We need your help - what do you need to know to help your sexless marriage?

The continued traffic that we get to that article is proof alone that there is a significantly large % of the married gaijin community that are suffering from sexless marriages.  Worse yet, there are no obvious places to go.  It isn’t the norm for Japanese couples to get counseling and there isn’t a harder topic to bring up with your loved one than a debate about who should be putting out more and why.  If you haven’t read through the entire thread then we really strongly recommend taking the time out to see the comments, questions and advice that our readers have left on this topic.  Even if you’re not married yet.  Maybe even more so if you’re not married!!

In a Japanese world that shuns upon dumping your feelings and worries on an outside party, we were pretty stoked when we came across a pre-marital counselor in Tokyo.  But to be honest, while they are great at helping avoid a sexless relationship before it begins they are not much help in bridging the ever expanding gap in an already sexless marriage. This time we’ve gone one step further and tracked down a local marriage/sex counselor.  She (yes! she) is Japanese but foreign educated and – get this – specializes in sexless marriages!! We are pretty excited.

We’ll be holding, and writing about an interview with her in the upcoming weeks but wanted to share the opportunity for input with our readers.  After all it has been the to the heart comments that have made that article such a key page for sexless gaijin husbands on the internet.  While we can’t promise to get all of your questions answered, if you can leave us a comment on this article before next Wednesday (June 16) then we will do our best to get her thoughts, comments, and maybe some answers about your situation, on your behalf! Lets just make that stick out a bit more, cause there is not much time…

Next Wednesday (June 16) is the interview. Please comment well before then, so we can ask her your interesting questions!

For the sake of continuity, please keep general thoughts and discussion about being sexless to the original article.  Just leave us your questions here.  Thanks to you all and hopefully we can hit a home run on behalf of all of the sex depraved married gaijins out there.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the situation isn’t getting any better in Japan. Earlier this month a Japanese company called “LC Love Cosmetics” (エルシーラブコスメティックス) released the depressing results of their survey of 500 Japanese women aged between 18-40. 47% of respondents felt that their marriage was sexless. ouch. Of those that were having sex they complained of everything from pain (itai, itai..), lack of petting through to premature ejaculation. What might surprise readers is that of the wives who complained of sexlessness, a whopping 40% of them claimed that they had tried to fix the problem by inviting their hubbies to bed. Oh, and 44% of those hubbies supposedly said no while another 20% “reluctantly” agreed! That is a pretty surprising result consider the data set that we have amongst our readers on stippy.com so trying to rectify the difference will be a big point in our upcoming interview. 12% of respondents were perhaps a little more honest when they admitted that they weren’t really troubled by the fact that they were sexless. LC claims that of those surveyed, those with a successful love life (who knows what the definition of that is though!) credited it to a good ability to communicate and a willingness by both sides to address issues like this. Have you tried to discuss it with your partner? It would be great to hear some real examples of how you tried… and then failed… so that we can take our interview with the counselor a step further than “you just don’t talk about it enough”.

Hurry, only a few days left before the interview with our stippy sexless counselor! Leave your questions for her in the comments below!

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.

In recent weeks, Stippy has been receiving much attention and many comments and questions based around our Tokyo Yakuza Wars and Prison in Japan articles. One of the questions we received was what is the difference between the Yakuza and the Right-Wing Nationalist groups? Are they different parts of the same organization, or are they in fact completely different?

For the average foreigner living in Japan, both the Yakuza and the Right-Wing Nationalists have very stereotypical images, and are easy to pick out from a crowd. The Yakuza are big, bulldog types with black glasses, often seen waiting quietly outside or by the bosses car, or in groups in the local Almond cafe. The Right-Wing Nationalists on the other hand, usually seem to be skinny undernourished guys, wearing a Long Live the Emperor style head bands, who cant say anything unless its standing on a big black vans through a megaphone so distorted that it is impossible to make out a word they are saying.

Despite the obvious differences, the first reaction is to put them in the same group, and assume that the vans, megaphones, Toyota Century cars, shouting in the streets, rallies on public holidays such as National Foundation Day (建国記念日), etc are all part of the same overall group, out to scare and control the public, and that they are mostly the same people on the same side of society. The mass media in Japan also tends to do so by portraying the Nationalists as “violence gangs” (暴力団). However, after the recent breakout of Yakuza Wars, and the Rise of Ishihara-style Patriotism in Japan, our research has shown that the two groups are surprisingly different, and have a very complex relationship.

Now, there are elements of the two groups which are the same- i.e. members of both groups who “wear both pairs of sandles”. For example, Yakuza’s have been know to form ad hoc Nationalist groups for specific purposes, and some members of the Nationalist group who cant make enough money to live, have joined Yakuza gangs. But in general, they are two completely separate organizations.

The most basic difference is what they are each working to protect. The Yakuza endeavors to protect its turf. This turf is an area within a city, and they compete with similar Japanese Yakuza groups for that turf, such as the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi over Nishi Azabu. On the other hand, the area that the Nationalists attempt to protect is the entire country of Japan. “From the Senkaku Islands in the south (尖閣諸島), to the Hopporyodo Islands (北方領土) in the north”. (Read here for an amazing Government conspiracy about the Happoryodo’s uncovered by Stippy.)

Another related difference is that all Yakuza work completely for the benefit and the honour of a Boss, known as an Oya-bun(親分)、the top of their own Yakuza organization. Each Yakuza group in Japan has its own Oya-bun. No specific knowledge or education is required for this line of work. However, the Nationalists work with complete and ultimate loyalty to the Emperor of Japan, and act only in the interest of Japan as an independent nation. To do this successfully, the Nationalists need to study history, philosophy and politics to fully understand exactly what they are attempting to protect.

In the post-war decades, the Nationalists had strong and wealthy organizations, but in more recent decades, it is the Yakuza that have tipped the balance due to both higher membership numbers and greater economic wealth. The two tipping-points for the Nationalists were in both 1981 and 1997, with revisions to the Japanese Commercial Code putting a stop to two of the Nationalist’s most profitable activities, Soukai-ya (総会屋), which is where minority Nationalist stock holders arrive at corporation’s AGMs and cause trouble and extort cash, and also kigyo-mawari (企業回り), where Nationalist members would sell the organizations internal magazines and publications to corporations.- large numbers of copies at extremely high prices. This was a large source of income for them which funded their activities, but the new laws diminished their power greatly, and the Yakuza began to take over.

One of the Nationalists main activities, is denouncing in public those who they believe have done wrong by the country, and by the Emperor. This is where they stand in the middle of a public place, on top of a van, and shout denunciations through a megaphone. However, in many situations, those person being denounced will seek refuge with the local Yakuza boss, and the boss will call up the Nationalists, and they hit down and talk it out. Usually they will come to a middle ground of exactly how far the Nationalists are allowed to go in their denouncements. Although these two groups are different, and work for different causes, there is friction between them. But this rarely escalates into violence, which is avoided.

As the original founder of the Chuko-juku Aikoku Renmei Nationalist Group (忠孝塾愛国連盟) famously quipped, in an unfamiliar street, a Yakuza must walk down the footpath with his eyes to the ground, whereas anywhere in Japan, a Nationalist can walk down the middle of the road, with his head held high.

Japan has been hunting and eating whales for centuries. And continues to do so today. Despite the political guise of whaling for scientific purposes, much of the blood red whale meat ends up in Japan’s fish markets and supermarkets for public consumption. Is Japan justified in whale hunting and being unfairly attacked by crackpot greenies, or are they really as cruel and inhumane as the Western news reports make out? Whichever side you are on, the fact remains that Japan’s “bi-product” of its scientific research program ends up on the plates of Japanese consumers, and is still an extremely lucrative market. We at stippy.com went to Tsukiji Fish Markets in Tokyo to get graphic evidence of whale on sale. The shopkeeper was even kind enough to point out which whale he was researching on his “Whales of the World” poster (Click on image to see an enlarged version). The Catch of the Day was Fin Whale on that particular day. Without siding with either the greenies or the Japanese, let us introduce you to the background of this issue, with some real facts. You decide for yourself which side of the fence you are on, and if you feel like letting us know, leave a comment at the bottom of the article.

Whaling Cultures in Japan and the West:
Japan’s recorded history of whale hunting goes back to the Jomon Era (縄文時代, from around 10,000 BC to 300 BC), with archaeologists having found hand spears etc from this time. However according to historians, whaling on an organized scale began in Japan in the early 1600′s. The traditional name for “whale” was “isana” (勇魚), meaning brave fish. Whale meat was a delicacy served at special occasions and festivals.

During the same period, whaling was becoming popular in Western Europe, especially in England where whale fat was burned to fuel street lights, and whale oil was used in Rolls Royce gearboxes. This created an increased demand for whales, and hunting on a global scale began during this period. (Think “Moby Dick”, the 1851 tale of the heroic Englishman captain who leads his crew on the hunt for the mighty whale.) In fact one of the objectives of early migrants from England to New Zealand and the Pacific was to search for new whale resources to sell back into Europe.

Following the invention of the light bulb (replacing the street light), efforts in whaling dropped somewhat in the West, which never had a culinary whale culture. Although it continued in other countries including Japan, and the 200 years from 1770-1970 became retrospectively known as the Era of Excessive Fishing （乱獲時代）, or the Whaling Olympics (鯨オリンピック). It was during this period that Blue Whales (シロナガスクジラ） and Southern Right Whales　（セミクジラ） were fished to dangerously low levels, which sparked the cultural clash between Japan and the West that began in the 1970′s and continues to today.

The Save the Whales Movement of the 1970′s:
Enter US popular culture and Christian righteousness in the form of Olivia Newton-John and the 1970′s “Save The Whales” campaign. This was perhaps Greenpeace’s most successful campaign, and is rightly credited with aiding the ailing Southern Right Whale population back to sustainable levels. Greenpeace made extensive use of new media, such as television, and Hollywood stars to gain support for their movement. Unfortunately, while they could have stuck with the facts such as “some species of whales are on the brink of extinction!” and been just as successful, they also took a populist angle stating that “whales are intelligent animals, and should not be killed!” This took strong hold in especially the US which did not have a whaling history, and the image of a whale became synonymous with saving endangered animals. And although the populations of endangered whale have been greatly restored, this image continues in the West today, and is center of the commercial whaling battle being fought through the International Whaling Commission.

The International Whaling Commission:
The IWC （国際捕鯨委員会） was founded in 1946 under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (国際捕鯨取締条約） to regulate, in a commercial context, whaling and whale populations by preventing over-fishing of whales. It was initially signed by 15 counties, and Japan was not involved (we suspect it had more serious matters to deal with in 1946.) This body effectively watches over commercial whaling to ensure the sustainability of whale stockpiles. It was not founded on the presences of conservation.

In the 1960′s, countries such as England and Holland which had been strong whalers, finding decreasing returns from commercial whaling, gave up the industry completely, and started putting more efforts into conservation. The number of countries pushing for a complete ban on commercial whaling grew dramatically during the 1970′s partly thanks to Greenpeace and the Save the Whales effort.
In 1982, the IWC determined that there was not sufficient scientific data on the population numbers and environmental conditions of various whale species, and in a majority vote, voted in favour of a commercial whaling moratorium, banning the commercial hunting of whales. This was implemented in 1986, and still stands today.

(There are over 70 species of whales in the world. However, the IWC only watches over 12 species. These IWC whales (as they are called) are Minke, Blue, Fin, Sei, Bryde’s and Humpback which are baleen whales, the Sperm and Bottenosed which are toothed whales, as well as the Beluga, Narwhale, Baird’s beak and Pilot whales which are in fact dolphins (or from the Delphinapterus family.)

Scientific Whaling:
The 1982 moratorium caused outrage in traditional whaling countries such as Japan, Norway and Iceland, who have never really agreed with this and have all looked to exploit loopholes. Specifically, the ICRW states that “contracting Governments may grant to any of its nationals a special permit authorizing that national to kill, take and treat whales for purposes of scientific research”. From 1982, Japan and Norway halted their commercial whaling and began killing whales under the provision for scientific whaling.

Since 1994 however, Norway has abandoned the claim of “science” and has openly called its whaling “commercial”, which the country is allowed to do because it filed an official objection when the moratorium was first put in place.

Japan however did not do so, and has taken a more condescending stance towards the moratorium, and continued to fish under the name of scientific research, officially to obtain data on population numbers, age and sex makeup, and natural death rates. Japan states that the quality of its research research results are thought of as high quality. And the logic behind the meat being sold in the consumer market is the whale meat not used in research should not be wasted, and is sold to prevent waste, as well as to fund further research. In other countries carrying out scientific research, this meat is thrown out. (A kilo of whale meat costs about 2500 yen wholesale, with the choicest cut, part of the tail, costing three times as much. By the time it reaches supermarket shelves, the price can have risen ten-fold.)

Numbers and Statistics – The Facts:
The table below shows the estimated whale populations from the IWC.

Source: International Whaling Commission Official Homepage
Additional, estimate populations include:

• Sperm Whales – from 200,000 to 2.2 million,
• Bryde’s Whales – in the hundreds of thousands, and
• Sei Whales – approx. 54,000.

So with that in mind, exactly how many whales is Japan hunting each year?
Since 1987, under the name of scientific research, the IWC has allowed Japan to fish 6065 tonnes of only Minke whales (thats about 400 actual whales). And since 2001, Japan has applied to increase this to include another 100 Minkes in the North Atlantic, 50 Bryde’s, 10 Sperm whales, and 39 Sei whales. That’s all folks.

So why the Big Problem?
With such a raging debate over such small number of whales, it appears to have developed into a cultural clash. Greenpeace has stooped to doing reckless things, such as when Japanese whalers have harpooned a whale, attaching its own dinghy in protest around the rope and whale being pulled up, somehow expecting the whaling boat to stop hauling it in. This has already resulted in damage and injuries for boats and people on both sides. Even if whales are that intelligent, how many whale lives is a human life worth?
This shows how rational thought in this conflict has been replaced by raw emotion.

This video shows an actual high seas collision that occurred in the Southern Ocean between a Japanese whaling boat, and a Greenpeace boat. It was highly publicised at the time, and the marketing power of Greenpeace had the world believing it was all the Japanese boat’s fault. I am no boat captain, but looking at this, the Greenpeace boat was in a position to prevent the accident more than the Japanese boat was:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the other hand, the Japanese side have made some childish moves. At the IWC meeting held in Shimonoseki in 2002, they had the audacity to serve up whale meat for lunch to the delegates of the participating countries, apparently in an effort to show that whale meat actually tastes good”. Here is the specific whale recipe prepared before the IWC Meeting. They have also contempt for the IWC by overtly buying votes from countries new to the Commission, such as Mongolia, one of the most landlocked countries in the world, which should need no place in the IWC at all.

Despite all the childish games, throwing of stones, and poking with sticks; from the perspective of ensuring the sustainability of whale populations, the IWC seems in fact to be functioning adequately. The question of whether or not Japan should be allowed to sell whale meat on the market should be something that all countries sit down and discuss like adults, based on fact, not blind faith in the supposed intellect of an animal. And whether eating it is “right” or not, should then be up to whoever is sitting at the dinner table.
As long as my children and their children will be able to see and enjoy this large animal of the sea, I don’t have a problem if they enjoy whale meat with perhaps a bit of ginger, wasabi and garlic. What do you think? Please leave a comment telling us where you stand, and more importantly why?

With maid cafes where pretty young girls that ooze submissiveness to their “masters”, and “shuccho health” (出張ヘルス, basically, dial-a-prostitute) and soap-lands (sensual bathing houses with soapy special service) to vending machines for porn, and specialty shops with used high school girl underwear; Japan, at least on the surface appears one of the most sexually proactive nations in the world. Japanese men are as perverted (if not more perverted) than those in other countries, and as for the ladies, on top of being naturally feminine (with petite sexy bodies, skin that doesn’t seem to change complexion from childhood, pretty faces and silky black hair), the women of Japan have no misconceptions about what style – clothes, perfume and make up – makes a man stop in his tracks, and rouse that tingle in his loins.

When interacting with others, sex and everything surrounding it is fair game for a topic of conversation in Japan and, it is certainly not frowned upon by religious groups or society at large as it is in the USA and other countries. When it comes to secreting sexual hormones and sexuality in general, almost nothing is taboo in Japan – until that is, the day one gets married, or so it seems. Indeed in stark sexual contrast, Japan may be suffering from a sexual drought, where being totally open about sex and being sexy in general, doesn’t seem to be converted into the ins-and-outs of baby making when it comes to married couples.

Shown in these statistics, a recent survey by Japan’s health ministry found that as many as one-third of all marriages in Japan are sexless. The problem is now so widespread that the government fears it is a major contributor to the dramatic plunge in Japan’s birthrate (now only 1.28 births per woman). This sexless phenomenon is not only found in those relationships that are plunging down the drain toward divorce, but to the contrary, more and more couples that consider themselves healthily married (and have no intention of separating), have not had sex with each other in the last month or more (the common definition of “sexless” in Japan), with many saying that they have not had sex together in the last 6 months to one year.

According to the most recent survey of 41 nations last October, the average Japanese has intercourse 45 (and according to Bayer Pharmaceuticals as low as 17) times a year, compared with the global average of 103. Japan is repeatedly at the bottom of the list. Last year it trailed Singapore, which was 28 shags a year higher!

The term “sexless”, was first used in Japan in the early 1990s, but now is instantly recognizable to the Japanese as a universally understood concept, and widely discussed in the media. There are books on the subject and thousands websites and heartbreaking blogs discussing sexless Japan, while letters on the subject fill agony columns on “dear doctor”-type sites.

One in five sexless couples say they view sex simply as a nuisance. A small number cite the lack of a private space, because children or elderly parents often sleep just the other side of a paper-thin door, leading many married couples to even sleep in separate rooms. Mitsui Home announced recently in an Asahi Newspaper article, that in 30% of the new houses they build, the couples are asking for 2 “master” bedrooms. This is a shocking statistic, which shows that sexless couples want to continue living their lives together – separately! “We are sort of room-mates rather than a married couple”, one 31-year-old man, who had not had sex with his wife for two years, told the Asahi Shinbun.

There are many other theories about why the Japanese become less inclined to raunchy evenings in the sack together, but likely it is a mixture of some of these:

• Stress of work/life in Japan (maybe the taihen cloud?)
• Lack of understanding, and usage of contraception, especially “the pill” (who wants to use condoms with their wife!?), making sex with your wife viable only when you want to have a baby
• Abundance of 不倫 (furin, or extra-marital) relationships
• More and more Japanese women choosing career over family
• A tendency among Japanese married couples to feel an aversion to sex with their spouse, not because they dislike one another, but rather because they feel that they have more of a sister-brother relationship; the sanctity of which would be destroyed with a repulsive incest-like feeling, by what westerners would consider normal conjugal relations

The last point is an interesting one, as in the past, it has been traditionally Japanese women who complained that they couldn’t see their hubby “as a member of the opposite sex.” But in the last few years, there’s been an exponential increase in men who can’t view their wives as sexual partners either. While it is true that many Japanese married couples seem to be sexless in nature, they key thing to remember is that this certainly does not mean that they lack the desire for sexual fulfillment. While marriage and children may bring on a sex drought in the home, Japanese people who want (and in the case of most men, need) sex do not simply abstain from sex because they cannot see the feminine qualities in their own wife, or the sexual attraction of their hard working husband.

Japanese men love their companies; they live for work, and many don’t even think it is a problem if they don’t have sex with their wives. They have pornography and the sex industry (soap lands, cabaret bars, and dial-a-girl services, and trips to Taiwan) to take care of their needs, but their wives have nowhere to go. They just suffer in silence.. or do they? The divorce rate in Japan has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, with more women blaming their sexually inactive, as opposed to sexually errant, husbands for break-ups. Though they may not be seeking sexual pleasure from their better halves, married Japanese women are seeking intimacy from other sources, leading double lives – being the good mother, while at the same time seeking out “Leroy” the lover, who is always lurking, and ready to fulfill her every desire.

Japan is full of temptation, and it doesn’t matter whether you are a housewife or salary-man, there is plenty of raunchy action waiting out there – if that is what you desire. Furin sites to find a (extra marital) “sex friend” partner are just as rampant in Japan as in other countries, however they are much more widely used by women in Japan to solve their sexless quandaries. For the more conservative ladies, sites like mixi.jp – which are neutrally classed as “social networking” spaces – are abound with profiles (men and women) looking for partners to secretly spruce up their sexless, but otherwise happily married lives.

Many Japanese marriages may be sexless, but this is only a statistic about the state of sex within marriage itself. In fact, there may be a good reason for the sexless condition of marriages here – Are the Japanese getting enough of the good stuff outside their marriages to keep them happy? I certainly think so.

Japanese people will never be sexless as individuals; therefore Japan is not sexless, so don’t let mere statistics confuse the situation!

(If you are married in Japan, or married to a Japanese, let us know what you think of “Sexless Japan” by leaving a comment below!)

A 3000 kilometer long dark cloud has enveloped Japan. It appears to have been completely missed by the experts, and we are concerned not to have once seen warnings on the weather reports. It seems to have gone completely unnoticed and yet is having a profound effect on the entire country. It has been detected recently by many of us at stippy, and after further investigation, is being widely referred to as the “Taihen Cloud”.

It is almost impossible to recognize the Taihen Cloud when one is on the ground surrounded by it, but once you know where to look, it is glaringly obvious, and its scope and intensity startling. Everything that lies under the cloud is affected by its unique power, and it affects every single person in Japan, every single day.

Said to be the northern hemisphere opposite of the cloud covering the “Land of the Long White Cloud” (Aotearoa, the land mass off the Eastern coast of Australia), the Taihen Cloud covers Japan almost completely from the tropical south to the freezing north. It is however said to be concentrated in relation to population density, therefore large cities like Tokyo and Osaka have the highest Taihen concentration levels.

A loose English translation of “taihen” (大変） is “it is hard, or difficult”. Everything that is taihen is much more difficult to do than usual. And the spread of the Taihen Cloud over the whole country has ensured that now almost everything has become difficult to do. This is not to be confused with “mendokusai” (面倒くさい), which means “it is a hassle for me to do”, which is not a reflection of difficulty, but more of the motivation or laziness of the person concerned.

The correct Japanese pronunciation for the cloud is taihen-kumo (大変雲), but is often mispronounced by young and old as taihen-kamo (大変かも), which also means, “it might be taihen”, and is commonly used in this nuance.

The Taihen Cloud makes everything about life, well, taihen. It is what raises the stress levels of people in Japan to unnecessary heights, and forces the difficulty levels of even the simplest tasks through the roof. It is what has caused Japan to lead the world in previously unknown phenomena such as Monday Morning Suicides, and “karoshi” (過労死, commonly referred to as death from overwork, however karoshi is not possible independent of the Taihen Cloud). It is what causes groups of people to stand around for excruciatingly long periods of time deciding simple matters such as what to eat for dinner, and then just as long to scrutinize the menu to make the difficult decision of what to eat. An advanced symptom is feeling the effect of the Taihen Cloud is the ad nauseas use of the phrase “dou shiyou!?” (どうしよう？ what shall I/we do?).

The moment when most people will feel the actual existence of the Taihen Cloud, is when they take off in a plane, rocket up into the sky and out of the local atmosphere. The subsequent feeling of having shed some weight, is the Taihen Cloud falling away from your shoulders. Unfortunately though, an adverse effect of the Taihen Cloud is that after a long period under its presence, it begins to permeate into the core of those affected, covering all, like a thick cloud of Taihen fog. As a result, when many people (even the unwary gaijin), fly up out of Japan into a taihen-less environment, for a period of time things can still appear taihen. The best therapy for this is simply time away in a relaxed environment, and can be accelerated by an afternoon or two of fishing brown trout out of a serene lake in the mountains.

One of the reasons the Taihen Cloud has grown so quickly, and on a national scale is its contagiousness. One person saying “dou shiyou”, can spark off others, and before anyone can stop it, brows become ruffled, and everything is too hard – the taihen pandemic.

As an unnatural meteorological phenomenon, theoretically the population of Japan should be able to take measures to effect the dissipation of the Taihen Cloud. However without the charisma and marketing budget of Al Gore, our inconvenient truth is that we do not have the means to undertake the national campaigns, lobbying and other efforts necessary to make it disappear over night. And in any case, this is probably much too taihen.

However, over time, with the right steps, we still hope that the Taihen Cloud can be overcome. The first step we would like to suggest, and here at stippy.com are considering petitioning the Japanese Government, is that the phrase “dou shiyou” be completely removed from the Japanese language. We would also suggest that this is complemented with the introduction of new educational programs focused on building vocabulary, to fill the obvious and uncomfortable hole in speech left by “dou shiyou”.

The old adage that realizing the problem is 50 percent of its solution likely rings true in the case also. With more awareness of the Taihen Cloud and its symptoms, and a concerted effort to introduce popular foreign phrases such as “no worries”, and “heaps of time”, things may not be as taihen as they seem.

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?

Akihabara is a district of Tokyo that has traditionally been famous for the electronics which have for decades been synonymous with Japan. Because of this, Akihabara has also become well-known for its geeks – and now one of Japanese geeks favorite new hang-outs, the “Maid Cafe“. Read on for an explanation of wide range of services maid cafes have to offer, and a hilarious video which introduces the type of clientele that keeps these establishments alive.

The Maid Cafe is one of those startling Only-In-Japan phenomena, such as the Toilet Target Marker Sticker, the Magic Hand, or the Fundoshi. They are mostly regular cafes, serving the usual cakes, coffees and teas (milk AND lemon for the authentic geek), however the waitresses are all dressed up in French maid or lolita costumes. Often the costumes include cats or bunny ears to increase the “cuteness” factor.

The maids use honorific language toward the customers such as a servant would use, their greeting being “welcome home, Master”, and their level of service and subservience for the customer borders the extreme. In some cafes maids have been known to get down on their knees to stir the milk, lemon, and/or sugar into the Master’s drink, and at the more hard-core cafes, maid will spoon-feed their Masters. It is this kind of attention that draws the Akihabara, or Akiba-kei geeks in numbers.

Generally cafes serve drinks at regular prices and customers pay an extra charge for the time they are there, ie 400 yen for every 30 minutes. However, some cafes offer extra services; grooming services, such as shampoos and ear-cleaning, or maybe fully clothed massages. In one cafe, for an extra 9,000 yen, customers can chat with the maid in a private room cluttered with comic books, character figurines and animation DVDs.

The line between reality and fantasy quickly becomes a blurred one.

However, its is not just the Akiba-kei geeks queuing up to take a cheap ride into a fantasy world.

The demand of Japanese women wanting to become maids has been a startling result of this fad. In a country where many adults dream nostalgically of the fun of their childhood, this offers a rare opportunity for adult women to play dress-up and role-play in a variety of different costumes, transporting them away from their tough daily lives. Many of these women are also devoted fans of the comics, animation videos, and video games portraying maids as heroines, and they enjoy immersing themselves into their characters.

Patronage of Maid Cafes is also on the rise among young women hoping to snag a geek and turn him into Prince Charming. They are trying to bring to life the story of last year’s hit movie “Densha-Otoko” (Train Boy), a love story set in Akihabara that also became a popular TV series. This is a story, all supposedly true, of a 23 year-old Akihabara geek who intervened on a train when an old man was harassing a beautiful young girl. She in turn fell in love with him, and realized that he was in fact a nice guy who was just to shy to find a girlfriend or speak openly anywhere apart from online. This has lead a number of young Japanese women to try their luck at the real thing. No doubt much to the delight of all the potential nice-guy Train Boys.

In a classic piece of Japanese TV, an “investigation” was carried out to see of out of 100 Akiba-kei geeks, how many would actually have the courage to become like Densha-Otoko and help a real damsel in distress. The TV station lures the guys into an alley with a sign to a Maid Cafe, then stage a fight.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A twist to the Maid Cafe are the latest “Princess Restaurants” where waitresses in maid outfits treat their customers like royalty as they are shown to their “throne chairs.” Targeting female customers in their 20s and 30s, Princess Heart is becoming a hot spot in Tokyo Ginza, providing service to only women and couples.

For those interested, here is a list of Maid Cafes if you live in Japan. And even one here if you live in Ontario, Canada! (Canada maid cafe link removed as it recently was pointing to a hard core rape site for some reason..)

Akihabara is a must visit for tourists to Tokyo. It has a rare old-town atmosphere, people selling dirt-cheap electronics out of their garages as well as boasting the largest electronics chain stores in Japan. Maid Cafes dispersed throughout certainly add a new spice to this already interesting area.

There was a recent report from Reuters stating that about a dozen Japanese tourists each year are so emotionally devastated when they travel to Paris to find that the real city isn’t quite as they had envisioned it they need psychological treatment. The article seems to indicate that this goes beyond the usual culture shock. I think we can all sympathize with traveling to a destination and finding that the reality is a little different from what we were hoping for but I’m hoping that we are able to cope without lapsing into psychoses.

Many of the contributors and readers of this site are gaijins who have left hearth and home to establish lives in a foreign land. I would have thought that the gulf between the English-speaking western cultures and Japan would be pretty large but apparently it’s not large enough to cause a namable psychological disorder.

I think we all have stereotypes and mental images of foreign lands but I like to think that I’m made of sterner mental stuff so that I won’t completely break down when I visit New Zealand and find that it’s not populated exclusively with sheep and hobbits. Why are the Japanese tourists so disillusioned with Paris but able to cope with the inevitable disappointments of other destinations? According to the brochures tour companies are promising that the world outside of Japan is a veritable paradise of lush nature, crystal blue skies, clear oceans, classic architecture and twinkling skylines. Of course the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a Niagara Syndrome, Guam Syndrome or Whistler Syndrome would imply that either these destinations are everything that the travel literature say they are and the Japanese tourists aren’t disappointed and disillusioned upon arrival or tourists have a suitably low expectation of these places and bad vacations are par for the course.

The naivety of the Japanese who suffer from the syndrome is actually rather touching in a way. Somehow they’ve managed to retain their idealized image of Parisians as polite, congenial sophisticates despite the abundance of readily available news stories that would contradict this. Why is this? Despite the fact that Japan is a modern nation with modern education and access to a host of information through the media and Internet a frighteningly large portion of the populace still remains willfully blind to reality and holds to some odd beliefs about other countries and cultures.

I can sympathize with the general desire, if not the specific city the Japanese have chosen, to think of some far off land as an exotic paradise. Unfortunately, the land of courteous Frenchmen riding bicycles along the Seine, carrying croissants in one arm, showering gifts of Louis Vitton handbags to lonely vacationing women while quoting and composing sonnets doesn’t actually exist anywhere but in the minds of the Japanese. When confronted by the reality that they just don’t want to face or accept that differs from the mental image the mind snaps and we have this very unfortunate syndrome as a result.

Japan isn’t cut off from the rest of the world in an isolationist stance anymore and news feeds from around the world can provide actual images, videos and reports of what outside countries are like. Of course it’s ultimately up to the individual to choose to accept the reports as accurate and real or to keep their head buried in the sand and cling to a fantasy.

The solution to Paris Syndrome is relatively simple. I would give the same advice to Japanese tourists as I do for my dates; Keep your expectations low and you won’t be disappointed.

Yes, I did the unthinkable – I left Japan. Took the wife and kid with me out to Oz, leaving only fond memories and my stippy mates behind (Well actually a pet rabbit too, but he never did much except jump around and shit everywhere anyways). After nine years in Japan, it certainly isn’t easy getting used to life “overseas”, and earlier this week as I busily pretended to be busy at my new desk in my new office, in my new city, my thoughts turned to what I’ve already started to miss in Japan:

My Favourite Things

Roppongi nightlife and loose social norms;
Miniskirts in winter and high school uniforms;
Harajuku girls suited up in costumes with wings;
These are a few of my favourite things.

Cold nama beer and fresh sashimi;
Towering mountains and the harsh Japan Sea;
Sakura trees towering over playground swings;
These are a few of my favourite things.

Toilet seat warmers and miniature mobiles
Sexy sports cars and highways for miles
Cooking nothing at home yet eating like kings;
These are a few of my favourite things.

When my ship sails,
When my plane flies home,
When leaving Japan makes me sad
I simply remember my favourite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

While I don’t think I’ll be winning any poetry prizes with my effort, it certainly helped me get through another “busy” morning, and until I can plan a trip back, my memories (and video Skype sessions ) are all that remain to connect me back to Japan. My wife (Japanese) has already booked her first trip back after being out here for little over a month, it’s yet to be seen how long I can last wthout a Japan fix.

I’m sure some of our readers have lived in Japan at some stage then moved away – what does every one miss the most?