I must preface this post by saying that I am not really an anime or a Manga fan at all. I’m not trying to defend some cool kid image or anything, and I’m sure there is some perfectly entertaining and legitimate stuff out there amongst the sea of nerds, I’m just not really into it. That said, I do have a soft spot for Miyazaki films. There is a reason he’s called the Japanese Disney – the films he comes out with are magic. Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are fantastic, and I’m sure I’ll end up writing reviews about them as well someday.

Deemed by the Japan society as “The first Japanese anime anyone should watch”, Totoro tells the charming tale of two sisters who live in the countryside. Their mother is sick in hospital with some unnamed illness, so they live in a haunted house with their doting father and somewhat bizarre surrogate grandmother. Whilst her elder sister is at school, four year old Mei spots two weird, rabbit-like creatures frolicking in the grass. She charges around after them, eventually chasing them back into a giant tree in the centre of a small wood. There she meets and befriends a huge furry spirit creature, which she names Totoro. Eventually her sister meets the beast too, and between them they have plenty of lovingly animated adventures. I don’t want to go any further down the plot as the ending is heartwarming beyond belief, but it needs to be watched from a neutral point of view. What I will say is that one of the characters in the film is Catbus, which is a giant cat that serves as a bus. It’s actually quite scary…

Well, I did warn you. Anyway – this movie is incredibly warm and fuzzy. What I found most interesting about it is that it doesn’t follow your typical children’s movie plot. Whilst it does have all the main characters pulling together to solve a problem, the beauty and indeed the bulk of the film isn’t in the chase but in the build up. There’s an awful lot of character development, to the point where it’s much easier to identify with our Japanese heroines than Shrek, even from a Western perspective. The artwork is, of course, stunning. Miyazaki is renowned for his amazing style, and whilst it has developed with every film, Totoro still looks fantastic despite being nearly twenty years old.

The best element of this film for me is the soundtrack. I have to state now that I am a huge fan of composer Joe Hisaishi, who also worked on Spirited Away, amongst other things. Whilst I wouldn’t say it’s his greatest work (Spirited Away is, of course…) it is beautiful, and if you’re into your film scores or your orchestras, you could do a lot worse than pick up the orchestral soundtrack, although it’s not cheap.

Overall, I absolutely loved this film, and I am quite the critic when it comes to the silver screen. I don’t think you have to be an anime obsessive to enjoy it, because I enjoyed it and I know less about the genre than most. It’s as cute as all hell, but any film that can cause me to laugh like a four year old schoolboy is good in my books.

I wanted to write about what I’ve been studying at university. I know this has the potential to be a very boring post, but I’ll try to inject it with my usual balance of borderline funny jokes and insane ramblings. If you really can’t bear to read it, just rub your face against the screen – you’ll soon feel like I do after two hours of grammar conjugation.

My university has an incredibly intensive Japanese course – it’s famous for it’s drop out rate and general amount of stress put on it’s students. We currently have around sixty people taking the class, and the lecturers are expecting around thirty of us to graduate into the second year. They are expecting only around twenty of us to complete the entire course. It’s kind of strange making all these new friends, knowing that only one in three of them will be around four years from now. The reasons people drop out vary, but the usual reason is “it’s far too hard” or “it’s far too fast”, and it really is. We cover two or three new grammar points in an hour, and get just one hour to practice them in a classroom enviroment. After that, we’re on our own. If you don’t practice or understand it – tough luck.

This “tough love” approach is kind of daunting, and I know quite a few of my colleagues are somewhat put off by it. Personally, without sounding like a sadist, I am finding myself benefitting from this regime. Yes, it’s not much fun sitting in the library going over worksheets time and time again, but at least I’m doing it, consistently, for hours at a time every day. Something tells me if they were “coaxing us into” the language, I wouldn’t be nearly as motivated.

Anyway – the nightmare that is Japanese. The first rule is that we absoloutly had to know the two basic scripts of Japanese. We all took tests in both of them and thankfully, I passed. From the get go, everything written on the worksheets or by the students should not be in English, aside from personal notes. It’s quite difficult, but it has improved the speed and accuracy of my composition, which is a nice side effect. Sadly, it’s also turned me into a nervous wreck. Can’t win them all…

Personally, I’m struggling at the moment with the Katakana (foreign words) spelling. Things like Chocolate - is it チョコーレト, or is it ヨコッレト ? It’s really annoying that, even after a year living in Japan, I can make mistakes just as much as everyone else. I was looking over some notes I made during my gap year and I was horrified to find I’ve forgotten half of it. Scary stuff. (It’s チョコレート, by the way…)

In reguards to the speaking, I think I am keeping my head above water, although that may be on the grace of what I learned during my gap year. We are currently doing an アンケート (questionnaire), and my partner and I decided to do ours about alcohol. Our three questions went something like this;

1. きりんビールをのみますか.
Do you drink Kirin beer?

2. あなたはたいていどこでビールをかいますか.
Where do you normally buy beer?

3. わたしはごぜんん六時から九時までヴォッカをのみます.あなたは何時から何時までアルコールをのみますか.
I drink Vodka from 6am to 8am. What time do you normally drink alcohol?

The teachers were impressed at our questions although they did express distress at our drinking habits. Suprisingly, not one of the students we surveyed drinks Vodka at 6am. Those fools don’t know how to live!

Anyway, that’s what we’ve done so far in a nutshell. This week we’re doing yet more grammar, and then the whole vicious learn-repeat-study-consider suicide-learn-repeat cycle starts again. Wish me luck.

Food, food, glorious food. You know the drill by now. Everyone packs up their bags and charges off to a foreign country for a holiday, and before long you find yourself in a McDonalds, or whatever the local equivalent is – the only place you can find that the whole family will eat at. Or maybe you’ve gone to a country where eating some of the local delicacies will kill you. Luckily, Japan is a great place for adventurous eaters and those with frail appetites alike.

Staple Foods
Right, these are the things you eat if you’re hungry. The absolute golden rule at all times, no matter who you are or where you’re going, is that it’s always time for beer and Yakiniku. You can’t really go wrong here – Yakiniku is fried meat on a Japanese Korean (oops, thanks Crack!) style barbeque, often covered with delicious sauces, and is best accompanied by an ice-cold Kirin beer. It’s incredibly cheap and easy to eat, and if you’re coming to Japan to see the culture and society, well, you’ll not really see anything more “true Japan” than businessmen getting drunk over fried meat after work. If you’re not so daring, avoid Reba, Tan, Tetchan and Hatsu, which are Liver, Tounge , Intestine and Heart respectively. They are all delicious though and well worth trying. As for 1993, August 29th is “Yakiniku Day” according to the “All Japan Yakiniku Association”. I’m not sure if this is anything more than an excuse to eat it, but I’m not complaining.

Next up is Japan’s most famous food, Sushi. It comes in various shapes and sizes – the most famous being Makizushi, which is the circle ones with the fish in the middle. A word of warning though – Sushi is best eaten fresh. The quicker it gets from the chef to your mouth the better. If you’re not a fan of spicy food, you may want to avoid Nigiri-Zushi, which is the most common type in Japan, but contains a speck of Wasabi Sauce, (Japanese Horseradish) which is quite spicy.

The third and, in my opinion, the best staple food is Yakisoba - Fried Noodles. Best purchased from a friendly street vendor, the dish consists of a big lump of noodles, fried with a small amount of seasoning, and a bit of radish. Sometimes you get onions or something else chucked in too. I know it sounds dull but I reckon by the end of my year in Tokyo I was made up of at least 40% Yakisoba. It’s that good. Furthermore, it goes with absolutely anything, especially more Yakisoba. I cannot stress enough the wonder of the Soba.

Daring Foods
You’ve eaten Frog’s Legs, Snails or Dog or something, and you’re looking for a new challenge? Very well – Japan has quite a few dishes that will raise a few eyebrows. I promise you now two things – I’ve eaten all three of these foods, and I enjoyed all three. Up first is Basashi. This is raw horse meat. Wait, come back – it’s really good. It’s quite chewy, but I honestly think it’s worth persevering with, because it’s really tasty meat – full of flavor. I’m not sure how much I paid for it, but my wage in Japan was horrific so it can’t have been that much.

Secondly is Natto. Whilst it doesn’t come from a strange animal, the reason it made this list is because it absolutely reeks. It’s horrific. It’s basically rotting (or “fermenting”) bean paste, and is often eaten for breakfast. Frankly I couldn’t imagine facing this stuff before 6pm and a few pints, but it is quite tasty. Just eat it fast and whatever you do, don’t smell it before eating it. I only had it about twice in Japan, simply because if I’d eaten it in my apartment my flatmate would have evicted me.

Finally, we have my favourite Japanese food of all time – Takoyaki. This is a dumpling made of batter, with a chuck of diced octopus, some ginger and onion, and is topped with delicious sauce, mayonnaise and some fish shavings. I know – it sounds utterly disgusting and furthermore it looks like something you would want to throw a long way down a mineshaft. However it is absolutely godly if you like seafood – I often burnt my mouth on it simply because I didn’t want to wait. Best purchased from street vendors. Make sure you order in Japanese and try to say something about enjoying it – I netted myself a bonus piece because I did just that quite a few times. Deeeelicious.

There we are, then. Six foods to try whilst you’re over there. I’d just like to say right now that I hold no responsibility if you throw up. However, if you take my advice and like the food so much you want to relocate, I charge a flat fee of £100 ($200) for my services.

The Japanese Government has stated that it will start fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors from next month upon arrival, under stringent new security measures that have been criticized by civil rights advocates.

That’s right. Despite the Japanese foreign office being incredibly understaffed and poorly managed, the Japanese government see it fit to burden it with yet more work, aimed at making coming to Japan even more confusing and daunting than it already is. The new measures are supposed to come in on November 20th, and will immediately mean all over 16s entering the country will have all their prints taken, similar to the United States’ measures post 9/11.

The reason the Japanese government have decided to bring about these changes now is due to reports that the French Muslim militant Lionel Dumont managed to sneak into the country with a fake passport. I’m going to go ahead and put my neck on the line right now and state that even if Dumont had been photographed, what’s the chance of whichever poor security officer running the test actually realizing it’s him? The plan is for the fingerprinting to be electronic, which basically means foreign visitors have to wait around in an airport whilst prints are checked against a database of criminals.

I think just about everyone in the world can spot the human rights infringements here. Whilst I understand and support any country in actively seeking out criminals, working from a standpoint that “We’re only safe if every foreigner is on record” is not a measure against criminal activity, it’s simply promoting Xenophobia in the nation. For a country who’s tourism industry is actively trying to expand, these new rules make no sense at all.

So what alternatives are there? Japan already employs a strict immigration policy, with visas notoriously difficult to obtain and upkeep. Currently, short term visitors from most developed countries were not required to hold a Visa, but by adding their prints to a huge database, aren’t the government basically stating “But what if they turn into a criminal one day?” Considering it’s one of the most developed nations in the world, the crime rate is so low it seems as if these measures are simply being put in as a precaution, rather than as a solution. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. The country does a fine job when it comes to national security – one report should not result in an accusation of every non-Japanese as a potential troublemaker.

Ultimately, these measures are going to become more of a hindrance than a help to Japan. With Hong Kong and China rapidly becoming the tourist spots of choice, adding further reasons for people not to visit is simply illogical. Regarding people wishing to move to or continue living in the country, who are screwed over on an annual basis by the ridiculous “Gaijin Card” measures anyway, these new rules are simply another problem on the pile of being a foreigner in the country. Knowing her prints will immediately be entered onto a “Criminal Detector”, would you really want your mother visiting you?

For more info regarding immigrating to Japan, I advise you check out the <3 Yen blog.

Source: CNA