Tim Patrick's Blog, page 2

Does Japan Have Too Many People?

Anyone who cares about Japan and its people knows that it is going through some demographic turbulence right now. A large baby-boom population entering its twilight years is clashing with those in their twenties and thirties who aren’t in any hurry to start families. Not only is the number of residents destined to fall precipitously, the ratio of taxpayers (the young) to those drawing government support (the elderly) will increasingly get out of whack, putting more pressure on the government to raise taxes, increase benefits, and PLEASE, PLEASE, DO SOMETHING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM!(6 more paragraphs)

Do Foreign Residents in Japan Have an Obligation to Fit In?

I participate in a variety of online groups where foreigners living in Japan mingle to discuss their experiences. Recently, in one such group, a foreign resident posted an anecdote about his work environment. His boss is an older Japanese gentleman, and each day when the employee arrives at work and gives a cheerful “Good Morning,” his boss responds with a minimal nod, but no spoken return greeting. The worker felt this was the height of rudeness, possibly even discrimination, and the comments from other expats generally took the form of, “Your boss is a (insert insult or expletive here)!”(9 more paragraphs)

Increasing Japan’s Birthrate Through Better English

There is a very amusing skit by the late Japanese comedian Shimura Ken where he plays a befuddled high school English teacher assigned to a class full of native English speakers. When these clearly American students recite perfectly from the textbook, Shimura corrects their readings, reminding them, for example, that the word “father” is pronounced “faah-daah” in his class.(7 more paragraphs)

Why Isn’t Japan Political?

I moved to Japan in part to get away from all the politics. America, in its modern incarnation, is politics on steroids. The old adage, “All politics is local,” was once linked primarily to elections, a reminder to elected officials to keep the focus on their constituents. But these days, the new motto is, “Everything is political,” where something as mundane as what you had for lunch can quickly spiral into us-versus-them invective. Japan is blessedly free of these excesses.(8 more paragraphs)

Japan and the Gender Gap Information Gap

As I was browsing through some online news reports last week, I learned that Japan is an oppressive patriarchal hellscape. It’s just so sad, and so unexpected. I mean, you wouldn’t know it from wandering around the country. If you waltz into any coffee shop in Japan, you see throngs of highly educated women dressed head-to-toe in the latest, trendy fashions. Between sips of exotic blended caffeinated beverages and bites of France-inspired pastries, they chat blithely about all the things that make life a never-ending fascination. Who knew that under all that frivolity, they were living a dystopian Handmaid’s Tale-esque nightmare?(9 more paragraphs)

The Burger Kingification of Japan

Japan is great at standardizing things. Whether it is Just-In-Time manufacturing processes in an automobile factory or the shuffling of paperwork at city hall, organizations in Japan are adept at creating and adhering to procedures that, in normal situations, work every single time. It’s that “in normal situations” part that is the gotcha. Those famous procedures succeed in large part because they define a clear, well-orchestrated, socially understood path that relies on all parties conforming to expectations at every step in the process. When someone comes in who won’t—or can’t—conform, those processes can go haywire.(11 more paragraphs)

The Kinds of Meetings You Meet in Japan

If you are like me, you have way too many meetings. There are productive meetings in this world—or so I’ve heard. Rather, many meetings start out with no clear agenda, cover ground that was already dealt with in prior sessions, or are filled with people who are unsure about the purpose of the meeting. Fortunately, Japan has a partial solution to this: meeting names! (4 more paragraphs)

That Time Some Guy Said, “You’re Not Japan’s Emperor, I Am!”

You history buffs out there might recall that the mid-1940s was a busy time for Japan. With the empire’s defeat at the end of World War II, the Allied victors were in a position to make sweeping changes to the country’s governance. Perhaps the most monumental was the conversion of the emperor’s status from holy ruler to a constitutionally limited symbol of the state. This effectively reduced the number of activities that would qualify as crimes of lèse-majesté, opening up exciting new opportunities for usurpers and claimants to the throne.(5 more paragraphs)

The Sad, Sad Tale of a Major Japanese Bank

Once upon a time, there was a young American boy who grew up to become a handsome prince. Oh wait, this isn’t a fairy tale. That young boy actually turned into a middle-aged computer programmer with a face for radio. And then he moved to Japan where, as related in one of my earlier articles, he took a Japanese last name via Japan’s legal alias system. Little by little, he updated his name on business cards, at online shops, and on utility bills. He even got approval from the National Tax Agency to use the new name on next year’s tax forms.(11 more paragraphs)

Making Japanese Babies Great Again

Back in March, I posted an article about Japan’s declining birthrate, identifying the nation’s key demographic concern and offering the kind of random suggestions that you might expect from an old guy past his child-rearing prime. When I uploaded that missive, I had not yet encountered “Birthgap,” a documentary that is must-viewing for anyone concerned about the impact of population decline in Japan and beyond.(11 more paragraphs)