Tokyo Times

Photographs from a small group of islands

Current Affairs

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Tokyo eatery extra?

With Japan’s stuttering birth rate staying stubbornly low, and an estimated one million centenarians predicted to be pottering about by 2050, this rapidly greying nation is in grave danger of degenerating into a giant geriatric home. A situation that the government is acutely aware of, causing it to create a Minister of Declining Birth Rate; however, at 34 years of age, and boasting only one baby, department head Yuko Obuchi is going to have to really start cranking out the kids if she’s going to have any kind of statistical significance.

Yet looking on the bright side, this relative rarity does mean that children may well start to actually create money rather than merely cost it, with this pioneering restaurant swapping the selling of soba to siblings. An opening offer of ‘buy one, get a brother free’ rather boldly getting the ball rolling.

Tokyo restaurant

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Japan’s lack of fondness for foreigners?

When it comes to Japan’s more hands-on means of amusement, non-Japanese are not always welcome — the bath-based satisfactions of soapland being especially well known for its racial restrictions. A policy that this maid-themed massage place in particular has taken to heart, making sure that foreigners know in no uncertain terms how unwelcome they are before they’ve even dared walk through the door.

Tokyo maid soapland

However, somewhat more surprising is the far from favourable feelings towards foreigners expressed by Japan’s tourist industry. As, despite the nation’s continually touted Yokoso! Japan (Welcome!) campaign, a recent survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs has discovered that a lot of hotels and inns are more than content to accommodate only their countrymen:

Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs says over 70 percent of Japanese inns and hotels that didn’t have foreign guests last year don’t want any in the future either. The ministry says that a survey of such businesses showed they feel unable to support foreign languages and that their facilities are not suited to foreigners. The survey released Thursday shows that over 60 percent of Japan’s inns and hotels had foreign guests last year, but the majority of the rest don’t want any.

A set of figures that if nothing else must please ex-Tourism and Transport Minister Nariaki Nakayama, who was forced to resign after — among other things — claiming that Japanese people were “ethnically homogeneous” and “definitely … do not like foreigners.” Although at the same time, with such strong support from certain sections of society, he may well feel that his decision to step down was happen a bit hasty.

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Japanese middle-class meltdown?

With the likes of Nomura Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui currently delving into their cash-rich coffers to buy up large bits of Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, it would seem that, for now at least, Japanese institutions may ride out the subprime storm relatively unscathed.

The tremors felt by the nation as a whole may also be as negligible, although perhaps only because the workforce has been suffering spasms of change for quite some time now. Once considered an almost middle-class mass, Japanese society would seem to be slowly fracturing, with the rift between rich and poor becoming increasingly pronounced. A situation hastened by the jettisoning of jobs for life and a rapidly growing number of part-time personnel, resulting in a worrying amount of working poor.

However, while many of these people may be anxious about missing the middle-class boat entirely, there are also now countless others who can’t even manage the most mundane methods of mobility.

Japanese homeless

Whether it be upwards or merely onwards.

Japanese homeless

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Japanese weight watchers

The term metabolic syndrome is now a much used media mainstay in Japan, and, as well as anyone a little meaty now being known as ‘metabo’, those weighing in with waists considered a bit wobbly — over 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 for women — will initially receive government ordered dietary guidance, or even re-education, if a reduction isn’t realised.

A situation that, while undoubtedly well intentioned, has resulted in those even a fraction flabby feeling the full force of all the fat-related fuss, with even little (or even not so little) ‘uns being similarly singled out.

Like this young fella for example. As, if a belittling day by the bench wasn’t bad enough, there was even the affront of being photographed by a funny-looking foreigner.

chubby Japanese kid

(click image for, erm, bigger batter)

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Japanese tubbiness and tattoos

The Japanese media’s somewhat excessive coverage of Metabolic Syndrome — the phenomenon formerly known as getting fat — has presumably played a huge part in pharmacies being full of suspiciously effective fat-fighting supplements, big companies bullying their staff into battling the bulge and even government ministers bravely baring their midriffs. Plus, anyone carrying even the most meagre amount of extra meat is now rather meanly marked as ‘metabo’.

However, for those not embarrassed about their bulging bellies, and at the same time brazenly prepared to say bollocks to such badgering, what better way to embrace the fact than by having it beautifully emblazoned?

Japanese tattoos