Fireworks have always been a source of mystery and nostalgia for many people. Perhaps its because we are generally introduced to these noisy and colourful displays when we are young and at a most impressionable age, after all being allowed to stay up late and go outside in the dark with the adults is pretty exciting stuff for a 4 year old. For me fireworks started with a few sparklers and the dads lofting up some bottle rockets. I then progressed to the larger, but still modest, shows held by the PTA at my local primary school.

In Japan fireworks, or “Hanabi”, are in a different league and are taken very seriously. Every summer usually around late July hundreds of major displays each with tens of thousands of explosions draw huge crowds. Fireworks in Japan have evolved technically over the generations into far more complex aesthetic endeavours than what I ever saw when I was child.Part of the reason that fireworks in Japan are so advanced maybe because they are seen as much a form of entertainment for adults as for children. In the past they were the exclusive domain of the upper class, rich daimyo’s would gaze at them as they floated on river boats, eating and drinking delicacies and being entertained by geishya. These days some of the most spectacular shows are the Hanabi Taikai, or competitive events where teams of pyrotechnics from around the country come together at live televised events to be judged on their technical and artistic merits.

One of bigger “crackers” (bombs?) the Japanese make

At this level, fireworks no longer resemble the cylindrical rocket shaped crackers with a stick poking out the bottom, they are spheres made of papier-mâché and string pasted together. Inside the shell ‘stars’ are packed in with black powder to help ignite them. A firecracker-like bursting charge is inserted in the middle of the shell, and a fuse attached to it from outside the shell. If you’ve ever seen one of these shells up close or handled one the first thing that will impress you is the weight, they are almost completely filled solidly with powder and with diameters ranging from about 7 cm to well over a meter they can weigh up to and beyond 400Kg a piece!

The shells are launched through huge mortar-like tubes , up to 30Kg of black powder is needed to shoot the larger shells up to their explosion elevation of about 600m. To make the display last as long as possible, firework-makers have learned to use the largest grains of black powder in their stars as possible, and not to mix the powder’s ingredients too thoroughly. That way, the fuel inside the stars gets starved of oxygen slightly, making the combustion leaner, brighter and last longer.

While the Chinese remain the world’s largest producers of commercial fireworks, the Japanese have some of the most sought-after designs. Manufactures have an arsenal of various techniques they draw on to wow the crowds, such as pressing their stars, onion-like, with separate layers containing different colouring agents—so the display can change colour as the stars burn. And while the spherical design is also used elsewhere, the Japanese trick that foreign firework-makers have yet to master has more to do with the manufacture of the shell itself rather than the ingredients that go into it.Thanks to their paper making traditions, the Japanese know better than most how to paste layers of paper on the shell’s surface and how to dry the shell so its strength balances the explosive power of the firework’s bursting charge precisely.

I’ve come a long way since my sparkler days, but thanks to the amazing skill of the Japanese at this art form fireworks still have that magical quality they always had. What’s your favourite Hanabi Taikai? Tell us in the comments.

Earlier this week Nepia, one of the nations largest manufacturer and distributor of domestic paper products released a very limited number of what may be the most expensive tissue paper in the world. Nepia very shrewdly made their new product available only through their internet shop at mid night on Friday, by the time the Saturday morning talk shows had picked up on the campaign it was all but over and all 3000 sets had sold out.

Japan has long been know as a place where tissue paper comes cheap, so cheap in fact that there exists an entire industry of handing out of free tissue paper (ティッシュ配り) for advertising. Young men and women, typically with spiked coloured hair and adorned with various body piercings, tissue distributors can be found around any big city in Japan usually around the entrances to train stations.

Given a good location, one of these skilled workers can hand out some 2 to 3 hundred packs of tissue paper an hour, even more impressively this unlikely looking bunch dole out approximately 2.5 billion packets a year or about 20 packs per person in Japan. Despite this seemingly flooded market, Nepia has introduced a line of tissue paper that sells at 3,000 yen for a set of 2 boxes (about 10 yen/tissue). As a comparison my local supermarket sells a set of 5 boxes for 298 yen (about 0.2 yen/tissue).

The new brand is called the ‘Super Celebrity Nose’ (超鼻セレブ), it features a 3 ply tissue with double moisture retention and is perfumed by Verbena, a flower native to the Americas.

Nepia’s official stance is that they will not be selling any more of the ‘Super Celebrity Nose’ line, but judging from the effort that has gone into PR so far as well as its popularity its fair to say that this was ploy to further gain the public’s interest and we’ll see more in stock soon. On a side note, the company’s current campaign “Hana nice day!” advertising for its less exclusive ‘Celebrity Nose’ line of tissues is quiet amusing and well worth a look just to see just how strange Japanese TV can get (CM1, CM2 & my favourite CM3).

Crab eating is taken seriously here in Japan, crabs are a delicacy and nothing is wasted not even the brain. Winter is well upon us and now is the best time of year to tuck into the tasty crustacean. Restaurants throughout the country are serving them up in all manor of fashion, and hordes of tourists are descending upon seaside towns especially in Hokkaido to fill up on a whole variety of the crawlers. A top of the line crab can cost anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000 yen! If you’ve been ever sat down to a good crab meal, you may have come across a dish called Kani Miso.

Kani miso (カニみそ), is a grey/green coloured paste, and usually you’ll get a good-sized spoonful or two from a single crab. Ask a Japanese person what they think kani miso is and more often then not the word ‘nou miso’ (脳みそ) will come up (i.e. crab’s brain). However this is a common misconception.

The truth is far more horrific, the brain size of an average size crab is little more than that of a pea, and kani miso is whatever is left after all the white meat is taken out of the crab – a nasty looking concoction of internal organs such as livers and pancrease, intestines, their contents and just a little bit of the actual brain. Over tofu though it’s delicious!

Try it out this winter, and let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

Earlier in Summer you may have missed the a new chewing gum phenomenon, “Otoko Kaoru” (Literally: ‘Man Scent’).

What’s unusual about this gum is that it causes a rose fragrance to be emitted from the chewer’s body for about one to two hours after its chewed. The Rose Menthol flavoured gum, contained a fragrant component geraniol, which is found in roses. According to Kanebo’s food research laboratory, the component is easily emitted from the body’s sweat glands, in much the same way as garlic or alcohol is.

With its black, ‘this will make you sexy’ design, the gum is marketed at Japanese men. Its been hugely popular, showing that guys here are very concerned about the way they smell. In Japan, it is often reported that young women cannot stand the smell of men, and are particularly put off by the scent of older guys. Apparently this product is an attempt to cash in on the insecurity that such reports have generated.

The gum has proved so successful, that the manufacturer, Kanebo, published a statement to say that they were unable to keep up with demand and the gum had been pulled from the shelves until further notice. A strange way to do business you might say until you take into account that chewing gum sales in Japan are driven through convenience stores. Due to their just-in-time distribution systems, these large chains can’t take on products with a questionable supply.

Is it likely we’ll see more pheromone inducing substances hitting the market soon? Tell us what you think.

The humble waribashi – disposable wooden, or literally ‘split-apart’ chopsticks. Japan consumes a massive 25 billion sets of them every year – about 200 pairs per person. Earlier this year, in a move that was cheered by environmentalists, China’s latest 5 year plan slapped a 5 percent tax on their chopstick exports over concerns of deforestation. The tax along with the rising costs of raw wood and transportation because of higher oil prices have contributed to big price rises. A pair of waribashi that used to cost a little over 1 yen 4 months ago are now 1.5-1.7 yen. As some 97% of the throwaway chopsticks in Japan come from China, restaurants and convenience stores alike have been scrambling to find viable alternatives.

Stores are curtailing their once lavish distribution of waribashi with many convenience store chains now only providing waribashi to people who ask for them. Restaurants have started using reusable chopsticks as a main stay, whilst still stocking waribashi in case customers have trouble snaring elusive noodles with the plastic chopsticks. And some establishments have even begun to offer small discounts to people who bring their own chopsticks. The number of environmentally conscious people taking their own hashi along to work and to restaurants has increased dramatically and the movement has stirred something of a ‘My Hashi’ boom. Online shops offering everything from coloured to personally lettered or logo’ed hashi are flourishing.

Until about 20 years ago waribashi produced by domestic makers accounted for half of the market, but were taken over by the cheaper and higher quality Chinese counterparts. China’s annual production of disposable wooden chopsticks now exceeds 45 billion pairs — equivalent to about 25 million trees. The majority of Chinese chopsticks go to Japan and South Korea, with the remainder being used locally. Some in Japan fear we soon won’t even be able to get expensive chopsticks from China: Japanese newspapers Mainichi and Nihon Keizai have both reported that China could stop waribashi exports to Japan altogether by as early as 2008. Environmentalists see this as an opportunity for Japan to better manage its own forests, currently Japan produces only 500 million of its own waribashi, only a sixth of what they produced only 1 or 2 decades ago. Indeed much of the country is currently seen as over-forested with an estimated 80% of the Japanese forests requiring thinning. Can Japan make the changes needed?

For those that can’t get enough of a supercharged 2 wheeled machine riding between their legs then the next best thing must be sleeping with it! In the country where land is scarce and parking spaces cost big bucks, people naturally tend towards buying bikes. Japan consistently has one of the highest per capita sale of motorbikes in the world. Its no coincidence then that the motorbike big three; Yamaha, Honda and Suzuki are all from Japan. There’s a real passion for bikes here, and now there’s a new avenue for people who love there bikes to express it, the Riders Mansion.

The concept is simple, an apartment with a window/sliding door which opens directly from your kitchen or bedroom onto your own private, indoor garage.

Red Barron, the nation’s largest motorcycle dealership with over 250 dealers (a few of which are overseas), is banking on the fact that bike lovers will not only want to live under the same roof as their bikes they will also want to live in apartments located directly above a Red Barron shop. They’ve already built one, a 7 story building out in Nerima and there are plans for many more, 20 in Tokyo alone.

Initially the rent on these apartments is expected to fetch between 86,000 to 139,000 Yen for a 30 to 50 square meter 1K+Garage or a Studio+Garage pad. The rooms will of course have all the other mod cons that you’d expect from a ‘Garage in Room’ design; large roomy elevators, a bike wash area, automatic doors for the garage and naturally a washlet.

The company says that the ‘Interior Garage’ layout will appeal to people with parking and bike theft/vandalism concerns. The fact is that indoor parking space for apartment dwellers is rare in Japan and so the idea is likely to be popular with bikers who like to preen, polish and park their machines without having to worry about rain spots on their shiny paint and chrome.

Tell us what you think.

In any look at Japanese culture a reoccurring theme is Japanese TV. Call it corny, crazy or just bizzare but which ever way you cut it, its interesting and can be a damn fine way to spend some quality veg out time. The very concept of a celebrity is taken to a new dimension in Japan, where people are famous for simply being umm … famous! In the west celebrities have a day job for which they become famous… ie actor, singer, comedian, young people in Japan however seem to skip the means and grow up aspiring to become simply “a celebrity”.

Japanese TV is very entertaining, one of my long time favourites has been Fuji TV’s ‘Fountain of Trivia‘ (トリビアの泉）a great show, since copied for the US market, where the hosts present to the panel a series of sometimes quite amazing trivial facts. The key is in the presentation of course, and you have to watch the full analysis for the effect, but sometimes there are some gems like “The last meal of the last emperor of China before he died was … Chicken Ramen”, “The first ever Tour de France winner, cheated in the race the following year by getting on a train”, and “If you shoot a Magnum .44 (the most powerful handgun in the world) at Japanese samurai sword head on, the bullet will split in two”. All true.

Another fun one is watching out for western celebrity sell outs a la that great movie, Lost in Translation; Silvester Stallone selling Nippon Ham, Brad Pit and his Edwin Jeans, Bruce Willis for Eneos Service Stations, the list goes on with the best being maintained over on Japander.com.

For those of us living out of country YouTube provides a great way to browse through some classic Japanese TV, that was of course until a couple of weeks ago when YouTube deleted 29,549 videos. “A total of 29,549 videos were deleted from video streaming site YouTube following a request from copyright-related rights organizations, NHK and other broadcasters, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) said. The collective request to delete the videos was made by 23 businesses and organizations. Parties included public broadcaster NHK and private television stations.” There are still a lot of great Japanese TV clips on YouTube but the crack down has officially begun.

Why Japanese broadcasters feel threatened by a lot of 5 minute long TV clips being posted on the internet is little questionable, surely these little snippets are a great way to wet the appetite and make you want to watch more. And for the vast majority of the planet who don’t speak Japanese what’s the harm in sharing a bit of civilized, Japanese ‘TV’ culture with them?

“Your Mission: Extinguish a fire!”, says the sticker above the urinal. It is the latest in an arsenal of stealth weapons gaining popularity in Japan amongst toilet cleaner circles. These Toilet Target Marker Stickers, play on a known male psychology by changing colour with the heat, as they are doused in urine. They are showing up in urinals around the country as their makers claim they keep toilets 76% cleaner.

Playing on that same psychology, Mastushita have really outdone themselves with their latest range of high-tech toilets. The GWN series unveiled a couple of weeks ago feature a LED light target projected from under the lip of the bowl to the middle of the target zone. This newest series, though not made of the same poo-repelling space age acrylic the that last iPod enabled models (CH1001M) were made of, do have toilet seats which heat to the optimum cheek bearing temperature of 29℃ in an impressive 6 seconds.

Japan is no stranger to preheated toilet seats, but in the age of global warming the company’s designers have lifted the bar in an effort to save energy and in so doing have created a seat which does not need to be heated 24 hours a day. Matsushita scientists deemed the ’29℃ in 6 seconds target’ optimal considering the time they had from when the toilet door opened and the on-board body heat sensor detected a potential user.

Naturally, with the recommended retail price of 135,450 Yen, the GWN’s will also come with the various other bog standard features we all expect of the modern Japanese toilet; automatic lids and seats, a self-cleaning stainless steal bidet/feminine wash nozzle, and wireless control panel preprogrammed with all your cleaning needs. Time to start thinking about Christmas gifts?

Mr. Koji Omi, the new Finance Minister of Japan in the Abe government, judging first from the fact that he’s not a graduate of the University of Tokyo, that has heretofore supplied Japan with the bureaucrats that begat the deflation of the late ’90s and early ’00s, we might have a good thing. From his first few comments too, he seems to be on the right track… and this despite the fact that he has been a lifelong civil servant, having left university and having gone directly into the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, where he spent a goodly portion of his early career, and then when he went into the Diet back in ’83, where he’s held a seat ever since.

The one very worrying thing about him is that he has argued long and hard for an increase in the consumption tax in Japan in order to try to attempt to balance a terribly imbalanced budget. For those of us who were around for the last rise in the consumption tax and the almost immediate affect on public moral and the economy, we know this is a major concern. Thankfully, his boss, Prime Minister Abe takes a much different approach, believing that spending cuts are more reasonable and far better economics. That, however, is another item for another day. Omi made some interesting statements recently regarding deflation, which as been Japan’s bane for years. Speaking last week, Mr. Omi minced few words when he said that the battle against deflation is over; that deflation is vanquished and that Japan’s monetary authorities can turn their focus upon other concerns. As he said,

“Judging from the current state of the economy, we can declare Japan’s deflation over. I think it is a bit unnatural not to do so now… [for] the economy has improved so much”

By all accounts, he’s right. Corporate profits are rising; employment circumstances are getting better; the price of real estate has stopped falling and is in inner Tokyo especially, beginning to rise. Omi is right; it is “unnatural” not to admit that the deflation is over. Deflation is dead!

Mr. Shinzo Abe turns out to be a surprisingly interesting guy a very brief review of his history turns up that Mr. Abe is from a very long line of very successful and very well connected Japanese politicians. His grandfather, on his mother’s side, was Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, who served during the Second World War in the Emperor’s Cabinet, was imprisoned for (but never found guilty of) war crimes. The elder Mr. Kishi then became an important post-War political figure, and rose to the Prime Minister’s post in 1957. Mr. Kishi was, by all accounts, the quintessential Japanese post-war Prime Minister: a finder/builder of consensus; a non-maker of new policies. However, its understood that Mr. Kishi’s imprisonment left a very real impression upon his grandson. Prime Minister Abe’s father was Shintaro Abe, one of the most successful of Japanese political figures during the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s. Mr. Abe actually led one of the important factions within the LDP, and held several different cabinet and LDP leadership positions during his career. He became Minister of Agriculture, then the Minister of Trade, and eventually becoming the Minister of Foreign Affairs. At one time, he seemed to be on the clear path toward becoming the Prime Minister, but had his career derailed during an infamous scandal involving the Nakasone government and Recruit. The Prime Minister certainly has a solid political back ground.

What is important to understand about Mr. Abe is that he is, at balance, a nationalist… not a venomous one in the mold of Mr. Le Pen of France for example, but a strong Japanese nationalist nonetheless. He has argued that Japan has been ill served by holding to its pacifist Constitution, and has lobbied hard for a material change. Further, Abe has said that part of his program will also be to change what is known as The Fundamental Law of Education, and to further raise the level of patriotism and traditional Japanese “values” in the nation’s schools. The Left and much of Asia find this disconcerting; the Right, in Japan, however, sees much merit in his positions. As Abe said in his book, Toward a Beautiful Country, which sets the tenor of his Administration but which also raises alarms in East Asia, by entrusting our national security to another country and putting a priority on economic development we were indeed able to make great material gains. But what we lost spiritually… that was also great.
His first major decision then was interesting: he announced a summit meeting to be held next week in Beijing. Obviously, Beijing is disconcerted by Abe’s positions, and equally as obviously, Hu and Wen want to speak directly with Abe about his intentions. Too, Abe has made it very, very clear that he will take a very hard line with N. Korea. When N. Korea tested its missiles recently, even before he became Prime Minister, Mr. Abe made it perfectly clear that such actions by N. Korea in the future shall not be acceptable, and that consequences will be paid. Abe from what can be read and seen is a man driven by “philosophy and conviction.” This sets the tone for some interesting times, although we suspect that Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma et al may harbour some concerns (as too, obviously, shall China).