Q. What is your name and where are you originally from?
My name is Roxanne Modafferi. I was born in Delaware, and grew up in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Q. How did you become a professional fighter?
I started doing Tae Kwon Do (like karate) in middle school, then the more full contact Judo in high school, and then in college, I got into MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) aka “Ultimate fighting.”

Q. What is a professional fighter?
A professional fighter is someone who is a specialist in combat techniques, whether it be striking like boxing, or wrestling/grappling techniques, or a mix of those two. They fight a single opponent in a ring or cage and receive compensation.

Q. What types of martial arts do you train in?
I’ve done TKD, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai and Kickboxing, but now focus on MMA, submission grappling.

Q. When and how did you decide to go to Japan?
I want to learn Japanese to use in a career, and I decided that before entering college. After four years at the University of Massachusetts, my Japanese skills were good, but not good enough to do a job like interpreting, so I decided to take an English teaching job in Japan. That way at least I’d be immersed in the culture and language. I could also train at a famous dojo/gym and continue my fighting career along side other professional fighters.

Q. How are the “dojo cultures” different in Japan, compared to your (American?) Dojo.
It depends on the dojo. I think in American dojos and gyms, there are specific trainers who focus on certain things (such as kickboxing, or conditioning or diet) to build their fighters. In Japan, the pro fighters tend to just train together- it’s kind of old fashioned. I wish I had a trainer to pay special attention to me and focus more on my weak points.

Q. How do you think martial arts fits into the Japanese culture?
Fighting and the competitive spirit is a big part of the culture, I think. The samurai warrior remains a respected figure and symbol of honor and order. Nowadays, strong pro fighters are also put on a pedestal. The average person knows about the most famous MMA fighters, like Kazushi Sakuraba, and a it’s one of the top sports to watch, like going to a baseball game. Also, all high schoolers have to do Judo or Kendo sword fighting in high school, so everyone is introduced to some kind of martial arts in their lives.

Q. What has it been like being a gaikokujin living in Japan?
It’s been okay for me since I speak Japanese, but people who can’t have it rougher. I live in Tokyo where people are used to seeing foreigners. However, out in the country, you get stared and discriminated against as an outsider who doesn’t belong. That sucks. But everyone has always been polite to me in Tokyo, and I don’t feel like I really stand out.

Q. Perhaps even more importantly, what is it like being the only gaikokujin at your dojo?
Yes, I am the only gaikokujin in my dojo. Again, since I speak Japanese, I can communicate and people are friendly. Sometimes I feel like I can never completely become “one” of them. But mostly, if you train hard, sweat and bleed with people, they accept you. I’ve made many friends, and I adore my dojo.

Q. Where’s your favorite place to go relax after a long day of training?
After training, it takes me a hell-ish hour and a half of standing up on the train to get home. So I drag myself to bed. If I do have free time during the day or morning, I like to sit in front of my computer and blog, watch anime online, or go shopping. I love grocery stores because they have such weird-looking stuff like fish that you can’t get in the States. Sometimes I go to the markets just to look around and laugh at the weird stuff.

Q. Does your Sensei regale to you stories about Bob Sapp to scare the students into training harder?
Actually, Bob Sapp isn’t that popular anymore. And at my current dojo, we don’t really have a sensei. We have pro fighters who take turns ‘instructing’ the beginner’s class, and then after that, the pros just train together. They’re scary enough.

Q. What’s it like for women to fight in Japan?
It’s really hard for women to find fights in Japan nowadays. Women MMA fights are becoming more popular in the States (Gina Carano in Elite EX, for example), but the Japanese organizations aren’t hosting enough shows. We need the public to be more aware of female fighters and support us!

Q. Any advice for someone who wants to follow in your footsteps as a gaikokujin professional fighter?
Visas are a major obstacle for fighters. Otherwise, they kick you out. You need a working visa to live in Japan, but that means you have to find a full time job. And if you have a full time job, it’s difficult to train full time, or even part time. So you need to have a lot of energy, and train hard. So my advice? Eat your Wheeties and be willing to work.

Feel free to check out her website and Myspace, found below!

www.63fight.com
www.myspace.com/roxyfighter

In high school, all of us younguns had to do a Senior Report, of sorts. Now, whenever I do essays / reports / etc, and I have the opportunity to write about whatever I want (bad idea, teachers), I like to choose a topic that almost nobody else has studied, so the professor can’t check my facts. I’m not saying that I go around making stuff up, but I feel a little better when I’m not writing on something within the teacher’s field of expertise. It, how should I say, often results in a higher, how should I call it, grade.

Of course, as you can tell by the title, I decided to study Japanese internment. More specifically, how it affected Hawaii.

If you don’t know already, Hawaii’s population includes tons of Japanese. I’m not just talking tourists in khaki shorts with cameras around their necks. Back during the war, Hawaii’s population was 1/3 Japanese. That’s huge. 157,000 Japanese made their home on the islands. In contrast, the United States mainland only had around 126,000 Japanese. 100,000 of those 126,000 were put in internment camps. That’s a lot of people being put away for no reason.

Now, as you probably learned in history class (if you’re an American, at least), “All Japanese were put in internment camps.” That is, at least, what we are led to believe. The history books tend to gloss over Hawaii, though. What happened to people over there?

Well, not that much.

Of the 157,000 Japanese living in Hawaii, only under 2000 of them were put in internment camps. These were people of supposed power, who could “possibly pose a threat to America.” The ironic thing is, though, Japanese-Americans on the mainland posed a much smaller risk compared to their Hawaii counterparts. Over half of the Japanese-Americans on the mainland were born in America and had American citizenship, yet they were the ones to get interned. They were forced to sell their land on the cheap (Japanese owned a lot of California grape growing land, all of which they lost. Sad, yeah?), and lost pretty much everything (My family’s sword was taken. Bastards!).

In Hawaii, however, almost everyone got off scott free. I’m not saying that anyone should have been interned - I think it was a terrible thing - but they should have at least been consistent about it. Really, the Japanese in Hawaii had much closer ties to Japan than those in the mainland. Still, in the end, it was all economy-based. If you suddenly lose 1/3 of your population, then the economy will implode on itself. According to my grandpa, a lot of Japanese ran banks and worked on farms at the time, so suddenly cutting them out of the economic equation would have been disastrous.

That is why Japanese didn’t get interned in Hawaii, even though more Japanese lived in Hawaii than any other part of the US.

Jokes on America, though. I hear stories about my Great Grandma during the war. She would walk around the streets of Nu’uanu, picking up cigarette packaging and pulling out the aluminum linings, then send it back to Japan so they could make weapons and bombs. On top of that, she went around to all her neighbors and friends (who apparently were pro Japanese, as well) and got them to put stitches into hachimaki, which were sent to Japan for kamikaze bombers to wear for good luck. Great job, America! Way to intern the right people.

Though, I would be sad if my Great Grandma was interned, she was just a sweet old lady picking up trash for those dirty cigarette smoking sailors. How nice!

Now that I’m back from Hawaii, I finally had the chance to wade through all the emails I decided to ignore until now (sorry if that was you!). A decent number of them were people worried about racism in Japan; mainly, they were worried that people in Japan would treat them poorly because they were, well, gaijin (that means foreigner, in case you didn’t know).

A few of these emails made reference to the infamous “no gaijin” signs which are supposedly littered all around Japan. When I searched around the internet for more information on this, I was surprised with what I found…

Well, actually, not that surprised.

First off, it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s the opposite. There is so much talk going around the gaijin world about anti-gaijin sentiment, or the “no gaijin allowed” signs…thankfully, a lot of this talk is done by people who don’t know much about Japan, or have never been there. A few rumors have spread around, they’ve gotten bigger, and people pass the word on until it becomes a bigger monster.

Now, I’m not saying that racism isn’t a problem in Japan. In fact, where isn’t it an issue? As a gaijin, you will stand out, and in a country that is 99% Japanese, you will be interesting and people will be interested. Does that mean people will treat you poorly? No, not necessarily. Will you get a lot more attention than if you were Japanese? Definitely.

I found a couple vides via JapanProbe the other day. I thought they were absolutely hilarious, though it seems as though JapanProbe’s commentors thought it was pretty insensitive and mean. I can’t help it, though, I’m a Dave Chappelle fan.

And commercial #2

This sort of moves me into my next topic: “No Gaijin Allowed” signs.

If you search for “No Gaijin Allowed” in Google, you’d probably expect to come up with a bunch of hits. If you search for it in an image search, maybe you’d expect tons of “no gaijin” signs chained onto restaurant doors (so that those dirty gaijin can’t rip them off and steal them). Instead, I found almost nothing. My normal Google search consisted of “No Gaijin Allowed” tshirts, and the image search came up with things that had nothing to do with anything. I wasn’t too shocked, though, I did expect to see more.

The reason for this? Those signs aren’t really that prevalent. I’ve been all over Japan, and I try to go to as many different places as I can. I have not once seen a sign like this. When reading about people’s experiences who have seen these signs, they explain that these signs don’t necessarily mean “No Gaijin Allowed.” Instead, they mean “We don’t want any trouble from Gaijin, so be respectful” or “We can’t speak English, and we don’t want to be bothered with body communication.”

Still, there is some anti-gaijin sentiment. I’m not denying that. Gaijin don’t always make a good name for themselves, and the few bad apples ruin it for everyone. Since gaijin stand out so much in Japan, one misbehaving gaijin can make all gaijin look bad. Every once in a while a story like this will come out. On top of this, there is some bad blood between the older generation that fought in the war and anyone not Japanese. Even that is turning around though, and I’ve never had a bad experience with someone of the older generation. Still, I can see some potential problem. On the other hand, our War veterans sometimes have bad feelings about Japanese, so it’s not like it’s any different.

Anyways, I just wanted to say that the “anti-gaijin” mentality isn’t as prevalent as a lot of people think. Japan’s a friendly place, and as long as you try to keep in mind that you are in another country, and you need to follow some of their cultural guidelines (like taking off your shoes, damnit!), you shouldn’t have any trouble. If you don’t make an effort, though, and think that you can get away with anything…well…then you might get some anti-gaijin sentiment. I warned you, though.

So what about you? Have you ever had any experience with this?

[Image source]

I’ve been in Hawaii the past week or so, a few days of which was spent with my host family from when I home-stayed in Japan in high school. Having them over here in America (though, Hawaii is about as Japanese as America gets) really brings out some of the subtle cultural differences between Japanese people and Americans. Particularly, though, we spent a lot of time at restaurants, so I thought I’d talk a bit today about Japanese restaurant culture. When at various eating places, it made me realize how things in Japanese restaurants are done a little bit differently. Nothing drastic or too strange, but things that are good to know when you’re over in Japan.

Calling out for service:
This was something that surprised me a little when living in Japan. People call out to the waiters/waitresses for service. You don’t wait for someone to come to you, you tell them when and why you want them over at your table. When we went out to restaurants here in Hawaii, I had to tell them not to yell at the waiter to come over every couple of minutes, despite their irritation that nobody was coming to take their orders when they wanted.

I could be wrong about this, but I consider it rude to call out to waiters / waitresses when you want something. I’m not talking about a soft “excuse me” or a wave to get their attention, I’m talking a fairly loud shout across the room when you want something. In Japan, however, it’s okay to do this. Feel free to shout out a moderately loud “sumimasen!” or even a “suman!” if you’re a little drunk and rude. This is a good way to get someone’s attention, as some places might be waiting for this call before they come by.

Tiny Glasses of Water:
I’m someone who needs to drink a lot of liquids at a meal. I like the big glass of water, and I drink it down fast. In fact, the percentage of my tip is completely dependent on how good a place is at refilling my water. A really good water filler will get 20% from me, whereas someone who does a poor job will get 10% or lower, depending on how everything else is.

In Japan, however, they like things small. Most places only give tiny glasses of water, and do a fairly poor job refilling. My host family always commented on the large glasses of water when they were here in Hawaii, while when I was over there I’d comment about how small they were. It’s just how it is. One good way to get around this is to ask them to put your water in a beer glass / beer mug. Those tend to be much larger, and will help you survive more of the meal if you’re big on liquids, like me.

Oh, I suppose you can call out to your waitress / waiter as well, and they’ll refill your water for you. For me, though, that would be like every minute, and got embarrassing after a while.

Getting Food Even when you Can’t Read the Menu:
I know a lot of people make their way to Japan without being able to read Japanese well. If you can’t read at least hiragana/katakana, I can’t help you. A lot of places will have pictures, or even plastic models of their main courses, so if this is the case you can point and say “kore, 1, kore, 1.” But what about when you go to a mom n’ pop shop type food place? Their menus are written or typed out, bare, simple, and lack pictures.

Luckily, you’ll find a lot of places using katakana within their menu items. This is a good secret to know. If you are at least familiar with different types of foods, and you can read katakana, you can at least find a few things on the menu you might be interested in. For example, things like “katsu” and “ramen” tend to be written in katakana. That will get you a little closers to finding what you want, anyways. At that point, you can point and say “kore, 1″ without completely guessing.

Then again, if you’re adventurous, go for it. Japanese food is usually pretty awesome, no matter what you get.

Grabbing Food from the Communal Platter:
When doing a “family style” meal, where there’s food in the middle and everyone takes from it, there are often times where you will use your chopsticks to get at this food. I’ve heard a couple of takes on this. Some people say close friends and family shouldn’t use the back (or fat) ends of their chopsticks to take food, since using the eating sides of your chopsticks shows how close you are. With family, yes, I think this is very common. With close friends, I’m not sure. I would just see what other people are doing, and follow along.

If you are eating with people that aren’t really close friends or family, then yes, it’s important you turn your chopsticks around to grab the food. If you don’t know how to use chopsticks, then you should probably turn your fork around and look like the idiot you are for going to Japan without learning how to use chopsticks beforehand.

Fighting for the Bill:
I thought fighting for the bill here in America was hard enough. In Japan, it’s like a no-holds-barred fight-to-the-death cage match. It’s important to fight hard to pay for the bill, especially if you’re older. Usually, the person who is higher up on the hierarchy ladder tends to pay, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to pay too. It really depends on the relationship with the people you are eating with, though. From my experience, a senpai will try to pay for a kohai, though splitting the bill seems to be more common than before. Still, though, make sure you insist on paying for something, even if you plan on losing the bill paying battle. If you lose, insist you will pay next time, and try to do it. Japanese people tend to keep track of gifts and who owes who what, so it’s a good idea to try and repay someone for their kindness if you can with something of a similar value. This goes for all presents and gifts, not just food. Luckily, though, younger folks are exempt, just like in America.

No Tipping:
It’s lucky that you don’t tip in Japan (at all), because otherwise restaurants wouldn’t get anything from me due to their weak water refilling skillz. No matter how great the service, you don’t have to tip, saving you around 15% at each meal. Even if you think Japanese food is expensive (and it isn’t, really, if you go to the right places), you are saving money not having to tip, which I think is pretty sweet. I also haven’t seen a lack of service due to the lack of tipping, which is also nice. It’s just not part of the culture.

My host family always complained about having to tip everywhere here in Hawaii - they just don’t know how easy they have it!

Time to Go Eat!
I hope this helps you a little bit with going to a Japanese restaurant. It’s probably best to avoid places that have “No Gaijin” printed on the front of their stores, which sadly still exist, though are fairly rare. Don’t let a lack of pictures / plastic models of food stop you from going somewhere. I’d say the best places are the mom n’ pop shops. Real down to earth cooking, right there, and the prices tend to be more reasonable while the portions are bigger.

Do you have any Japanese restaurant tips? Share them in the comments!

Let’s go down the list of name honorifics and review each one separately. It’s really good to know how to use each of these (if you don’t), since you can come across as pretty rude when you make a mistake!

San:

Overview: This is the most common. It can be used on boys or girls. It can be used in formal and (somewhat) informal situations. Pretty much, san is your fail safe when you don’t know which one ot use. You probably won’t get in trouble if you use this one, so it’s good to use with frequency.

Do Not: Refer to yourself as [your name]-san. This is very rude. You might as well start asking people to get on their knees and bow down to you. Only use this on other people.

Other Uses: You can also attach san to some nouns, usually jobs. For example, booksellers are called honya-san. I know that some uses like this are more common than others so I’d say it’s best not to jump to conclusions and start turning every noun you see into name-honorific enders.

Trivial Fact: Ever notice how a lot of Japanese usernames on the net end with three? I just read this on Wikipedia, and it completely makes sense. Since the number three in Japanese is san, some people use this to end their names. I think it’s clever, anyways.

Also, in the Kansai area of Japan (they speak a different dialect, kind of like how people in Texas would have “southern accents” in America), some people use han instead of san (apparently). I can’t confirm this from experience, but that’s what I read.

Sama

Overview: Most likely, you’ll never run into an appropriate situation to use sama, unless of course you want to be a little sarcastic. The only time you’ll be using sama is if 1) you’re working for a company and you’re talking to a customre, or 2) you want to be sarcastic about someone who thinks really highly about themselves.

Do Not: EVER refer to yourself as sama…well, that is, unless you’re making fun of yourself. Otherwise, there’s no reason to do it, and if you do it with a serious face, people will think you’re a big stuck up snob.

Trivial Fact: Aparently, there’s also a “Chama” version of sama. Typically, you would use this when talking to someone who is older.

Kun

Overview: This is where you start getting more casual. Kun is primarily used when refering to other males, usually by someone of high status to someone younger / lower status than them. A good example would be a teacher talking to a (usually male) student. Some (masculine) females get called (name)-kun, though this is less common.

Do Not: Use this on someone of higher status than you. That means teachers, people that are older than you, parents, etc. You get the picture. If you aren’t sure, then just use san - at least you’ll be safe that way.

Chan

Overview: Now we’re in deep waters. Chan is primarily used on children, female family members, lovers, and close friends. Really, it’s a term of indearment. Often times, one’s name will be shortened to add chan to it. For example, I get the Ko-chan treatment instead of Koichi-chan, which just sounds awkward.

Do Not: (once again), use it on anyone of higher status than you. If you are using chan, the person should be much younger, or you better know that person really well.

Trivial Fact: Unlike all the other name honorifics, it’s actually not too horrible to refer to yourself and add the chan to the end. Children do this a lot, but so do some adults. Adding chan to a name can sometimes become a nickname that’s used instead of the real name, at which point it becomes acceptable to refer to yourself while using the honorific.

Another interesting thing about chan is that it is paired up with ojii and obaa (oji-chan / oba-chan), roughly meaning grandma and grandpa. Once Gma and Gpa get old, they come full circle, and you get to use the honorific reserved for children on them. Poor guys.

Anyways…

If you were confused by that, then just know this is barely touching the surface. Knowing what name honorific to use in what situation is one of the easiest things to learn in terms of the whole hierarchy in Japanese speech. It gets so much worse. Anime, I think, will often give people the wrong idea when it comes to how to use san, kun, sama, & chan (another good reason to get yourself a teacher of some sort). Anyways, speaking of anime messing honorifics up, next time I’ll be talking about the difference between senpai, kohai, and sensei. Actually, come ot think of it, this might be one of the few things they might be getting right.

So, here’s the test. If you were to email me (or someone else you don’t really know), what honorific would you use?

If I were to email our author Erin, which one would I use?

If I were to email our other author Viet, which one would I use?

Lastly, here’s a trick question, what about Santa Claus?

As much as I want to be outrageously snarky in this post, I don’t think I can bring myself to do it. After all, social anxiety disorder is pretty serious stuff, especially in Japan, the birthplace of the hikikomori (引き籠もり or “pulling away”) phenomenon. In an attempt to help out those who are uncomfortable in social situations, Avex has introduced a DVD titled Miterudake (ミテルだけ) or “Just Looking”. The DVD is labeled as “interactive”, but there are really only two activities that users are expected to perform:

1. Choose one of fifty relatively-diverse women

2. Endure them staring at you for about a minute (eyes up, boys)

Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Repeat (does this count as an activity?)

So basically, the only purpose of the DVD is, as its creator states, 「人と目を合わすこと」, or to help people “adapt to others”. As weird and pointless as it may seem, I can’t deny that there are people out there who do have a major fear that they’re constantly being judged by others. Still, I think it might be more cost effective to just realize that most people aren’t actually staring at you in real life (especially not in Japan, where a lot of “normal” people still find sustained direct eye contact to be rude) than to go and buy a $25 DVD. Or you could just find a picture of the Mona Lisa.

But hey, whatever floats your boat. I’m certainly not one to tell other people how to manage their neuroses. One thing I can say for sure about this DVD, though, is that it’s bound to act as inspiration for many x-rated spin-offs. You just wait and see–in the next few months, scores of new AV DVDs will hit shelves of sketchy Akihabara porn shops with similar premises and similar titles (“Just ____ing”). Come on, it’s Japan. You know it’s true.

Anyway, sorry this article was a bit boring. To make up for the lack of entertaining sarcasm, here are some links to more Miterudake clips and spoofs on the Youtube and NicoNico Douga. You can also find more clips on the Miterudake website (as well as links to the personal blogs of some of the women, which is kind of creepy).

EDIT: It turns out Miterudake could be a lot weirder than I first thought.

EDIT 2: Here’s a video from Koichi. Thanks, Ko.

You know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sometimes it’s my job. If you’ve ever used your Japanese with a Japanese person, you know how impressed…they seem. You say something (anything, even if it’s only vaguely Japanese) and they will respond with ecstatic claps, squeals of joy, and “jyouzu jyouzu sugoi jyouzu” over and over like a broken record.

Gosh, I really don’t want to do this, but I thought you should all know the truth. Here’s what Japanese people actually think about your Japanese:

Now, I don’t want to get you down. I don’t want to uninspire you. It’s not your fault. You can blame the philosophers, the “intellectuals”, and the cultural anthropologists of the Japanese post-war era. Most of the blame can be put on them, amongst others.

You see, there is this thing called Nihonjinron, which basically means “Theory of the Japanese (people).” Right after World War II, Japan was feeling particularly sad. They had just lost the war, and they were being occupied by the Americans. Nihonjinron was this big thing that came along that helped separate the Japanese from the threat of western cultural influence. Nihonjinron is full of bogus theories that make the Japanese unique from everyone else.

Although there are a ton of Nihonjinron theories out there, here are a few of the more ridiculous ones, for your enjoyment:

1. Japanese evolved from a separate set of primates, which makes them unique (and, to some, superior).
2. Japanese have a special “masculine and feminine” that makes them unique. They believe that this feminine form of language came from thousands of years ago. Although it was proven that feminine language only came into existence in the Meiji Era, most Japanese still believe in this, and are taught this in school.
3. Japanese brains are different from non-Japanese brains. More on this in the next point.
4. And finally, the one that has to do with this article: The Japanese language is so unique that only people with specially developed (Japanese brains) can hope to ever be able to understand it and speak it. And this is why…

Japanese people aren’t actually impressed with your Japanese. Well, I shouldn’t say that. They are impressed, but mostly because they never expected you to be able to speak any Japanese in the first place.

Japanese people think they are very unique. They think that they are the most unique and homogenized culture on earth. It is prejudice like this that causes them problems when it comes to internationalization.

So now, if you’ve ever wondered why Japanese people are so impressed by the littlest bits of Japanese, now you know. Don’t get discouraged, though! I’m not saying your Japanese is bad. It’s hard to become perfect. I mean, look at Japanese people who try to speak English. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a native Japanese person develop “perfect” Engrish. It’s tough both ways…though, I suppose the difficulty in English is probably due to the fact that only big Caucasians (who of course have bigger, specialized brains) can comprehend the vastness of the English language. Amerikajinron, anybody?

*disclaimer: This, of course, isn’t to say that every Japanese person thinks like this. This is just one explanation to the “why Japanese praise people speaking Japanese so much” theory.

They are finally putting down their Gundam model constructor kit. They are finally putting Street Fighter II down. Some of them are even facing that big yellow orb in the sky and huffing and puffing their way on over to “Mother Café,” a particularly maternal café in Osaka with “older looking women” who are actually instructed to nag you about things… “Just to get the experience to be more accurate.”

“Takeshi-kun! You really need to pay for your visit this time.”
“But moooommmmm.”
“No, seriously, you actually have to pay for this.”
“Seriously?”

You’d think you could experience nagging from your actual mother, if you wanted to. So how in the world did this place come into existence?

Apparently, “Mother Café” was created because “there wasn’t really anywhere that had a library of over 10,000 different manga, and also allowed people with a bit of a maniac streak about them to pursue their hearts’ desire.” Maniac streak is right.

The Mother Café’s boss (for some reason I have the image of an angry, old, Norwegian woman) said that they staff their café with women who are capable of understanding worries people have and have experience dealing with people of all ages. They want it to be a kind of therapeutic café where customers feel at ease enough to open their hearts to the staff.

Well, I suppose if they open their wallets as well, that’s all that really matters…

I don’t know about you, but I’d be completely creeped out and on edge the entire time, especially if they were trying to act like my mom.

“Koichi, would you like to tell me how your grades are?”
“Hmmm, let me think. No.”

If a customer is lucky enough to find a “mother” that doesn’t completely terrify them, though (or nag you too much about being a loser), they can have that mother serve them every time they come for a visit, at no extra charge.

Can you imagine though? I wonder how many people ask their moms for money to go to a Mother’s café…

This sort of thing definitely wouldn’t fly in America, but I can kind of seeing it doing somewhat well in Japan. There’s a complicated relationship between children and the mother, which I’m not particularly willing to go deep into (right now). Still, the otaku culture has come up with some even stranger things, so putting a Mother’s Café past them would definitely be a mistake.

What do you think? Would you pay some older looking lady to nag you?

[source]

Hey you! If you liked this article, then maybe you’d be so kind as to add it to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, or Digg! You rule.

What is different about Mixi?

• Everyone is Paranoid: The most important thing to know about Mixi is that nobody wants to be your friend. That is, the folks who use Mixi listened to their parents, and will often refuse to talk to strangers. I feel like this is quite different from Myspace, and even Facebook. When I first got Mixi, I joined a community (which you will learn about later) for everyone who went to the high school I went to in Japan. I thought I would add some people I didn’t know (but who went to the same school as me). I thought this was reasonable. I have a decent amount of “friends” on Facebook from high school or college that I’d never formally met, but still added because we shared a common educational experience. Although most people were nice about it and added me, I got a handful of people who refused my Mixi friend offer saying they didn’t know me personally, so I should stop pestering them, or something to that extent. I suppose the best way to learn is to make mistakes.
• Centered around Journal Writing: In a sense, Mixi is somewhat similar to Livejournal in that a lot of it is centered around journal writing. When you write a journal entry, all of your added friends see it on their front profile pages. Many of them read it and comment on it too. I know several people who are absolutely addicted to this feature and will get a little bit restless if they can’t read their Mixi journal articles on a regular basis.
• Communities are Big Big Big: Another big part of Mixi is their communities. Unlike Facebook groups, people are often active members. Communities don’t usually have silly names, and anything written in the community is relayed to your front page, which keeps you on top of things (as long as you don’t join too many big communities). Joining a communities might be a good way to make friends as well.

What you should know before joining Mixi:

• Everything is in Japanese: If you are just starting to learn Japanese, it won’t be easy stumbling around the controls and setting up a profile (not to mention meeting people and making friends). You should probably have a pretty good grasp on hiragana and katakana at the very least. Having some kanji knowledge would definitely be a plus. At least you can always pop stuff into Jim Breen to get English translations, but if you don’t know hiragana/katakana I wouldn’t bother for now.
• It’ll be hard to make friends (you can be my friend, though!): Like I said before, people don’t want to become friends with strangers (for the most part). Joining communities and becoming active members might be a good way to make friends. Emailing any Japanese people you know and asking them for their Mixi accounts might be another good way to network out. At the very least you can become my friend, though (the link won’t work unless you are logged on).

Mixi Top Menu:
The Mixi top menu is full of information. The most important thing, though, is that you distinguish the two menu rows from each other. Both of them are similar, but they actually have very separate functions. The top one has to do with things that are not your own. For example, if you clicked on the top menu’s “journal” button, you will see everyone else’s recent journal entries. If you clicked on the bottom one, you will see your own recent journal entries. Below is an image of the top menu, fully translated. Click on it to zoom in.

I am now going to go through each menu item and talk a little bit about each one. For sanity’s sake, I will only go through the bottom menu row, plus “search friend” and “invite friend” up in the top left.

• Home: This will just take you home, to your main page.
• Messages: This section allows you to read and send messages to your friends (or not friends).
• Journal: This will allow you to write a journal entry. This can be about pretty much anything. Think of it more like a diary, where you say stuff almost at random (at least that’s what it feels like when I read people’s Mixi Journals). Don’t say anything you want to keep private, though.
• Movies: Upload movies here. Mixi tried to make a video service to rival Youtube’s and failed. Still, there’s some neat videos in here, and people like to see your videos as well.
• Photos: Upload and manage your photos in this section. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I bet it’s pretty cool.
• Music: I’m not sure what this section is about, honestly, but it has something to do with music. Either way, it won’t affect your social networking experience too much. If anyone knows more information about this section, feel free to comment and let us know.
• Reviews: You can review places, things, etc in this section. I thought this was a pretty neat idea. You can search for products and places, too, and find out what people thought of them.
• Bookmarks: Put up your favorite websites here.
• Traffic: Who has visited your page?
• Options: A huge array of options pertaining to your account.
• Search Friends: Find friends already on Mixi.
• Invite Friends: Invite others to join you!

Left Column: Profile Picture, Friends, and Communities:
On the left column you’ll find profile pictures, friends (also known as my miku (マイミク), short for my mixi(マイミクシー), and communities. Depending on how deep you are into the system, you will either have a lot here or nothing at all. Let’s go through each section, because everything works a little bit different than you might expect. For your reference, a full sized left sidebar can be found here.

• Profile Picture: Mixi allows you to upload three profile pictures, which can be viewed if you click on a link below someone else’s image. The funny thing about profile pictures, though, is that most people don’t put up their real faces. Usually there will be some kind of animal, an actor/actress’ photo, or some inanimate object. Like I said above, though, everyone is paranoid. I would say one in every thirty people put their real images up, and that’s it. You will often see non-Japanese using Mixi with their real pictures, but that is rare as well.
• Friends: You can find your list of friends here. I always get confused because real names are not displayed (just nicknames) and the images above them are of kittens and ferris wheels. Even if it is someone I know really well in real life, most of the time I’ll have no idea who they are on Mixi, even though we are Mixi friends.
• Communities: The Communities section can be found at the very bottom. This shows off the communities you have joined. I didn’t join too many communities because then I get too many messages on my front page, which makes it too difficult to keep track of everything. Some people can handle it but I just read to slowly.

Center Column: Friend and Community Journal Entries, Reviews, Photos, Movies, Music, and Introductions:

• Newest Friend Journal Entries: When one of your Mixi friends writes a journal article, it will show up here for you to read and comment on, if you choose. Many people are very addicted to this feature.
• Newest Community Posts: When something is written within a community page that you are a part of, it will show up here. This will help you keep up to date on discussions going on in different communities. I had too many of these messages, so I left a bunch of my communities and kept only the really important ones.
• Most Recent Friend Reviews: Whenever a friend reviews a place or a product, it will show up here. These are sometimes pretty interesting to read, since you’ll learn about things you’ve never heard of before.
• Most Recent Friend Photos: Woo, photos of friends.
• Most Recent Friend Movies: Woo, movies of friends.
• Most Recent Friend Music: Woo, I don’t know what this category is. Does someone else know?
• Friend Introductions of YOU: This section is my favorite. In Mixi, you don’t write on people’s walls like in Facebook or Myspace. That space is for people to write introductions about you. Most introductions explain how the person knows you and then a little bit about your personality. Occasionally you’ll see a non-Japanese person writing on it as if it were a wall, but this is incorrect. A typical translation of an introduction post would be: “I know this person from high school. He was in my Soccer Club, and he is the type of person who gets along well with everyone,” or something like that. Just remember that this section is for you to write about other people and their personalities/abilities/etc. I think that most of these are positive things about the person, so don’t go around and say that people are real knee-biters. Here is an image of my introduction wall, click on it to zoom in:

Using Mixi to Learn / Practice Japanese:
All in all, mixi is a great way to learn and practice your Japanese. The real hard part is getting people to add you as their friend. If you can get over that boundary, you’ve got yourself an incredible resource.

• Reading Practice: Reading other people’s journal articles is a great way to practice reading. Although it isn’t formalized like a text book, people on Mixi tend to write in short, simple sentences. A lot of people write their journal articles on their phones, which means it’ll be easier for you to read. If you’ve never seen Jim Breen, take a look. It’ll help you translate journal entries in a jiffy. Mixi journals is a good (and quick) daily practice for reading comprehension.
• Writing Practice: If you really want to get into things, you can start writing regular journal entries. If you have enough Mixi friends, you can probably ask people to correct your mistakes in the comments section of your post. It’s a good (and usually sure) way to feedback and corrections on your writing, at least in my experience.

How Do I get an Invitation to Mixi?
I’ll send you an invitation if you comment below. Please note: I think there might be a lot of requests, and although I plan on getting to everyone eventually, sometimes things get busy with school and work. I’ll be giving priority to those who I see or have seen commenting more often (on other posts, not this one) over those who only commented here for the first time. So, if you want a faster return, please comment elsewhere too. Here’s a good list of articles, though anywhere (or nowhere) is fine. Also, please enter your correct email into the comment box, otherwise I won’t be able to invite you.

The Full Translation of Mixi’s Front Page:
I thought I’d translate the whole front page for you all, too, while I was at it. You can see it here in it’s full glory, or click on the image below. Both will take you to an “actual-sized” image.

Everyone, good luck with your Mixi’ing! It’s a lot of fun, which is good motivation to learn more Japanese.

UPDATE: Mixi now requires you to have a Japanese mobile email address to join! This means, if you don’t have a Japanese cell phone, you’re pretty much screwed. More information here.

Every week (i.e. whenever time allows), I’ll be doing a “Japan week in review.” These segments will cover smaller news articles from throughout the week that we don’t want to cover individually. Although these articles of news won’t necessarily be very important, they’ll surely be interesting instead. Included after the break is a video; before that, though, let’s go through the stories not covered in moving picture.

Army of Tiny Crustaceans is Destroying a Small Japanese Island: On a small island 1650 ft off the cost of Hiroshima, a whole bunch of tiny crustaceans are burrowing into the island, causing it to break apart into a billion little pieces. The island’s name is Hoboro, if you ever want to visit, though I’m not sure why you would, since it’s inhabited (except for our friends the “nanatsuba-kotsubumushi,” of course). Supposedly the increasing number of these shrimp/crab relatives was caused by increasing temperature of surrounding waters, which caused plankton blooms. These little guys love the stuff, so they reproduced like crazy. Since they make their homes by burrowing into rock, they are destroying the island one burrow at a time. Reports say that the island could disappear within the century if this keeps up. Wow! [source]

Japan Stops their Brutal “Research” of Whales: When Japan “researches” whales, they kill them in large numbers and feed them to their upper classes. “I say, Mr. Tanaka, I’m going to have to research some more of that ‘Whale Curry‘, it tastes smashing” (British Accent). Thankfully, due to international pressures, Japan has halted (for now) this nasty practice. We’ll see how long Japan can keep from eating that lovely whale cocaine. [source]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s Vlog: As you can in the video above, Yasuo Fukuda (along with the whole Liberal Democratic Party) has started a Youtube page. You can even check out his English Video and see what the Prime Minister actually had to say (instead of what he said in my video). It’s pretty interesting and pretty blah at the same time. His English is fairly good, anyways. I’ll include it below for your convenience:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mobile Post Offices: In Aichi Prefecture (where I used to live), a lot of rural post offices are getting shut down. To combat the obvious problems that would arise because of this, mobile post offices (big vans) are being sent out. People can do all the normal mail stuff as well as withdraw money from ATMs. One neat little tidbit for the non-Japanese explorer: If you need to withdraw money from an ATM, the post office is the way to go! Most ATMs won’t accept your cards, but for some reason post office (and Airport) ATMs often do. Just something good to know if you are visiting. [source]

Death By Mochi is Wonderfully Tasty: Every New Years, a lot of Japanese people eat mochi soup (zoni). It’s one of those things that if you grow up with it you’ll absolutely love it. With every wonderful thing comes a price, though, and Mochi Soup is no exception. Every year a handful of people die from choking on the mochi, although usually they are of the elderly variety. This year four people died, and ten people were hospitalized - a pretty average New Years in my book. Party on, Garth. [source]

Ass n’ Boobs Airbag: You really just have to look at the picture. These airbags are supposedly better for you when you smash your face into them. I imagine they’d be a lot more fun too. Made by Takata, these airbags will reduce injury from airbags, but greatly increase (suspicious) male driver collisions. [source]

Tallest Elevator Test Tower: *Ah, dang, I messed up on this one. I thought it was the tallest elevator (as said in the video above). It’s actually the world’s tallest elevator testing tower, which sounds a lot less impressive, because I don’t imagine there are very many towers dedicated to elevator testing. Still, it seems like a pretty cool place to visit, so why not check it out if you’re near Inazawa City? [source]

Japanese Inmates Think Their Jumpsuits Aren’t Stylish: Aw damn, and I thought gray with vertical stripes was in again. O Brother Where Art Thou is hax. Recently a survey was done showing everyone what everyone already knew: Jail cells are too small, solitary confinement is no fun, and their clothes aren’t very fashionable. It’s not like we’d want our prisoners to be wearing the latest fads. How would we tell them apart from society? They have to look crazy, otherwise it would be hard to spot them amongst the millions of spiffy Japanese teenagers.

Hello Kitty Shames Soldiers, Kills You With Love: Apparently Hello Kitty has come out with it’s newest (and cutest!) high powered rifle … just kidding. Actually, a crazy gun-otaku put together a themed Hello Kitty AR-15 rifle for his wife. Here’s a quote from the creator: “Well, in the “spirit” of the California Assault Weapon Ban I decided to do my best to alleviate the fears of my fellow citizens and gun-banning legislators when I put together a new AR-15 for my wife.” Maybe if President Bush saw these he’d start equipping our fearless soldiers with these deadly assault rifles. [source]

So what do you think about this week’s useless Japanese News? I’m particularly interested in politicians blogging. I don’t think they pull it off very well, with Mr. Fukuda being no exception. All the American candidates are using Youtube as well, though for a different purpose. Fukuda’s use of it is more of a running thing; I think it’s good to keep the young’uns informed. Otherwise, I’m terrified of the Hello Kitty Gun, laughing at the Japanese inmates, and craving Mochi Soup. I might have to go make some of that right now, I think we have leftovers. See you all next week (or so)!

*Update: Aw, man, I kind of feel bad for posting this. I’m not very happy with it, overall. This has been a big learning opportunity, so there will be big improvements on this series for next time, though. Until next time…