監査法人 – The exciting new NHK TV series

I’m really getting in to a particular mini-series (ドラマ, dorama) on air at the moment in Japan. It’s 監査法人 (Kansahojin, “Auditor”) on NHK at 9PM each Saturday night. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mini-series that is solely focused on that very sexy profession of auditing! Judged by all of my friends who are accountants I wasn’t really expecting much spice from this one. Much to my surprise, after having just watched the first three episodes (Episode 4 of 6 in total is screening tonight, Sat 5th July at 9pm), I’m finding myself pulled right into the story. Clearly NHK has timed the airing to clash with the AGM season of Japanese companies as there is an unprecedented number of Japanese companies’ being questioned about their real motivations by foreign investors. It seems to be winning in the ratings war with Japanese viewers. Can I tempt you, too?

The protagonist is a CPA at a major auditing firm called Wakasugi Kenji 若杉 健司 (played by Takashi Tsukamoto, 塚本 高史). I’m still not sure why they bothered portraying him as a single father, but let’s not lose the forest for the trees. Walking in the footprints of his dedicated sempai (先輩, superior) Onodera Naoto, 小野寺 直人 (played by Toyohara Kohsuke, 豊原 功補), Wakasugi is deemed to be a rare breed in the firm due to his unwillingness to show a blind eye to his customers when it comes to the letter of the law. Onodera was the first of a new generation of CPAs who was motivated to take a more responsible approach to accounting after his best friend committed suicide when he was caught cooking the books of his own company. It sounds a little extreme, but this is Japan… it probably is somewhat realistic. The scene is set in true Japanese business style. Corruption all over the place. While I have a funny feeling that we will see many, many more important players become entangled, so far we’ve been introduced to the corrupt management of the auditing firm that Wakasugi and Onodera work for. One of it’s directors of Shinohara Yuzo (篠原 勇蔵, played by Hashizume Isao, 橋爪 功) has regular off the record “meetings” with senior people at the mega banks and in particular the CEO of one large food company.

Matsushita Nao in Kansahojin (監査法人 松下奈緒)

In the first episode we meet Wakasugi’s unrealistically sexy co-worker, Yamanaka Akane (山中 茜, played by Matushita Nao, 松下 奈緒) who is helping him with the audit of a small-scale construction company (hokuriku kensetsu, 北陸建設). The President of the company leads a multifaceted attack of wining and dining in order to convince the CPAs to be lenient with them. As you’d expect in most Japanese auditing companies, this works like a charm on the senior members of the team but the young two CPAs ignore the instructions of their superior, Tashiro Jungo (田代 淳吾, played by Ken Mitsuishi 光石 研) and prepare themselves for a meticulous audit if the company’s books. Low and behold, it turns out that the company had illegally booked revenue from transactions that didn’t exist (架空売り上げ, Kaku Uriage) in order to secure financing from their bank. If you think that sounds familiar, it’s because several Japanese companies got busted for doing the same thing in the last few years, not the least of them, Livedoor.

Personally, I’m quite enjoying the lessons in creative accounting. In the second episode the two young CPAs discover how to shift damaged inventory from your books (at a food company called Asukaya, 飛鳥屋) by manipulating the balance sheet of a related company. That’s what Kanebo did with a bunch of it’s outdated inventory that it couldn’t sell. In the third episode we learn about how a SI company uses round-tripping (架空循環取引, kaku junkan torihiki) with friendly companies to boost their sales. That is what my favorite ebi-fry company, Katokichi 加ト吉, was found guilty of (… oh and Enron, too). The story is also being set up to deal with a bank that probably should be bankrupt if you marked the NPLs on it’s balance sheet fairly. Wow. Talk about topical for the entire Japanese banking sector. As a bit of a creative accounting otaku, I’m hoping that they can go into enough depth to make it educational but I’m sure I’ll keep watching even if it just makes a good saga.

The battle for justice between the two young upstarts and a pretty impressive array of respectable ojisan actors has been unfolding nicely. It’s not an easy job to cast actors that can play with such a mixture of age groups without it looking tacky and the last thing you would want is for it to turn into a shallow “young versus old” expose. So far it appears as though they’ve done a good job of adding a reasonable amount of meat to the plot and turning a potentially dry topic into one with real social implications. It’s one of the few times that I’ve felt guilty about not paying my “voluntary” annual fees to watch NHK. In fact, now I think about it, what better example of the value of a national not for profit broadcaster than this one. None of the other free to air television channels could have ever put together a drama like this. Think how touchy the issues are that it addresses are for Japan Inc. Then think about who it is who signs the cheques to pay for for the commercials on the other free-to-air TV stations.

You’ve gotta love it how the writers have called the corrupt auditing firm “Japan Kansahojin.” (ジャパン監査法人) Surely it seems innocent? Nah, it’s a clear and direct jab at 新日本監査法人 Shinnihon Kansahojin (or “New Japan” Kansahojin), who are well known in the industry to be the most lax auditor – out of those remaining that is! A more “tame” writer would have opted out for a company name sounding more like 中央青山 (Chuo Aoyama) which has already been disbanded and was the auditor for pretty much every famous case of creative accounting in Japan this decade (Kanebo (カネボウ), Nikko Cordial (日興コーディアル), Ashikaga Bank (足利銀行) etc) not to mention the other big name bankruptcies of the 90s like Yamaichi Securities　(山一證券) and Yaohan (ヤオハン). NHK’s dramas have been consistently outperforming my expectations lately. Hagetaka was probably the first NHK drama to ever attract my attention (and most of my generation) but more recently I also found Top Sales (an intriguing story based on the success story of Fumiko Hayashi,　林文子). So much so that I’m tempted to see if I can find a decent biography of Hayashi on Amazon.co.jp. (Can anyone recommend a good one?) While Hagetaka is probably my favorite out of the three (so far), I am looking forward to see how the remaining episodes of “Kansahojin” portray our beloved politicians and bureaucrats. The other great thing about NHK mini-series’ is that they are all over in 6 episodes and so you don’t feel as though you are whittling your life away by starting to watch one… like you do with US dramas.

If I’ve written enough to tempt you to watch it, you can watch the first episode right here on stippy.com (If you would like other episodes, and can’t get them yourself, we can point you in the right direction, just let us know in the comments!). If you’ve already seen it or have been cooking books in a Japanese company before, then share your reflections with us below in the comments section.

Click the video here to watch episode one in its entirety (You will need the latest and greatest Free Flash Player Plugin to play it):

Click here to view the embedded video.

(The content above was produced by and aired on NHK. If you liked this first episode, go and rent the others at your local video shop)

(If you haven’t seen Hagetaka yet, you can read our previous critical piece on the excellent series HERE. Thanks also to soteiguy for your comment on that article which encouraged me to write this one.)

“Hagetaka” – New Japanese TV Drama Series

The current recovery in the Japanese economy has been a long time coming. For over a decade, Japan was watched from overseas, with foreign money waiting for the recovery, which had to come sometime. That time is now, and the takeover of Japanese companies by foreign firms and foreign funds form many of the daily headlines. As do the measures by the Japanese companies to resist the same. For example, the Sapporo Holdings’ current desperate measures to avert a takeover by US hedge fund Steel Partners, and Nippon Steel doing all it can to dispel continued advances by Mittal Steel. This type of assault on Japanese firms is captured in a gripping new NHK drama series called “Hagetaka”.

The recent increase in M&A and corporate takeovers of Japanese companies by foreign funds has once again stimulated the nationalistic sentiment in the Japanese people, as well as the idea of protecting Japan, its interests, and culture at any cost against potential foreign conquerors. Although Japan has been a capitalist country for over half a century, still, business is not always about just money, and many Japanese would go to great sacrifice rather than be taken over by a foreign entity. A much used analogy is that of Japanese soldiers in Okinawa in 1945 jumping one by one like lemmings off Suicide Cliff as that was preferable over being captured by the enemy. It would be naive to think that in merely 50 years that the fundamentals of capitalism could have replaced 2,000 years of cultural pride.

NHK has aired over the last 6 weeks a hugely popular TV drama called Hagetaka, a fictional drama about a US investment fund which comes to Japan to buy up companies and implements US style reforms. The setting is 1998, and the initial target is a traditional bank called Mitsuba. This was in fact the year in which the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan was taken over by Ripplewood and became Shinsei Bank, and is loosely based on events from that period. The literal translation for Hagetaka is “vulture,” however the English name for the drama is “Road to Rebirth”(再生への道). This Japanese characters for Shinsei are 新生、which also literally mean “re-birth”.

The main character is a Japanese called Masahiko Washizu, a fund manager of a US firm called Horizon Investments. Washizu originally worked for the same Mitsuba Bank, but moved to the US due to the crash of the Japanese bubble economy, where he became a New York-trained fund manger, and typical of the US influenced new generation for which money is the ultimate goal. His mission is to buy out Japanese businesses, beginning with Mitsuba Bank, and “save this decrepit country”. Washizu is determined to make as much money out of Japan and Mitsuba in the shortest time possible, and get back to the US.

Washizu is pitted up against his old boss, one of the top managers of the Bank, Takeo Shibano. Shibano is a talented manager, yet a conventional and conservative Japanese banker, who values his relationships and his clients over money. (Apparently, Shibano’s character was in fact based on a real person, Junichiro Koshi, a top level manager for the Industrial Bank of Japan (now Mizuho), who was a prominent figure during this period of bank restructuring. Koshi is currently serving as a senior adviser with the Bank of Thailand.)

Despite Hagetaka being a serious business drama, it has been extremely popular with Japanese viewers, with the first episode attracting an impressive 3.5 million viewers in Tokyo alone. Interestingly, 50% of viewers of the drama who were interviewed did not see the US firm as the villain of the story, and they faulted the Japanese company for allowing themselves to be vulnerable. The director Kei Kurabe said “the show struck a chord among Japanese because M&A is suddenly something that is close to our lives. Japan is still trying to decide whether M&A is a good thing or a bad thing.” The number of M&A deals in Japan has quadrupled in the last decade to 2,775 deals last year from 621 in 1996.

The series was based on 2 novels by Jin Mayama (真山仁) called “Hagetaka”(ハゲタカ), and “Buyout”(バイアウト). Kurabe “tried to depict only the business world in a documentary-like way”, and that he came up with the idea of producing a corporate battle drama after the furor surrounding internet company Livedoor in 2005. Ironically, it was difficult for Kurabe to get permission from NHK to produce Hagetaka, as NHK themselves had just been recently embroiled in the takeover bid from Livedoor of Fuji TV.

On a similar note, read here for a Stippy review of “Barbarians at the Gate”, the legendary story of the hostile takeover of RJR Nabisco in the US in the late 1980s.

Already seen it? Let us know what you thought in the comments.

This is the fifth and final video in our first series of “Only in Japan” videos.

Check out video 1, video 2, video 3 and video 4 if you haven’t already!

Zebras, Tapes and Taxis is a mixture of a few weird “OIJ” scenes, that were not enough to make a full one minute video from, but nonetheless are still worthy of your Japanophile eyes, and are bound to bring a few chuckes.

The video consists of three themes: Zebras, Tapes and Taxis!

In most countries (at least USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand) where roads are striped with black and white lines – parallel to the flow of the traffic – pedestrians have right of way, and cars must yield (stop) when someone is walking, or is about to walk across the road… Right? Wrong.

This universal stripy marking, normally pointing out a haven for people wishing to walk across the road in most countries (called a Zebra Crossing, but unimaginatively referred to in the U.S. as a “crosswalk”) doesn’t seem to hold any authority when it comes to making Japanese drivers stop for the proverbial granny trying to get across to the other side of the road. (The founder of the colouring scheme for the crossings – pictured above – is not happy with the state in Japan, and is pressing defamation charges against Ishihara Shintaro in the Tokyo Supreme Court at the time of publishing this article)

I am not quite sure what the actual law about stopping at zebra crossings is in Japan (but some enlightening comments would be welcome!). In any case, it can be a shock for first-timers in Japan, when cars don’t stop at these crossings. The symbology of such simple lines is really quite powerful, and I am sure it has lead to quite a few gaijin “near-accidents”.

Despite their wide usage, it appears that zebra crossings (where there are no traffic lights) in Japan are only for show, and have no bearing on actually slowing people down. On the other hand, they do however get extremely complicated at large traffic light intersections, shown by this picture of one of the most famous crossings in Japan, in Ginza. It’s almost going overboard with the Zebra theme in this case, its hard to know which way to walk!

Anyway, on to the video. The “Taxi” and “Tape” parts are also fun additions, to make up the Only in Japan video collage, a grand finale for the OIJ series if you ask me! The video not only shows us the reality of zebra crossings, but introduces another eyeopener for first timers – automatic car doors on taxis. Along with this, we also get a peek inside a Japanese video rental shop- what a combination!

Thanks again to Simon Adams and Andrew Johnson for showing us a few corners of Japan, that we may have missed otherwise! Enjoy the last video in this series of Only in Japan footage, “Zebras, Tapes and Taxis”, and send it on to some friends!

QuickTime is required for this video, in order to view in full H.264 Quality.

Enjoy “Zebras, Tapes and Taxis” in Quicktime (click image above) for best quality, or there is a (bad quality) version here.

Here we are again, with the fourth installment in the Stippy “Only in Japan” Video series. This time we will explore a mysterious trait of Japanese cyclists – the fact that they fail to see the safety benefits of using bicycle helmets!

Note: If you have only tuned in to this series on stippy.com recently, you really need to catch up on the first, second and third parts also. Check them all out, they are well worth the laugh..!

In many countries around the world, cyclists are obliged (sometimes forced by the law) to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Throughout South East Asia it is common to see people without helmets, but this can be attributed to a lower level of safety consciousness than in more developed nations. Japan on the other hand has no excuse to not be more helmet aware, and through this video, we hope to bring the current state of helmet wearing in Japan to the surface! (The video does provide for a good chuckle also..). Even though proposals to make helmets mandatory for children to some local and prefectural governments have been made by various community action groups for some strange reason these have historically been rejected in early stages, long before votes are taken by local parliaments to enforce them as law.

Bicycle helmets are 85 to 88 percent effective in mitigating head and brain injuries, making the use of helmets the single most effective way to reduce head injuries and fatalities resulting from bicycle crashes. Despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of all fatal bicycle crashes involve head injuries, it is very difficult to find bicyclists that wear helmets here in Japan.

One article on asahi.com (Asahi Newspaper) dated 22nd Dec 2004 titled, “Working to get Helmets on Kids while Riding with Mum” (ママチャリ乗せるなら子にヘルメット 広がる普及の動き) showed the reason why mothers of kindergarten children refuse to even use a helmet on their kids. The following mother’s example was a representative of most other parents that were interviewed:

４歳の長男を乗せていた主婦（３３）はヘルメットを持っているが、使っていないという。「幼稚園の送迎時に使ったら、まだ珍しいから、ほかの親に『何でかぶせているの？』という目で見られた。もっと普及すれば使いやすいんですが」(Translation: One mother who had her 4 year old son with her on the bike said that she does have a helmet for her child, but never uses it. “When I take him to kindergarten, a helmet would deviate from the norm, and other mother’s would look at me, as if to say, ‘what is that on his head!?’. It is embarrassing so I don’t use it. If only it would become more common to wear helmets..”)

It seems that the Japanese are so concerned with how they appear to others, that they are willing to risk the safety of themselves, and more worrying their children, by continuing to repel the practice of wearing bicycle helmets.

Simon Adams and Andrew Johnson decided to find out why, by hitting the streets of Tokyo and asking, “Where’s your Helmet?”. Enjoy the video, and send it on to some friends!

QuickTime is required for this video, in order to view in full H.264 Quality.

Enjoy “Where’s Your Helmet” in Quicktime (click image above) for best quality, or there is a (bad quality) version here.

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: Video no. 4 in this series is now available HERE.

How the weeks fly by! Here we are on our third of our weekly series of “Only in Japan” videos. Once again Simon Adams takes us on a mission to unravel the mystery of the “Orange Ball”.

They are round, colourful and embedded deep in the Japanese retail culture. Every bank and post office has two at each teller’s booth. They are hard to miss at convenience stores, and you wont enter another Japanese “gasoline stand” without seeing one. What are they? I am talking about Orange Balls of course. If you have lived in Japan for any amount of time, you must have seen them (you certainly will after watching this video anyway!).

In last week’s video we discovered the “Magic Hand”, the all-purpose tool for handling any I’ve-dropped-my-*insert item here*-on-the-tracks situations at Japanese train stations. This week, we learn that Orange balls are the ubiquitous anti-crime tool in Japan used for stopping all sorts of criminals in their tracks, well almost… They are, orange balls, filled with a thick florescent ink that glows in the dark, and has a strong smell. Police dogs in Japan are actually trained to be able to track this particular odour (said to be similar to rotting pineapples), and are taught that it is the smell of a criminal.

Orange balls are available for about 1500 yen each, and actually come in lots of colours. However, Orange – for some reason – is the only one that is in wide use (I have never seen another colour in use anyway). These spheres of ink are called 防犯ボール (bohan ball) in Japanese, and a simple Google search for the term shows that they are widely available on the internet, here, here and here for starters! You can even buy clear water filled orange balls for practice! (Don’t ask me why you cant just use a normal tennis ball or something.. it’s just good marketing I suppose)

How are they used? Well, I couldn’t be bothered writing a thousand words, so you can watch the cool short video below, and check out this demonstration picture. (The video is much more enjoyable – trust me!)

Once again, thanks to Simon Adams and Andrew Johnson for kindly letting us present you these videos for the first time on the internet.

QuickTime is required for this video, in order to view in full H.264 Quality.

Enjoy “Orange Ball” in Quicktime (click image above) for best quality, or there is a (bad quality) version here.

Stippy.com recently got some behind the scenes snapshots from the movie set of “KISARAZU CATS EYE – World Series” (木更津キャッツアイ ワールドシリーズ).

This Japanese movie was released just a few days ago, on the 28th Oct 2006 by TBS. We thought we would just introduce it with some photos that you wont see anywhere else (You can click on all photos to enlarge them).

Twenty-one year old former high school baseball player, Kohei, learns that he is dying from cancer. He is told that he only has six months to live, and decides that he wants to do something daring, out on a limb. He proposes to five trusted members from his former baseball club that they form a ring of cat burglars that would steal from those who commit crimes. His friends think it odd, but feel they cannot turn down a dying man’s request. With only six months, how much could they do anyway?

So was the plot for the highly popular TBS television series first showing in 2002. This movie follows up the first one released in 2003 “Kisarazu Cats Eye – Japan Series”.

Cats leader Bu-san has passed away but his ghost is not content to be away from his beloved crew, especially as they have parted on uncertain terms, and now returns seeking closure.
Only, some members can see him while the rest of the town is in confusion at some odd behaviour of the Cats, making for some amusing scenes and foolery.
Most shocked by his return is probably his widowed wife, played by the very pretty Korean actress Yoon Son-ha (picture is her at the set of the movie, we could only sneak this one shot of her) who, while happy to see him back is shocked to find his genitals didn’t come with him!

Adding to the mayhem is the reappearance of Ozzy, and Ucchi who is now AWOL from the Self- Defence Force where the cruel taunting of his dominatrix-type superior (Chiaki Kuriyama, the infamous high school girl in “Kill Bill 1″) have driven him to the edge. However, the rising of spirits from the ghost realm has also brought with it a team of American high school kids who won a tournament in Japan 80 years ago. Their ship sunk off the Kisarazu coastline and have comeback as Zombies to play some ball and get their lost medals back.

Luckily the zombie leader – Jun Hashimoto – has Japanese ancestry and communicates in comical manner with the Cats – (Jun makes his first big-screen appearance after a successful stage acting career – the other zombies are real zombies still living in Tokyo today).

Check out the official home page for the details of the movie itself. We just thought we could bring you this brief article with exclusive pictures and a foreigner angle (our specialty!). We spoke to one of the guys involved in the shoot and found out lots about being a gaijin actor in Japan too, it was a great chance. The best part however, we have to admit – was Chiaki and Yun..!

While showing reruns is the bread and butter of those little watched cable channels, recently, the subscribers of channel #739 have recently been lucky enough to re-live some wonderful memories from the golden age of Japanese broadcasting. You can almost feel in your bones the passion that the average Japanese housewife must have had to learn English back in the bubble era after a few seconds of watching the Zuiikin girls’ Eikawa lessons.

Produced almost three decades ago by Tongtong, the concept behind the Zuiikin girls is that by exercising while you are learning English, the muscles in your body will actually remember the new vocabulary for you. Not only did the producers aim to come up with practical lessons that prepare you for your next overseas trip, they seemed to be focusing on the kind of phrases that your average chikyu no arukikata will rarely tell you about. To watch the videos just click on the screens below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Zuiikin (随意筋) refers to the muscles in your body that you can consciously move yourself (and called “voluntary muscles” in English.) Anyone who is lucky enough to have a Japanese spouse will realize that this word really brings on new meaning in this next lesson:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just as you were reeling in your chair thinking about all of the extra ammunition your spouse now has against you, it seems as though our prayers were answered. In the final episode of this strange conversational calisthenics, the producer must have had a soft spot for we gaijin. Welcome the Zuiikin Boys and the nihongo version (Japanese language skills not required to enjoy):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite their best efforts to sabotage their reputation, it does appear as though Tong Tong is still in business. If you’re convinced that you’ve got what it takes to be a new addition to the Zuiikin dancers, then perhaps you should check out their home page, after all they do seem to be looking for people here.

Mao Asada was a phenomenon last winter, coming from relative obscurity to win the ISU (International Skating Union) Grand Prix Final. However, despite being the best on the adult circuit the ISU rules said she was too young (15 years old at the time) to compete at the Olympics, robbing her of the chance of glory in Turin. With such a sudden rise to fame it is no surprise to see Asada doing endorsements in the media. Nevertheless, what is most interesting about her latest television commercial, for the new Olympus digital camera μ, is the music. Figure skaters, banned in competition from using anything with lyrics, generally do not use modern pop music, which makes the juxtaposition of Asada with the music of punk band the Blue Hearts a very interesting marketing strategy.

The Blue Hearts are the iconic Japanese punk rock band. From their initial rise to stardom in 1987 they were ground breakers and trend setters in a previously next-to- non-existent genre in Japanese music. Even after their sudden break up in 1995 they continue to be a dominate force in Japanese rock music, their influence showing through in the music of many younger bands such as GAGAGA SP.

Olympus have also been very deliberate in their choice of song to promote their latest digital cameras. Linda Linda was the song that propelled them into the big time in back in 1987 and remains their signature track. Nevertheless, this track is not just an old favourite, but one whose stature in Japanese pop culture continues to grow; It was used in the 2004 hit drama Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai wo Sakebu (Crying Out Love In The Center Of The World), as well as being the source for the title of the 2005 movie Linda Linda Linda which also featured the Blue Hearts’ music.

That a whole generation has grown up listening to the Blue Hearts is not something that has been missed by Olympus. If the target market is men in their 20s and 30s then the combination of the young skating star Mao Asada with the music of the Blue Hearts is a sure way of getting their attention. You can watch the promotional video below in Quicktime, or there is a windows media format available here if you are so inclined.

QuickTime is required for this video.

It has been more than a week since the first “Only in Japan” video, apologies for that. This week (keeping the weekly thing going notwithstanding), we would like to bring the second in the series, aptly named “Magic Hand” (マジックハンド）. Have you ever been so lucky to be involved with such a hand?

We believe that this is the first ever footage of a real uninhibited “Magic Hand” in its natural habitat. However, what is not so commonly known, is that you can find magic hands in the dark grimy corners of almost any train station in Japan. Unfortunately though, they are usually hidden away under lock and key, and only come out for the eyes of the lucky… Oh, but just in case you are misunderstanding me, I don’t mean this type of Magic Hand, (WARNING: Link may not be safe for viewing at work, or if you are easily offended) so get the dirty thoughts out of your skull!

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you played with those extendable claw things that when you squeezed them they extend out and can pick something up. I thought they were totally useless, but they never failed to amuse me for hours.

Yes, the magic hand placed in all Japanese stations is one of those contraptions that the rest of the world thought was nothing more than a gimmicky toy for kids. Well, for the Japanese 駅員さんs (station staff) it’s a serious tool for solving “situations” like those that may arise on the train station home platform. Simon Adams shows us the mystery of the magic hand, creating one of those situations, on location at Koshigaya station in Saitama.

Click on the dumbfounded ekiin-san below to see what happens!

QuickTime is required for this video, in order to view in full H.264 Quality.

Enjoy “Magic Hand” in Quicktime (click image above) for best quality, or there is a (bad quality) version here.