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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salt - Are you getting enough?

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

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

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

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

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

Natural Sea Salt Production

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

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

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

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

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

Yumenoshima - Likely the only tropical waterfall in Tokyo

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

Yumenoshima Tropical Rainforest - glasshouse with huge palm trees inside

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

Pineapples growing in the middle of Tokyo

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

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

Playing with Kapla in the Yume-no-heya

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

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

Colosseum of grass at Yumenoshima

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

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

Behind the tropical waterfall at Yumenoshima

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

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

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

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

How Yumenoshima Tropical Rainforest gets heated from burning your rubbish

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!

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?