking for a new place with her and talking about our new life together. Starting tonight, we will go on a three-day, two-night pre-marriage trip.

He was found dead a mere ten hours later.

Kijima was a real piece of work. According to reports, she was a professional con-woman who met lonely men on the Internet and convinced them to ask her hand in marriage. Once “engaged,” she would start asking for money, sometimes pretending to need it for tuition. With the money from her many future husbands she lived an expensive, luxurious lifestyle, complete with the high-end condo, a wine-red Mercedes, and occasional stays at the Ritz-Carlton. She also liked gourmet food such as obscenely expensive green tea (Y2,000 for 100g), a habit that pushed her weight up to a whopping 100kg.

Born in 1974 in Hokkaido the granddaughter of a local politician, Kijima moved to Tokyo at age 18 to attend Toyo University but dropped out after a year without paying her tuition. In 2003 she was arrested for scamming someone in a Yahoo auction.

I was not able to find when her career as a black widow got started, but probably some time around 2006 when she began renting a large two-bedroom apartment in Itabashi-ku. Her scams were apparently so successful she netted a total of Y95 million before getting caught.  So over three years that’s a very comfortable annual income of around 32 million yen (or around $300,000), presumably tax-free.

It’s reported she met around 20 people on the dating site. She apparently didn’t always kill her marks – she was unsuccessful in scamming some and maybe just didn’t feel the need to kill others. The six men identified so far were the unlucky ones.

In addition to her online dating activities, she worked another angle “taking care of” an 80-year-old man who she also met on the Internet, whose house burned down in May under mysterious circumstances with him in it.

Amazingly, she left behind all kinds of evidence on the Internet. First, she gave her real identifying information to the dating site allegedly used for the crimes. Second, she documented much of her activity on her personal blog hosted by recipe site Cookpad (some of it is still available via Google’s cache, and some bloggers have been able to rifle through it). In it she posts pictures and tells stories about all the nice stuff she bought from the men she killed (of course she doesn’t go into that particular detail).

Details of this story underscore just how influential and entrenched the web has become in Japanese society. Not only did the “konkatsu” killer meet all these men on Internet dating sites (including an old man), the cops’ investigation hinges greatly on this woman’s sloppiness and overconfidence in failing to cover her tracks properly.

As juicy as all these details are, it’s important to note that this woman is being given the Noriko Sakai treatment – that is, the Saitama police haven’t officially arrested her for murder, just fraud at this point. The cops will likely hold her for a few weeks as they progress with their investigation, following the standard procedure in Japan. In the meantime, it’s possible the police are trying to get over a lack of damning evidence tying her to these killings by flooding the media with all manner of intimations (and the media is no doubt demanding details on this huge story). That may be why major media outlets have declined to report her real name for fear the character assassination could expose them to future defamation lawsuits, as argued here. Still, with all the reports of new evidence popping up they will probably get their woman.

The face of futility

view8576727

Unceremonious.

Tonight Yoshifumi Nishikawa, the former president of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation hand-picked by Koizumi to lead Japan Post through the privatization process, has announced he will step down rather than fight the inevitable. Shizuka Kamei, the minister in charge of revising the privatization plans, gave him the news personally yesterday that there had been a change in plans, though he was not explicitly told to resign (Kamei had said that enough in public already).

This picture of a downtrodden Nishikawa was taken before tonight’s press conference, I think right after his meeting with Kamei. He had worked for about four years preparing Japan Post to become a stock corporation and prepare for an eventual public offering. Now it’s all over. Barring another reversal, there will be no IPO and the government will now re-emphasize Japan Post’s role as publicly owned infrastructure instead of as a potential source of cash for the ailing treasury.

This marks Nishikawa’s second major fall from grace as a top executive, though this one wasn’t his fault. At SMBC he had to step down in 2005 to take responsibility for losses. Financial regulators later slapped the bank with a partial business suspension order for forcing small businesses to invest in derivatives as a condition of getting a loan, a practice that took place under his watch. Heading Japan Post was his attempt to leave a more positive legacy.

Guy eats Y4000 worth of Yoshinoya, then robs the place

Yeah, that’s what happened. A middle aged man ate 10 separate items including several full meals at a Kobe Yoshinoya, waited until there were no other customers, and then robbed the place with a wooden chopstick, nabbing Y80,000. He is still at large. How he could still move after 10 meals, let alone make a run for it, I will never understand.

Hiking in Hannou-shi, Saitama

Hannou-shi in Saitama Prefecture is located along the Seibu Ikebukuro line outside Tokyo. Closer to outlying Chichibu than urban Tokyo, the town’s look and feel are like a scene out of the recent Oscar-winning film Departures (which I highly recommend!). Mrs. Adamu and I decided to hike there after finding the town randomly on a web search. It was an extremely convenient trip – after an hour and a half train ride it was just a 10 minute walk to reach the trail. We followed this route on the Hiking Map website.

Anyway, here is what we saw!


This is a monument to local deaths from industrial accidents. Not sure why they died or when.


Going up Tenranzan mountain we came across these oddly shaped Buddhas. The fifth Tokugawa shogun apparently called a monk from a temple near this mountain to heal him with chanting, and it worked. The statues are somehow related to this.
Continue reading Hiking in Hannou-shi, Saitama

Obama won the Nobel because Bush was just that bad

Obama won the Nobel Peace Price completely out of the blue and really without much in the way of results. I think the whole world must be scratching its collective head now.

So to try and help make sense of things, I just wanted to echo the sentiment in this post from Talking Points Memo:

It’s not the accustomed stance of a writer or blogger. But this one does have me at something of a loss for words. I notice the condemnation of the Taliban, the edged snark of the superciliati. But I also see Ana Marie Cox’s first-off Twitter: “Apparently Nobel prizes now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.” And while less than generous, I think she’s on to the root of the matter. But perhaps not precisely in the way she thinks.

This is an odd award. You’d expect it to come later in Obama’s presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the ‘hyper-power’ as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it’s a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was ‘normal history’ rather than dark aberration.