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!

Mince Cutlet Burger - Yokoji Hamburger Utsubo Koen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demiglace Photo on Menu

My Demiglace Burger

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phone: 06-6204-4548

Hours: 11:30AM-5AM

URL: www.yokoji-hamburger.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E-Commerce in Japan is a growing trend - and becoming accessible in English too

This increase in attention of online retail is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly, it (actually the internet in general) is a growth industry. People are moving online to shop at a rapid rate, and in the midst of the global recession, traditional concerns regarding security and privacy are taking a back-seat to convenience and price. In addition to this, the turmoil that has been brought about by the recession has brought strong attention to old and antiquated business models that are no longer going to work. Online retail offers cheaper overheads, cheaper marketing costs, and a growing global customer base, and therefore is emerging as one of the new beacons of hope in an otherwise fairly depressing global economy.

Online shopping has been firmly established in Japan thanks to the likes of early adopters such as Yahoo Japan and Rakuten, and also equally in part to the development of Japan’s lightning fast internet and amazingly reliable logistics industry (think Sagawa and Kuroneko Takkubin etc). It always amazes me how quickly these guys can get things to your door, even in the pouring rain! In fact, this infrastructure has allowed Amazon Japan to offer same-day delivery for some items ordered online over the Christmas season. Considering the actual time it takes to take an item from a shelf, throw it in a truck, and actually drive it to your door, there must be almost zero down-time, especially if you live in the sticks! Again, pretty amazing. Walmart in the US is offered a new drive-through service during Christmas, where shoppers could buy products online, and they were ready at the next drive-through window for shoppers to pick up. Close, but no cigar compared to Amazon Japan. Another area which has contributed to establishing online retail in Japan is Japanese companies’ focus on creating a reliable site and credibility with their customers, making the experience as safe and anshin (安心) as possible.

As global online retail sales increase, there are a growing number of small and innovative companies to carve out a piece for themselves and take on the likes of Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo Japan. However, while the barriers of entry are low, the costs of running an online retail business relatively low, and marketing costs (email and viral etc) can also be very low, the profit margins can also be low and therefore require a high turnover to stay in the game. It’s a typical snowball pattern, where it’s very difficult at the beginning, but if you can start gathering some pace, then the company can grow fast and it can be difficult to take down. First-mover advantage is also vital, especially in Japan. Due to these factors, it is hard to imagine anyone replacing Yahoo Japan or Rakuten in Japan in the near future.

However, giving the potential prize for the biggest snowball, and the global nature of the business, there are some fascinating innovations in the industry at the moment, providing ways to market more items to more people.

Recently many English Language sites are emerging - they offer the latest in Japanese fashion to the world, a market that more traditional Japanese language sites have so far failed to exploit

We also think that the market for supplying Japanese products to the rest of the world is increasing, and there are a bunch of new sites doing so in both English and Chinese.

Over 6 years old, Rinkya.com is possibly the oldest (and largest) company in this market, and has built a nice niche for itself. Rinkya is an English language online auction and shopping site based in Tokyo, which allows foreigners to bid for and buy items in English from Japan’s e-commerce sites such as Yahoo Japan and Rakuten. Rinkya layers a translation engine on top of the sites, so users can browse and buy in English. As this can be used on any online retail site in Japan, it gives users access to a huge selection of Japan’s products sold online. While those naysayers in the translation industry or those who have been in Japan for a while will say that machine translations are still too primitive and will never be perfect, Rinkya has proved that they are in fact sufficient for an effective level of interaction, and that form indeed follows function. Interestingly, Rakuten, Nissen (through jshoppers.com) and others are now trying to do the same thing with limited success. We put this down to their lack of understanding of how to market to and how to handle a foreign client base.

Following Rinkya’s lead, the number of companies trying to bridge the gap between Japan and overseas, is growing. Netprice (again), began last year providing a Japanese language service Tenso.com to post items from Japan overseas for Japanese who had bought things online from Yahoo or Rakuten, who didn’t post directly at that time. Based on this success, they then took the next step and early in 2009, launched into China, through cooperation with Alibaba, to sell their wealth of Japanese goods into China in Chinese through Alibaba’s online retail site Taobao.com.

In addition, sites such as HanbuyJapan.com, Flutterscape.com, and Japantrendshop.com care of trend consultants CScout, are trying various approaches to promote Japanese good overseas. Despite the state of the economy, the mind-set of Japanese is likely to remain the same in terms of a focus on making quality products. And with the growth rates of global online retail and the further expansion of the internet itself, we expect to see more innovative sites and ideas in the near future. Take a look at a few of the sites above, they offer an excellent range of quality Japanese goods, at competitive prices, and best of all – in English!

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

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

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

Shop front of Pocke Farm in Okinawa

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

Open deck seating at Pocke Farm scores high on atmosphere points

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

Pocke Farm - Thick 'n' Chunky Spam Sandwich

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

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

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

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

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

Hours: 11AM-10PM

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

The New Keisei Skyliner Express - Tokyo to Narita Airport in just 36 minutes - but what's the catch?

Seems too good to be true.

So what’s catch? Well the first, and rather predictable, piece of fine print is how they measure the travel time. 36 minutes is the time needed to travel from Nippori （日暮里駅）to Narita’s Terminal 2 Station (空港第2ビル駅). Presumably if you get on at Ueno （上野駅）and have to use Terminal 1 （成田空港）then it will take closer to 40 minutes. That itself is not a deal breaker. Perhaps the bigger problem for most of us is the location of Keisei’s existing stations in Nippori and Ueno. Unless you live on the Yamanote Line (山手線) or in one of the many cardboard boxes in Ueno Park, neither are really that benri (便利, convenient.) It doesn’t help that JR’s Nippori Station is one of the only JR stations in the capital to have neither an escalator nor an elevator. Even if the new Keisei Nippori Station will be completely barrier free like they are promising, it is of little consolation to those of us who have to lug our family’s heavy suitcases up the stairs on the JR side in order to get there.

Here is the detailed PR video (in Japanese) that will give you a run-down of more details:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Narita Sky Access – 36 minutes/2400 yen/62.0km Between Nippori and Narita:
The new train will be known officially as: “Narita Sky Access” (成田スカイアクセス), and the fare from Nippori to Narita Airport will be consistent with the current Keisei offering of 2400 yen. This makes it not only faster than JRs N’EX (Narita Express) offering, but also cheaper.

The next best news – apart from cutting off 15 minutes from the existing travel time – is that trains will be really frequent. In addition to the 3 express trains (特急) that will continue to run the existing (51 minute) route to the airport from Ueno, there will be 3 Sky Liners and 3 express trains running every hour on the new route. That’s 9 trains an hour to Narita from Ueno. That’s even better than Hong Kong’s Airport Express (機場快綫, 5 trains per hour) which anyone who has used will agree is a very efficient system. How will the Narita Express (N’EX) be able to compete with its frustrating 2 trains per hour timetable? (Currently Keisei has 55% of the market for train passengers to Narita but this is bound to increase post 2010.)

Inside the new Keisei Skyliner

Apparently the government isn’t too happy about this as the Transport Ministry (国道交通省, kokudokotsusho) want to cut the travel time between Narita and Haneda dramatically before the runway expansions planned at each airport are completed in 2012. Fat chance of that. Keisei’s management have made it clear that it would be impossible without more tunnel space at some key stations on the subway line that would enable an express train to overtake the normal slower trains. But hold on a second, the government is talking about shaving off over 40 minutes from the current travel time (106 min à 65 min). That’s going to take more than just a bit of improvising underground near Asakusabashi (浅草橋駅).

So I can hear you thinking it over. What if they did get their act together and link Narita and Haneda with a high-speed express train? Would I use it? Is the Asakusa Line really that much more helpful compared to say catching a bus from Narita to a more convenient location? This is the icing on the cake for those of you who plan to be in Tokyo long term. Unless Hatoyama scraps it, the government will start including funds in their budget from this year enough to build a new station on the Asakusa Line that links it directly to Tokyo Station (東京駅) by 2015. Nice. I’m not quite sure how it would work exactly. It’s supposed to be somewhere between Takaramachi (宝町駅 ) and Nihonbashi (日本橋駅) but that smells to me of another long, sweaty underground walk like they have at the existing Nihonbashi station for the Asakusa Line. It all sounds a little too aggressive to me. I don’t think I would bank on it being completed on time especially since Ishihara wasn’t successful with his bid for the 2016 Olympics. Fat chance.

Ueto Aya at the kick-off press conference of the New Skyliner

But doesn’t that just strike you as poor planning? Why on earth wouldn’t JR have extended the shinkansen to reach Narita? They could have at least built their existing line on a wider gauge size so that they could potentially upgrade it one day. Funny you should ask. I’d always blamed this gross inefficiency on the ex-bureaucrats at JR but it turns out we have the selfless Japanese people to blame for that hour of pain we experience every time we travel out to Narita. Yep, the bureaucrats had it right. The national government actually approved the construction of a Narita Shinkansen (成田新幹線) and even purchased acres of land in Tokyo and Chiba before the idea was scrapped. At the time, the politically powerful residents of East Tokyo, Chiba and also the left-wing were up in arms at the idea of building a noisy train through their backyards that wouldn’t even stop near their houses. Sounds like that old lady who refused to sell her house to the Narita Airport and now lives right under the flight path of the second runway. Edogawa Ward (江戸川区) actually took the Minister for Transport (運輸大臣) to the Supreme Court in order to stop the construction!!

If you’ve ever gone to Disneyland then I’m sure you’ve wondered why the underground station for the Keiyo line (京葉線) at Tokyo Station is in such an inconvenient place? Well that “hole in the ground” was originally planed for the shinkansen station (as they were going to continue it through to Shinjuku). After canceling the shinkansen the government had to come up with an excuse to “use” the hole and hence we have the Keiyo Line. They also spent 90 billion yen building a meaningless piece of track from Narita to Tsuchiya (土屋) called the Narita Airport High Speed Rail. Oh, and you guessed it. It was completed 15 years behind schedule AND wasn’t even high speed! Because they built it on small 1067mm tracks, Keisei has had to build another wider line right next to it in order to complete their real “High Speed” railway! Gotta love JR.

I wonder how much the new train will cost passengers to use. The Hokuso Line that it will be an extension of is pretty expensive at the moment (It currently costs 1070 yen just to get from Nippori to Imba Nippon Medical School (印旛日本医大駅, Imbanipponidai) which is about the price you pay to get all the way to Narita on the existing Keisei line if you don’t use the Sky Liner. But hey, even if it costs 3,000 yen like the Narita Express it is still probably worth it for returning that extra 15 minutes of your life that JR robs from us each time. And I’m sure that the regular express will be cheaper for the day before pay day.

Here is the plan, for where the new track will run. It really seems to cut a beeline for the airport:

So back to my original worry: Where should I live? Well, if I could bare living out in the boondocks, I guess the obvious places where land prices are likely to rise are where the new express (特急) is scheduled to stop: Takasago (高砂駅), Shin-Kamagaya (新鎌ヶ谷駅), Chiba New Town Central (千葉ニュータウン中央駅), Imba Nippn Medical School and Narita New Town North (成田ニュータウン北駅). Hmmm. That’s a tough call. Nothing against those of you living in Chiba but it just feels soooo far away from it all!

I feel like I’m back at square one. What’s it like living in Takasgo? Where do you think I should live? I look forward to your comments below.

Official site for more information: www.new-skyliner.jp

screen shot of the eco-oto iPhone app (30 second flush selected)

Now, thanks to the “eco-oto” (“エコ音”, which is short for “ecological sound”) iPhone app, you no longer have to feel embarrassed that someone is hearing you take a whiz in a public toilet. Do I hear you saying “Why on earth would I be embarrassed fulfilling a call of nature?” Well there are a few things that you need to know about Japan.

Japanese women are very self-concious about the noise that they make in the bathroom. Maybe it is because there are so many other women hanging out in front of the mirrors doing other things that it is no longer deemed appropriate to have a whiz (or whatever..) in a public toilet anymore. Whatever reason it may be, many toilets in Japan come equipped with a “sound” button on their control panel (if you don’t know why Japanese toilets have a control panel then you have a little catching up to do but unfortunately that it out of scope of this article!). When you press the “sound button” these toilets will play a recording either of some music, or more likely, they replicate the sound of a flushing toilet. The idea is that this sound will drown out the noise of you “fulfilling your duty” on the commode, and hence quash the embarrassment factor of taking a slash.

close up of a real Japanese toilet with a button for making a fake flushing sound

But, there is a problem. Not all public toilets have these cool futuristic control panels. While some people scope out public toilets in advance to make sure that they always know where a safe and noisy toilet is nearby, how embarrassing would it be if you got stuck in a public toilet without such a button!? Well that is what this iPhone app is all about. At the touch of your screen, your iPhone will replicate the sound of… well, a flushing toilet.

The app, which has been on sale in the Apple iPhone app store since last Thursday 5th Nov (link to iTunes Appstore), is designed to be cute and pink and the buttons are large and easy to press so you can even press them if you have long nails. For people who tend to be louder than average, or perhaps for those days after a great curry you can even increase the volume of your simulated flushing sound (think Niagra falls). Better still, you can choose between “flushing water” for 30, 60, 90 and 120 seconds depending on your mood. I personally have no idea how people would ever know which to choose. More to the point, shouldn’t there be a 5 minutes option?

the button to make a flushing sound is big enough to be pressed using the palm side of your finger in case you have long, fancy nails.

The app costs 115 yen or 99 cents and is semi-bilingual (it comes with hilarious Jinglish translations). You can download the app by using this direct link to the iTunes Appstore. Flushed with pride, the company responsible for this app – polygonmagic.com – also made this press release:
http://www.polygonmagic.com/business/ip-ecooto.html.

It’s quite funny, and apart from some of the features mentioned above, Eco-Oto also has the following selling points:

• Very easy for girls to carry around, with a cute & stylish design (its an app for Christ’s sake, how can it not be easy to carry around if you already have the iPhone!)
• Sound level that you use is automatically saved for next time (where would be be without that?)
• The pink dotted indicators slowly flush in towards the middle, to indicate how much more flush time you have (theoretically, this should be longer than your own “steady stream time”)
• The flush button flashes 10 seconds before the sound finishes (to warn you to put the squeeze on the flow – and here I was thinking that this would be delayed until version 2.0!)
• Easy for beginners (well, there is a first time for everything I guess)

Maybe it’s just me but I see this as being the first of a plentitude of similar apps. Just think of the power of the iPhone functionality. You could have one app which created a map of all of the people flushing toilets throughout Japan. Perhaps people could have another button that you press when you didn’t need to use the app so apple could create a nationwide map pointing out user-friendly toilets from embarrassing ones!

Better yet they could create an SNS which alerts you when your friends and other people are flushing nearby… or perhaps it alerts you when they enter a toilet and haven’t started flushing so that you can assist them remotely!? The possibilities are endless.

Do you think you’d ever use an app like this? Is the saving that embarrassment really worth 99 cents? Who on earth are you embarrassed about being heard by anyway? Better yet, share with us in the comments section your ideas for new toilet apps and maybe we can convince the developers to release a stippy toilet app!?