Tani Park

During a long run in an unfamiliar corner of town one morning, I came upon a broad set of stone steps, flanked on either side by massive stone lanterns.

Thinking it the entrance to a shrine, I climbed up the steps. To my surprise, however, I found a number of monuments dedicated to those who had died in Japan's modern wars and foreign engagements from the overthrow of the shogun and restoration of the Emperor to power, known as Boshin War (戊辰戦争, 1868-69) and Meiji Restoration (明治維新, 1886), to the Russo-Japan War (日露戦争, 1904-05), the Manchurian Incident (満州事変, 1931), and on to the Pacific War (太平洋戦争) which ended 75 years ago this summer.

This sombre memorial to Japan's militaristic past is not listed on the map, nor are there any signs outside of the premises indicating what awaits the visitor at the top of the stairs.

A monument to those who died in the Second Sino-Japanese War (支那事変, 1937-45).

Far left, Russo-Japanese War; Far right, Second Sino-Japanese War

Monument to those who fell in the Manchurian Incident (満州事変, 1931-32) and Shanghai Incident (上海事変, 1931).

For more on "Tani Park", go here.

Never Say Never

A friend recently had a falling out of sorts with social media and deleted his FB and Instagram accounts. I think it may be his third time to do so over the past fifteen or so years. Can’t say for sure what brought him to once again take such a drastic course of action. Why, if it hadn’t been for another friend informing me about it, I probably would never have known that he’d quit. The thing is, while I post a lot—a helluva lot for purposes of self-promotion, as a sounding board for articles I’m writing and in the pursuit of my various hobbies—I confess that I seldom check what others are posting. It’s not that I’m a narcissistic boob. It’s just that I don’t really have the time.

Anyways, file this next bit under "Famous Last Words".

A friend was cleaning out his mail box, virtual mail box that is, when he came upon this twenty-year-old e-mail from a mutual friend or ours (i.e. the guy who just dumped his SNS accounts). It really cracked me up, considering that "Bud" today is one of the most active persons I know on Facebook. Let this be a reminder that we should never say "never". 

Hi, y'all!

   Just a note to say hi and to tell you that I will soon be giving up this e-mail address (and its provider for a cheaper one). I do not log onto the Internet much anymore. Info overload, I guess. Plus, I feel like I have seen everything that is worth seeing there in cyberspace. I will be soon be getting a new e-mail address in place of this one. Yeah. I doubt I will be giving that address out to people, though. Who needs more than one address? I surely don't.

   I hope you all are in fine spirits and are healthy. Enjoy the rest of December and the holiday/party season, and the coming of Y2K. That should be fun.

Cheers,

Bud

I give Bud about six-to-ten months before he signs back up.

A Major Award

My hobby of late is watching the gameshow Tōdai Ō (東大王) with my sons. It features a team of students from Japan's "best" university, Tokyo University or Tōdai, pitted against a team of other brainiacs answering trivial questions and solving brainteasers. Every time I answer faster than those on the show, I like to moon the contestants, to the wild delight of my two boys.

Anyhoo, you can follow along with the data function and remote control of your TV, and today I managed to get enough of the questions right to qualify for a prize from the show. Kind of feel like Ralphie's "old man" right now; expecting a "Major Award" to arrive by special delivery in the coming weeks.

"Well, it is a lamp, you nincompoop, but it's a Major Award! I won it! I have mind powers!"

Gokoku Jinja

One of my favorite places in Fukuoka City is Gokoku Jinja, located just south of Ōhori Park.

According to the Encyclopedia of Shintōism, Gokoku is a shrine built for the protection of the nation and "dedicated to the spirits of individuals who died in Japanese wars from the end of the early modern period through World War II."

These shrines were originally called shōkonsha (lit. "spirit-inviting shrines") in the prewar period numbered over one hundred. In 1939, however, they were renamed gokoku jinja. Following Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, "the shrines were placed under strict observation by the occupation armies, and many of the shrines changed their titles, though most have today reverted back to their original name . . . In most cases, they have added individuals who have died in service to local public organizations to their lists of enshrined kami (spirits or gods). Yasukuni Jinja in Tōkyō acts as the central or home shrine for gokoku jinja nationwide." (See note below.)

   I wrote about Gokoku Jinja in my second novel A Woman's Nails:

Many of the more interesting sites in Fukuoka are fortunately within a short walk from my apartment: the castle ruins with its maze of stone ramparts, and Ôhori Park, which has a beautiful Japanese garden. A Noh theatre and art museum are also located in the area, as is Gokoku Jinja and a martial arts center simply called Budôkan.

Gokoku Jinja, like Tōkyō’s infamous Yasukuni, is a shrine dedicated to those who died defending Japan. Had I known this little fact before visiting the shrine, I may have been moved in an altogether different way. Instead, I was inspired with a deep sense of awe, the very awe which was sorely absent when my father would drag his unwilling brood at an ungodly hour every Sunday morning and stuff it into the first two pews of our dimly lit, dusty old house of worship where we’d reluctantly take part in that hebdomadal morose pageant, Mass.

No, if the divine and mysterious were to be felt anywhere, it was in shrines such as Gokoku, a serene island of ancient trees, expansive lawns and painstakingly raked gravel. It’s a spiritual oasis in the heart of a frenetically bustling desert of asphalt and condominiums and if you’re not moved to the core when visiting the shrine, then you have no core. With the Catholic church, the nearest I ever got to appreciating the power of the Almighty was at the coffee and donuts bonanza after Mass when dutifully sitting-standing-genuflecting automatons were resurrected with copious amounts of caffeine and sugar.

After a purifying ablution of my hands, I passed between a pair of komainu statues and through a towering wooden torii gate, entering the shrine. At the end of a long the broad path of combed gravel was the shinden, a long, one storey golden structure with a gracefully sloping roof at the edge of a lush and verdant woods. Iron lanterns and straw braiding hung along the eves, and a young woman, her black parasol leaning against the offertory box, bowed her head in prayer. Drawn by both curiosity and a spontaneous reverence, I made my way along the gravel path, ascended the short flight of steps and offered up a pray, myself.

One day my father will ask cynically, “So, now you’re a Shintōist, are ye?”

And I’ll reply, “When was I never one?”

What did I pray for? Happiness, of course.

With the change in my pocket, I bought an o-mikuji, a small folded strip of white paper with my fortune written in Japanese on one side, and, to my surprise, in English on the other.

“Your flower is heather,” the o-mikuji told me. “It means lonely.”

Wonderful.

“You are introverted and like to be alone,” the prognostication continued.

Not really.

“But man cannot live on without others.”

Hah! No man is an island! Plagiarism!

“Let people into your heart, and you will be happy.”

Bingo!

Regarding my hopes and ambitions, I was told to “make efforts, and try to be friendly with a lot of people.”

By gum, try I will!

“Your studies will be all right, if you keep calm.” I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, releasing a small fart, redolent of sour milk.

Any more relaxed and I’d be dead.

I was advised to be cheerful, but to not aim too high when looking for a job. It was also suggested that being quiet on dates wasn’t always the wisest thing to do, and, because I was, again, too introverted I must “behave cheerfully.”

Dutifully noted!

Not particularly impressed with this fortune—it was only shokichi, a four out a scale of about six—I tied it onto a narrow branch of a nearby tree and left the shrine.

---

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Oshiri Tantei

There is a cartoon/manga called Oshiri Tantei ("Butt Detective") that the boys like.

Oshiri is a crack detective. Not one to take a backseat or sit on his duff, he always gets straight to the bottom of any crime and find out who's behind it--no ands, ifs, or butts, about it. Best part about Oshiri, is his character: he's never an arse or cheeky, though he can be somewhat stern.

Mitama Matsuri

Gokoku Jinja holds a special place in my heart. It was, in fact, where I was first married. And, though, that first marriage could hardly be called a success (My second marriage in a Christian church in Honolulu has fared much better), I still have many fond memories of that wedding day.

The Mimata Matsuri, or the Souls' Festival that is held from the 13th to the 16th at Gokoku Jinja.

Like the similarly named festival at Tōkyō's Yasukuni Shrine, Gokoku's Mitama Matsuri is a festival in honor of those who died in the service of the country. That may sound sinister considering Japan's history, but (at least here in Fukuoka) all this really involves is lanterns being displayed on the grounds of the shrine.

The first time I discovered the "festival" was about fifteen years ago, during one of my evening jogs. Seeing the lanterns, I took a detour and headed into the shrine. There were only a handful of people milling about, but the lanterns must have numbered in the tens of thousands. It was awe-inspiring.

In recent years, the shrine has tried with a modicum success to attract more visitors by offering concerts, food stalls, and other attractions. Unfortunately, the number of lanterns steadily falls year by year and the feeling of awe that struck me the first time has become tempered with disappointment.

Seventy-five years have passed since the end of World War II and those who participated in it are now in their 90s and older, if still alive. Those who lost parents, children, siblings, or spouses in the war, people who'd be most inclined to keep a lantern burning for the souls of loved ones, are even older, more infirm (again, if alive). My own Japanese grandmother, who died about five years ago, lost her husband in the war. The more that time passes since the end of hostilities in the Pacific, the easier it is for me to imagine that the yearly calls of "Never again" might one day become too faint to prevent another destructive war. Just a thought.

Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

_______________________________

Note: "The origin of Yasukuni Shrine is Shokonsha established at Kudan in Tōkyō in the second year of the Meiji era (1869) by the will of the Emperor Meiji. In 1879, it was renamed Yasukuni Shrine.

"When the Emperor Meiji visited Tōkyō Shōkonsha for the first time on January 27 in 1874, he composed a poem; "I assure those of you who fought and died for your country that your names will live forever at this shrine in Musashino". As can be seen in this poem, Yasukuni Shrine was established to commemorate and honor the achievement of those who dedicated their precious lives for their country. The name "Yasukuni," given by the Emperor Meiji represents wishes for preserving peace of the nation.

"Currently, more than 2,466,000 divinities are enshrined here at Yasukuni Shrine."

-- From Yasukuni's official home page

Doyo no Ushi

On Tuesday, you will probably be seeing 土用の丑 (doyō no ushi) on signs at your local supermarket or izakaya. What the hell is this?

Doyō (土用) refers to the 18 days before the change of a season (節分). In the case of 7/21, it refers to the 18 days before the start of autumn or rishhū (立秋), lìqiū in Chinese. This year rishhū is on August 7th.

The beginning of this 18-day period is known as 土用の入り (doyō no iri); the final day, 節分 (setsubun). Yes, there is more than one "setsubun" in Japan—four actually—not just the one in February when people play exorcist and throw beans at demons.

As it is believed that one becomes susceptible to all kinds of ailments when seasons change, the Japanese like to fortify themselves with unagi (grilled eel, pictured), udon, and umeboshi (pickled plums). Why these things? Because they start with "u", just like the "u" in "doyō no Ushi". Yes, that is the reason. Silly, ain' it?

The "do" in "doyō" incidentally means earth/soil, and is one of the five ancient elements, 五行 (Gogyō, or wǔxíng in Chinese). These five elements (fire, water, wood, metal/gold, earth) are also the same as the days in the week. Most people believe these came from China, but they actually came from the Roman Empire, which created the 7-day week and gave us the names for the days which today are still reflected in the Japanese--namely, Nichiyōbi (Sun Day), Getsuyōbi (Moon Day), Kayōbi (Mars/FIre Day), Suiyōbi (Mercury/Water Day), Mokuyōbi (Jupiter/Wood Day), Kinyōbi (Venus/Metal Day) and Doyōbi (Saturn/Earth Day). The order of the days, I believe, was connected to the speed at which they passed through the sky. (I need to double check that.) Interestingly, in Chinese, they just call the days "the first day of the week, the second day of the week", which is kind of what you would expect of a humorless and Godless, Communist dictatorship.

The "ushi" in dōyo no ushi means cow. (As you may know, there are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. 12 animals x 5 elements gives us 60 different combinations.)

And so what "dōyo no ushi" actually means is this: "the day of the cow that falls within in the 18 days before the start of a new season according to the ancient luni-solar calendar."

Got that?

But wait! If there are only 12 elements and 18 days of the doyō period, then there must be two doyō no ushi days. Yes, you're right. At least in most years you are. This year, there will be two doyō no ushi. The first (一の丑, ichi no ushi) falls on July 21st; the second (二の丑, ni no ushi), on August 2nd.

Bon appétit!

Tsuyazaki Walkabout

Several years ago, I started translating professionally. While I had been rendering into English the odd document here and there over the past decade, I had never seriously considered pursuing a career in the field. Itchy feet, however, had me go against my better judgement. 

The theory behind the career move (if you could call it one) was that if I could make a living by translating, why then, I wouldn't need to stay in Japan all year long. I could work wherever I had a power supply and a good Internet connection. I pictured myself in a French town, sipping a café au lait and nibbling on a croissant, as I hammered away one translated sentence after another and earned twenty to thirty yen per character. Six months into it, I did manage to realize a small slice of that dream--albeit at the modest rate of only ten yen per translated character--working at the dining table of an apartment in a seven-hundred-year-old building in Rome's Trasvetere district and four months later on the deck of a condo in Sunriver, Oregon.

The thing is, I had never cared much for the work when I did it casually, and now that I was doing it all the time, I was beginning to hate everything about it--the deadlines, the selfish demands of clients, the pittance earned vis-à-vis the effort invested. Jobs piled up, and I went for a stretch of three months not having a single day off. There aren't words in the English language to describe how exhausted I was. In Japanese, however, there were plenty: kuta kuta, heto heto, guttari, and so on.

The biggest disappointments, though, was the nature of the material I was translating. Most of it was tourism related. I'd say ninety percent or more had to do with enticing tourists to visit this place or that, a lot of which was pure fabrication.

One lie, in particular, appeared invariably in everything I was asked to translate: shizen-ni megumareta (blessed with beautiful nature). Every time I came across that line, I would look up from my keyboard and ask, "What nature? Where the hell is this nature they speak so glibly about?" Blessed with power lines and vending machines, perhaps, but nature? Who you trying to fool?"

Before long, my conscience got the better of me and I gave up pursuing translation as my ticket out of Japan. I still do the occasional job, but only on my terms and only if the material is interesting. 

 Every now and then, curiosity has me actually go to the trouble of visiting the sites I have written about in translations to see if there is any meat to be found in the spam-like gunk of my translations. A few weeks ago that curiosity brought me to a sleepy fishing village called Tsuyazaki.

The photo above how Tsuyazaki likes to promote itself. White-washed walls made of clay, gray undulating roof tiles, the green patina of copper finishings, an ancient sake brewery located at the end of a narrow cobbled road that is still producing quality rice wine a hundred years after its founding, and so on. The reality, unfortunately, is yet another dying town that is clutching at straws to reinvent itself before it gives up the ghost for good. 

That said, I must admit that I was genuinely impressed by the Toyomura Sake Brewery, which is well worth the visit if you are in the area (and whose sake I am drinking as I write this), the rest of Tsuyazaki, I'm afraid, is rather dreary. (I extend mea máxima culpa if my translated copy motivated anyone to visit the town.)

Tsuyazaki, which merged in 2005 with Fukuma to form a city with an affliction of a name--Fukutsu -shi--likes to boast of its sengen, (literally, 1000 houses) that were built in the so-called "machiya" style. Unfortunately, most of these houses are either in a bad state of repair or, as is so frustratingly common throughout Japan, covered with ugly fiberglass siding. These are san'widged between uninspiring houses and shabby apartment buildings.

The town was apparently the number one producer of sails in Japan back in the day when fishing ships were powered by the wind rather than Yanmar outboard motors. It's hard to say what industry the people of Tsuyazaki engage in today. There is some farming and fishing, yes, but not on a scale large enough to provide steady employment for young people. Until a few years ago when the Nishitetsu train still ran between Kaizuka and the town, an army of beach goers would descend upon Tsuyazaki on the weekends. But sadly no more. 

Rape blossoms.

A tailor shop. Kinda makes you wonder how business is doing.

The former residence of the Kozuma family, an ex-dyer, the Ai no Ie, was built in 1901. Today it houses the Tsuyazaki Ethnological Museum.

A small shrine located between the Ai no Ie and Toyomura Sake Brewery.

This home is suffering from an identity crisis.

Japanese radishes drying in the sun.

An old farmhouse.

Bachata en Fukuoka

Bachata en Fukuoka (English: Bachata in Fukuoka) is the first single released by Juan Luis Guerra for his latest album A Son de Guerra. The song, based on Guerra's experience during a trip to Fukuoka, Japan where he was performing at the annual Isla de Salsa, reached #1 in 2010, the second bachata song do so last year.

Dile a la mañana que se acerca mi sueño
que lo que se espera con paciencia se logra
nueve horas a París viajé sin saberlo
y crucé por Rusia con escala en tu boca

tell morning that get close to my dream
that what you have been waithing with patience can be achieved
nine hours to parís i travel whitout knowing it
and crossed by Russia with a stopover at your mouth

Yo canté tu bachata aquí en Fukuoka
(tu bachata en Fukuoka)

i sang your bachata here in fukuoka
(your bachata in fukuoka)

Y un atardecer pintó de canvas el cielo
caminé la playa de Momochi, mi anhelo
y se me escapó una sonrisa del alma
aquí me enseñó arigato gozaimasu

and a sunset canvas painted the sky
i walked the momochi beach, my longing
and a smyle from my soul got away
here arigato gozaimasu taught me

Yo canté tu bachata aquí en Fukuoka

i sang your bachata here in fukuoka

Pa’bailar contigo, (pa’bailar)
se me alegra la nota
Quiero cantar contigo, (quiero)
una bachata en Fukuoka

to dance with you (to dance) pleased my note

i want to sing with you (i want) a bachata in fukuoka

Una bachata en Fukuoka, (pa’ soñar contigo)
en el mar las gaviotas

a bachata in fukuoka (to dream about you)
at the sea the seagulls

Con tu piel de abrigo (quiero)
vivir bachata en Fukuoka

with your skin as a coat (i want)
live bachata en fukuoka

Y llegó la hora de partir y decir sayonara (con pocas ganas)
y una palomita se posó en mi ventana
Kon’nichi wa!, ohayoo gozaimasu

and the time come to go and say "sayonara" (with few desire)
and a little bird landed on my window
Kon’nichi wa!, ohayoo gozaimasu

Pa’bailar contigo, (pa’bailar)
se me alegra la nota

to dance with you (to dance)
  pleased my note

Quiero cantar contigo (quiero)

una bachata en Fukuoka

Una bachata en Fukuoka

i want to sing with you (i want)
a bachata in fukuoka

a bachata in fukuoka

Sueños, de arena en las olas
Besos, me daba tu boca
Tengo, estrellas y rosas
Niña, cantando en Fukuoka

dreams, about sand in the waves
kisses, your mouth gives me
i have, stars and roses
girl, singing at fukuoka

Pa’bailar contigo, (para bailar)
se me alegra la nota

to dance with you (to dance)
pleased my note

Quiero cantar contigo (quiero)
una bachata en Fukuoka

i want to sing with you (i want)
a bachata in fukuoka

Una bachata en Fukuoka, (pa’ soñar contigo)
en el mar las gaviotas

a bachata in fukuoka (to dream about you)
at the sea the seagulls

Con tu piel de abrigo
vivir bachata en Fukuoka

with your skin as a coat
live bachata en fukuoka

Hakata Magemono

Wooden craftwork, known locally as Hakata Magemono, was originally produced solely to be used as implements in sacred rites at  Hakozaki-gū, a shrine famous for its Tamaseseri and Hojoya Festivals. Over time, however, magemono grew in popularity among commoners who found practical uses for them as rice containers, lunch boxes, and so on.

Today, only two ateliers producing Hakata Magemono remain today, one of which is Shibata Toku Shōten located in Maedashi in Fukuoka's East Ward. Shibata Toku Shôten produces some sixty different types of magemono, including the popo zen tray which has enjoyed an enduring popularity over the years. Given as presents during Shichi-go-san (7-5-3) celebrations, popo zen trays are painted with auspicsious items, such as cranes and turtles. Since ancient times, the trays have traditionally been crafted by men; the pictures painted by women.

At Shibata Toku Shōten, great care is put into choosing the materials. "If the grains aren't straight, it won't make good magemono," says Shibata. "You can only get a sense of how a piece will all come together after years of experience."

To produce magemono, slats of hinoki (Japanese cypress) are first arranged according to their measurements. Next, the part where the two ends meet is planed. "If you make the joining parts too thick, the line won't be straight," Shibata explains. "If you make it too thin, then it'll be too sharp."

After the ends have been planed, the board is soaked in water overnight. The following morning, it is soaked into hot water for about 4 hours, making the board more pliable. Once the board is soft enough, it is bent with a special machine and then assembled. 

When asked what he found most pleasurable about the work, Shibata replied, "When a customer who's been using one of our products for several years comes in to have it repaired. If used with care, they can last for several decades."

Hakata Magemono which have been produced for some 300 years have been designated as an intangible cultural heritage of Fukuoka city.

Every year my wife asks me what I want for my birthday and I always say a magemono bento box. We’ve been married for over 15 years and I still haven’t received it.

Sunday's Walk (2010)

Built in Meiji 43 (1910), this lovely building was originally intended as a reception hall for foreign and other dignitaries visiting the Kyūshū-Okinawa region. It is one of the few buildings that remain in Japan featuring designs influenced by the French Renaissance. It is open from 9:00am to 5:00pm, Tuesday to Sunday. 

Three Maiko

A bronze replica of a work created by master doll artisan Kojima Maichi in Taisei 14 (1925) when the artist was thirty-eight years old. The original dolls were a third the size of this statue and won the silver medal at the Paris Arts and Crafts Expo.

The rear entrance to Kushida Shrine.

"Sacred water" for washing your hands and mouth before entering the shrine. Having once seeing a family of pigeons bathing in one of these things, I've never been able to use them since.

Torii gates.

This well water is supposed to cure all sorts of ailments. If you can believe that, then maybe you can convince yourself that it tastes wonderful, too.

O-mikuji (paper oracles)

Dosanko. Located midway through the Kawabata Shopping Arcaade, this is my favorite place for Hokkaidô style miso rāmen in Fukuoka. The butter ramen is also amazing.

Miso Rāmen.

Doesn’t look like much, but this is the best chahan (fried rice) in Fukuoka.

And, on our way home, we passed by Nakasu Taiyō Eigakan, Fukuoka's very best movie theater. Nobody believes me when I say this, but it is true. Have a look for yourself.

Average Income and Cost of a New House in the US

My mother’s 90th birthday is coming up and the eleven of us surviving kids are trying to come up ideas to make the day a special one, despite the social distancing and lockdowns. One of my sisters found an interesting card that showed what was going on in the US in 1930. There are several versions of these out there, and I wouldn’t mind having one sent to me on my own 90th birthday, if I manage to live that long.

Anyways, I was struck by the cost of a house compared to the average annual income. Have a look:

1920

$3,269; $5,000 (1.5 times)

A house, a modest one perhaps, was within reach of a middle-class worker in the ‘20s.

1930

$1,368; $7,145 (5.2 times)

This is at the start of The Great Depression, which is why the average salary has been slashed. Home prices, interestingly, are up. What’s going on there?

1940

$1,900; $6,500 (3.4 times)

Incomes are still low, but with the start of WWII, things will turn around.

1950

$3,300; $14,500 (4.4 times)

Houses are still expensive compared to income, but that may be a reflection of the demand for housing in the postwar baby-boom era.

1960

$5,600; $16,500 (2.9 times)

Income is rising faster than the price of houses.

1970

$8,734; $26,000 (3.0 times)

Both are rising at about the same level.

1980

$17,710; $76,400 (4.3 times)

From the Reagan era on, the price of houses compared to income starts to increase. I have read that this was the result of more married women entering the workplace, allowing couples to spend more on housing than they otherwise would have. Warren talks about this a lot.

1990

$29,943; $149,800 (5 times)

More of the same. Housing prices keep going up, up, up and were back at Depression Era levels, only the dual incomes have made people numb it.

2000

$40,343; $134,150 (3.3 times)

A return to sanity, or just a breather?

2010

$49,276; $272,517 (5.5 times)

As I suspected, house prices are bonkers again.

Trimming Nails

If novels had director's cuts, this chapter would be in it. 

Aya

I thought an evening at home for a change would do me some good. I'd cook myself some dinner, then settle down to write the pages which had remained unwritten for too long. They'd collected in the course of days and weeks, so much so, they'd become a growing nuissance, cluttering my mind. And so, a warm meal in my belly, I sat down at my table to the long neglected task of writing another chapter in a novel that seemed to constantly rewrite itself. Pages of digressions and tangents, of love and hope, hate and despair. I opened a bottle of cheap vodka and placed it within easy reach in case inspiration became elusive. I wrote as quickly as the words could be dragged unwillingly across the sheets of paper. When I'd come to the end of the bottle and the end of my thoughts, I stretched my aching back, uncurled my numb legs from beneath me and read what had flown out of me over the last few hours.

With a rare sense of satisfaction in my heart and beginning to lose myself in the fog of drink, I retired to my futon to reread what I had written and dream of things bigger than myself lying on that thin cotton pad. I thought about the friends I missed, the friends about whom I often dreamt, about the Saturday nights two, three years before when I'd scrape together what little money I could, buy something cheap to drink then head downtown where I'd soon be staggering on all fours on the dancefloor. I missed my old friends so badly that merely visiting them in my thoughts was painful. It was even worse on nights such as these when I'd wanted nothing more than to stay at home with my thoughts and compose. Little by little the confidence I'd so strongly held on to would slip through my fingers, and the itch to get out of the thoughts that clouded my head and into the night would be enough to drive me mad.

I finished the last of my vodka and walked into town. It was an unusually warm November night, so I took my time meandering the dark and narrow streets that I had trudged/treaded in various states of insobriety a hundred or more times before in the sad, concise history of my miserable life in this city of Fukuoka.

I followed my nose, my heal and toes, to The Big Apple, a bar I hated for all the memories I wanted to disown. How many months had I tried to avoid the place? Since my heart had been thoroughly and unequivocally broken by Mie? Oh, I'd been there since then, in times not so much of weakness, but for a lack of anywhere better to go. A group of gregarious Australians brought be back into the gaijin fold and there I was gravitating to the bar as natural as if I'd always been going there. From then on, I'd pass, stick my head in from time to time to see if I knew anyone, and stay if I did. Little by little over the course of several months going would become a kind of  habit, drinking with aquaintances because real friends were not to be had, drink until five a.m. only to walk home alone, again, sometimes with the burden of heartbreak lightened, sometimes feeling as if its weight would crush me.

By the time I arrived the vodka I'd drunk had befriended me enough to warm a smile on my face and soften the furrow in my brow. I entered through the tinted glass door, then squeezed through the press of black sailor trying to endear themselves to the young Japanese girls, back on through to toilet in the rear where I found Mario. 

He gave me a genuine smile when I greeted him. We talked about things that didn't matter, insignificant things, then I asked him whether he was really Italian. He admitted that he wasn't, that he was Iranian, something that neither the Japanese nor the Americans would easily accept. I sat down next to him on the step and talked to him about history and culture, the Japanese and ignorance. It was one of the best conversations I'd had with another foreigner, though we'd had it in Japanese, and when I stood up to go I felt as if I'd broken through the insufferably thick layer of ice that most foreigners protected themselves with.

Many foreigners maintain a distance between themselves and others, perhaps from arrogance, perhaps from the knowledge that most of us in Japan are only here for a short time and developing any friendships outside the usual circle is a waste of time and energy. I wasn't innocent, I'd been harboring similar sentiments and had been handicapped by a selectivity that had prevented me from investing myself in relationships often because of severely limited choices. Therein lay the root of my problems. Torn between a real and concrete loneliness and a paucity of acquaintances from which to develop friendships. 

When I went back into the mob of mutually exclusive groups, dancing couples and the occasional loner like myself, I found Brian, an American whom I'd met in my neighborhood only a few weeks earlier. I'd thought he'd left and told him so. "Nah, I can't leave until I've sold everything." By everything, he meant drugs. Hash, X, pot. The night we first met in my neighborhood, I invited him back to my apartment where he got me high for the first time in ages. He offered to treat me again. I couldn't refuse and followed him out of the Big Apple and across the street to a different building where we took the elevator to the top floor, ascended a short flight of stairs to the roof and smoked hash for the next half hour.

Despite his generosity, he was in a sour mood. He mentioned that Patrick, the Swede I had originally met him with, had ripped him off, but that really wasn't what was bothering him. In his line of business, he was used to people trying to rip him off. He'd never trusted the guy in the first place, and besides it was only money, something he seemed to have no shortage of. 

We talked about all sort of things, going off on tangeants to see where they'd take us, and suddenly in the middle of our discussion on biblical myths such as the virgin birth he said, "God, what am I doing with my life? I haven't been home in eight years. I'm a fucking drug-dealer. Sometimes I just wish the police would fucking arrest me . . . "

There was nothing I could say but suggest we go back to the bar and get another drink.

When we returned to the Big Apple, we found Patrick dancing with two foreign women. I suspect that someone as tall, blonde and gregarious as him had little trouble getting laid by the sexually frustrated foreign women you inevitably found in the gaijin bars. He could have them as far as I was concerned; I'd lost interest long ago.

Brian and I got our drinks and stood to the side of the dance area continuing the conversation we'd been having earlier. "Nothing interests me anymore . . . I've seen it, I've done it, I've been there already . . . Eighty countries, man. I've been to eighty countries in the last eight years, but I haven't been home . . . "

"Wooh!" Patrick was dancing with the two foreign girls, with bare arms raised above him twirling in the air. "Yeah!"

"Look at that idiot," Brian scoffed. "Thinks he's the reincarnation of Jim Morrison."

Patrick took turns kissing the two girls who clung on him. If the girls had been remotely attractive, I might have been envious of the tall Swede rather than merely disgusted. 

"Oh, Yeah!" he said and began clapping above his head. "Mmmm, yeah!"  I suppose he wanted us to clap along with him, but no one did. Even the others who'd been dancing stopped, turning away as if they were embarrassed by the spectacle he was making of himself. A lack of audience was no matter; he continued hamming it up all the same. 

"A true artist is never really appreciated," I said to Brian. 

"Especially, a con artist."

 Just then someone tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, I found Aya. I didn't think I'd ever see her again after I'd moved closer into town. Six months had passed since we last met when she had tried to communicate through a verse in the Book of Mormon that she was in love with me. 

2

"I lost your address when I moved," I said hugging her. "It's so good to see you again."

I bought her a drink, then sat down at the bar with her so we could talk about everything that had happened since that warm Sunday afternoon in April.

"I often thought about you," I said taking her hand. It wasn't entirely true, though. I couldn't say that I had really consciously thought of her. I wondered what she was doing or where she was. And it wasn't that often that curiosity would make me wonder about her. No, it was on only the rarest of occasions that she would visit my passing thoughts. Drunk as I was, it was tempting to even say that I'd missed her. But then the thin veil of credibility I was wearing would have been torn off.

Why hadn't I contacted her? Was it because of her age? She was only fifteen the first time we met, sixteen when I ejaculated all over her breasts six months ago. No, age never factored into the equation. Too young wasn't necessarily a minus. Not in Aya's case, at least. Had she been older, I might not have given her the time of day. No, Aya's age, and the breasts she'd been so generously endowed with were all that had ever interested me. But at the time my heart still carried the unhealed wound of Mie's departure from my life. Though the wound hadn't quite healed, time had allowed me to put her absence further and further from my mind. I'd grown used to the feeling nothing the way you can get used to the silence. I suppose I hadn't contacted Aya because I still wanted desperately to fall in love with someone again, but now all I wanted was to fuck like a dog.

"I had a birthday," she said.

"Oh, you did? Congratulations! So, you're now what? Twelve? Thirteen?" She punched me softly in the shoulder. Really, what did another birthday mean when you were so young? Only that you were still young. I turned twenty-seven since we had last met. A year closer to thirty. A year closer to death.

"You don't know how old I am, do you?" she asked.

I knew. How could I forget coming on the breasts of a sixteen year old? Coming on a girl ten years younger than myself. The thought had made me smile, had even warmed me on the odd cold night. She was seventeen now. "Yeah, I know," I replied. "You're seventeen."

 She asked me where I was living now. She asked me if I had a girlfriend, but didn't believe me when I said I didn't. I didn't believe myself, to tell the truth. It'd been more than a year since I'd had a proper one.

"I have a boyfriend," she confessed. "He's black."

I took Aya by the hand to the back of the bar, then through the fire escape to the exposed stairwell then led her up the ten flights to the roof where I tried to kiss her. 

"You just want to have sex with me," she said, pushing me away.

"What ever gave you that idea?" I asked. I turned away from her and looked across Oyafukô-dôri to the building where Brian and I had shared a spliff earlier. I could barely make out what looked like the ember of a joint rising, glowing brightly, then dimming and falling slightly. It looked like a firefly. 

Aya had accused me of just wanting to screw her. Of course, I wanted to have sex. Would I have been up on the roof catching a cold with the girl I didn't really care a whole hell about if I weren't interested in sex? No way! Wake up, Aya! Reality awaits you! 

"Aya, I don't want to have sex. I just want to be with you." I took her into my arms again and held her tightly. "I don't want to have sex," I said kissing her neck. "I don't want to have sex," I said biting her neck and feeling the weight of her breast in my hand.

I did want to have sex. But I wanted something more, too. Something that she would have never been able to give me. Aya would never know anything about that, of course. I wasn't about to open up a Pandoran box of emotions before the girl.

3

We descended the stairs and walked hand in hand back to the bar which was deserted all but for the staff who were starting to clean up. Looking at the clock I saw that it was almost five. Where the hell had the time gone? We couldn't have been on the roof for more than half an hour and I'd arrived at the bar around midnight so I had two, no three hours that I couldn't account for. Or could I? Had they merely drifted off into heaven with the smoke each time I took a hit off Brian's spliff? No, time had only been slightly compromised by the hash I had smoked, and been made completely forgetable by the drinks that Aya had been ordering and placing one after the other before me. A few weeks later Brian would say, "It's not often you see a chick trying so hard to get a guy drunk so she could fuck him." 

"Live and learn." I would reply.

Aya and I jumped into a taxi and headed back to my place where I lost no time in getting undressed, lying in bed and falling fast asleep.

A few hours later I was woken by Aya. 

"Wh-what the fu . . . ?"

"You're snoring and I can't sleep."

"Huh? Me? Snoring?"

"Yeah, you. You're really loud."

"Nah, not me."

"Yes, you."

"I don't snore."

"You do, too!" She imitated me. It sounded like a boar in the throes of death. She crawled above me and grabbed my neck. "I want to kill you."

"So kill me," I said slowly pulling her sweater up and over her head. 

Although her forhead and nose were just as tan as they'd been in April, her shoulders were milky white as if they had never once been kissed by the sun. Under the sweater her huge breasts were held in place by a simple cream colored bra. Some girls with smaller breasts were able to get by with a single clasp, others with more shapely figures reguired two. Aya's breasts, however, were precariously contained with three industrial sized clasps which groaned with stress fatigue. While I might have been able to undo a single clasp bra with a adroit snap of my thumb and index, undoing Aya's bra was a major undertaking requiring a foreman, joices, pullies and hard hats. When the last of the third clasp had given way, I could feel the weight of her generous bosom drop heavily onto my chest. 

It was amazing how firm they were, how small and pink her nipples were, but then she was only sixteen. Seventeen, that is. What was the age of consent in Japan? Who knew? Who cared? Why was I even asking questions? All I wanted was to fuck Aya, but not necessarily because I wanted her. No, I wanted to fuck so that I might forget, to fuck myself into a reprieve, to put yet another body between the memory of Mie and myself. And so we fucked, fucked for hours, fucked as the morning light was beginning to sneak into my room, as the sound of pidgeons and crows was beginning to break the silence of a Sunday morning, fucked until the odd car could be heard passing slowly by, fucked until the voices of children and their mothers reminded us of the time, fucked until I came again into the deep valley between those majestic peaks.

I rolled off of Aya and fell asleep. When I woke up, she was dressed and in the kitchenette doing my dishes. Great country, I thought. When she finished, she hung up the dish towel on its hook and sat down on the bed beside me. 

"You have gray hairs," she said running her fingers through my hair.

"Thank you!"

"I'm supposed to meet my boyfriend today, but I don't feel like it."

"So don't." I pulled her towards me and kissed her, then took her hand and bringing it under the covers, placed it on my cock. "Why don't you stay with me?"  She nodded her head slightly, then proceeded to remove her clothes.

I suppose it was her age. This poor girl had been blessed with a body that demanded and got your attention, yet lack of experience meant that she hadn't yet learned how to use the gifts the gods had given her. She straddled me, then waited for sex to happen. When it did, she never let go of her composure the way that Rika would. Rika was lost in epiphanies each time we had sex. One day, I thought as Aya whimpered softly above me, she'd be a great lover, but I didn't have the patience to teach her. The excitement you might feel screwing someone so much younger than yourself fades sooner than you'd think. I lay Aya down on her side and tried to evoke something more than the pathetic whimpering, but success was elusive so I gave up and consentrated on myself, instead, and before long my own pleasure produced a short strand of pearls on her back. 

We took a shower together to wash the smell of each other's sex off our skins. I shampooed her hair, then later dried her body with a towel. We returned to my bed where she cleaned my ears with a mimikaki. It was the first time since I'd dated Mie that anyone had done that for me. It was one less memory Mie could no longer monopolise. 

4

We spent the afternoon in Dazaifu, visiting the famous Tenmangû Shrine. I'd suggested going as I'd been wanting to see the Japanese maples at the nearby Komyoji temple. And with the Shichi Go San soon approaching, I knew there'd be many parents taking their dolled up children to the shrine to pray for their health and happiness. More than anything, I wanted to go to Dazaifu ostensibly to see these children and take their photos, but there was a deeper wish, too, a wound that hadn't yet healed. Looking at the little girls in their colorful kimono, with their black hair combed up in hoops and ornaments and flowers dangling out in every which way, their skin white with powder and small lips as red as pickled plums on a bowl of steamed rice. Looking at them when they were so adorable like this made me think of the children I could have had, but had so far chosen not to. The reasons for past decisions, though made with the best intentions, and often the only choices I could make at the time, could hardly comfort when I look into the bright eyes of these children.

"They're so cute," I said to Aya. Would she have understood how the regret stung when I looked into their precious faces? 

We sat down on a low bench that was covered with red carpeting and ordered umegamochi manjû and green tea. Aya ran her fingers through my gray hairs.

"Everytime you do that you make me feel old."

"I like older men."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"I don't know. They're more interesting, I guess." She placed her hand on mine and rested her cheek on my shoulder. "I think you're interesting, too."

A three-year-old girl walked clumsily by in her platform zori. Her kimono was more decorative than the others I'd seen and there was a collar of white fur around her neck. She looked at me, turning her head as she passed, then paused and waved her short fingers before continuing awkwardly on her way.

When I told Aya that I wanted a child she replied, "You are a child." It was true and I knew it, knew it all too well, but coming from a high school girl ten years my junior made it all the more ironic. Hardly a day passed when I didn't ask myself if I would ever manage to grow up and do the things that I, myself, and so many others had been expecting me to do. But as often as I thought about it I could never quite come to choose between living life one day at a time without regard to the consequences of my actions and without concern for what others were expecting, and giving in to those pressures and leading a responsible, normal life. As lonely as I was, as keenly as I still felt the solitude of being so far from family, friends and love, I did not live entirely within a vaccuum isolated from the world and people around me. My breath fell upon others both near and remote, upon Aya next to me on my shoulder and Mie so far away, but still in my heart. My thoughts return to the fulcrum upon which my emotions are balanced. Love. Love found. Love lost. Love killed. Love desired. Love. Love. Love.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2011. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Read more excerpts from A Woman's Nails here:

Jóie De Vivre

Unfortunately, the Japanese chose to abandon their charming wooden homes and live in soulless concrete boxes, instead.

Art of Living (Fukuoka)

It has been with qreat dismay that I have watched neighborhoods all over Fukuoka City lose forsake architectural treasures over the years. When I first came to Japan over two decades ago it wasn't hard to find a traditional Japanese home or shop or even a cluster of such buildings here and there. Over time, however, these jewels have been torn down only to be replaced by ¥100 parking lots and tawdry apartment buildings which lack the soul the previous dwellings had. The trend has continued unabated and so now as I walk about town, I try to photograph the traditional Japanese homes I come across just as a zoologist might try to record a dying species. 

Daimyō, Chūō-ku

The entrance to a gorgeous home located in the affluent Sakurazaka neighborhood of Chūō-ku.

This is rather unassuming storefront is a shichi-ya, or pawn shop, located in Imaizumi, Chūō-ku. Curiosity had me poke my head inside once where I found a teller window of sorts. Unlike most pawn shops which display and sell items forfeited by customers unable to pay off their loans, nothing was on sale inside. Considering the size and location of the property this house sits on, business must be good.

Nishijin, Sawara-ku

This is a privately owned home located along the Fujisaki-Nishijin shopping street. All of the houses there must have looked like this, but today only a handful remain which beggars belief.

The former residence of the owner of Jōkyū Shōyu (soy sauce), in Daimyō, Chūō-ku. The house was renovated several years ago is now home to a popular soba restaurant called Yabukin. 

The view from the second floor of the kura and roofing.

Our Work is Done

Coronavirus Ranking, number of confirmed cases (recoveries)

🇨🇳 80,945 (64,198) ← Our work is done.

🇮🇹 17,660 (1,439) ← More wine, please.

🇮🇷 11,364 (Numbers may be not be reliable because kooky people still like to lick mosque walls . . . Um)

🇰🇷 7,979 (510) ← Goddamn crazy Korean cults!

🇪🇸 5,232 (193) ← More wine, please.

🇩🇪 3,675 (46) ← Üübermenschlich! Fee fill be beaten NICHT beim "Firus"!

🇫🇷 3,667 (12) ← Enjoying the staycation, having afternoon sex; stinky soft cheeses and unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes. Cough, cough.

🇺🇸 1,952 (6) ← Best healthcare system IN THE WORLD 🎉Those 43 deaths are a small price to pay for FREEDOM!

🇩🇰 1,589 (1) ← Happiest people on earth, smiling a little bit less than usual.

🇨🇭 1,139 (4)

🇳🇴 996 (1) ← Party is just getting started.

🇸🇪 814 (1) ← Ditto. Cue the ABBA. “Waterloo! Waterloo! Don’t know what this song’s about. Waterloo! Waterloo!”

🇳🇱 804 ← Don’t take your finger out of the dyke, Jan. No, not that dyke! The levee! Don’t take your finger out of the levee!

🇬🇧 801 (19) ← Nothing to see here! Move along, move along. (Special relationship comes with special favors from our special friends across the pond.)

🇯🇵 701 (118) ← Asking, What's all the fuss? Olympics are still a go, right? Right? Helloooo?! Is this thing on?!

⛴ 696 (325) ← Looky here! Wait! Come back!

🇧🇪 556 (1) ← More chocolate, please.

🇶🇦 320 Qatar . . . Or is it Quttr? You’d think with their money, they’d be able to afford some more consonants. “I’d like to buy a ‘K’ for $200.”

🇨🇦 306 (8) ← Lot of people wishing Trudeau self-isolated a few years ago.

Hoops of FIre

Oh, the joy of being an American citizen!

I am finally getting around registering my second son as a Yank, three years after his birth. (Sorry, son.) For those American expats, who are soon to become parents this can be an exasperating, time-consuming process, which entails, in addition to a stiff drink for the patience you’ll find in it, completing the following forms:

DS-2029, Consular Report of Birth Application.

DS-11, Passport application.

SS-5, Social Security application.

The original birth certificate which requires a visit to the Ministry of Justice if the child is a “half”, something I learned only after getting into an altercation with a senior employee at the local Ward Office. (This is so unlike me, but those SOBs at the Ward Office have a way of bringing out the worst in a person.) This, of course, needs to be translated into the blessed Mother Tongue: ‘Murrican.

An affidavit of the child’s name. (Now, one thing nice about the U.S., is that they allow you to choose a name different than the one on the Japanese birth certificate if you like. Your daughter can, for example, be named Hanako Yamada in Japan and Bianca X. Witherspoon in the U.S.)

The original, plus one photocopy, of the parents’ marriage certificate, which in my case will require going back to the ward office, and apologizing for the misunderstanding the other day. (Sigh.) Oh, yes, this needs to be translated into English, too.

Original plus one photocopy of proof of termination of all prior marriages. (As if going through with the divorce wasn’t painful enough, now I have to beg the Ward Office to provide proof that I am a scoundrel. They’re on to me.)

Evidence of parents’ citizenship, original plus one photocopy.

Evidence of physical presence, such as high school and/or college transcripts (which I actually do have and like to whip out from time to time to prove what a marvelous student I was. No one believes me. The impudence!), wage statements (Wages? Y’gotta be kidding. Why do you think I came to Japan in the first place, silly?), credit card bills, former passports, etc.

Both parents’ IDs. Originals and copies, but of course.

The application fee. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Mug shots of the child for the passport.

One self-addressed, “LetterPack Plus” envelope. 

Two days in and I’m just scratching the surface of paperwork. Fortunately, the Tokyo Embassy’s website (see Citizen’s services) does an outstanding job in walking you through the process. They also provide templates for translating the necessary Japanese documents.

Now, back to the paperwork. Better fortify myself with another gin and tonic before I take that next step. 

Aki Misaki

I share the same hairdresser with a little known, yet best-selling Japanese author named Aki Misaki (三崎亜記). His first novel, Tonari Machi Sensô [1], won the 17th Shôsetsu Subaru Shinnin Prize [2], and has been made into both a manga and feature film of the same name. The novel apparently tells the story of a modern-day Japanese town which declares war on a neighboring town. It is apparently told from the perspective of a public servant working in the town hall. I say “apparently” because while I own the book, I have not yet read it.

My hairdresser, Tanimura, occasionally mentions Misaki when I’m at his salon as he knows that I am also trying to make a career out of writing. Tanimura will say something like, “Misaki said he does all of his writing at McDonald’s.”

“McDonald’s? You must be kidding! How on earth can an author write anything halfway decent with that McDonald’s stink swirling around him?”

“Well, he manages somehow: just published his fourth book.”

“Fourth!”

“Yeah. So, where do you write?”

“Me? Mos Burger, [3] of course.”

“Ha! Seriously?”

“No, no, I’m kidding.”

“Where do you write, then?”

Shortly before I remarried, my fiancée would take me over to her parents’ house on Sundays and lock me up in their washitsu [4] and force me to write. It was torturous, but effective. kneeling in front of my MacBook with nothing else to do but fill a page with words and sentences, I finally managed to complete the first quarter of what would eventually become Rokuban, my second and most popular work so far.

My writing habit has changed considerably over the years. Although I have been writing since I was a kid, it is only in the past three or four years or so that I have become methodical about it. Where I used to write in the evening or at night, often under the influence of alcohol, I now like to write in the morning from about eight or so to one or two in the afternoon, preferably on an empty stomach. (I find it easier to concentrate when I’m slightly hungry. Hemmingway did too.) I’ll drink one or two cafés au lait over the course of the morning. (Too much coffee and I’ll end up spending more time in front of the toilet than in front of my MacBook.) I may have a double shot of Ron Zacapa Centenario, some of which I’ll add to my coffee. And where I once took copious notes, I do so only sparingly now. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in an interview, “I know from experience that when you take notes you end up thinking about the notes and not about the book.” [5]

I write almost every day, one chapter at a time and in sequence. It might seem easier to just let everything in my head spill out higgedly-piggedly onto the page—to not waste the inspiration when it comes—but, I’ve found that going back and cleaning up the text can be a major, time-consuming headache. Better to get it right the first time and make minor changes later.

As for where I write, ideally I would like to write at home where I am comfortable. Unfortunately, I have a young son who likes to climb up onto my lap and start banging on the keyboard. So, I make my rounds at various cafés in town where the staff knows me and can put up my spacing out.

“Where do I write?” I said to Tanimura. “Here and there.”

I am still searching for the perfect café, a place where the seats are comfortable and mood is conducive to creative work, there is good coffee and food on the menu and good spirits on the shelf; a café where the wi-fi is reliable, the music not distracting, and smokers are forced to do their smoking outside; a place to write where it’s neither too cold nor too hot, that has a clean toilet, and where the customers are regulars so that I don’t have to worry about leaving my Mac on the table when I go to take a leak. If you know of this place, I am all ears.

Tanimura told me that Misaki had been in to get his hair cut recently.

“Oh?”

“He said something that surprised me.”

“What was that?”

“Misaki likes interior design,” Tanimura said. “So, I asked him if he had any plans to build a house someday and what do you think this guy says? ‘Yes . . . as soon as I’ve saved up a hundred million yen.’ [6] A hundred million yen! Do writers make that much?”

“Not this writer sitting in front of you.”

“A few months ago when Misaki was in here, he said he had just bought a Mini Cooper—cash! And then a month later he said he had bought a condominium. Cash, again!”

I didn’t doubt what Tanimura was telling me, but the funny thing is when I got home I asked my wife if she had ever heard of Misaki.

“No.”

“Have you ever heard of Tonari Machi Sensôˆ?”

She had, but hadn’t seen the movie. Like most Japanese films, it was a low budget, direct-to-video production.

All week, I went around asking everyone I could those two questions and not a single person admitted to having heard of Misaki. (Some had heard of the movie, though, but, like my wife, hadn’t seen it.)

And yet, this goofy-looking Misaki is selling enough books to retire from his job as a civil servant in a small town office (Write what you know!) and is now able to devote all his time to writing. (My dream!) Misaki is earning enough money to be able to buy a car and a condominium with cash and is saving up to build his dream house. (My wife’s dream. [7])

“I had no idea writers could make so much from royalties,” Tanimura said as I was leaving.

“Neither, did I.”

It was encouraging to learn that a little known author like Misaki could do so well financially after having written only four novels. And it got me to thinking: perhaps, I should start writing at McDonald’s, too.

---

I originally wrote the above piece about five years ago. A lot has changed since then. For one, I no longer write in cafes (or McDonald’s for that matter). I do most of my writing in the wee hours at home, from about four in the morning to eight or so.

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[1] Misaki, Aki (三崎亜記), Tonari Machi Sensô (となり町戦争), Tôkyô: Shûeisha, 2005.

[2] The Shôsetsu Subaru Shinnin Prize (小説すばる新人賞) is a literary prize awarded to new authors by the publishing house Shûeisha. It is named after the company’s monthly literary journal, Shôsetsu Subaru.

[3] Mos Burger (モスバーガー) is a popular chain of hamburger restaurants in Japan. Widely considered to have the best burgers, it is somewhat expensive for fast food. It is the second largest fast food franchise in Japan after McDonald’s with about 1,300 shops nationwide.

[4] Washitsu (和室) is a Japanese-style room found in most Japanese homes with tatami mats often used as a guest room.

[5] Márquez, Gabriel García, El olor de la guayaba: Conversaciones con Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1993.

[6] ¥100,000,000 is equivalent to about $1.3 million.

[7] Help make the mother of my children happy: buy my books!

Average Annual Salary

This is a repost from five years ago. Things have changed quite a bit since then.

More depressing stats from one of my favorite websites of late, Heikin Nenshū Labo. This shows the trend in average salaries in Japan between the years 1995 and 2013. 

In 1995, the average yearly salary for a "salaryman" in Japan was ¥4,570,000. The average salary peaked in 1997 at ¥4.67 million, but has fallen ever since. In 2009, the average salary was only ¥4.06 million, due to the recession that followed the "Lehman Brothers Shock" and stock market crash of 2008. Growth in salaries has been anemic in the years since. 

Looking at this chart, I am curious to know, one, what the average salary was during the bubble years of the late 1980s, and, two, whether salaries have increased in 2014 and 2015. I would also like to know how "salaryman" is defined.

In 2013, the average male salaryman earned ¥5,110,000, compared to an average of only ¥2,720,000 for women.

This graph shows the average salary for men (blue) and women (red) according to age. 

Doda has a pretty good breakdown of income according to age. The average fortynine-year-old man in Japan earns ¥6,830,000. 46% of those men earn more than seven million yen. Only 13% of men and 5% of women in their late forties earn more than a ten million yen a year. 

At Career Connection, you can get information on the average salary paid by a particular company and read reviews by people who are working or have worked for the company. Nomura Securities, for example, pays workers in their forties an average of ¥16,240,000 a year. Not bad. TEPCO pays its forty-year-old employees an average of ¥12,170,000.

Student Loans, Japanese style

Look up the word shōgaku-kin (奨学金) in any Japanese-English dictionary and you will, more often than not, be told that the word means "scholarship". It does not. Unlike scholarships in the U.S. which are awarded on the basis of academic achievement and do not have to be paid back, shōgaku-kin is a student loan.

Of the thirteen girls in my class this afternoon, seven of them were recipients of these shōgaku-kin loans which ranged from ¥30,000 per month to as much as ¥120,000 per month ($285~1,142). The most common amount was ¥80,000 per month ($762), with three of the seven receiving that amount.

 As tuition runs about ¥450,000 ($4,286) per semester at the private college were I work, a loan of ¥80,000 per month is more than enough to cover the expense of education. (Now, compare that to my own university where it costs more than $60,000 a year to study.)

The loans must be paid back, of course. Students are given a grace period of six months before they must return the money, at which time they will start making monthly payments of ¥142,000 to ¥20,000 ($152~190). They have ten years to pay off the loan. Interest on the principal of the loan is negligible: less than one percent. (Again, compare that with the U.S. where I was paying a fixed 10% interest.)

All in all, it's not a bad deal.

For those of you like me who would like to avoid saddling their kids with debt so early in their lives, there is the gakushi hoken (学資保険) or yōrō hoken (養老保険) which is a kind of savings and life insurance plan. Many of these plans start at as little as ¥10,000 a month and usually have a fixed payment period of about five years. It’s a quick, painless, and safe way to sock away money for your kids’ education.