He was a fascist and was arrested as a class A war criminal after WWII. Despite having run a huge fascist organization and recruited a 150,000 man army that plundered China, trafficked in opium, and committed war crimes, he was let go because there was not enough evidence against him (although some say it was because America wanted to use the right-wingers to fight communism).
He also had a lot of tie-ins with the yakuza, and was a drinking buddy of the head of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Kazuo Taoka. Sasakawa was affiliated with the Moonies too, was one of the most powerful men in the LDP (even helping choose cabinet ministers), and once called himself “the world’s wealthiest fascist.”

So by now you’re probably asking yourself why there are statues of the guy all over Japan. Well, the reason is that after getting released from prison, he used his money and political influence to get motor boat racing legalized as a form of gambling. Motor boat racing (kyotei) is one of only four types of gambling that are legal in Japan, and earns billions of dollars every year. The money goes to the Nippon Foundation, and does do a lot of good charity work, supporting the United Nations and many important charities in the country.

Another thing it does, is put up these weird statues of Sasakawa and his mother all over the country. They’re outside every motor boat racing track, and also in front of a lot of the museums and cultural facilities that the the Nippon Foundation finances. This one is in front of the Maritime Museum in Tokyo’s Odaiba district.

The statues are just as odd as the man. Most of them were put up while Sasakawa was still alive, and he was present at the unveilings of many of them. Many Japanese people still remember the TV and newspaper ads he bought, ostensibly promoting family values, but many people got the impression he was more interested in promoting himself. The statues appear to be his idea, and all of them have a tear running down his face as he carries his mother up the 785 steps of a temple in Shikoku. If you look him up on the Internet, about half the information will be about his charitable work, featuring photos of him jogging with Jimmy Carter or chatting with the Pope. The other half will be his mug shots, or him having a good time with Mussolini.

Here’s a video of Sasakawa at the unveiling at one of his statues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECeEbyg2QPs

Wikipedia article on Sasakawa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoichi_Sasakawa

Sasakawa, a Respected War Criminal, an interesting article by a French journalist, who, despite being unable to spell ‘yakuza’ properly, has some interesting information about his life:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30028.html

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The post Sasakawa Ryoichi Statues appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

See also:
How to Win at Pachinko (Japanese Pinball)
Waiting for the Pachinko Parlor to Open

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The post Green Peas Pachinko Parlor appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

It’s a real page turner, filled with drama, pathos, and even a bit of action. It starts out with a meeting between Adelstein, a cop friend of his, and two members of the infamous Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime syndicate. The two yakuza threaten Adelstein’s life, telling him that if he publishes an article detailing their boss’s liver transplant in America, they’ll kill him.

The rest of the book is what led up to this event, starting with the odd story of how he got hired at the Yomiuri Shimbun, his days as a reporter on the crime beat in Omiya and later Kabuki-cho, and later his involvement in the Lucy Blackman case and investigations of human trafficking in Japan.

Maybe you’ve read stories in the English dailies about a yakuza, Tadamasa Goto, who became a Buddhist priest a few years ago. Goto is the man whose liver transplant Adelstein exposed, and I was just riveted as I read about Adelstein’s confrontations with one of the country’s most vicious criminals. It seems extremely likely that the reason Goto has become a priest is due to Adelstein’s reporting.
The book is also an excellent source for people who are interested in Japan’s media and police. Some of the reporters and cops are nearly as immoral as the yakuza.

You’ll probably be shocked to read about the details of their incompetence and insensitivity in their handling of human trafficking cases, how both groups resisted efforts to expose the human trafficking problem in Japan, and the horror stories about the way newspapers treat their reporters.

My only complaint about the book is a minor one. I find it hard to believe that a reporter who worked on the crime beat would not know words like “gokudo” (yakuza), “honban” (the euphemism for sex used in soaplands), or what a host club is. There are quite a few places where there are conversations in which police officers or other journalists explain things that Adelstein, as a journalist, would clearly have known. These seem to be there for the reader’s benefit rather than because they actually happened. In the end of the book he explains that he changed names and details to protect people, but the possibility that he has made up conversations leaves me with a vague suspicion that there are other things that have been invented, rather than just having their details changed. (Jake Adestein has written a response to this criticism in the comments. I’m now a bit conflicted about whether my criticism is valid, so I hope you’ll read his response).

Anyway, this is a great book, one of the best I’ve ever read about Japan. It’s not written by one of those people who jet-setted into Japan for a month or a year and thought that made them a Japan expert. There’s fascinating stuff on nearly every page and this book will give you a whole new perspective on the way the yakuza, media and police operate in Japan.

Adelstein’s excellent Japan Subculture Research Institute blog is also a great read.

[amazon text=Find Tokyo Vice on Amazon&asin=0307378799]

*Possibly not as brave (and seemly delusional), though, as Benjamin Fulford, Japan’s foremost conspiracy nut, who protested outside the Yamaguchi gumi’s headquarters trying to convince them to shut down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZROavuaxr4

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The post Tokyo Vice Book Review appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

See also:
How to Win at Pachinko (Japanese Pinball)
Green Peas Pachinko Parlor

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The post Waiting for the Pachinko Parlor to Open appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

The first time I opened it I already noted that the logo could be misunderstood if one doesn’t know that the triangle stands for “V”.
Then my friend sent me a friend request which made me laugh out loud!

Here is a picture of it:

It might not be obvious to non-Japanese speakers, so let me tell you that “Ero” by itself basically means “pervert” in Japanese.
On first sight, this looks like “Issho ni ERO”, which on sounds like “Be perverts together”.

By the way, as you probably guessed, the word “ero” is a shortened form for “erotic”, and that is also what it means in combination with other words such as ero-hon (book with adult content), ero-kawaii (sexy-cute) or ero-guro (erotic-grotesque; an artistic movement).
By itself however, an “Ero” is someone who has seemingly only one thing in his mind. 😀

I wonder how long it will take Vero to do something about it.

And it might not be the only problem the new social media kid on the block could face in Japan with this logo.

The Japanese social recruiting app Wantedly Visit has a strikingly similar logo, although I’m not sure who was first. It could well be that Wantedly came up with (aka copied) it later.

Pretty similar, don’t you think?

Yet another similarity I find interesting is the one to the blockchain platform Xtrabytes:

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The post Vero Logo Fail in Japan appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

Do you feel that you have been using your brain too much recently?

Are you frustrated by games of skill?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then Pachinko may be the hobby that you have been looking for.

Pachinko, often described as ‘Japanese Pinball’, is a game in which the player buys a large quantity of silver balls and feeds them into a sort of vertical pinball machine where the balls cascade around, their paths determined by small metal pins. If any of the balls land in a small hole in the center, the player wins more balls, which he can feed back into the machine or exchange for prizes.

The chances against winning are, for the average person, ridiculously small, and it is easy to lose a thousand yen (US$9) in just a few minutes. For those lucky few who win, there is always a little shop behind the Pachinko Parlour that will exchange the prizes for cash (this is to circumvent Japan’s gamling laws).

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?

Why do otherwise intelligent people sit in smokey Pachinko Parlours listening to a cacaphonic soundtrack played at ear-splitting levels? What is the fascination with watching little silver balls disappear into a machine?

In the old days, during the 1950’s, people could control the force with which the ball was shot up into the machine, giving the game an element of skill, but in the Pachinko parlours of today, the participant need only pour his balls into the machine and watch passively as they bounce around and disappear.

Here’s an interesting email I received in response to this page:

I just wanted to take a few minutes to comment on your site. First, my name is Bob and I lived in Kurashiki city, Okayama-ken from 94-99. I’ll return in about a month to do some part time work while I’m on Summer break from an Australian university where I’m working on an MA in TESOL.
Anyway, I really enjoyed clicking through your site. I feel you have done an outstanding job of showing a bit more of the authentic day to day life and amusements of living in Japan that other sites rarely get into.

I wanted to make a few comments on one thing in particular. The pachinko comments seemed a little dated.
Actually, much to my shame to admit, I happened to know a few young Japanese that showed me how to win at pachinko, and I spent quite a few days in these places over one particular winter. Why? Though I agree it is basically a mindless pursuit (I often told people that I could duct tape my dead grandmother to one of these machines and she would be “playin’ pachinko!”) it has changed quite a bit from what you described. The days of hoping that the balls will drop into multiple holes for a few extra balls have changed dramatically.

The purpose of getting the balls to drop into ONE particular hole on the board is to cause the small video screen in the middle to spin, like a Vegas slot machine, and hope for triple whatevers to come up. If you get the trips, then you go through a fifteen round video session where you will win one bucket of balls equivalent to about 5,000 yen.

If you happen to be on a “good” machine, you can hit triples every 100-200 spins and walk out with quite a profit. Which is where the appeal, like any gambling, ultimately lies.
The men and women, who taught me how to play, used a whole system of hand held computers to collect data on the machines. The key to getting those “good” machines was based on knowing how the computers in the machines worked and on what days they were likely to hit. To keep it short, while hanging with this bunch I often experienced days where I walked home, after eight hours of play, with anywhere from 50 to 80,000 yen for about a 20,000 yen investment. On my best weekend, I pulled in a 160,000 yen profit in two days!

Mindless? YES! Do people off the street have much chance of doing the same without knowing a bit? Possibly, but probably not. Can you make a living doing this? Hell yes! In that particular winter I was pulling in more in a week than my job was paying in a month.

So, if it was so profitable, why did I quit? Back to the mindless part again. I grew tired of sitting in one position for eight hours a day; keeping track of all the number crunching on which machine should have a good day; sucking in hard core second hand smoke; coming home with my ears ringing from the cacophony of sound and so on. I have to admit it was quite a ride though. Some of that leftover cash has paid for my education now and funded some seriously festive nights back in those days.

I just wanted to try and give some insight on the pachinko craze. I in no way condone it because, again like Vegas, I’ve seen far many more losers pumping in the family savings than I’ve seen people who were willing to put in the time, effort and knowledge it took to try and come out ahead. People who thought they could beat a computer program by shear will. Additionally, I’ve never met any fellow gaijin that took this particular road during their experiences in Japan and I sometimes try to explain some things to people who thought pachinko was just flipping balls in a machine to win a box of tissues.

Again, great, fun, interesting site and I enjoyed the trip.

Best wishes,
Bob

Photo credit: Travis Nep Smith

See also:
Waiting for the Pachinko Parlor to Open
Green Peas Pachinko Parlor

Or want to buy your own new or used pachinko machine?

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The post How to Win at Pachinko (Japanese Pinball) appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

The last time you went out for ramen, what flavour did you eat?
Soy: 27%
Tonkotsu: 14%
Miso: 11%
Salt: 9%
Tonkotsu Soy: 4%
Kimchi: 2%
Tonkotsu Miso: 1%
Other: 31%

Do you wash your hands in the stream of water that comes out of the toilet tank (No, Japanese people don’t wash their hands in the toilet bowl. The water comes out of the cistern at the top)?
Yes: 73%
No: 27%

Do you lock the door when you use the toilet?
No, never: 29%
It depends: 28%
Yes, always: 25%
Only when I sit: 18%

Have you ever confessed that you loved someone in a love letter?
Yes: 46%
No: 54%

What is your favourite type of onigiri (rice ball)?
Umeboshi: 21%
Salmon: 15%
Tuna flakes: 6%
Plain: 6%
Mentaiko (fish eggs): 5%
Kelp: 5%
Sea-chicken and mayonnaise: 4%
Mentaiko Mayonnaise: 2%
Cheese: 2%
Other: 35%

When you were a child, did your family celebrate Setsubun (the Bean Throwing Festival)?
Yes: 32%
No: 68%

What kind of computer do you have?
Apple: 16%
Fujitsu: 13%
NEC: 12%
Custom-built: 10%
Sony: 9%
Dell: 6%
IBM: 5%
Gateway: 5%
Sharp: 3%
So-Tec: 3%
Toshiba: 2%
Hitachi: 2%
Matsushita: 2%
Compaq: 2%
Epson: 2%
Sharp: 2%
Other: 5%

At what age does a person become an “Obasan” (middle-aged woman) or “Ojisan” (middle aged man)?
Age 30-34: 40%
Age 35-39: 31%
Age 40: 29%

How much “allowance” do you give to your elderly parents to supplement their pension every month?
0 yen: 58%
10,000 yen: 7%
20,000 yen: 11%
30,000 yen: 14%
50,000 yen: 7%
100,000 yen: 2%

Do you close your eyes when the dentist is working on your mouth?
Yes: 50%
No: 50%

Had you used your heater by November 11th this year?
Yes: 75%
No: 25%

If the convenience store clerk asked you if you wanted your onigiri heated up in the microwave, would you be surprised? (It’s only done in some parts of Japan).
Yes: 48%
No: 52%

Do you pull up your pants before or after you flush the toilet?
Before: 73%
After: 27%

Where do you put the thermometer when you take your temperature?
In your armpit: 78%
Under your tongue: 20%
In your ear: 3%

When served grilled salmon, do you eat the skin?
Yes: 68%
No: 32%

Can you name all 47 of Japan’s prefectures?
Yes: 57%
No: 43%

Have you ever tried on-line dating?
Yes: 18%
No: 82%

How much money do you spend for lunch every day?
0-199 yen: 8%
200-399 yen: 25%
400-599 yen: 29%
600-799 yen: 21%
800-999 yen: 8%
1000-1199 yen: 5%
1200-1399 yen: 2%
more than 2000 yen: 2%

When you sit on the toilet, how far do you pull your pants down?
To below my knees: 51%
To above my knees: 29%
To my knees: 20%

How many Chuugen (summer gifts) do you plan to send this year?
None: 65%
1-3 gifts: 29%
4-6 gifts: 0%
7-9 gifts: 2%
10-19 gifts: 4%

What kind of birth control do you use?
Condom: 63%
Abstinence: 5%
The pill: 3%
Early withdrawal: 9%
None: 20%

How do you handle a CD?
With one hand, putting one finger in the hole: 57%
With one hand, without putting a finger in the hole: 21%
With both hands: 2%
Other: 20%

Until what age is it appropriate to put your kids’ photos on a New Year’s card?
Up to age 3: 18%
Up to age 5: 21%
Up to age 7: 25%
Up to age 9: 7%
Up to age 11: 3%
Up to age 13: 13%
Up to age 15: 1%
Up to age 17: 3%
Up to age 19: 5%
Up to age 22: 1%
Up to age 30: 2%

Do you eat the tail when you have fried shrimp?
Yes: 51%
No: 48%
Never eat shrimp: 1%

Do you own a negligee (women only)?
Yes: 22%
No: 78%

When you take a pee, do you use the opening in your underpants?
Yes: 46%
No: 54%

Do you walk on the escalator?
Yes: 52%
No: 48%

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The post What’s Normal in Japan? appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

Video of the festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SggvPrkoJUI
Shrine homepage: http://tomuraya.co.jp/wakamiya.htm (Japanese only)

2-3-16 Daishi Eki-mae, Misaki-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Inside the grounds of Wakamiya Hachimangu.

To get there, take the Keikyu line from Shinagawa Station. Transfer to the Keikyu-Daishi Line at Keikyu Kawasaki Station and get out at Keikyu-Daishi. It takes about 45 minutes and costs 580 yen. The festival starts at 10:00 AM. The main event, the penis procession starts at 1:00 PM.

There are other posts about the festival here:
https://www.meanwhile-in-japan.com/tag/kanamara-matsuri/

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The post Kanamara Penis Festival Reminder appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

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The post Hard Gay Toy appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.

Fortunately, about 300 of the dolls were hidden or preserved by people who risked being branded as traitors. There’s a really interesting homepage with a detailed history of the dolls, photos, and the story of individual dolls at http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/dolls/index.htm.

The museum also has displays of dolls from around the world, and fascinating displays on traditional doll-making techniques in both Japan and the West.

The museum is conveniently located in Yamashita-Koen near Motomachi/Chuukagai Station and costs 500 yen. For more details, visit their website at: http://www.doll-museum.jp/index_en.php.

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The post Yokohama Doll Museum appeared first on Meanwhile in Japan.