President Obama’s recent trip to Japan caused a stir when he greeted the Emperor with a 90-degree bow. The President’s supporters are claiming that it was protocol, but it most certainly was not. Bowing between equals involves a 45-degree bow. Never does a party on equal terms with the other perform a 90-degree bow (unless the other is reciprocating, of course). These deep bows are performed by people in inferior positions, for example you will see car salesmen bowing deeply to customers leaving their parking lot. You also see clerks giving deep bows to customers in department stores and students giving deep bows to their teachers. Yes, it is a sign of respect, but it is a sign of respect given by a person in an inferior position to someone else who is in a superior position. Moreover, you do not perform such a bow while shaking someone’s hand. As far as I’m aware, there is nothing offensive about doing so, it’s just not done.

Personally, I do not think any American, much less the President, should be greeting foreign dignitaries with deep bows (all men are created equally and all that jazz, you know?). I think it just shows that Obama is inexperienced and lacks a proper understanding of how he should handle himself as President (much as his failing to cover his heart during the National Anthem did during the primaries).

On the other hand, the Emperor has no real power and is only a figurehead, so the goof did not really symbolize anything like his bow to the Saudi King did. From what I’ve seen on Japanese websites, the Japanese people are simply treating it as a goof. No one here thinks the United States has lost face because of the bow. I’m just glad he didn’t get down on the ground and do a dogeza (to sit with your feet folded under you and bow so that your face pretty much touches the ground). All in all, I think goofs like this are the least of our concerns when it comes to what the Obama administration might do to the future of the US.

Japan on Friday welcomed the news it had topped the world longevity ratings, but with its citizens living increasingly longer lives it may soon become hard for the government to find enough young taxpayers to support them.

The statistics for 2007 published on Thursday by the World Health Organization put Japan on top of the longevity list, reporting that the average life expectancy was almost 83 years—86 years for women and 79 years for men—up from 81 years in 2000.

“A steady increase of Japan’s longevity reflects good medical care, nutrition and successful economic development, and that alone is a good thing,” Norie Handa, a Cabinet Office official in charge of aging issues, said Friday. “What we really have to look at is whether we can live long in good health, and peacefully.”

However, in a country where the birth rate has been declining for decades—the population fell by 51,000 last year, the sharpest decline ever—a longer life expectancy means a disproportionately large elderly population.

The number of people over the age of 65 has reached 22.5% of the population and in a dozen years will likely to surge to nearly 30%, according to government estimates.

By contrast, the percentage of children in Japan is expected to fall to below 11% in the next decade or so from the current 13%. The country already has the smallest percentage of children among 31 countries, trailing Germany and Italy, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications report.

According to the last statistics I read, however, 3 out of every 4 babies in Japan are aborted. That means Japan is aborting itself into extinction. The solution to their aging population is quite simple, actually: start encouraging women to carry their babies to term. It’s certainly a politically incorrect thing to suggest (I noticed that a comment suggesting just that has mysteriously disappeared from the above site), but it’s fairly obvious all the same.

For more information, visit the PAZ Japan website.

This is a store beside TGI Friday’s in Tokyo (Machida) where I like to eat when I want some American food. I took the picture with my mobile phone, which does not have a very good camera on it, so in case it’s too fuzzy to read or you can’t believe your eyes, the name of the store is FAMOUSCRAP.

I thought I’d introduce those of you not familiar with Japan to the world of Engrish (also known as Nihonglish, Japlish, Eihongo, etc.). What the term refers to is the strange words and phrases that appear on signs, t-shirts, product names, store names (as the one above), etc. in Japan (or other Asian countries).

If you’ve never seen the crazy things that they put on signs and merchandise here in Japan, take a look at Engrish.com. You’re sure to find some things that will tickle your funny bone. I had a good laugh the other day at some of the photos and captions at Japangrish.

In Japan, people think that blood type determines personality. They have books and games on the subject, and people here are almost religious in their conviction that the blood type-based predictions are accurate. I’ve seen television shows that only give one side of the debate. They’ll show an experiment that divides children up by blood type and accurately predicts their actions and then fail to show the countless experiments that produce less than favorable results for the hypothesis. Satoru Kikuchi, associate professor of psychology at Shinshu University, says, “Blood types, determined by the proteins in the blood, have nothing to do with personality. It’s simply sham science. The idea encourages people to judge others by the blood types, without trying to understand them as human beings. It’s like racism.”

For the most part, it’s just funny to see them making such a big deal of it. In fact, I guess one of the reasons I always “forget” to ask the doctor my blood type is that I love seeing the expression on people’s faces when I tell them that I don’t know my blood type.

It can get serious, though, as this article describes, with sports positions and even jobs being determined by blood type.

For as long as anyone can remember, Christmas trees adorned with lights and ornaments have greeted holiday season visitors to UNC Chapel Hill’s two main libraries.

Not this year.

The trees, which have stood in the lobby areas of Wilson and Davis libraries each December, were kept in storage this year at the behest of Sarah Michalak, the associate provost for university libraries.

“For as long as anyone can remember…” it starts out. It’s sad, really, that the rights of the majority are so often trampled by the minority in the US. Every year another business or institution decides that they’re not going to use the word “Christmas” in their advertising or allow their employees to say “Merry Christmas” for fear of offending someone. Offending someone is, of course, the only sin still recognized as such in the US of A, the Land of the Easily Offended and the Home of the Hypersensitive. Yet here in Japan, a country that is predominantly Buddhist/agnostic, no one thinks twice about it. All the stores play traditional Christmas hymns, and the word “Christmas” is up everywhere. People who aren’t Christians tell each other “Merry Christmas,” and they’ve even got their own original Japanese tradition of having a Christmas cake, which looks a whole lot like a birthday cake (sounds like a good idea to me, by the way). They do this because it’s fun. Plain and simple.

The point is, if you don’t like Christmas, then don’t celebrate it. Why do you want to ruin it for everyone else? As a Christian in Japan, I’m a part of a minority. It has never occurred to me nor to any of my friends, however, that we should protest the Buddhist and Shintoist festivals that the municipalities here hold. I don’t participate in them, but I’m not going to go out and tell everyone else that they can’t because I don’t. Why would I? Because the message at these events “offends” me? Boo hoo. Suck it up, people.

What on earth could possibly be wrong with putting up a flag in a government building? Well, according to one reporter, “Mr. Nakagawa is a hawk. There is a political intention to what he is trying to do.” Good grief. I don’t know anything about Minister Nakagawa, but displaying the national flag is not something that should cause a stir. At the end of the article, it even notes, “At present, about half of the government ministries display the [Japanese flag] in the briefing rooms at their press clubs.” Okay, so what was the point of the article, then?

If you read the article, you will also see that this newspaper refers to him as “Rightwing Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa.” Now there’s another shining example of balanced reporting. What purpose could possibly be served by putting an ideological descriptor before the guy’s name? It looks to me like media everywhere likes to create controversy where there is none.

Some of the lines are:

You don’t have to do anything

You don’t have to say anything

Go ahead and laugh

Do what you want

It doesn’t matter if you fail

You can just try again

A 25-year-old Tokyo man, describing himself as “tired of living,” yesterday killed seven and injured 12 more people…Japan has among the very strictest gun control laws in the world. And that is precisely why one disturbed young man with a truck and a knife could wreak such carnage in a bustling neighborhood.

Tomohiro Kato drive his truck into a crowd of pedestrians shortly after noon, then jumped out of his vehicle and began stabbing any strangers he could reach.

…People who believe gun control will result in less violence should be forced to live in societies where only criminals have guns – or where, like in Japan, police have broad search-and-seizure latitude to hunt down any illicit weapons.

…There are really only two alternatives to a free society that respects the right of armed self-defense: One is chaos and anarchy and the other is a repressive police state like the people of Japan live under.

…We can learn from Japan, all right.

The lesson to be learned is not to repeat the mistakes that country has made on guns – trading freedom for safety and getting neither.

I agree with his logic as it pertains to the situation in the United States, but not in Japan. Handgun ownership has never been legal in Japan. People here in Japan don’t need guns to defend themselves, because criminals do not have guns. If there has been a trade-off between freedom and safety, I’d say Japan has definitely ended up with greater safety. Does anyone want to compare violent crime rates between the US and Japan? When was the last time there was a school shooting in Japan? Does Mr. Farah think that Japan should legalize guns so that they can prevent the rare incident like the above from happening and instead have to deal with random shootings like in the US?

There’s no way to get rid of handguns in the US without jeopardizing the rights of law-abiding citizens. I’d never support that in the US, but there’s no good reason for Japan to legalize guns. It is a safer country without guns. Any country is going to be safer without guns. You can’t argue otherwise. It just makes no logical sense that having wide availability of weapons that can kill several people all at once and from a distance can create a better situation.

And where does he get the idea that Japan is a “repressive police state?” I’ve lived here for seven years now, and I don’t feel repressed. I’ve never been searched for weapons, either. This is a poorly researched and poorly put together article. I’m surprised to see Mr. Farah’s name on it.