Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat. aggregator

recently on twitter: makiwi: Time Magazine is so behind the times. Little Britain did it way funnier years ago. http://t.co/UxmvGhHw (NSFW)

Sun, 27 May 2012 14:43:31 +0200

makiwi: Time Magazine is so behind the times. Little Britain did it way funnier years ago. http://t.co/UxmvGhHw (NSFW)

Maki's Quora answers: What are the best vegetarian Japanese dishes?

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:01:13 +0200

Makiko Itoh, Writer in English and Japanese

The big problem you will run into anywhere in Japan is dashi (soup stock), if you must avoid fish. Standard dashi is made with dried fish of some kind (bonito (katsuobushi) or sardines (iwashi)) plus dried konbu seaweed. And dashi is used in the majority of savory dishes. In recent years it's even being added to foods that didn't have it before, like various pickles. You'll really have to seek out shojin ryori (Zen Buddhist cuisine) that uses vegetable based dashi, or specifically vegetarian restaurants.

IF you can live with dashi then your options are much wider. The most famous Nara dish is called chasoba, zoba made with green tea. The soup/dipping sauce is made with dashi though.

Chagayu, rice porridge made with tea, is another one.

Narazuke is another Nara speciality - winter melon, cucumber, ginger and such pickled in sake lees for a month or more. You can be fairly sure this is vegetarian, though check the label.

And in the general Kansai area, tofu is the best. Try to just buy some tofu and add your own condiments and such if you want to be sure they didn't add any dashi to it. I wrote about my favorite Kyoto tofu makers a while back here: http://justhungry.com/kyoto-tofu... (Their restaurant is not vegetarian though.)

See question on Quora

Maki's Quora answers: Why do so few stores in Japan accept credit cards (compared to the US)?

Sun, 27 May 2012 11:15:48 +0200

Makiko Itoh, Writer in English and Japanese

Let's look at this question from the opposite perspective: Why does it seem like every transaction possible in the United States pushes the use of credit cards, compared to other countries such as Japan*?

- It has been a longtime policy of banking institutions in the U.S. to make consumer credit readily available, since they can get away with charging very high interest rates.
- Handling cash in the United States has various crime related costs associated with it. Cash is anonymous and easily stolen. (The prevailing common sense is to not carry around more than say, $100 in cash on you.) Cash can be 'laundered'. And so on.
- Credit cards take away the need to establish trust between the customer and the business, since the trust-checking responsibility is handed over to the credit card company.

In Japan, it's still not a big deal to carry around large amounts of cash, since the crime rate is a lot lower than it is in most of the U.S. (though you do have to watch out for pickpockets and purse snatchers). There's also a lot more implied trust between consumers and businesses.

Credit card use is rising in Japan though, especially due to the popularity of online shopping. While banks don't push credit cards much, many other establishments such as retail stores do.

*I lived for many years in another country, Switzerland, where credit card use is also quite lower compared to the U.S. Some of the same things you see in Japan can be seen there too: low crime rate (carrying around cash is not seen as dangerous), more implied trust between consumer and business, and so on.

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Maki's Quora answers: Do foreign women ever get groped in Japan's metro?

Sun, 27 May 2012 10:03:20 +0200

Makiko Itoh, I'm Japanese.

Have you ever been in a Tokyo commuter train, during rush hour? The trains get so crowded that you can't even turn around, or move your arm or your bag if it's stuck in an awkward position. You can barely breathe sometimes. Under those circumstances, if a groper is going to grope, they don't care, or even know, what their victim looks like, unless they were specifically targeting someone prior to getting on the train. (The flip side is that if you are the gropee, you can't move to see who the hell is groping you.) All they want to do is have an anonymous feel. So yes, foreign women do get groped. Ugly people get groped. Old ladies get groped. Everyone has a chance of getting groped, even men. (Although the ones most likely to get groped are probably young girls/women who are wearing skirts.)

It's an unfortunate aspect of living in Tokyo. It doesn't happen every day or anything though, and if anything is probably over-reported just because other types of crime are so low in Japan, and people like to think Japan is this real perverted place where everyone is fantasizing all the time about tentacle sex. (See Are a lot of Japanese men perverted? If so, why?)

See question on Quora

Maki's Quora answers: Why is Germany allowed to have an army while Japan isn't?

Sun, 27 May 2012 09:45:30 +0200

Makiko Itoh, My university degree is in medieval folkdancing

The way this question is phrased seems to imply that somehow each nation is given permission, or not, by another power, presumably the United States, to define their armed forces as an army or not. While in the aftermath of WWII both countries had to agree to basically 'never wage war again' by the victors, namely the United States, since then both nations have regained full autonomy over their own laws.

In regards to why Article 9 of the Japanese constitution still stands, and why the Japan Defense Force (JDF) is defined as a defense force rather than a military (although it has all the trappings of a military in fact, including military ranks, conventional weapons, and such): Article 9 has come up for frequent debate in the decades since it was implemented in 1950. There are groups in Japan (mainly on the right) who would like to change its status to make it a full military. There are also equally strong voices who would even get rid of the JDF, or any sort of armed forces. Each time the issue has come to the forefront, the current law has stayed. (Prior to March 11 of last year, the prevailing opinion was on the 'get rid of' side, mainly due to seeing maintaining the JDF as a waste of government money. Seeing them in action during the March 11 crisis did a lot to change peoples' minds.)

In general terms, Japan has had strong pacifist tendencies ever since WWII, so the likelihood of the JDF being redefined as a full military, including the ability to engage in action overseas*, is fairly remote. What could change that speculatively is if North Korea becomes a much larger threat than it is now, or say China or someone decides to get a lot more militarily aggressive, or something along those lines. In other words the political climate in the region has to change quite drastically. (Well, not so drastically maybe in the case of North Korea.)

To derail a bit, the United States maintains several of their own military bases on Japanese soil (as they do on German soil, and in many other allied countries), although the number has shrunk quite a lot post-Cold War. These include a major navy base in Yokosuka, which is quite close to Tokyo, and a big base in Naha, Okinawa. The latter is a political hot potato, with local residents really, really wanting to kick them off. The current governor of Okinawa was elected largely based on his pledge that he would do everything in his power to get them off the islands. To be cynical and all that, one reason why the U.S. military was so quick and eager to assist in aid efforts post-March 11 was to try to gain political brownie points with the Japanese people to counteract the anti-U.S. military sentiments brought about by the Okinawa base situation.

*the JDF has seen active duty overseas since the 1980s, mainly in the Middle East, but not in combat.)

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Sat, 26 May 2012 03:03:41 +0200

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Fri, 25 May 2012 22:29:27 +0200

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recently on twitter: makiwi: @nichbuick they did apologise, 4 times or so so far, but no change in the situation

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:05:28 +0200

makiwi: @nichbuick they did apologise, 4 times or so so far, but no change in the situation

recently on twitter: makiwi: @KrysaliaH ^_^

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:58:51 +0200

makiwi: @KrysaliaH ^_^

recently on twitter: makiwi: I need to stockpile some rude phrases in French now.

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:55:27 +0200

makiwi: I need to stockpile some rude phrases in French now.