Japan Is Doomed

Sometimes, and it is pretty rare, a news headline pops up on my Google page that literally forces me to stop doing everything I’m meant to be getting on with and read it. The crying baby sumos managed to stop me studying Kanji for an hour, as did the pen-spinning championships. Usually when this happens the story is quite good, and often I can turn it into an article here on JID.

This one was no exception. According to the BBC;

A Japanese company is developing a vending machine that counts wrinkles and skin sags to check a smoker’s age.

It plans to use face recognition technology to prevent anyone under the legal age of 20 buying cigarettes.

That’s right! Whilst I’m not a smoker I do pity my poor friends who, when they run out of cigarettes and need to buy some more, need to spend a few minutes standing in front of a vending machine trying to look old. The problem is pretty rife in Japan, a lot of school kids do smoke, but there must be a more logical solution. Oh, hang on… this was in the same article;

Purchasers who failed a digital camera “age test” would need to show the machine an ID card to establish they were legally allowed to smoke.

So hang on. You have to do the digital camera thing first, and if that fails then go on to insert a card into the machine? Am I the only one who sees the logical flaw here? I’m not exactly the most devious person (believe it or not…) but if I were 16 and wanted a smoke I’d probably get someone who looked older than me to stand in front of the camera. Something tells me it’s a lot easier to trick the camera than the card reader.

The company says the system gets it right in nine out of ten cases. The remaining 10% would be sent to a “grey zone for baby-faced adults” where they would be asked to insert their driving licence or identification card.

“Get your smokes here! Anyone over 20 welcome! Unless you look quite young, in which case welcome to what we professionals call the baby-faced adults grey zone”. Doesn’t really have much of a ring to it. I say people who fail the test should be sent to a government building, where they have their face rubbed with sandpaper until they look older. Problem solved!

There is one glaring omission on the part of the developers. You see, whilst it may work 9 times out of 10 at spotting that people are old enough, what about children who look older than they are? I can see kids walking around Tokyo with clothing pegs all over their faces trying to make wrinkles. Plus, you know who else would be able to get away with underage smoking?

This guy would have no problems fooling these machines! (Unless there’s a “No smoking for people with tiny eyes” rule in action!)

So I’m sorry guys, but it doesn’t look like these new machines are the way forward. Too many old looking kids and rhinos smoking in the streets. Keep trying, though! How about a vending machine that smokes for you? All the enjoyment, none of the side effects!

When I headed off to teach in Japan, I hadn’t had much training. As we were teaching assistants, it never really fell to use to manage a classroom for long periods of time. As long as we were effective and tried hard, we tended to get pretty good results and the classrooms in general were pretty well behaved.

Now obviously, I don’t know the stresses of running a homeroom class. Not only teaching those kids, but dealing with things like bullying, applying to university, their parents and so on. That must be quite a tiring job if you’re looking after 40 of the little monsters. But even if they got really out of hand, you probably wouldn’t end up doing something like this;

A schoolboy and his parents have filed a lawsuit seeking 10 million yen in damages for emotional distress after a teacher announced him as the most disliked person in his class, based on a survey, it was learned Saturday.

The boy attends a junior high school in Chiba. In April 2005, when he was in his fourth year of elementary school, the teacher in charge of his class at the time made the students list up the names of classmates they liked and disliked.

Now stop me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s very effective teaching. Generally most teachers run surveys like “What do you like about the cafeteria?” or something, but “Which kid should we all dislike?” probably won’t promote classroom harmony. According to the article the kid went on to get bullied and ended up changing school. I hope he gets the money, and I hope the teacher loses their job. Maybe I’ll start my own questionnaire and send it to that homeroom class. “Who thought that was a dumb idea?” Perhaps.

I looked all over the net but sadly I couldn’t seem to come across a copy of the questionnaire itself, which is a shame. So instead here’s my interpretation of how it may have read.

Dear Students;

Hello there! It’s your teacher Dr. Bizarro here. As I’m sure you’re aware, surveys are very important here in school. I’d like to thank you all for your responses to ‘Should we put laxatives in 1 in every 20 school meals?’ and ‘Who likes low hanging unprotected electric wires?’.

So many great changes have happened because of our surveys; as you know the second floor cafeteria now has hundreds of bees’ nests in it, and everyone over on the 5th floor tell me they really like how we covered the walls in extra strong adhesive glue! So to further improve your school life, we’re running a new survey. Please fill it in and hand it to me by 3pm!

Your Name:
Your Class:

1. Who, in your homeroom class, do you dislike the most? _______________

2. If the student voted least popular in question number one left the school and tried to sue us, do you think they would win the lawsuit? [YES / NO]

3. We’re thinking of welcoming new students into the school by savagely beating them on their first day. Do you think this would help them fit into their new school? [YES / NO]

4. Who likes searing heat on a daily basis? I know I do! Please select if you would like us to channel hot lava around the basement floor of the school. [YES / NO]

5. Our school uniform is very well liked by students and we seek to make it better. You know what would be better? Clogs. Do you want clogs? [YES / NO]

6. The school anthem is a little dull, isn’t it? So instead of singing songs, how would you like to have to rip out chunks of your hair whilst screaming at your parents? [YES / NO]

7. The cafeteria food is being changed from next month. Please select the type of food you would most like eating. [SEWAGE / SPIDERS / THE OLD SCHOOL UNIFORMS, BOILED]

Thanks for filling in the questionnaire! I’ll be sure to tally up the results as soon as possible, and let you know by writing the results on a student’s forehead! Don’t forget to bully them!

Thanks,

Dr. Bizarro

Those poor kids.

Good old Japan Probe did an article recently about Japanese Salaries, and how much various professions make. Now whilst I’m all for enjoying your job over getting money, I thought it had quite a few interesting entries I wasn’t expecting. Note that the way the team behind it got the data was pretty rubbish - they asked one person from each profession. But poor data has never stopped me before! I’ve only kept the interesting ones, the rest are available on Japan Probe’s article. All pay is in USD so everyone sort of knows how much it is.

New TV “talent” $9,000
Surprisingly low, really. I suppose by talent they might mean people who appear on game show programs and have to try eating horse ears or something.

Stuntman $20,000
Again, another surprise. This is possibly the most dangerous job on the list and yet it’s not very well paid. To be honest, I think I’d rather do the next job on the list for double the pay…

Ice cream salesperson $40,000
It’s not enough! Ice Cream is on of the most important products in the world! It’s part of a balanced healthy diet! (Carbohydrate, Protein, Sugars, Starch and Choc Chip).

Portrait artist $50,000
Probably not the ones who sit along beach piers and boast of their hilarious ability to make you look weird.

Creator of food samples $70,000
What an awesome job. It’s not clear, but I assume it’s the people who produce the plastic food that sit outside restaurants and so forth. I think they deserve the money, those little plastic bowls of Ramen look delicious

Takoyaki shop owner $100,000
They deserve triple what they make simply because Takoyaki is the best food ever. Much better than Ramen. Wait, hang on…

Ramen store owner $300,000
Boo! Although if you can get Takoyaki at the store then that changes everything. Someone should invent TakoRamen. Maybe I should.

Manga creator $500,000
Good grief, I was expecting them to make a 10th of this. I assume this guy probably makes the Pokemon manga or something, because if everyone who draws those things make this much I’m going to drop out now and start writing Japan Is Doomed: Cute Animals And Fighting Ninjas 5000.

So then, if you make Manga you will earn twenty five times as much as a stuntman. That’s just not right, and for that reason, where is “Junten Volunteer”? Probably not in the top 40,000. Oh well, one day…

After a week or so of university related updates, I think it’s time for a return to my social commentary updates, and what better way to return to the exciting world of Japanese news than with this fantastic story;

An annual “crying sumo” contest for babies, in which pairs of infants are brought together to see who can cry the first or the loudest, was held at Tokyo’s Sensoji Temple on Sunday.

Sensoji. I’ve been there. I can’t remember if there were any crying children there or not, but I would assume if there was, the parents would have been frantically trying to stop their child from disturbing other visitors, right? Well, apparently one day a year the parents do the very opposite.

As you can see, these kids thought this crying thing was nonsense and were having none of it. I have to admit, I’d probably take a similar approach. Apparently, however, if the kids don’t start crying the people running the show don scary masks to make them cry. To be honest, I think just explaining to them exactly why they were being held up in the air would be enough to set most kids off. “You messed up my daily routine of crying and running around for this!?”

So whilst some kids didn’t cry, others took the “quicker I cry, quicker it’s over” approach, and appropriatly turned on the waterworks;

I feel the best way to stop this madness would be for the kids to all go on strike, but I do not mean any disrespect to the kid on the right in that photo. The poor thing is not letting the team down at all, because the man who is looking at hime there is the scariest man in the entire world.

Prepare yourself.

Aah! I think I’m going to start crying! Look at him! He clearly feeds on the tears of children! I like his hat though. Still, I don’t feel I’d be comfortable allowing the Elf of bad dreams here wander around listening to the screams of my baby child. That’s just me, though.

Of course, it’s all in good fun and I’m sure nobody takes it too seriously. Their website suggests the crying competition is just part of a big festival, and serves only as a bit of light entertainment. But come on guys, can’t we have something more normal like running races or Super 100m Beetle Back Janken Sumo Pen Spinning? I know which I’d rather see.

Thanks to CNN/Getty Images for the photos.