Lauderdale’s Souffle – it is a must – nothing else like it in Tokyo

My wife and I love any excuse to get out of the house early, and on a special occasion we will often eat out for breakfast. If you’ve ever tried to Google “Tokyo breakfast” or “Tokyo brunch” then you will sympathize with my plight. For starters “brunch” seems to rarely start before 11-11:30am. Wouldn’t one call that lunch? And a search for breakfast seems to lean towards options for people on business trips looking for a slightly more palatable option than the defrosted omlete they get in their business hotel. So here it is, the result of several years of my own personal research into the Tokyo breakfast scene. The list is short but that is not for lack of trying. The stark reality is that amongst the small handful of options out there, many are mediocre. Below I’ve chosen my favorite three establishments. Each one of them should appeal to a different type of eater so I hope that I can tempt you to try at least one (and write about it in the comments section below! Or, better yet, tell us about your favourite breakfast haunt!).

1) Le Pain QUOTIDIEN (ル・パン・コティディアン 芝公園店) (FAMILY OPTION)
Authentic french bread. Coffee’s not cheap at 550 yen, but the organic bread is to die for. The real attraction is the basket of assorted bread (“organic wheat baker’s basket” 780 yen). Only the regulars seem to order this – after all there aren’t that many places you can order organic bread in Tokyo, and it comes with a nasty little selection of spreads to try with it. Most of the other items on the menu are great too, but you’ll end up saying “what? only that?” when you compare the size of the serving with the price. A great place for taking your kids if you don’t like them eating all of the preservatives in convenience store bread. When the weather is nice you could buy some bread from their take-out section and nibble on it while walking around Zojoji temple (増上寺).
Breakfast starts: 7:30AM
Coffee: 550 yen
Address: 3-3-1 Shibakoen, Minato-ku (港区芝公園3-3-1) / 2 minutes from Onarimon Station.
Phone: 03-6430-4157
Homepage: http://www.lepainquotidien.jp

Lauderdale’s Pancakes – have not come across pancakes like this elsewhere in Tokyo

Breakfast starts: 7AM weekdays, 8AM weekends
Coffee: 150 yen with a food order. (bottomless cup!!)
Address: Keyakizaka Terrace 1F, 6-15-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku (港区六本木6-15-1) / right behind Roppongi Hills
Phone: 03-3405-5533
Homepage: http://www.lauderdale.co.jp/f-breakfast.php

3) Conrad Hotel (Cerise by Gordon Ramsay) (COUPLES OPTION)
This is definitely the most expensive of my list but I still think it is value for money when you consider the quality of the produce. You might not be able to relax with your kids here but it is a great place to come with your better-half for a refined breakfast. You can order from the menu but really the buffet (2800 yen) is more than enough. While that means you don’t get a hot egg dish, you honestly don’t really need it when you start to discover the hidden gems: the moorish salmon, the rare cheese platter, the fresh chunky preserves, etc. It is my run away favorite amongst the foreign hotel offerings in Tokyo.
Breakfast starts: 6:30 (weekdays) / 7:00 (Weekends)
Coffee: included in buffet (bottomless cup!)
Address: Conrad Hotel, 1-9-1 Higashi-Shimbashi, Minato-ku (港区東新橋1-9-1) / 2 minutes from Shiodome station
Phone: 03-6388-8745
Homepage: http://conradtokyo.co.jp/cerise

1 Yen Coin – What is its fate?

While the rest of the developed world (apart from the USA – still shadowed by the imperial system) moves away from their smallest denominations for convenience sake and because of their drastic decline in purchasing power over the last 30 years, for many Japanese people, the silvery pika-pika aluminium of the 1 yen coin and its nature as the base of Japan’s currency and economy make it hard for them to let go. In some ways it is the most pure of the Japanese coins (it is “one”, and 100% aluminium), and despite mentally groaning about it when they fiddle in their purses, people still surprisingly love to use it. 99 yen stores, and in general prices ending with 98 and 99 JPY are still incredibly common, even in retail stores where the majority of the transactions could be expected in cash, and customers will without fail diligently wait for their 1-2 yen change to be handed back over the counter, even if it means waiting for the cashier to fumble and break out a roll of new coins.

Australia, Brazil, Finland, Israel, Holland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and England have all abolished at least their smallest denomination in the last 20 years (several had 2 cent equivalent coins, which have gone as well). The latest country to be left penniless (literally!) is Canada, and as the most recent example of permanent cessation of production of the smallest denomination, it is interesting to look at some of the reasons given by their legislators when they announced their decision on March 29th 2012.

Indeed, the purchasing power of the Canadian penny now has less than 1/20th of when it was first produced. The recent announcement described the penny as a “burden to the economy”, actually costing 1.6 cents to make one of them! The pamphlet outlining the change to the public reveals that the government is losing $11 million a year just on production costs, and that is not including the wasted time and frustration of those who have to use it, and count it in business transactions and banks all over the country. The estimated total burden for keeping the penny in Canada is now in excess of $150 million.

Penny Ban in a US retailer

The rational solution is easy (to implement and to understand by the public), and has been proven (see above) as a widely accepted method of ridding the country of the production and management overheads and the burden on the economy – not to mention the teeth-clenching hair-pulling frustration that it gives consumers, businesses and banks alike.

So, how is this being dealt with in Japan? Well.. It isn’t really. The 1 yen coin seems to have a somewhat sacred presence here. That’s not to say that people dont complain about it – they dont hold back any monku on that. But just as a wife complains about her husband (or their 35 year old son who still lives at home), and just as he is still loved (tolerated?), the Japanese society keeps clinging to their beloved 1 yen coin and seemingly dread the day that it will walk out the door.

Alongside the emotional attachment to the 1 yen coin, there are other potentially stronger factors that could yet lead to its demise, more quickly than people may realize. In 1997, when Japan raised consumption tax to an easier and more rounded number (5%), the actual demand for 1 yen coins decreased overnight. With the expected rise to 10% in the coming years, and the further proliferation of denshi-money (eMoney/cashless transactions), demand is expected to drop to all time lows. In fact, in 2011, for the first time in 43 years since the first minting of the current design, the Mint of Japan didn’t even produce a single 1 yen coin for general circulation. And, for good reasons..

The 1 yen coin costs far more than 1 yen to produce. In fact, it costs between 1.6 and 1.8 yen, nearly double the face value to produce one of those little buggers. Even so, there have always been, and still are far more 1 yen coins produced than any other coin! The aluminium in each coin alone costs around 0.7 yen, and the rest of the cost is for production and distribution. Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting reported in a 2003 analysis that producing a 1 yen coin created a 13 yen overall loss for Japan!

Keeping the coin in circulation by changing its size and/or material to something cheaper is out of the question for now as well, as there is a law that sets the weight and size of all coins in Japan. Interestingly, the 1 yen coin is exactly 1 gram in weight, and made of pure aluminium, per law. Hence, even today many people save their pennies (yennies?) as a convenient way to calibrate their weight measurement scales at home.

Don Quijote’s 1 yen box for free use at the register

What do you think… will the yen, go the same way as the sen did, way back in 1953? (A sen is 1/100th of a Yen, and used to be minted in Japan as currency). What will it take for the Japanese people to realize that almost the whole developed world (except the USA) has deemed it necessary to get rid of this burden on society?

Pop quiz: Name a Japanese company with a US educated CEO.

Better yet, name one with a CEO and a Chairman who both have MBAs from different, well respected US Universities? Let’s narrow it down a little further for you with another hint: the company makes a habit of hiring “rejects” from other companies into its management team.

So how many of you are assuming that I’m talking about a little dot com that you’ve never heard of? What if I told you that the company has sales of 1.3 trillion yen and probably made either your toilet or your bath!?

Still can’t place the name? Don’t worry – most people can’t. They’ve changed their name so many times over the past few years that even Japanese wouldn’t recognize their brand name. Their official name is JS Group (住生活) although their operating company is known as Lixil and they used to be called Tostem-Inax. Clearly they have no understanding of the importance of an easy to remember company name but boy do they have an interesting set of people sitting behind the steering wheel.

Yoichiro Shioda - Chairman

After only two years at the helm, Shioda had the guts to become chairman and choose someone from outside of the company (and outside of his family!!) to replace him as CEO. Better yet, the new CEO, Yoshiaki Fujimori (藤森　義明 / MBA from Carnegie Mellon), is the former head of Japan GE (and rumored to be the first ever Asian senior vice president to have been appointed at GE globally). Yes, I do mean “that” GE. Although it is in Japanese there is an interesting interview with Fujimori while he was at GE here describing him as more American than Japanese. You don’t hear that too often in Japan Inc.

But perhaps what is more interesting is what Shioda did to the rest of the management team while he was CEO. Of the 9 people on the board beside himself, five are non-executive directors (from unrelated industries) and two are recent additions to the company from other companies (Fujimori and Tsutsui mentioned below). Talk about an independent board. In fact, he has made three very controversial appointments (in addition to Fujimori) of external people to key roles. This is the bit that I love. All three of them would broadly be referred to as failures in their most recent jobs. It is rare enough for a Japanese company to put “outsiders” on the board but even rarer to select “outcasts” from other companies. (Either Shioda is a genius or he is masochistic…)

Takashi Tsutsui

Toshimasa Iue

Shinichi Tanzawa

So besides making baths, what does JS do? The Japanese building and housing material industry is made up of hundreds of small companies specializing in one or two products. JS Group is attempting to be the first conglomerate who can manufacture everything needed to build/renovate a house or building. It started with the merger of Tostem (aluminium sash) and Inax (bath, toilets) and has since digested Toyo Exterior, Nittan, Sunwave, Shin-nikkei, Hivic, Kawashima Selkon textile, Wuxi Moritec Special Door, the Asia-Pac business from American Standard (did they make your toilet?) and Permasteelisa (an Italian manufacturer of curtain walls). They’ve also started joint ventures with Sharp, Secom, Haier and LG. Most of these transactions happened while Shioda was CEO.

While it is generally hard to get insight into the politics behind Japanese mergers their acquisition of Shin-nikkei was particularly noteworthy. Shin-nikkei management openly chose JS over Sankyo-Tateyama (a competitor who they had already signed an agreement with) because they felt that only JS was moving fast enough to survive in the industry. Talk about a stamp of approval from an insider.

The stock market has clearly taken a liking to the Shioda story. The share price doubled while he was at the helm although it was hit hard when the company revised down last October due to the impact of the Thai floods, Fukushima earthquake and greater than expected costs related to integrating the companies they have purchased through M&A. At 0.88x PBR the stock doesn’t feel expensive but then again the whole of Japan (TOPIX) is trading at a mere two thirds of its liquidation value so which Japanese stock isn’t cheap right now? We are not investment advisors. We don’t own the stock. We are not offering any advice to buy or sell. We just thought it was an unusual story in the closed and incestuous world known as Japan Inc.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. You can’t get much more domestic than the building industry and it is pretty hard to get excited about anything relying on Japanese GDP growth. JS probably has the highest likelihood of being the “last man standing” in a perpetually contracting industry but that isn’t very sexy. That said, how realistic is it to believe that JS (or any other international company for that matter) could break into the building supplies market in any other country? I hope that we haven’t heard that last of Fujimori but something tells me that it will be an uphill battle.

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!

Nikon デジタル一眼レフカメラ D800

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

Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami Documentary - Fuji TV

This incredible documentary is the first of its kind to air in Japan, with professionally commentated and chronologically compiled footage of the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that was to follow. It is all in Japanese, but for those of you who cant understand the commentary, just watch it anyway. It is very well put together, giving logical sequencing of the mess which we all witnessed on the news and Youtube in the weeks after the event. Watch it, and witness the gut wrenching footage and interviews with people who lost their families and livelihood (even if you dont understand the language with your head, your heart understands the story being told). Much of the footage has previously never been shown before, and has been painstakingly sewn together into this shocking story, that helps with a deeper understanding of what really happened on that tragic day, March 11th 2011.

It starts with a 20 minute sequence of the progressive destruction of one single city, that had 19 cameras (some amateur, and some fixed) positioned around the bay. Quite amazing to see all of this second by second swallowing up the city.

The main program then starts, with detailed stories and descriptions of different people’s accounts. Emotional as hell, but it focuses on how the Japanese pulled together, and helped each other. No riots, no looting, just people in mourning trying their best to help other people in mourning.

Full credit given to Fuji TV for this show (we even left the ads in). We just thought it was such an incredible show, that it needs to be shared.

Watch the full program by downloading it in the link below.

Download the full video in mp4 format

(formatted for iPad, iPhone, in very high quality – you may need to right click and choose “save as”)

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!

Sexless? We interviewed a professional Japanese relationship consultant for some ideas on what could be the cause

Marital advisors, Couple consultants, pre-marital counsellors, and the like are extremely rare in Japan. Sex specialists/therapists are even fewer and further between. Through some good fortune however, we were lucky enough to meet Rieko Saigo (西郷理恵子), one of Japan’s most prominent experts on sex…less marriages. During our three hour interview we learned more about the psyche of the Japanese wife (both in and out of the bedroom) than we ever expected and hope to share some that insight with you here.

Rieko Saigo (西郷理恵子) – Background:
While she dons a different sword to Takamori Saigo, her great, great, great uncle, it might be fair to describe her as the first female samurai fighting for female sexuality. Saigo has been interested in sex (academically!) since her days as a student studying Law at Waseda University. A self-proclaimed major in “Adult Videos”, she realised she would “never be able to learn the truth about sexuality” while studying in Japan and went to America to further her studies. Not to miss an opportunity to learn how to express herself, one of her highlights during her time in the US was performing in the Vagina Monologues. As an active member of Japan’s Society of Sexual Science (日本性科学会), she has been answering the needs of sexless Japanese men and women since 2006 and was generous enough to share some insights about the sexless couples that she has been involved with in Japan.

Her clients are all ladies!:
What surprised us more than anything else was to hear about her typical client. Diametrically opposite to our typical reader at stippy.com, her typical sexless client is female! In fact 90% are. Before you ask to be introduced to these Japanese women (whom mostly are disappointed/desperate about their lack of a sex-life) let me tell you that their stories sound desperately similar to our readers. The majority of her clients are married and have suffered a downhill trend that started after marriage. (On an interesting – or depressing – side note, there is also a significant minority of single Japanese women out there who are unsure if they should get married to their current boyfriend because he refuses to have sex with them!).

A common theme amongst many of Saigo’s patients is a feeling of loneliness and an inability to communicate with their husbands about sex and the quality of their relationship in general. How easy do you find it to broach topics like this with your Japanese partner? Has she ever asked you to sit down to discuss the quality of your relationship? Maybe our generation (X) of Japanese spent too much time watching how their parents “love” each other by staying out of each others way. I don’t think it is any coincidence that it was as recent as 1986 that the phrase 「亭主元気で留守がいい」 (teishu genki de rusu ga ii, or “a husband who is healthy and always absent is ideal”) was coined. It isn’t exactly a concept that is really going to encourage couples to try and get over their difficulties in communicating now is it.

A few of her clients acknowledge that they are the reason behind being sexless as even if they do have sex they don’t enjoy it. However, the vast majority of her patients are desperately seeking sex with their disinterested (male) partners and hitting a brick wall. Sound familiar?

Reasons why even Men are not interested in Sex
There is actually a pretty long list of reasons why the men aren’t interested in sex but the most common is being “too tired.” (heard that before?!!) Apparently statistics imply that the incidence of ED is increasing in Japan as more and more men are over worked at their jobs and come home without the energy to get it up at night so perhaps there is some truth to the matter.

What is perhaps a little more worrying are the stories that Saigo relates about men who just “don’t feel it is right” to have sex with their wives. Apparently some of the men suggest that sex with your wife is like incest. Others can no longer look at their wives as women after they give birth and Saigo notes that the common Japanese custom of calling your wife “Okasan” (Mum) only makes matters worse. (If that strikes you as strange, here is the proof – a whopping 49% of married women call their husbands “papa” or “otosan”, too!).

Enough said about men. Following are some reasons for Japanese women not to be interested in sex (and Saigo’s advice on how to possibly alleviate this in your afflicted partner!)…

The importance of masturbation and understanding ones sexuality?
One reason for Japanese women and their uncomfortableness with their own sexuality is the taboo surrounding female masturbation. Masturbation is much less common in Japan than in the West and when they do it they definitely do not talk about it. Saigo points out that the reason why Sex and the City was so popular in Japan was that Japanese women wish that they could be outgoing and self-confident in such a sexual manner but in reality can only do it vicariously through television. Can you imagine Sex and the City being re-filmed in Japan with only a cast of Japanese women?

While it might not surprise you to learn that a lot of Japanese women don’t realise that they might have a libido, it will definitely shock you to hear that “many Japanese women have never even looked at their vagina!” We are talking very uncomfortable with sexuality here. It hits home. How could your wife ever tell you how to make her feel good if she doesn’t know how to do it herself. I guess that explains why Japanese women are always waiting for you to “lead.” The very fact that a Japanese word exists specifically to describe a women who lays down in bed and does absolutely nothing during the act (maguro) does say something about the anthropology of the Japanese, and project their perhaps subconscious expectations of sex. One of Saigo’s recent focuses is on removing the perceived barrier around masturbation by discussing it in public and encouraging Japanese woman to get to know their downstairs selves better.

But we had great sex before we got married…
So what about those of us who are puzzled about how sex could have dried up to nothing, when it used to be so great before marriage. How could it be true that our wives don’t know how to enjoy good sex if they were so frisky and experimental before we got married? Saigo suggests that many of those wives are just good actors. Especially when they are in the courting stage, it is natural for women to want to raise the excitement in the relationship. They want to make their time together with you enjoyable so put in an effort to make you happy – which means including some great sex. They aren’t really reaching orgasm but they don’t want to sour the mood by letting on. They have mastered faking their climax to make you feel like an alpha male. These girls don’t really know why women sometimes moan during sex but they’ve seen it on the late night ero-channel, and so feel inclined put on “a pout or a moan to try and make the experience feel more authentic”. But the reality is that unless your wife is a Grammy award winner then she’s not going to be able keep up that act year after year. The sad reality is that she probably wasn’t enjoying it before you got married either. She might not have been consciously using it as bait to get you hooked but it is no surprise that she doesn’t have the energy to keep up her acting forever, especially when kids come along.

Cultural backgrounds:
“Without being able to ask their friends, or their mothers for advice about sex, Japanese women have been forced to “learn” by copying the passive actions portrayed by women in Japanese porno movies”. In fact due to totally inadequate sex education in Japan (both in school and at home), porn flicks are the only guide that most Japanese men and women have about sex. This has created a self-perpetuating and extremely negative spiral that we are now paying the price for. Think about it. How often do you see a woman playing an active role in a Japanese adult video? It’s basically just male masturbation but using a female body instead of his hand. Do you see where I’m leading to with this? In fact Saigo was pretty blunt about it. Japanese men just don’t know how to fulfil a woman sexually. The flip side of that razor edged coin is that Japanese women never get the chance to realise that sex can actually be enjoyable. Men don’t enjoy it. Women don’t enjoy it. No wonder everybody seeks it outside of the home.

On Fuzoku:
So what about the oft quoted Japanese wife who doesn’t want her husband to have an affair but is totally happy with him going off to fuzoku (風俗, brothels) to satisfy his sexual needs. While I’m sure there were more than a few readers out there hoping that this was just a sign of the overly generous nature of Japanese women, Saigo offers a sobering explanation. The tribe of wives out there that send their husbands off for “happy endings” are a lot more calculating than we would have hoped and are suffering from a lot more than just being sexless. They’ve “lost all love for their husbands and are just doing the best to hold their families together” for their children, or to avoid the embarrassment of divorce. They know that if their hubbies get too involved in a love affair then it could well lead to divorce. Ironically, the whores that their husbands are using are doing the wives a far greater service than the desperate salarymen. The wives are able to keep their families together without having to “service” their husbands. Most of these wives “don’t even want to touch their husbands any more”, let alone tell them that they love them or have sex with them. If you’re wife is encouraging you to visit fuzoku then perhaps you need to start with marriage counselling before you sign up to slow sex classes (see below).

And what about the Anru-style virtue of necessity?
One of our readers specifically asked about Saigo’s view on the strategy of coming clean to your wife about your “fling” in order to try to win back her affection through jealousy. While it worked for Anru, she reckons that he was extremely lucky. Saigo regularly receives calls from women who are totally repelled by their husbands when they learn of their affairs, and struggle even more with any physical contact with them, feeling that they are “dirty”. In addition to the double edged sword of jealousy it can also destroy what little self-confidence your wife might have which could take years to rebuild.

Yeah, so what does all this mean for a gaijin trapped in a sexless marriage? Give me some specific advice…!

Communication:
The fact that you are worried about being sexless means that there is more than just something missing between the two of you. There is a good chance that your partner will be sensing a problem, too. The only way to get over this is to talk it all out and the best way is to hear your partner out first. Odds are that they are just as frustrated (maybe not about the same thing) as you. Saigo points out that the more and more she speaks to her patients, the more and more she realises that the problem isn’t just being sexless. Being sexless is just a symptom. The bigger problem is in the communication – or lack their of – between the couple. If it is too embarrassing to do it in person then she recommends that you write it down. All women have a soft spot for letters. It is also very hard for them to ignore something that they have read in a letter.

Perceptions of sex and one’s sexuality?
Saigo recommends that you try to redefine your Japanese partner’s perceptions of sex. The worst thing you can do is abuse her (or him) for not giving you sex. She recommends that you start by re-educating yourself. The more fun you can make it for your partner, the more likely she will be willing to try it more regularly. Saigo’s golden words of wisdom: “Sex isn’t just about ejaculation. Try making it all about exploring your partner and finding out how to make her feel good.” For those of you who can’t even get your partner in bed to change her perception, she recommends that you change your tactic from “You’re so selfish to hold back sex from me!” to “I’d like the opportunity to try a whole new method of sex that is more enjoyable for you”.

Adam Tokunaga - Slow Sex Courses

If you don’t think that you are quite up to signing up for one of his classes (he has various “introductory”, “practical” and “advanced” courses at approx 40,000 yen a session) or perhaps you don’t think your partner would be too understanding, the good news is that you can buy the DVD. Link on Amazon here.

Despite my original scepticism, what makes me think that this guy may really be the answer to our problems is the fact that he has released a copy of his book – a manual on how to perform “slow sex” in both English and Japanese. Thank you Adam! If you find that the English book strikes a chord, you can get the Japanese version for your partner:

“Slow Sex Secrets: Lessons from the Master Masseur” by Adam Tokunaga, English version and Japanese version.

Additional tools
Finally, we’d like to share a couple of additional books with you that Saigo recommended to us. Two of the three come in both English and Japanese so both you and your partner can comfortably read them and compare notes. Each of them focus on increasing the quality of your sex by giving you ideas on how to please your partner first.

“For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide To Reclaiming Your Sex Life” by Jennifer and Laura Berman sisters (バーマン姉妹のWOMEN ONLY―心もからだも満ちたりる愛しかた愛されかた), English version and Japanese version.

“Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion” By John Gray PhD (ジョン・グレイ博士の愛が深まる本―「ほんとうの歓び」を知るために), English version and Japanese version.

女医が教える 本当に気持ちのいいセックス (“Really Satisfying Sex As Can Only Be Taught By A Female Doctor”) by Miyon Son (宋 美玄), Japanese version only.

You can learn more about Saigo by reading her:
Blog
Twitter
Regular column at All About
New column in the magazine Chakra

Thanks:
We would like to thank Saigo-san for graciously spending the time with us, and letting us hurl your questions at her. She certainly was great fun to interview, and gave a fresh new aspect on our sexless debate.

While we’d appreciate it if you could leave your general comments about the sexless debate to our main Sexless Japan article, if you have any specific comments about this interview or questions that you would like us to ask Saigo in any follow up interviews then please let us know by contributing in the comments below here! We would love your feedback on the interview, and any angles you took on it.

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!