The iPhone landscape has changed somewhat over the last few days. Finally now we have a choice other than SoftBank if we want to own an iPhone. For some of us the fact that we needed at least 24 months remaning on our visa to sign up for their 2 year contract was the killer. For others it was the rumors of poor network coverage or just the desire to wait until the spec was a little closer to the Android phones. If you haven’t got an iPhone yet, it is easier now. But which provider is the best deal? Softbank or au by KDDI?

The short answer boils down to two key factors. If your decision is purely driven by money, the answer is Softbank. But, if you are a heavy user or you just hate waiting for web pages to pop up then I hate to say it but you should probably be going with au. Below I’ll walk you through some of the other differences and throw in another option to include, and help you come to your own verdict.

The price issue is simple. With au, it costs you an extra 500 yen each month on your “all you can chew data” set. Depending on a the model you choose it might also cost you more to purchase the iPhone itself through au. If you are transferring to au from another carrier and satisfied with the most basic iPhone (16GB) you will end up with a “free” phone at the end of a 24 month contract. If, on the other hand, you are an existing au customer and you want the high-end model (64GB) then you will be up for an extra 8,500 yen to purchase the iPhone itself even at the end of your 24 months.

There are a few other hidden costs that go both ways. au only gives you free SMS with other au subscribers (for Softbank they are all included for “free” in the data package). au has a wider variety of voice plans with discounts for people which are worth looking into for people who use their iPhone as a “phone”, too. Softbank’s standard rate per minute to non-softbank phones in 42 yen. au’s is the same but you can get it down to about one third of this if you wanted to (20 minutes per month is the rough cut off line for considering other packs). Both companies now offer free calls between 1AM-9PM to owners of other phones in the same network.

But what about the speed? If you listen to Son-san at Softbank he’ll point out that the theoretical maximum speed at Softbank is 14 M/bs (upload) and only 3 M/bs at au. It sounds like a no brainer to choose SoftBank. The problem is that SoftBank just doesn’t have the network quality to achieve those speeds with the density of users they have online. While it’s official “population coverage” is only 1% behind that of au, the reality is that the number of antenna covering each area is much lower than au (and DoCoMo for that matter). If you are lucky then you will sometimes get a very fast connection speed but the reality is that as soon as other people in the same vicinity are using the SoftBank network at once, the speeds drop dramatically. Think Shibuya or Namba. And for that matter, think remote Okinawa.

But the speed issue doesn’t end here. The real killer for SoftBank here is the latency difference. Have you been frustrated about how long it takes for a simple webpage to be displayed on your screen (PC or keitai!). Well that is latency, the time it takes your server to connect you to the pipe. The longer the latency is, the longer you have to wait until your key press is even registered by the internets. Softbank’s latency is much, much worse than au. If you think you are wasting your life away waiting for web pages to be displayed then you are destined to sign up with au. Here is a great youtube video showing what latency is and how stark the difference is between the two companies:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For those of you who can read Japanese, here is a link to a guy who has done tests for both speed and latency in three different locations.

If you doubt the statistical relevance then take a look at this guy’s chart in the middle of his page with 10 readings taken in the same location.

There is one other key factor that is swaying my decision and it has nothing to do with speed or cost. It is network type. If you go home regularly or do a lot of travelling then you might not be that keen on paying the exhorbatant prices that either company charge you when you are roaming. (Both have similar roaming abilities geographically speaking and max out at 3,000 JPY per day if you remember to sign up for their unlimited data O/S plan). That said you are unlikely to want to stop using your iPhone just because you are out of Japan. Stopping short of restricting yourself to the Wifi in your hotel room, you will want a local SIM card. If you have a Japanese purchased iPhone then you will have to jailbreak your iPhone first. This enables to download a bunch of other interesting apps but every time you upgrade your OS your phone is reset to it’s pre-jailbroken set up. The fun doesn’t stop there. Remember that if you buy an au phone that it operates on the CDMA network. It is a different model (physically) compared to the SoftBank one which is designed for GSM. GSM is the most popular in the western world. That means more choice of networks to use when overseas. Worse yet, some countries don’t even have a CDMA network (eg. Australia closed their CDMA network in 2008 and New Zealand is closing it in 2012).

If you don’t want to deal with the issues surrounding jailbreaking then your other option is to buy a SIM-unlocked iPhone direct from Apple. While you don’t get the monthly cash backs (2,000 JPY or so) from the local carriers, you don’t have to worry about signing up for a 2 year contract (or convincing softbank that your visa will be renewed and you really can take on a 2 year contract). The best way of using a SIM unlocked phone in Japan is with bmobile. For 4,800 yen a month you can get 1 GB of data and 20 minutes of free voice. (1,000-1,500 less than softbank/au). Oh and better yet because bmobile is a MVNO on the DoCoMo network you get the best quality coverage in the country. Here is their link.

Your first thought might be “Is 1 GB going to be enough?” A friend close to B Mobile tells me that very few people max out their 1 GB. If you are a really heavy user then you can actually buy a DoCoMo SIM and achieve the same thing for about 10,000 yen a month. Before you buy a SIM unlocked iPhone make sure you read the fine print on Apple’s homepage.

Given that you can already buy a SIM unlocked iPhone 4 on amazon.co.jp it won’t be long before you can buy the 4S, locally, too. Here is a rough guide to international iphone 4S prices if you have a friend in one of the countries that offer unlocked phones. I’ve included sales tax because if you happen to be travelling to that country you can probably claim back the sales tax at the airport when you leave Japan:

There are a few minor services that au don’t offer just yet (eg. iMessage and FaceTime) and you’re iPhone will only check for new mail once every 15 minutes. But these problems will apparently be solved by January of next year. SoftBank was like this with their first model of the iPhone. Another minor issue is that due to the CDMA network that au uses it is impossible to use both data and voice at the same time. That means that if you are in the middle of a download on your iPhone and you receive a call, it will automatically stop the download to take the call. On W-CDMA (the network that SoftBank uses) you are able to continue downloading the file while you are talking. Not the end of the earth but worth mentioning.

So which option do you think makes more sense? Have you got a 4S already? Can you notice the latency issues with Softbank? Tell us about it? While you’re at it, tell us how much data you use every month!

Salt - Are you getting enough?

Murakami’s book is called Nihonjin niha shioga tarinai! (日本人には塩が足りない！ “The Japanese don’t get enough salt!”)　() He tells the story of how as a child he was always tired, lethargic, cold, atopic and prone to sickness. Until of course he woke up to the therapeutic value of salt at the age of 19 and he hasn’t looked back since. While I am no scientist, I feel that he (quite surprisingly) does a decent job of providing scientific rationale to his argument.

The crux of his argument is as follows: Too much of a anything is not good for you. Any food source has its highest nutritional value for us in its natural form and so less processing is better. The ‘salt’ that we unknowingly buy in the supermarket (here is where it gets interesting) isn’t really salt. It is an artificially processed supplement containing 99% sodium chloride (NaCl). “Natural sea salt” as it always has been for the past few mileniums is only 90~95% NaCl and the remaining 5~10% is made up of vital nutrients that are essential to our bodies functioning healthily. Whereas your body will always naturally dispose of any excess “natural sea salt” it can’t deal well with the manufactured NaCl that we fill our food with these days. Who knows, maybe he is right?

So what other minerals are contained in “natural sea salt”?

• Magnesium chloride (often known in Japanese as nigari にがり)
• Magnesium sulphate
• Potassium chloride
• Potassium sulphate

Ever since Japan introduced the Ion-exchange Membrane Electro-dialysis Method (イオン交換膜方法) of salt production in 1971 the vast majority of these minerals have been removed from table salt. Almost all of the salt that you will find on supermarket shelves is 99%+ NaCl. The body is constantly working to balance it’s amount of sodium vs potassium and calcium vs magnesium. If this becomes unbalanced then your body starts playing funny tricks on you. Sometimes that can mean sucking out the stores of calcium or sodium from your bones.

Natural Sea Salt Production

To his credit, Murakami then goes on to quote numerous academics whose unsung research actually points out the fact that there is no obvious correlation between salt intake and high bloodpressure. For the sake of brevity you can follow the following links yourself for examples:

1. Rene Quinton (A 19th century French physiologist) “L’Eau de mer, milieu organique”
2. Kyuzo Aoki (青木久三) Professor of Nagoya City University 「逆転の健康読本」
3. Yumi Ishihara (石原結實)　「『塩』をしっかり摂れば、病気は治る」
4. Professor Emeritus Akikazu Takada (高田明和) of Hamamatsu Medical University 「健康神話にだまされるな」
5. Professor Toru Abo (阿保徹) of Niigata University 「老けない人の免疫力」
6. Ryoichi Obitsu (帯津良一), director of the Obitsu Sankei Hospital 「達者でポックリ」
7. Professor Emeritus Akio Shimada (島田彰夫) of Miyazaki University 「伝統食の復権」
8. Sadamu Ichikura (一倉定) 「食事を変えなければ大和民族は衰亡する」
9. Former Professor Shiro Kawashima (川島四郎) of Ohbirin University 「まちがい栄養学」
10. Dr. Hideki Mukai (向井秀樹) of the Ohashi Hospital, Toho University 「アトピーの「かゆみ」をとる塩療法」
11. Hideo Makuuchi (幕内秀夫)「粗食のすすめ」(while this isn’t a research paper it is a best seller that the author recommends on macrobiotics)

While there probably isn’t a lot of research supporting it, he does point out a few reasons why the logic might apply more to Japanese than people living in other countries. Climate: The high humidity in Japan means that people in Japan will naturally cleanse their bodies by sweating out a lot more of any unnecessary salt than people living in drier climates. Diet: there is a lot more sodium found in meat and so a Western diet provides more sodium without taking salt separately compared to a traditional Japanese diet. The Japanese even go out of their way to put nigari (bittern) into their Tofu! Water: As water naturally has more minerals in it in Europe than elsewhere, Europeans are less in need of the minerals that Japanese can obtain from natural sea salt. (and in fact European natural rock salt (岩塩, gan’en) does have less minerals than Japanese natural sea salt so there is nothing to worry about!)

Think about it. Why is that people in “the west” are constantly saying that Japanese food is healthy but for some reason the Japanese themselves are complaining that it is high in salt and not healthy despite having an extremely long life-expectancy. We’d love to hear any good reasons why not to believe it! Please comment below! If you are even slightly intrigued I do recommend reading his book as it is pretty light reading yet quite well written.

Link to “The Japanese don’t get enough salt! Mineral balance and healthiness of mind and body” (日本人には塩が足りない！ミネラルバランスと心身の健康)

Yumenoshima - Likely the only tropical waterfall in Tokyo

The Botanical Gardens are enclosed in a huge glass dome and specialize in tropical plants from the Amazon, S.E. Asia, and the Congo River. So how on earth can Tokyo afford to keep such a huge facility constantly heated year round and only charge 250 yen for entry (children under 12 are free!). Yes, this is yet another example of Tokyo’s scale and it’s hidden efficiency. A byproduct of Tokyo’s rubbish as it is burnt in the nearby New-Koto Incinerator (新江東清掃工場, Shin-koto seiso kojo) is an extremely hot (125 degrees) supply of water. After cooling this water to 70 degrees they circulate it around the green house to recreate a tropical environment. So regardless of how cold or wet it is outside, you can go for a pleasant walk in a warm tropical environment with your kids.
* If this sort of thing really fascinates you then you can also sign up for a free tour of the Incinerator!

Yumenoshima Tropical Rainforest - glasshouse with huge palm trees inside

Just like you’d expect in a tropical environment, you walk down paths surrounded by huge trees – the palms that are as high as the roof are amongst the most spectacular. Many of the trees are pretty easy to recognize fruit bearing trees so your kids will enjoy looking out for bananas, mangos, pineapples, guavas, durian, etc.

Pineapples growing in the middle of Tokyo

I can also guarantee that it will probably be the first and last time you see a waterfall in Tokyo – especially one that you can walk behind (picture below). If you have a boy with a bit of courage then you might like to take him into the Carnivorous plants house. When I was there it was mainly filled with Nepenthes and had quite an eerie feel about the place. (We were in an out in less than a minute!)

But the Gardens are more than just looking at trees. They make an effort to put on regular events that are enjoyable for children. When we were there at the end of October they had an extensive fancy dress wardrobe available for use (free!) and about 20 huge pumpkins (50~100kg!) for kids to push around, sit on and play with. However perhaps the biggest highlight for us (sorry plants!) was the Kapla room. The room which is officially called the “dream room” (Yumenoheya, ゆめのへや) is well placed at the end of your tour and has a whopping 5,000 pieces of Kapla. If you’ve never played with it before, Kapla is a simple wooden Dutch toy (like Jenga) designed to extend your imagination through thinking in three dimensions. While you can buy Kapla easily in Japan. It would cost you a few hundred thousands of yen to put together a collection that big. We spent at least an hour building and then demolishing several towers.

Playing with Kapla in the Yume-no-heya

If the weather isn’t that bad when you go, there are also lots of other great facilities to keep your kids running around and entertained. Right in front of the Gardens is a large bed of grass in the shape of a colosseum which is perfect for kicking around a soccer ball or flying a large radio controlled helicopter. If there aren’t any events on there is an Olympic size running track which is often used for athletic meets. (* Request from author: I am always looking for a running track like this in a convenient place – let me know in the comments section below if you can recommend one. They are few and far between in Tokyo.) If the weather is really good, then definitely go for a walk around the marina behind the gardens (Yes! There is a marina in Tokyo!) and tell me what the restaurant there is like.

If it is pretty cold but you are still looking for something to do to kill a few minutes on the way back to the station then you can go visit the Fukuryu-Maru Museum (第五福竜丸展示館, daigo fukuryumaru tenjikan) for free. Here they have preserved a Tuna Fishing boat that was hit by the US hydrogen bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll in 1954. They claim that it is no longer radioactive.

Colosseum of grass at Yumenoshima

Finally, for the bean knowledge buffs out there – here is the story of the island. The first plans to reclaim land here were late in WWII when the government planned to build a huge runway here. The plans were quickly cancelled as Japan faced a huge shortage of raw materials and weren’t rekindled until the 1950s when Tokyo was forced to look for a new way of storing its ever growing rubbish heap. The island was filled in a mere 10 years and a decade later in 1978 the rubbish island was officially turned into a park. It got the nick-name Yumenoshima (“dream island”) because the original grand plan of the government was to build a huge amusement park there. Ironically, the dream never came true but the name stuck.

I don’t know if it was because of the really low expections I had before I arrived but I thoroughly enjoyed our day out at Yumenoshima. It’s definitely worth a visit, especially at the end of the month when the budget is a little tighter than normal.

Behind the tropical waterfall at Yumenoshima

The easiest way to get there is to walk (15 leisurely stroll through the park) from Shin-Kiba Station (JR Keiyo Line, Rinkai Line, Subway Yurakucho Line). There is a car park which is reasonably cheap but is still a 5 min walk from the Gardens. You can also catch a bus directly to Yumenoshima from any of Kinshicho, Kameido, Kiba and Toyocho stations.

Place: Yumenoshima Tropical Botanical Gardens
URL: http://www.yumenoshima.jp/index.shtml
Hours: Open daily (except Mondays) from 9:30AM~5PM
Tel: 03-3522-0281

If you can understand Japanese then it is definitely worth asking for one of the free tours as the guides are very knowledgeable and will tell you a few interesting stories behind the plants that you wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Here is an overview in English, to help you explain this place to your kids!

How Yumenoshima Tropical Rainforest gets heated from burning your rubbish

In part three of this series, I wrote a bit about travelling with a baby in Japan on planes. The big form of transport that I didn’t mention was cars. I’d never felt the need for owning a car in Japan until I had a baby but recently I’ve been starting to think that it would be a nice addition to the family. Besides the fact that it would make bringing nappies home from the local supermarket a lot easier, it would make domestic travel just that little bit smoother. We’ve been able to get around a reasonable amount with a combination of rent-a-cars and taxis when we haven’t been able to use trains (or boats or planes), but the reality is that it is just not as safe or convenient as having your own car with a fitted baby seat.

We knew that we would be using a taxi every so often (coming home from the hospital, visiting the in-laws, etc) so bought one of those 5-in-one baby cars (ベビーカー, pram/stroller) that brushes your teeth and also turns into a car seat when we need to take our child in a car. It seemed like a great idea. We could save space by attaching the car seat to the frame to form a pram and yet still fit the frame easily in the back of a taxi. You attach the baby’s car seat to one of the back seats using the chest harness already in the taxi. So you’re thinking, most taxis in Japan don’t have a back seatbelt – well… that was the least of our problems. Generally if you hunt around the back seat you can find a seatbelt, what we didn’t budget for was the length of the seatbelts not being long enough. Yes. This is a seat for babies made and designed by a Japanese company to be used in Japan, yet there are actually many taxis that don’t have seatbelts long enough to attach it. My word of advice to you? Read the fine print on your car seat before you buy it. Ours required a minimum seatbelt length of 210cm. While you’ll be right with a new kojin taxi (個人タクシー, privately owned and operated taxi) in the big cities, you might not be so lucky in regional centres were the car models of taxis are a little bit older. Indeed, we had to wait a very long time (and say “No Thanks” to several empty taxis) in both Kyushu and Shikoku in order to find one that we could attach our safety seat to.

You can’t rely on taxi drivers to help (or understand) the issue as they will often say “not to worry” or ridiculous things like “you’ll be alright if you hold him in the back”. Somebody really needs to educate taxi drivers that it is actually illegal to take an infant (or any child up to the age of 6 for that matter) in a car without a child safety seat. For some reason it seems as though the broader population missed the passing of that law, not to mention the one requiring seatbelt usage for adults in the back seat, too, last year. The stats for child auto safety in Japan is quite eye opening. Perhaps it is because most Japanese are not regularly drivers but for some reason (tell me why!?) people just don’t seem to realise how dangerous a car can be.

A survey of nearly 13,000 people by JAF and the police (チャイルドシート使用状況全国調査全国調査) in 2007 found that less than half of parents used a baby seat for their child in their car and a whopping 11.5% felt that hugging their child was adequate protection in case of a car crash (in America this is known as the “child crusher position”). These numbers have gotten significantly better in the 2010 survey, where 56.8% of children under 6 were fastened in child seats, however a staggering 40+% were still “protected” using other means, such as the child crusher position.

Even amongst parents using child seats, only a scary 36.5% were able to fasten it correctly to their car seat (most of them had intentionally fitted it loosely and some had just placed it on top of the back seat! 2 out of 3 parents who own seats don’t even use it every time their child is in the car. The probability of your child dying when you don’t use a child seat is 4.3x higher than when you use one.

All of these ridiculous stats are in spite of the fact that it was made compulsory for children under the age of 6 to use child-seats in cars way back in 2000 （道路交通法第71条の3）. That said Japan has got to be the only country in the world that has an official exception to this law stating that children who are in the middle of every-day baby related activities (ie. Feeding, nappy changing, etc) are exempt from this law. How ridiculous is that? Surely you can stop the car in order to change your kid’s nappies!? Surely you’d want to! I mean, think of the mess if you did crash with a crappy nappy lying on the back seat because you hadn’t finished changing your child yet. yuck..

In order to be able to use our car seat in a variety of different cars and taxis, I went to several auto-shops to see if I could purchase a seatbelt extender. The idea is that you attach the male and female parts of a seatbelt to a short piece of seatbelt that you can plug into both parts of the seatbelt in order to add a few inches of length to the belt. No matter how many shops I tried, the answer was the same. They don’t exist in Japan. (I’ve seen them overseas and they are normally used by over-weight people to help them lock their seatbelt.) By my third visit, I found a man who was quite clued up to the Japanese auto-laws. Apparently there is a clause in the Japanese seatbelt laws that states that obese people are exempt from wearing a seatbelt and hence there is no need for such a seatbelt extension in Japan. After all if it isn’t required by law, who would want one? Damn it. How much more obvious could it be that the government is enforcing these rules in order to help us and that seatbelts protect our lives. And yes, while we’re at it, there is a safe way for pregnant women to attach a seatbelt so there is no reason why they shouldn’t wear one either! In case you haven’t noticed, I have had this discussion with many Japanese taxi drivers but every time it has been in vain. I’d love some advice on this matter. How do you rebut the comeback “don’t worry I’ve never had an accident before” or better yet “but the customer looks so uncomfortable with that tight seatbelt on”.

Do you have any seat belt in Japan stories? Tell us in the comments!

Mince Cutlet Burger - Yokoji Hamburger Utsubo Koen

Even Osaka, despite its size, doesn’t have a very large selection of authentic burger joints. As my local informant was reluctant to give up too many details, I was quite keen to check out Yokoji for myself and see how it measured up to Awajishima and the other burger joints in our series so far (#2, #3, #4).

Something hit me in the face about Yokoji, the moment I walked in the door. While the outside is a little dreary, the inside feels surprisingly like a happening Roppongi style café. I guess the owner decided that, given his location in the middle of the Osaka CBD, he has to be more than just a “burger joint” to appeal to the OL crowd who patronise the place during their lunch breaks. Apparently it turns into a bar (open until 5AM) at night but I’m not really sure who it would appeal to, especially with so many other bars nearby in Umeda (梅田) and Shinsaibashi (心斎橋). The daggy exterior is designed so that part of the restaurant is open and people with pets can bring their dogs along with them for lunch without actually going inside the restaurant itself. While I don’t have a pet, I imagine that it would win a few brownie points amongst the stylish pet owners of nearby Minami-Horie (南堀江).

Inside the shop - Yokoji is frequented by local OLs during the week

Yokoji has a little too much variety on the menu for my liking. Take your pick. Would you like a “Juicy mince cutlet” hamburger?, a “Dangerous spicy” hamburger?, a “pepper demiglace” hamburger? Or a “spicy teriyaki” hamburger? They even serve a “Vegetable potato” hamburger. (Please don’t ask me why it would still be called a hamburger even though it is made out of vegetables.) I don’t know about you but I just want a plain old hamburger with the lot! After at least 5 minutes of stewing over the menu I decided that if I was to judge the quality of their hamburgers then I should keep things simple and so went for the “original demiglace hamburger” for 650 yen. Apparently they spend three days preparing the demiglace sauce so I figured it must be worth trying.

The one thing that they have got right is the list of “extras” that you can whack on your hamburger. They recommend adding egg (ネッカたまご, Eggs from Nekka), bacon (石狩川ベーコン, Bacon from the Ishikari river) and red cheddar for an extra 350 yen. If you’re really keen, you can lash out and add a piece of foie-gras for 900 yen. I couldn’t go past the egg and bacon but decided to try some blue cheese instead of the cheddar. That set me back an extra 450 yen on top of the price of the hamburger.

All in all, I was a little disappointed. The egg and bacon was fine, but I came home without any more idea as to what “nekka” eggs and “ishikari river” bacon were than before. The patty was perhaps slightly above average but once again, nothing to write home about. And to top it all off, I didn’t even notice the demiglace sauce until I was 2/3 the way through the burger. The “signature sauce” was sitting in a little plastic cup next to the mayonnaise as if it had just been squeezed out of a bulldog sauce bottle. To top it all off, the sauce was cold, there wasn’t a lot of it and it certainly didn’t taste as if they’d really been stewing it for 3 days. (It probably didn’t help matters that I’d just cooked up a wicked demiglace sauce at home the night before, but I’m just a novice, they’re the ones that decided to include it in the name of the damn burger!) Oh, and perhaps my expectations were raised a little too much by the tasty looking photo out the front. Can you guess which one was mine?

Demiglace Photo on Menu

My Demiglace Burger

For people who like fries with their hamburgers, you can get a bunch of different flavours of salt sprinkled on them: garlic, pepper, chili, curry, and funnily enough, “salt”. I guess the manager has visited Spuds down in Nanko (南港) before. Once again, a little too much choice for me. It’s things like this that made me get the impression that Yokoji is targeted more toward your typical group of OLs on a lunch break. Whereas a guy just wants a piece of meat between bread, I guess OLs want a nice atmosphere and plenty of choice so everyone in their group is satisfied. In their defence, it does make eating a hamburger a bit of a fun experience. I guess it boils down to whether that is what you wanted or not (I don’t need no fun in my burger).

At one stage 15 out of the 16 patrons in the shop were female

Yokoji is located about 5 minutes walk to the North of Honmachi station on the Osaka Subway. It’s a little bit hard to find if you’re not familiar with the Honmachi area so make sure you seek out the Hanshin Expressway (阪神高速) as soon as you leave the station as it is virtually underneath the Expressway (on the East side). Yokoji is located right next to a very randomly named bento place called “Hotto Motto” (here is a photo of Hotto Motto, you cant miss it!). There are actually a number of pretty tasty looking bakeries nearby (between the express-way and the Midosuji road) which are definitely worth stopping by on your way home.

Beer: Budweiser, Heineken, corona, zima (600~650 yen). No hawaiian beer.

So all in all, what did I think of Yokoji? The atmosphere was a little cool for a burger joint. The taste of the patty was not particularly memorable. I liked the fact that you could add egg and bacon to your burger and a variety of cheeses although I was disappointed with their famous demiglace sauce. Given that they are a hamburger joint, it would have been nicer if they could have put a little more effort into getting their English spelling on the menu right. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high after the roaring review I got from my hamburgerer friend, but this time, Yokoji only gets one stippy.

Yokoji Hamburger Utsubo Koen
Where: 4-7-6 Kawaramachi, Chuoku, Osaka.
大阪市中央区瓦町4-7-6船場竹伊ビル1階

Phone: 06-6204-4548

Hours: 11:30AM-5AM

URL: www.yokoji-hamburger.com

Thinking of starting up your own company in Japan?  Why not, Japan is the home of the small enterprise.  The tax system is set up to promote large tax holidays for owners of small businesses and there doesn’t seem to be much of an expectation from the tax office that you even need to break a profit.  I was surprised at how simple it was to start up a company when I inked the papers at the local government offices last year here in Japan.  There are plenty of under-worked book keepers willing to weave through the bureaucracy and just tell you where to sign.  The only two things that you really need to give thought to is the name of your new baby and which town you would like to establish her in.

Even if you were starting up a company back home you would probably mull over the brand value of your name.  Let’s face it, do you really have any idea about how effective your new company name will be in nihongo (日本語) and what message it will convey to the average Japanese?  Well I have some good news for you.  It seems that katakana company names are all the rage these days.  An interesting piece of (albeit trivial) research published the other day by Tokyo Shoko Research (東京商工リサーチ) pointed out that of the ten most popular company names in Japan, seven solely use Katakana.

Hold on a sec, what do you mean ten most popular company names?  How can there be more than one company of the same name? So much for copyrite.  Japanese corporate law surprisingly allows more than one company to have the same name.  Technically, as long as your company has a different registered address then you can even call yourself Sony!  You could even be in the same street as long as both companies specified different street numbers in the official address.  (You can choose how detailed your official address will be.  If you are choosing an original name then you probably want to keep it as broad as possible (eg. Tokyo, Minato, Roppongi (東京都港区六本木) without mentioning which chome (丁目) or banchi (番地) you are.  That way even if you move offices down the street you don’t have to waste 10,000 yen updating your official company register with the tax offices.)  If you want to be really cute you can also distinguish yourself from another company by placing the KK (株式会社) either before or after your business name.

So what, you may ask, are the most popular company names in Japan?  A Whopping 429 companies (out of 2.6 million surveyed) were called “Assist” (アシスト).  This was followed by “Rise” (ライズ) and “Suntech” (サンテック) with 382 each and Sato Komuten (佐藤工務店) with 380 on number four.  While it might be good for a laugh down at the local pub, I doubt you or I are going to be calling ourselves Sato Komuten. Then again, I’m not totally sure it would be a great idea copying any of the top 10 names either.  As far as I can tell there are at least two other reasonably active companies that come in a google search for the company name that I chose.  Frankly, it is a pain in the arse.  In less than a year I have already been asked what I have to do with one of them.  Speaking of which, in this day and age you probably want to go for a company name that you can buy a .com or .co.jp or .jp URL for (as this was the major reason why potential customers confused me with another company).  Don’t worry too much if you can’t register the kanji domain name (read more here).

While we are at it with the company name bean knowledge here is a bit more.  The most common character used at the start of accompany name was 大 (meaning large eg. Yamato, Osaka, Taisei, etc.) with over 70,000 companies.  The most common katakana words at the start of company names were office (オフィス, 5124), green (グリーン, 3611) and Japan (ジャパン, 3608).  To be honest, I don’t think I’d be overly keen about chosing any of those katakana names.  Maybe I will borrow Yamato for my next company’s name though.

So what about ending your company name?  While we’d often put “inc” or “co” or “and partners” etc at the end of English names, in Japan it seems the standard is “Industries” (工業, kogyo).  Over 132,000 companies use that in their official name.  Skipping over the other typical Kanji names (建設、工務店、商事、商店) the most common katakana options (hey, as gaijin we’ve gotta use the katakana) the most popular words are service (サービス37,541) , center (センター, 22,139), tech (テック, 17,514), japan (ジャパン, 16,161).

Have I helped you come up with an interesting name or just made matters worse?  How many people out there actually run their own companies?  I would love to see the stats for companies in Japan run by gaijin.  There are so many opportunities in such a big economy like Japan that it should be ripe for the opportunity.  Does anyone know of any organizations for gaijin entrepreneurs?  If you have an interesting stories about setting up a company in Japan then share it with us in the comments section below.

Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦) ousted former President of Fujitsu

Over the weekend it has emerged that Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦), the financially savvy president of Fujitsu, who “resigned due to health reasons” (病気療養 byoki ryoyo) back in Sep ’09 was actually blackmailed into resigning by Akikusa Naoyuki (秋草直之), another former president of the company.  note: Akikusa is famous for destroying 91% of shareholder value during his five year reign at the top of Fujitsu and blaming it on his employees who “don’t work hard enough”.

Perhaps it is more fitting to use the word “coup.”  At 8:30AM on Sep 25, 2009, Thirty minutes before their regular directors meeting was scheduled to start, Nozoe was summoned into a small room by Akikusa and Mazuka Michiyoshi (間塚道義), the man to be elected as his replacement ninety minutes later.  Nozoe was told that they had dirt on a company that he had close dealings with and so he must retire immediately.  In the press conference later that day, the new president told the press that Nozoe had asked permission to focus on his health (取締役会の前に直接、治療に専念したいため社長の職をまっとうできない) but that he couldn’t discuss the details as they were private.  The financial world watched as Fujitsu’s share price lost over 12% in the following two weeks as they waited for a better explanation.  None came.  Nozoe wasn’t seen again at the company again (despite remaining an “advisor to the board”) nor did ever hold a press conference.  All a bit of a surprise for a man who promised to deliver Fujitsu’s highest historical profit only three months earlier and was deemed to have a perfect bill of health at his regular check-up at St. Luke’s Hospital.

The stock plummeted for good reason.  For the first time in over a decade, the market had liked what it was hearing from Fujitsu’s president.   Even though Nozoe was only at the helm of Fujitsu for 15 months, the stock outperformed NEC, their closest competitor by 25% because he was willing to make courageous decisions to make Fujitsu a viable company in the 21st Century.  But as is quite often the case, what is loved by the share-market is not always popular amongst staff. His smarter (but internally despised) moves include:

• Selling Fujitsu’s perpetually loss making HDD business to Toshiba and it’s HD media business to Showa Denko (Feb 17, 2009).
• Trying to merge Fujitsu’s semi-conductor business with NEC Electronics.  (NEC Electronics shunned them to chose Renesas to partner with instead).  Instead Nozoe chose to outsource production to Taiwan’s TSMC (April 30, 2009).  This made over 2,000 Fujitsu jobs redundant.

Both of these businesses have been a drag on the bottom line for almost a decade that neither Akikusa (president 1998-2003) nor Hiroaki Kurokawa (黒川博昭, his direct predecessor: president 2003-2008) had the courage to pull the plug on.  In fact both former presidents were famous for being soft on the management in these two divisions who knew that if they bowed their heads deeply and asked politely for one more chance that they would never be turned down.  By contrast, Nozoe was economically rational, quick to move and wasn’t shy about it.  Apparently on the day of the sale of the HDD business he was walking around saying that the head of the division had “gracefully committed suicide” (潔く腹をかっさばいたな) by refusing to focus on profit.

While the sale of these two huge divisions were the most controversial, during his short time he also managed to merge several other problematic subsidiaries (which had become popular havens for “retired” Fujitsu managers) and came close to selling Nifty (their internet provider subsidiary).   While he’d be praised for his decisiveness in the States, this doesn’t win you any friends in Japan.  Low and behold, it turns out that Nozoe spent a significant time in America when he personally took charge of a significant patent case that the company was fighting against IBM.

Unfortunately, the concept that a company is solely owned by its shareholders just does not fly in Japan.  Corporate law states that a company is to be run for all of its stakeholders (including employees, customers, etc etc) and that is often interpreted to mean everyone but shareholders.  Clearly this guy has been stabbed in the back by unhappy employees after he made some difficult decisions in the interest of the company that jeopardised a few fat pay checks.  If that had happened at the mid-management level then it would be slightly more understandable, but the fact that such crass politics can be allowed to impact the choice of CEO of a listed company is worrying.  Surely the board has fiduciary duties to protect the long-term interests of the company (for both share holders and employees) and not the short term interests of a few disgruntled senior citizens?

The questions that this drama has brought up do not stop there.  What sort of corporate governance exists in a company where a failed former CEO can remain on the board for seven years after he supposedly retired?  It wouldn’t surprise me if this was a family run company and the Don of the family was lingering behind the scenes but Akikusa certainly is not that.  In fact Akikusa – who has been sitting on the Fujitsu board for an amazing 22 years! – only owns 15,000 shares in Fujitsu (not even US$100,000 worth!).  Surely that in itself states pretty clearly that Fujitsu doesn’t believe in aligning senior management’s incentives with shareholders.  While there isn’t a huge difference between 21 and 22 years, it is probably also worth mentioning here that when Akikusa “stood down” as Chairman in 2008 he did so claiming that he would only remain on the board for a year to assist the “transition”.  Not only has he assisted in firing a talented CEO, he has also somehow managed to continue to control the company for seven years after he stepped down as President.  (Please refer to second paragraph for reference to Akikusa’s management ability).  Apparently it was Akikusa who “suggested” who the new CEO should be to replace Nozoe in the board meeting that followed the negotiated dismissal.

Of course, this has been all over the news in Japan. While not telling the full story, this news clip gives a brief overview of what happened:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Feel free to add your comments below, but other particular questions that cross my mind regarding the incident are:

• Don’t shareholders have the right to understand the real reasons behind changes in senior management? Shouldn’t the new CEO be punished for blatantly lying to the public post the Coup?  (The TSE in fact does have a rule requiring listed companies to explain the reasons behind changes in company representatives (代表権のある役員の移動に関する適切な公表の義務))
• Shouldn’t the entire board be involved in decisions regarding the appointment of the CEO/President of a company?  Why wasn’t the issue discussed thirty minutes later in the board room?  Fujitsu has four “independent” directors but what monitoring role did they play in this situation?  Surely this just supports the theory that “independent” directors in Japan are merely there as a favour to the senior management and have no intention to actually act on behalf of shareholders.  (It is even more depressing when you realise that one of Fujitsu’s independent directors is a representative of Fuji Electric who owns a 10% stake in Fujitsu).
• The allegations were that Nozoe had direct links with a company that was a front for the Yakuza.  Nozoe claims that there are no links between the company that he had dealings with and the Yakuza and that he was never shown any proof suggesting so of the links.  Better yet, it appears that the assumption of guilt was based on a rumour heard from a stock broker.  As anyone who has read Tokyo Vice will realise, it is extremely difficult to find reliable information in Japan about which companies really are fronts for the Yakuza but that still doesn’t suggest that acting on hearsay is a way to manage a multi-billion dollar company.  Nozoe (through his lawyer) has since requested (Feb 26) that the company give him the opportunity to state his case to the board and also conduct a detailed investigation into the corporate governance standards in the firm.  Regardless of the truth, it sounds like a great idea.  Surely if the current management was confident in their decision then they should not be afraid of such an inquiry.  He also requested that they reinstate him as President of the company.  Good luck to him.
• Let us for a moment assume that Nozoe really was connected to the Yakuza.  Wow.  TSE listing rules clearly state clearly that companies with links to the underworld will be de-listed.  That should be an even bigger headline.  Could we even go as far as to say that current Fujitsu management was aiding and abetting the links to the Yakuza by not exposing the association?

While Fujitsu has been careful not to go into too much detail in its official announcement regarding the decision (link to English statement here) it seems as though the allegations went something like this:

• Nozoe was pushing the company to sell its stake in Nifty (www.nifty.com – their internet provider subsidiary).
• The favored buyer, was a company run by a close acquaintance of Nozoe (this itself is a huge conflict of interest if you ask me but perhaps that is a little more acceptable in Japan Inc.)
• A broker that Fujitsu had dealings with suggested that there may be some “reputational risk” involved with a fund that may have invested money in the potential buyer.  (Reading between the lines this means that the buyer was a front for the Yakuza and was channelling black market cash into the acquisition via an investment fund.
• The first time this situation was explained to Nozoe he agreed to cease negotiations with that party, but for some reason allowed the same close acquaintance to continue to be involved in the transaction.
• The board members who staged the coup felt that this was not in the spirit of the “Fujitsu Way” and hence demanded his resignation at the same time as insinuating that if he did not resign immediately, Fujitsu would definitely be de-listed.
• Five senior managers who were staffed on the Nifty case were immediately fired or demoted following the coup.

To be clear, even the company’s official explanation (the new one) states that Nozoe did not do anything illegal.  So far the stock price has failed to react very much to this news (-3% the day after the announcement).  What does this mean for Fujitsu shareholders?  If the company is really only -3% worse off then does that mean that investors never really did expect that corporate governance standards were being met even at such a large company?

Vaccinations in Japan are different than in the West - there are important points that you should know, because your Japanese doctor may not.

There are two very important things to know about new born vaccinations in Japan:

1. Japan doesn’t immunise for as many diseases as is standard in the West.
2. Japan has developed its own domestic vaccines for most diseases which means that they are not compatible with vaccinations taken for the same disease in other countries.

At the time of writing, the recommended injections for newborns in Japan (i.e. those that are provided free of charge to residents) are as follows:

The yobosesshu brand - Japanese babies will wear this mark with them until adulthood and beyond

• BCG (結核予防法) → at birth
• Diphtheria(ジフテリア) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• Pertussis(百日咳) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• Tetanus (破傷風) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• Polio (ポリオ) → 2, 4 and 6 months

In addition to these diseases, Hong Kong, for example, also recommends (and provides free of charge) vaccinations for the following diseases:

• Hepatitis B (Ｂ型肝炎) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• HiB (ヘモフィラス・インフルエンザ菌タイプB) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• Pneumococcal conjugate (PCV) (肺炎球菌結合ワクチン) → 2, 4 and 6 months
• Rota Virus (ロタウィルス) → 2, 4 and sometimes also 6 months

According to our paediatrician who was educated in London and Australia, both Australia and most of Europe vaccinate for the same diseases as Hong Kong. I’m assuming that they are all copy cats of the UK standard. Furthermore, each of these countries uses the same brand of vaccinations so your child isn’t going to have any problems if you travel between those countries. On the other hand, when we found ourselves in Japan 4 months after my son’s birth we realised that we’d created two problems for ourselves: (1) we were half way through vaccinations for diseases that Japanese paediatricians hadn’t even heard about (e.g. rota virus) and (2) we couldn’t even complete the four diseases that Japan also immunises for, as Japanese hospitals use domestically developed brands that aren’t compatible with the first two rounds that we’d taken overseas. Don’t let a Japanese doctor fool you on this point. They are not compatible.

This is an interesting chart (source) that makes a comparison of the standard Japanese vaccination schedule with that of the United States. Could be a good one to take with you when you visit your Japanese GP, to spur discussion about how he/she needs to help you:

It is actually possible to receive a hepatitis B vaccination in Japan if you pay for it yourself so I guess it is unfair to include it in the second list although it is not standard and most children don’t receive it. I’ve also heard that the HiB vaccine is very close to approval in Japan as well. Even if it is improved, it is unlikely that it will be included on the free list of vaccinations for several years so will probably be in the same basket as the hepatitis B vaccination.

It might seem like a lot of injections for your baby to receive but in actual fact almost all of these injections are administered at the same time. If you find a friendly paediatrician in Japan then you will probably get diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus together in one injection called a DPT (三種混合, sanshu kongo) which reduces some of the shock to the poor little kid. If you’re unlucky, your paediatrician might

Some clinics in Japan will give vaccinations the Western way - at 2 months the baby receives all of them at the same time with simultaneous jabs in both legs

It only took a few phone calls to leading hospitals in Osaka and Tokyo to realise that no public hospitals were able to administer any vaccinations other than those officially recommended by the Japanese government. They recommended me to try and find a small private hospital that might be importing the drugs on a proprietary basis. After smiling and dialling every international sounding private hospital I could think of in Osaka, Kobe and Tokyo, I was proudly offered various combinations of DPT and a bunch of branded vaccines that I’d never heard of. I thought I’d almost struck gold with a small practice in Hiro (広尾), until the senior doctor (院長先生, inchosensei) – who will remain unnamed – started trying to convince me that both brands of the rota virus vaccination were interchangeable. It scares me to think how many unsuspecting parents take their children to that guy and get the wrong vaccination!

Anyway to cut a long story short, I was only able to find one hospital that was able to administer each of the injections for us. Here are their details:

Tokyo Medical and Surgical Clinic
Address: 32 Shiba koen Building 2F,
3-4-30 Shiba-koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0011
Telephone: 03-3436-3028 (24 hours)
Fax: 03-3436-5024

Unfortunately for families coming from Australia, they only had Rotarix (and not Rotateq which is standard in Australia) for the rota virus at that time but that might change in the future. I highly recommend them for the other vaccinations and their professionalism. At the time of writing these vaccinations cost a hefty 80,000 yen for one round of all 8. For obvious reasons, it is nice to have an insurance policy that covers these payments – but it will have to be private as the clinic is not recognised by the Japanese health insurance system. While my focus has been on newborns, parents of children who are either 12 months or 4 years old will probably want to know what the story is with chicken pox, mumps, measles and rubella. All of these injections are available in Japan, but only measles and rubella are provided free to residents. Whereas the west generally administers measles, mumps and rubella together in a 3-in-one injection called MMR, for some reason Japan doesn’t include mumps and just gives an “MR”. It’s worth confirming the brand that you used for the first round at 12 months if you are giving the 4 year booster to your child for the same reason as mentioned above.

Lets us know about your yobosesshu experiences in Japan, or for that matter, anywhere else. It’s a fascinating topic, but sometimes a scary one, especially when it involves your own little one.

Where does the money come from? Everywhere you travel in regional Japan there seem to always be new highways under construction

So after all of that rhetoric about abolishing road tolls (高速道路無料化法案), Hatoyama has decided to rethink his plan and only allocate 1/6 of the original budget detailed in their manifesto.  Until last week, I, like 65% of Japanese voters, actually wanted him to scrap the entire plan altogether.  I happened across some insightful interviews with the academics who originally proposed the policy and have since gained some insight into where the concept came from.  How does Hatoyama look at himself in the mirror after promising that Japan will cut green-house gas reductions by 25%?   It turns out that there are significant structural problems with the current toll system and even a few environmental arguments behind scrapping them. Would you believe it?

While I would have structured the policy quite differently myself, I was quite disappointed with myself for being so completely fooled by the LDP propaganda and related rhetoric from the media surrounding the issue.  As Hatoyama said when he scrapped the policy, they were thoroughly defeated by opposition propaganda in selling the concept.  Since I haven’t seen any balanced pieces in the English media either, I thought I would share “the other side” of the argument with you.

The real issues surrounding Japan’s highway tolls are surprisingly similar to those that became the catalyst for the privatisation of the post office.  Especially in the countryside, LDP cronies have bought votes from the construction industry by supporting unnecessary public works projects.  The post office is guilty as 80% of the money deposited in the Post Office bank (195 trillion yen!) is used to buy JGBs (Japanese Government Bonds).  The government then uses the cash obtained from selling the JGBs to fund this endless construction work.  If the buyers of JGBs were normal investors (i.e. economically rational) then they would require the government to spend the cash on economically viable projects and hence force the government into contemplating ROI.  Lucky for the Japanese Government, they have never had to justify the use of its cash (read: irrelevant Keynesian public works projects) to JDB investors as they have always had a “buyer of last resort” in the post office.  Privatizing the post office meant that the government/LDP could no longer manipulate the cash in the Post Office Bank for political purposes.

It cost 50 yen to use the Tokyo Shutoko Expressway back when it was opened in 1962.

So what has this got to do with road tolls?  Let’s go back about 40 years to the end of the 60s, when Japan was starting to catch up with the West.  The government was desperate to improve the efficiency of domestic logistics and began to build a highway connecting Tokyo and Kobe.  Welcome the first ever toll road in Japan.  In order to convince the populous, the government promised that they would remove the toll within 30 years as they would have repaid the entire loan necessary for the construction of the road.  Thirty years equates to 1992 for Nagoya-Kobe (名神高速, meishin kosoku) and 1999 for Tokyo-Nagoya (東名高速, toumei kosoku).

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that we are still paying tolls today despite passing those deadlines over ten years ago. Because Kakuei Tanaka (田中角栄), the Prime Minister in 1972, realized that he could use the cash generated from these two profitable highways to subsidize uneconomic road construction in the countryside (read: LDP stronghold).  He hired Dentsu (電通) to come up with the catch phrase “Revamp the Archipelago” (nihon retto kaizo ron, 日本列島改造論) in order to hide what was actually referred to as the “Sharing Around The Cash” system (ryokin puru sei, 料金プール制).  Now, thanks to Tanaka, the government has a whopping 2.5 trillion yen of cash every year to build bridges to nowhere in their regional sandpits.

Japan's annual budget for road construction runs rings around other countries in this international comparison

The debt that Japan borrowed from the World Bank to build these toll roads was fully repaid in 1990 – ten years faster than they had predicted!  However, for some reason (read: the LDP policy to “buy a vote with a road”) the public corporation managing Japan’s roads (高速道路機構, kosoku doro kiko) still has a whopping 30 trillion yen of debt.  Better yet, they also have plans (implemented by the LDP) to shoulder a further 20 trillion yen of debt between now and 2050 to build more roads in remote places.  Oh my Buddha!  Will someone please tell them that Japan has enough roads already (see chart showing Japan’s disproportionately large annual spend on roads). Think how many roads you could build with 20 trillion yen!

Getting rid of highway tolls means that making the plans to borrow another 20 trillion yen to build meaningless roads infeasible.  More to the point, it means getting rid of another 2.5 trillion yen that the LDP wants to use to line the pockets of regional construction companies should they ever get back into power.  That is why Ichiro Ozawa (小沢一郎, the real brains behind the Hatoyama government) was so keen to push through this legislation.  (Ironically, the same rationale should argue that it doesn’t make sense for the DPJ to halt the privatisation process of the Post Office but that is another story).  Even if the DPJ does back pedal on the size of the discounts it is vital that they abolish this system.

Perhaps a smarter solution to the problem would have been to merely change the name of the tax and dedicate the same 2.5 trillion yen to environmental issues.  I think you could make a similar argument for their recently rethought attempts to cut the current 0.6 trillion yen “temporary” tax on gasoline (ガソリン税の暫定税率の廃止, gasorin zei no zantei zeiritu no haishi) that has been in place since 1974.  Let’s not forget that a socialist party should be all about high taxes and high public spending.  The DPJ seem to think that they can achieve high public spending with reduced taxes.  I’m not so sure how sustainable that is.

The vast majority of Japan's huge network of express-ways aren't being used

The other problem with both the gasoline tax and toll roads is how it impacts greenhouse gas emissions.  Interestingly, Yasuyo Yamazaki (山崎養世), ex-Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO and the man who first proposed cutting Japan’s road tolls, claims that it could actually cut green house emissions!?  Honmakaina I hear you shout!  Here are the skin and bones of his theory:

• Currently 65% of Japan’s highways are severely underutilised and only 5% are subject to congestion.  The primary reason for this is that they are so expensive.  (At an average of 25 yen per km, a car traveling at 100km/hr would be paying 2,500 yen per hour!)  Free highways will mean that this infrastructure doesn’t go to waste.
• Engine idling at traffic lights is the biggest culprit when it comes to auto CO2 emissions.  A shift of traffic from the highly congested local roads (with lots of traffic lights) to the existing highways (without traffic lights) should reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 3 million tonnes.
• The underutilised land in service areas and parking areas across the nation is said to be worth about 10 trillion yen.  With more traffic, the value of the real-estate should be substantially higher and hence create significant opportunities for profit through redevelopment.
• Economic projections by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (国土交通省, kokudokotsusho ß why is the name so much simpler in Japanese?) suggest that the economic impact of cutting tolls could be as high as 7.8 trillion yen.  The biggest beneficiaries would be trucking companies that use the nationwide infrastructure daily and ideally their clients should too as the trucking companies subsequently lower their prices.  (Note from the editor: Given that the annual revenue from tolls is only 2.5 trillion yen I guess they are assuming a Keynesian multiplier of 3! Hmmm…)
• Many people who don’t have cars and live in big cities argue for a user-pays approach to funding Japan’s highways.  The irony is that we are all paying these tolls indirectly every time we buy meat, fruit and vegetables that were produced in other parts of the country.  Free tolls should mean lower grocery bills, especially for people living in big cities.  (This is included in the 7.8 trillion yen figure mentioned above and one of the key reasons why the Keynsian multiplier is assumed to be quite large)

The biggest flaw in this argument is that auto traffic has an uncanny ability to grow indefinitely until it meets the capacity of roads available.  Just read Ben Elton’s “Grid Lock.”    Removing the tolls will just see an increase in auto traffic greater than Japan has ever seen before.  This of course would be a huge boon to Toyota and the other Japanese auto-makers.  Maybe that is another hidden motivation for the government as they try to turn around the floundering economy.

Their current proposal for changing the policy would be to only scrap the tolls on rural highways and even then to introduce pricing ceilings for daily use: 5,000 yen for trucks and 1,000 yen for cars.  If they really believed in the Keynesian multiplier effect of the cost saved in cutting infrastructure costs then surely they would be charging cars 2,000 yen and making trucks free?  This would be hard to push by voters, yes, but true to the original thesis behind the policy.  You do remember why you proposed the policy, right Yukio?

At the end of the day Japan just cannot afford to scrap existing tax revenues – especially less controversial ones.  With a whopping 200% of its GDP in gross government debt (the highest amongst G20 by a factor of almost 2x), Japan needs all of the extra income it can earn to pad its coffers.  Despite being a left-wing party, there are plenty of ex-bankers within the DPJ.  They get it and they realise the huge sacrifice they are making in scrapping road tolls.  The fact that they refuse to scrap it completely shows you just how powerful that cash was in buying votes for the LDP.  Even if they redirected the money earned from tolls to welfare, they must assume that the LDP will reverse any changes as soon as they take power again.  Abolishing tolls seems to be all about abolishing any chance for the LDP to ever reinstate another “sharing around the cash” system.

Has this article changed your view?  If so, let us know in the comments section below.

Locomoco Burger at Pocke Farm in Okinawa - Not as nice looking as the one on the menu but the wholemeal buns made up for it

Unfortunately, it is a long drive up to Churaumi and there isn’t a lot to do along the way. When I was visiting there last we decided to stop by the “American Village” in Chatan (北谷) to break up the trip. It’s just to the south of Camp Foster (キャンプ瑞慶覧) and Camp Lester (キャンプ桑江).

Although I didn’t see too many Village People (or Americans for that fact) there, “American Village” is a low rise shopping mall that was developed on the site of an old American air-force base runway. I suppose it is Okinawa’s answer to Odaiba (お台場) only a little more compact. While my ladies were walking around the fashion outlets there, I decided what better way could there be to kill the time than by munching down on a hamburger. Low and behold, within the section of the village called “American Depot” there was a quaint looking little hamburger joint called Pocke Farm so I decided to pay them a visit. (This is the 4th in our “Japan’s best burger series – here are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd in case you missed them).

Shop front of Pocke Farm in Okinawa

Pocke Farm is like one of those little huts run by Filipinos that you’d expect to find in a Hawaiian parking lot. The shop itself is just a small box adjacent to American Depot but it does have quite a spacious deck “out the back” for customers to sit down and enjoy their hamburgers so it actually pulls off a high score when it comes to atmosphere (especially on one of those rare Okinawa sunny days).

Open deck seating at Pocke Farm scores high on atmosphere points

The menu is a bit of a mix of American, TexMex and Hawaiian fast food. I’m not sure why that doesn’t really strike me as strange but I guess it is a bit of a common theme across Okinawa. Apparently they recommend the Spam Thick’n Chunky Egg Sandwich (スパムチャンキーエッグサンド 580 yen or $5.75)

Pocke Farm - Thick 'n' Chunky Spam Sandwich

I decided to try their “locomoco burger sandwich” (photo at top of article – 680 yen or $6.75). Why not? Okinawa was the closest I was going to get to Hawaii for a while. In addition to the standard lettuce and tomato, the locomoco burger has a fried egg, sunny side up, and home made demi-glace sauce (if you dont know what locomoco means click here). I’m a sucker for words like “original recipe” and “home-made” when it comes to my burgers and having demi-glace sauce on my burger sounded a whole lot better than some runny gravy. While it might seem like a strange thing to say, the buns were pretty good on the burger. The buns are the same on all of their hamburger sandwiches and are baked freshly every day using a secret recipe that contains cereal. They have quite a whole-meal flavour to them so you almost feel as though you’re eating a health food.

You can see the photo of my actual “locomoco burger sandwich” at the top of this article. It was nowhere near as pretty as the photo at the cash register but it tasted fine. The salad was fresh and the pattie was a normal size. At the time I was very tempted to give them two Stippies for the home-made bread and demi-glace sauce but in retrospect I think it is probably only worth one. Perhaps if the weather was better and they sold beer from the Kona brewery instead of just corona and Budweiser, I might have been fooled into giving it the extra stippy. To put it in context, this was the first hamburger that I ate in Okinawa after being pretty disappointed at Jef and AW so I was pretty easily pleased. That said, the place was very popular and I would definitely recommend grabbing a quick bite there if you’re visiting American Village around afternoon tea time.

Pocke Farm - All prices in JPY and USD (spelling?)

As with nearly every hamburger joint I’ve visited so far in Japan, for some reason they can’t spell English that well. Albeit it was only one letter but you would think that a hamburger restaurant in a shopping centre called “American Village” that was built on an old American air-force runway right next to two existing American bases would be able to spell HAMBURGER! (My Engrish photo of hamburger spelt “hanburger” at a hamburger shop didn’t turn out so well.. so you’ll have look for it when you visit!).

Pocke Farm [ポッケファーム]
Address: 9-4 Mihama, Chatan, Nakagami, Okinawa (沖縄県中頭郡北谷町字美浜9-4)
Telephone: 098-982-7790

Hours: 11AM-10PM

Website (Japanese only): http://www.depot-abc.com/pockefarm/index.html