Awesome site that photoshops those creepy Japanese Christian signs to change the word “God” to “cat.” Pure gold:
The kingdom of Cat is upon us.
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!
Anyone receiving messages send from Japanese cell phones to their Gmail or Yahoo mail (or Hotmail?) account may have noticed that Emoji can be displayed in your web mail inbox. The newest update to Google Labs, the optional experimental features that can be enabled in the settings screen, now has a feature called “Extra Emoji”, which when enabled allows for the insertion of emoji into ordinary email messages. When I realized that emoji support was included in all iPhones, even though it was disabled by default in those sold outside of Japan, I predicted that they would soon be spreading worldwide, and it looks like I was right. As far as I know, this makes Gmail the first non-Japanese service to seamlessly implement emoji input, but expect Apple to enable emoji on non-Japanese iPhones and for more systems to support this gradually spreading standard in the near future.
Slate’s tech columnist recently suggested that AT&T Wireless (and presumably other wireless network service providers) move from an unlimited data plan to a tiered plan that rewards lower end users and punishes the heaviest users. Although the heavy users would end up paying more, the goal is actually not to extract the most money from customers, but to encourage them to reduce their usage, even at the cost of of lower per-user profit. United States wireless networks, like much of our infrastructure in most of the country, is under-developed and over-utilized, and groaning under the pressure. By providing financial incentives to users to monitor and restrain their use, the idea goes, network utilization would go down in the short term enough to keep the network stable, and there would be time for upgrades.
How would my plan work? I propose charging $10 a month for each 100 MB you upload or download on your phone, with a maximum of $40 per month. In other words, people who use 400 MB or more per month will pay $40 for their plan, or $10 more than they pay now. Everybody else will pay their current rate—or less, as little as $10 a month.
This is of course basically how the Japanese company Softbank bills for Internet utilization on their phones, including the iPhone. (I believe PCS companies like eMobile actually introduced unlimited usage plans first.) While their billing system works at a more granular level, the individual packet, the overall effect is similar. If you barely connect to the network that month, your basic network charges may come to around $10, with metered usage up to a cap of around ￥4000, or around US$40. Of course, since Japan has historically not offered unlimited data plans, the introduction of this billing system was in some ways received in the opposite way that it would be in the US. That is, Japanese wireless companies historically charged purely metered rates, while US providers have mostly offered unlimited plans. While the introduction of a tiered pricing system was considered a customer-friendly innovation in Japan, as it finally made it possible to use your wireless phone as much as you wanted without worrying about the bill, I wonder how Americans, so used to buffet-style pricing, would react.
In the last week or so, there has been some buzz on the NBR mailing list about Japan’s airliner industry. Many very educated people seem completely unaware that Japan has built whole commercial planes before, and that it is still deeply involved in this business despite not having a strong brand in the aircraft business. For regional pundits who are newbies to the aerospace industry, here’s a brief history of Japan’s forays into my favorite line of business.
The Imperial days
Before and during World War II, various Japanese firms built a variety of propeller-driven planes which were used for both civilian and military transport purposes. Many of these models were based on, or provided the basis for, Imperial Army and Navy bomber airframes. Wikipedia has a good list of these planes in its article on Imperial Japanese Airways, the old state-sponsored airline. I particularly like the Kawanishi H6K, a flying boat which was used for flights between Japan and its South Pacific mandate. Flying boats are awesome.
Besides unique designs like the H6K, there were also Japanese planes based on American or European designs; in fact, the Douglas Aircraft Company was granting production licenses to Japanese firms as late as 1938. Throughout the Pacific War, the Japanese forces were flying transport planes almost indistinguishable from parallel models in the Allied forces’ fleet.
After Japan lost the war, the American occupation forces banned Japanese firms from developing or building aircraft, and confiscated all the related technical materials they could find. The demands of the Korean War, however, quickly revitalized the aircraft servicing industry in Japan, as the US needed skilled workers to fix its fighters and bombers at Japanese bases. Japanese aviation resumed in earnest with the peace treaty of 1952, which removed some of the restrictions and allowed scheduled domestic flying to resume.
The YS-11
In 1956, when the aircraft production ban was completely lifted, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry immediately made it a priority to develop a home-grown replacement for the war-era planes then flying throughout Japan. They negotiated with the Finance Ministry and Transport Ministry to come up with a production budget and implementation plan, and in 1957 secured funding to set up a Transport Aircraft Design Research Association (輸送機設計研究協会 Yusōki sekkei kenkyū kyōkai) based at the University of Tokyo, overseen by MITI and a consortium of domestic manufacturers.
The first initials of the Association’s Japanese name, “YS,” were applied to the name of their final aircraft design, the YS-11. With mock-ups prepared and the design ready for production, the Association turned over control to a newly-formed parastatal Nippon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (日本航空機製造) or “NAMC,” comprised mainly of staff seconded from the major keiretsu manufacturers.¹
The first YS-11 rolled out in 1962 and represented a major advance in Japanese aircraft-building technology.
There was still work to be done, though. Although most production took place in Japan and was overseen by Japanese firms, Japan did not have the technical capability to make the airframe materials or engines for a modern aircraft, and ended up acquiring these parts from Alcoa and Rolls-Royce respectively.
Still, the YS-11 was a pretty solid aircraft, seating 64 passengers with a cruise speed around 650 km/h. Although most found themselves on regional flights within Japan, Japan’s neighboring countries also bought many of the type. Piedmont Airlines flew YS-11s around the southern United States for a while, and Olympic Airways operated the type around Greece. Having made some return on the government’s investment (though not enough to turn a profit), NAMC set its sights on more advanced planes which never saw the light of day.
The YS-33
In the mid-1960s, NAMC got cocky and decided that it would try to clone the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 widebody trijet, which was one of the most popular airliner models at the time despite an array of safety issues. The initial plan called for three models seating 100 to 150 passengers, but by 1970 it was clear that the market was demanding something more in the range of 200 to 250 passengers. Planned development costs skyrocketed from 15 billion yen to 100 billion yen as the plan got bigger and more technically complicated.
NAMC realized that the government simply could not afford to home-grow an entire jumbo jet, so the YS-33 (alternatively known as the “YX”) never made it past badly-drawn concept art.
In 1971, NAMC shut down its production and design departments, effectively becoming a mere servicer for the YS-11. The company wound down its operations over ensuing years and finally closed in 1983.
The Boeing cooperation era
Around 1970, the global airline industry was suffering from a glut of overcapacity and rising fuel prices, and was shifting its demand to more efficient aircraft. Every major aircraft manufacturer was planning a widebody twinjet at the time: two-engine DC-10s and L-1011s were on the table, as well as the first Airbus (now known as the A300) and a Boeing project tentatively called the “7X7.”
The key Japanese aerospace companies, led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries, set up a Civil Transport Development Consortium (民間輸送機開発協会 or CTDC) in 1973. CTDC signed a memorandum of understanding with Boeing to become a technical development partner on its 7X7 project. The 7X7 turned into what is now the 767, and Japan ended up providing about 15% of each aircraft, including fuselage and wing sections. The aircraft flew for the first time in 1981.
Since then, Japan’s involvement in large Boeing aircraft has continued. The next Boeing widebody, the now-ubiquitous 777, rolled out for the first time in 1994 with even more Japanese components, comprising 21% of the aircraft. On Boeing’s latest large aircraft project, the ongoing and beleaguered 787, Japanese firms have been contracted to build most of the wings and part of the center fuselage, a total of 35% of the plane, and an extremely important 35% at that.
These huge components are currently built in Nagoya, loaded onto pregnant 747s, and flown across the Pacific to the final assembly line in South Carolina.
This is one reason why Boeing aircraft are ubiquitous in Japan. Airbus’s last sale here was an ANA order for five long-range A340s, which ANA cancelled after placing the first non-US order for 777s. ANA and JAL both later became launch customers for the 787, and ANA has extensively advertised the unprecedented Japanese-ness of Boeing’s upcoming model. But neither airline is particularly beholden to Boeing. In fact, production problems with the 787 led JAL to threaten shifting its order to Airbus.
Airbus, for its part, has not paid much attention to Japan. Instead, it has thrown its money and time into marketing in China, going so far as to open an entire assembly line in Tianjin for its popular A320 family of short-haul jets. Airbus planes are becoming more and more common throughout China, and it’s likely that China will use imported Airbus know-how to jump-start its own large aircraft industry.
Meanwhile, the Boeing partnership is the most successful segment of the Japanese civil aircraft industry today–at least much more successful than all the other money-losing projects to build a “truly Japanese” airliner.
The 7J7
CTDC also came up with a “YXX” plan, first proposed in 1979. They sought to develop a 100-seat jet plane that could be used for domestic routes to secondary cities. Based on their success with the Boeing partnership, CTDC decided to get Boeing on board, and thus was born the Boeing 7J7.
The 7J7 was a fairly unique design in that it would have used propfans for engines. These are basically very aerodynamic propellers mounted on jet engines. Propfans are very fuel-efficient compared to regular jet engines, and are capable of attaining similar speeds. However, propfans are also very loud, which makes propfan aircraft less attractive from a passenger’s standpoint.
In a high fuel price environment, and with the Iranian revolution casting fear in the hearts of fuel-hungry airlines, the propfan’s advantages were extremely attractive. By the mid-80s, though, most airlines were out of money and fuel prices were back to manageable levels. Boeing shelved the 7J7 plan and concentrated on making more efficient conventional jets.
The YSX
Undaunted, the Japanese aerospace industry started chasing another pet aircraft project called the “YSX” in 1986. This aircraft was conceived as a direct replacement for the aging YS-11s, using a similar body with more modern wings and turboprop engines.
The YSX was a very underdeveloped plan which mainly fell victim to bad timing. By the late eighties, Japan was in the middle of an asset bubble while Europe and the US were facing a recession, and domestic manufacturing was no longer quite as competitive. Then came the Pan Am 103 disaster and the Gulf War, which tugged at the finances of already-strained airlines across the globe. By the time the industry picked back up in the mid-1990s, Japan was in a recession, US aircraft manufacturers were turning their attention to Chinese and Korean partnerships, and new types of aircraft were muscling small turboprops out of the market.
Mitsubishi Regional Jet
Today, propeller planes are becoming rarer and rarer. More airlines are switching to small jet aircraft for both short flights (where jets are more comfortable and almost as efficient) and long flights (where small jets can operate more convenient frequencies carrying less people on each flight). This is a market which Boeing and Airbus almost completely overlooked, and as a result, its leading players are now Bombardier of Canada and Embraer of Brazil, hardly countries one would expect to gain a strong toehold in the airliner market. Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian firms are also getting interested in this market segment.
In 2002, the newly-renamed Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry decided that Japan should get in on the regional jet game, and started throwing billions of yen at a regional jet development project led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The resulting design is called the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, and has managed to capture twenty-five orders from All Nippon Airways, though no other carriers have shown interest so far.
There seems to be little chance that MRJ will ever be profitable, as estimates show 600 airframes would have to be produced in order to yield a profit.
*** UPDATE: Just hours after this post came out, Trans States Airlines, a feeder contractor for a few major US airlines, ordered more than 100 MRJs.
Why can’t Japan build a jumbo jet?
The large-aircraft industry has long been supported by government funding. Boeing’s early money-winners, the 707 and 747 lines, started out as military transport planes and were later adapted for passenger service.² Airbus started out with a huge amount of funding by the British, French and West German governments as a way to jump-start the lagging European aerospace industry, and its parent company EADS is still subsidized to develop military aircraft for European forces. The other country to develop a significant big-plane industry was the Soviet Union in its heyday, and since the collapse of its command economy, its once-great aircraft manufacturers like Antonov and Ilyushin have been relegated to making poor copies of designs developed elsewhere.
While we all know Japan has no qualms about throwing tons of money at questionable business plans, the state’s obvious disadvantage here is Article 9. Strategic military infrastructure is legally out of the government’s reach, yet this is the sector which has the deepest technical nexus with large airliners. Without the prospect of national defense applications, there is much less economic rationale to invest in a whole production line for a plane with more than a hundred seats. It takes a hell of a lot of infrastructure, too: Boeing’s assembly line near Seattle is the largest building in the world, covering 400,000 square meters, and is mainly for assembly, not even producing all the huge components.³
Japan certainly has the native technical capability to put together a jumbo jet; the question is whether they could ever make money on it, and whether they could even put together a business plan which makes more sense than piggy-backing on a foreign producer.
¹ NAMC’s chief technician, Teruo Tojo, was a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries employee who also happened to be prime minister/war criminal Hideki Tojo’s second son.
² The 707 airframe is still in military use as an airborne command post and mid-air refueling platform; the 747 started out life as a bid for a giant military transport plane, and morphed into a giant passenger plane after Boeing’s bid lost to Lockheed’s (which became the C-5 Galaxy).
³ It also allegedly has the busiest Tully’s Coffee in the world.
Almost as soon as I got back to my house in Kyoto, I slipped down the stairs and bruised the fuck out my left butt-cheek, which currently displays a prominent horizontal black-and-blue line. This was not an auspicious start. The next day, when I stopped by a bicycle shop to get some air in my tires, I accidentally jerked my iPhone out of my pocket via the headphone cable, upon which it plummeted in a dead drop directly into the spikey concrete underfoot, shattering the screen like a cobweb. After a moment of horror, I went directly to the Softbank shop, where they swapped it for a fresh one at a very unpleasant cost of ￥22,800, mollified only very, very marginally by the fact that it only took about ten minutes, and that iTunes does a good job of backing up all of the data on my PC.
Yesterday afternoon, I joined my friend Kate on an expedition to Fushimi Ward, in southern Kyoto City, to recover two bicycles of hers that had been impounded the previous day when she and a friend parked illegally while having dinner downtown. (See Adam’s post on bicycle collection.) I brought my camera along, hoping to take some photos of the lot, but as soon as I arrived I pulled out my camera from my bag and saw that the lens had been broken entirely in half! Luckily I was only using my Canon 50mm 1.8F, the cheapest SLR lens currently (if not ever) made, which retails for under $100, so the loss was relatively minor, and I do have several other lenses I can use, but following on the heals of the iPhone disaster I was still very, very pissed.
Upon returning home I pondered whether this would be a good chance to upgrade to the 1.4F version, which allows for even more dramatic depth of field, has a superior focusing mechanism, and also a superior level of build quality that does not lend itself to breaking in twain, but decided that at this time I don’t have another $300 to blow on top of the replacement cost, and just ordered a replacement of the broken model from Amazon Japan for ￥8,800. While I had first thought of it as a pure loss, this morning an idea occurred to me.
I had read in the past that in older, fully manual, camera systems it used to be common to mount a second lens backwards onto the front of the lens being mounted in the ordinary fashion, as a makeshift macro lens. A macro lens is a type of lens that is specially built to allow for extremely closeup focusing, enabling the photographer to create dramatic closeup photographs which show extreme detail, almost like a weak but highly portable microscope. You have probably seen many examples in nature photography.
Anyway, I decided to see how it would work with my broken lens, so I mounted the 17-85 EF-S lens on my camera, held the front part of the broken lens (right hand side piece in the above photo) up to the mounted lens, with the previously outer-facing side of the lens facing towards the camera body, and then checked to see what I could do with manual focus. Well, the first shot (of my knee hair) actually looked pretty cool.
Next I tried the one yen coin and dirty lens cloth sitting on my desk, and then took comparison shots using the 17-85 lens by itself, to contrast the level of magnification provided by the conventional lens and the DIY macro. Note that none of these photos are cropped, magnified, or adjusted in any way.
As you can see, the DIY macro provides significant magnification when compared with the standard lens, over 100% larger, as well as a quirky DIY fisheye effect reminiscent of toy cameras like the Holga. While I might not have ever thought to destroy my lens for such a use, it may actually be worth the cost to play around with it in this way. While these photos were taken in a very makeshift way, by holding everything in place using both hands, both knees, and a funny crouch in my chair, the next step will be to purchase a lens cap for the 17-85 lens, cut a hole out in the middle, and construct a DIY mount that allows me to safely walk around with the makeshift macro. I may also experiment with removing the lens from its plastic enclosure and seeing how it performs when held closer to the primary lens. I’ve wanted a macro lens for a long time, and while this is hardly the way I would normally have considered going about acquiring one, it should be a lot of fun to play with.
(Updated with note; corrected)
A lot of new stuff going on in my life prevents me from posting much, but I felt I should weigh in with this tip for fellow commuters in Japan:
Business weekly Shukan Diamond President has an article that explains how you could potentially save around 9,000 yen a year by buying two commuter passes — one that goes most of the way, and another that covers the rest of the ground. Because of the oddities of Japan’s train pricing system, your commuter pass might go up or down if you split your commute into two separate passes.
But it’s not as simple as buying two train passes along the same route. If you do that, generally you’ll have to either get off and on again halfway through your commute, or explain to the station attendant every time you get off the train. Not practical.
But one successful example they give is this: If you live in Omiya and commute to Tokyo Omori station, you could save 9,060 yen a year by buying one pass from Omiya to Ochanomizu, and the second from Ochanomizu to Tokyo Akihabara to Omori. This will let you ride all the way to Tokyo Omori (and let you stop at Ochanomizu at no charge if you want).
As you can see, it can get kind of complicated. To help sort things out, someone has developed an application that determines the most advantageous route for any given individual. Sadly, it’s already gone viral and is thus unavailable.Those who don’t want to wait for them to add server space and Google ads can try experimenting with Yahoo’s train route finder in the meantime (if you’re desperate, try waiting until late late at night when most others are sleeping. If you do, open a mirror site for the rest of us!).
The article states that this practice is hardly new and has been used by train-savvy salarymen for some time now.When some of Tokyo’s planned new routes come online it should create whole new levels of complexity to exploit.
(Diamond article found on Yahoo Japan front page)
Note: This practice is not the same as a train scam known as kiseru in which the rider has a ticket for the beginning and end of the trip but skips out on the rest of the fare.
One of the perennial annoyances of world travel in the early 21st century is the difficulty inherent in having the wireless connectivity abroad upon which one has become dependent in one’s country of residence. To say, having operable cell phone service. Yes, the entire world now generally recognizes GSM and unless you are foolish enough to travel abroad with a CDMA only provider like America’s Verizon or Sprint, or Japan’s AU, then your foreign phone shall operate locally, but with the combination of using a foreign phone number and operating said number in a foreign land under a roaming agreement, which produces a particularly usurious fee schedule, wherein a simple text message or phone call of greetings is so expensive as to chill the blood and whiten the face.
The solution to this problem is inherent in the same GSM specification that allows phones and service provider accounts of most nations and varieties to operate worldwide – the SIM card. In most countries, a traveler may simply peruse a local vendor of inexpensive SIM cards offering a reasonably priced prepaid service, whether said vendor be official company store, or marketplace stall, or even automated machine, and after completing the local procedure shall simply replace their existing SIM card, being extremely careful not to lose it, whereupon he or she then has a local phone number.
The difficulty of obtaining such a prepaid SIM card varies greatly by nation. In my experience, the most difficult of all is Japan, where they are simply not sold; the only options for the foreign traveler is to cavort without a cell phone, in the manner of a twentieth century hobo, or to pay a truly outrageous fee for a rental phone or the aforementioned international roaming service. The easiest of all may be The Philippines, where there is a SIM card vending machine located in the lobby of the international airport, allowing one to purchase the chip without providing any personal identifying information, or even to interact with a human being. Someone higher on the scale is Taiwan, where the item may be purchased cheaply and readily at any of the innumerable vendors dotting the market-places, but where the traveler is required by law to show both one’s passport and a supplemental form of identification, quite a burden for a thing so small.
And this brings me to today. Here I am, in my country of citizenship and birth, but only for a short time. Far too short a time to obtain the ongoing contractual wireless service of a resident, and yet far too long, and with far too busy a calendar of engagements to vainly search for working examples of the antiquated coin-phone, or to scurry from doorway to doorway, in search of an unprotected WiFi signal, like a starved and lonely rat trapped out in a storm, trying to sniff its way home before the scent fades.
Here in the US we have two providers of GSM service. AT&T and T-Mobile. Yesterday I was in Manhattan, I believe at 6th Avenue and 17th Street, where stores of these competing firms stared down each other across the Avenue (increasingly full of bicyclists, in these recessionary days). I first inquired at AT&T, the original provider of my retired Samsung Blackjack, now being asked to come out of retirement for one more short campaign. Absurdly, they told me that the fee for a SIM card was $100, with $100 worth of service included. So, there is no base fee but I would be required to spend far more money than I will actually use. And across the way, loquacious Dennis of the T-Mobile store, resident of The Bronx, informs me that their basic fee is a mere $10, with service structure that becomes increasingly favorable (to both parties) the more credit one purchases, in the grand mercantile tradition of the bulk discount.
In fact, it turns out that my old Blackjack was still SIM-card locked to AT&T (meaning that it would not work with any other provider), but either a law of congress or regulation of the FCC now requires that providers of services provide the code needed to unlock said lock, which AT&T (relevant tech support # is 1-800-331-0500 ) did most readily upon request. And now, here I sit, surrounded by phones and computers of divers sizes and capabilities, but amidst them is a single unit, made in Korea, purchased in New Jersey some years ago, containing within itself an accurate and complete record of the telephone numbers of family, friends, associates and acquaintances domiciled in these United States, and once again with the capacity and license to contact them.
Thanks to Gen Kanai for passing on this landmark lecture on Youtube culture and how it’s turning all Americans into attention whores who can only find validation through media exposure:
This appears to be on the same page as J Smooth’s observations about how even as the Youtube generation mourns Michael Jackson’s death, now that everyone is a media star they must deal with the same pressures of public exposure that Jackson faced:
I direct all MFT readers to read this amazing, detailed expose from The Smoking Gun identifying and incriminating the the denizens of “Pranknet” an online community of highly destructive and juvenile practical jokers, whose exploits include the following:
Late on the evening of February 10, a call to Room 306 at the Best Western in Shillington, Pennsylvania roused a sleeping traveler. Jonathan Davis at the front desk was calling with scary news: A ruptured gas line was threatening hotel guests, some of whom were already feeling lightheaded and dizzy.
Noting that he was following a “protocol sheet,” Davis instructed the male guest that he needed to quickly unplug all electrical devices and place wet towels at the base of the room’s door to keep carbon monoxide from entering the space. After the guest took those precautions, Davis then directed him to bust out a 5′ x 5′ section of window. The man, who happened to be a glazier, asked, “Are you serious?” When Davis urgently assured him that the drastic measure was required for his safety, the guest replied that he would put on clothes and “bust this fucker.”
Using a chair, the guest then smashed a window. As broken glass cascaded into the room, Davis then advised that the television screen would need to broken since the tube contained an electrical charge that could spark an explosion. Davis suggested the use of the toilet tank cover to disable the television. But when the guest threw the porcelain lid at the TV, it broke. So Davis directed the man to toss the set out the window. Stepping gingerly around glass shards, the guest complied.
At this point, Davis’s supervisor, Jeff Anderson, joined the call and determined that the guests in 306 had co-workers in the adjoining room. Anderson then called Room 304 and advised the man answering the phone to “remain calm.” He told the guest of the gas leak and advised him of the safety measures that had already been followed next door. The man in 304 also unplugged electrical devices, placed wet towels at the door, smashed a window, and tossed the television to the sidewalk below. Anderson then directed the guest to pull the fire alarm. As a siren wailed, the guest asked Anderson, “Can we get out of this motel? Why can’t we just leave the building?” He had previously remarked, “I hope this ain’t some kind of joke.”
This is a really impressive investigation. The author writes with a well-deserved satisfied tone and seems to almost taunt the Pranknet members with his ability to expose them. Do yourself a favor and spend the next half hour reading through it and listening to some of the calls. You’ll see what a public service it is to hopefully stop these people.
Continuing my recent real-estate kick…
One thing that surprised me when I first came to Japan as an exchange student was the extraordinarily low rate of apartment or house sharing among college students and other young, single people. Having just come from such an arrangement myself, I would have assumed that students in Japan would be similarly into sharing had I actually even stopped to think about it at any point. While I did meet a handful of Japanese students at Ritsumeikan who lived with friends, they were mostly (although not exclusively) in the group that had studied abroad, or were at least highly social with the foreign and international crowd.
But this is not to say that Japanese people never have roommates, only that it’s relatively rare. For example, after coming to Kyoto University last year, I met quite a lot of Japanese students living in share arrangements, which I believe to be directly related to Kyoto University’s higher rate of “bohemian” type culture, as well as the fact that unlike Ritsumeikan, Kyoto University actually has a few dormitories open to Japanese students (as opposed to the “International Houses” that many Japanese universities provide for exchange students, and shorter term foreign students), many of whom become accustomed to group living and decide to continue after moving out of the dorm.
How might one find a room to sublet, or a subletter to live in one’s spare room in Japan? It has been pointed out that “there is no culture for classifieds in Japan, which means an instant success for a “Japanese Craigslist” is next to impossible to achieve.” This is indeed true, but the sister-sites Roomshare.jp and Roomate.jp seem to be off to start, albeit in a specific arena.
While all sorts of arrangements exist, and the range of normality is probably not so drastically different from other countries I’d like to leave with one particularly unique “share mate” (as the term goes in Japanese) recruitment ad.
Hello.
I run a counseling business that I started. However, due to the poor economy I’ve had trouble getting clients. Well, that’s just how it is. However, now I am looking for someone who seriously wants to do a job in mental care.
Rent (with space for sleeping, internet, phone, everything needed for normal life) is free!
However, there are the following conditions.
- A woman with the appearance (mood of) of a counselor.
- A warm personality
- 20~35 years old.
- Someone who really wants to study ‘mental’ topics.
(It’s fine if you don’t have any other job.)
I have not posted this as a joke.
Anyone interested should please get in touch.
The poster does not say anything else about themselves, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a middle-aged guy with some sort of odd therapy fetish. It definitely seems like a setup for a movie though. Is this the start of a quirky romantic comedy, or a psycho-thriller?
BTW, thanks to Benjamin for pointing out this ad to me (and thanks to me for telling him about the site!)
