Category: Cultural Experiences

It is 7/8/9 today. I think that’s kind of cool. I think it is pretty well established by now that I’m a bit of a geek, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I find the sequence amusing.

Over 5 years ago I decided to give up caffeine. There was no religious reason behind it. A long time ago I vowed to never drink Coca-Cola or any caffeinated carbonated beverage after I got my orthodontics off. I didn’t get braces until I was (barely) an adult, and I figured I had enough Coke as a child to last a lifetime. With Coke out of my life, my coffee and tea habit fulfilled my caffeine need. Eventually, tired of Sunday morning headaches if I didn’t get my latte in a timely manner, I decided it probably was a good idea to quit the drug. I will admit to using coffee medicinally on a few occasions, mainly to survive a road trip without falling asleep. I can promise you, if you don’t habitually drink coffee, a latte around 2:00 pm can sustain you for hours and hours. I also admit that chocolate has not been purged from my diet either, so I’m not pure. But I try.

What’s that have to do with anything? Well, I’ve started to notice a trend in Japan for Coffee Jelly drinks. Say what? That sounds and looks horrible. It sort of seems boba-esque to me. I’ve always thought boba was really silly, and was kind of like putting little choking hazards of phlegm in my drink. Sorry, but that’s what I think. Starbucks now offers Coffee Jelly Frappuccinos, and Georgia offers Jelly Coffee in a can. As I started writing this, I did a Google search and found a zillion blogs recently blogging about Coffee Jelly. It is so hard to be cutting edge, but I wonder how many of those blogs compare boba to phlegm? Huh? HUH? That’s what blogging is all about! Originality. The two blogs linked at least tell you what drinking Coffee Jelly is like. Oh, at today’s exchange rate, a Tall is about 5 bucks, a Venti is over $6.

As for other news, I really want to get my Nara pictures on line, but now that I got my iPhone toy and joined Apple’s MobileMe, I want to create an album that I can link to from the blog. So now I have to learn the best way to export directly from Aperture into MobileMe, plus Japanese homework, plus consolidating my address books and taking advantage of the MobileMe “cloud” to sync all my devices, plus a visit from Tomo, and a 4th of July party, and researching cool Apps for the iPhone, and an almost daily need for sleep I just haven’t accomplished everything. I’m sorry, I’m trying.

Rainy season continues. We had a respite over the weekend and it has rained at some point every day this week. More predicted. And I’m sad to report that white-sweats and top-knot appear to have fully broken off communication. They sit in different sets of benches waiting for the train and even enter the train through separate doors. I’ll let my blogosphere friends know if anything changes.

Holy cow! Just by using the term “herbivore men” in my blog, I got almost 400 hits yesterday. That wasn’t my intention at all, but checking my logs there were a ton of Google searches for that phrase. I wanted people to read my blog, but I never thought one reference would create such a stir. This more than tops the Google searches for things related to the naked man festival (I won’t start to tell you some of the search topics that end up pointing to my blog). Well, as my tag says, “Be careful what you dream of, it may come up and surprise you,” (with all due respects to The Icicle Works whose lyric is lifted for my tag).

I found the CNN article interesting, as did apparently at least 380 other people who bothered to search and then click my site.

I asked my interpreter about the phenomenon described in the article. Yes, I have an interpreter. It makes me sound pretty important doesn’t it? My interpreter, who is shared with my team, is really helpful as a cultural bridge as well. She knew what I was talking about and described the following:

Recently the number of young men who are not greedy for hunting girls is increasing. Such kind of men is called as “Herbivore Men” or Sousyoku-kei-Danshi or “草食系男子”(そうしょくけいだんし) .

On the contrary, girls are impatient against such attitude by men’s. Therefore girls are more aggressive to get their mates than ever in Japan. The activity to get married which is called “Kon-Katsu” or “å©šæ´»” has become active vigorously among young ladies.

She doesn’t have to worry, she’s married and has two kids, with the oldest in high school. Considering she’s only 25, it is quite remarkable. I should also add that she reads this blog.

I got a comment from “Christopher” and I wondered who that was. I noticed his email address included the phrase “sanfranclubkid.” I didn’t think I knew folks who would include “club kid” in their address. 10 years ago, maybe I would have known someone but still it is very unlikely. That was before I checked my access logs to see that I had so many hits. I reckon Christopher was someone who found his way to my site via Google. Christopher noted:

I saw the article and I think that’s cool; be who you want to be and do what you want to do. They’re not hurting anybody, they’re just being themselves. The only unfortunate thing about that, was that “Jay” doesn’t live in SF, and I can’t be his boyfriend, cuz he’s hella cute!

First of all, thanks for the comment Christopher. I liked the article too. I agree, it’s great to be who you want to be and do what you want to do. I said it was fascinating and perplexing, but I didn’t say it was bad.

The article also comments on the socioeconomic aspects of the life of younger people in Japan. I did not originally post that portion, but it is important to understand the whole context so be sure and read the whole article.

Fukasawa said the group does not care so much about making money — a quality tied to the fact that there are fewer jobs available during the current global economic recession.

Japan’s economy recently saw its largest-ever recorded contraction and has shrunk for four straight quarters. Blue chip companies Sony, Panasonic, Toyota and Nissan all reported losses in May, and most are forecasting the same for the current fiscal year. Though still low by international standards, Japan’s reported 5 percent unemployment is the highest since 2003.

Hori agreed economics has played a role. When he finished university, “a lot of my friends were trying to work for a big company that pays well and I wasn’t interested in that. I am kind of struggling financially and my father is not very happy about it,” he said.

Starting salaries are very low right now, and I have friends working their tails off making nothing. If they were interested in raising a family, they could not afford to do so. I’m sure a contributing factor to the herbivore men is the fact that they cannot traditionally support a woman in the manner in which she expects to be supported and cannot even come close to supporting a family. That’ll take the wind out of your sails pretty quickly. I think the expectation of Japanese women is changing, but there is a lot of societal pressure (I mean a LOT) to conform to expectations. So perhaps grazing on grasses instead of hunting buffalo is a natural reaction.

Christopher did bring up another point that is part of the perplexity. “The only unfortunate thing about that, was that “Jay” doesn’t live in SF, and I can’t be his boyfriend, cuz he’s hella cute!” Christopher said. But indeed, there’s the rub. Jay doesn’t want to be your boyfriend. He’s not interested in guys. He’s just a clumsy, skinny, metrosexual with great hair and snappy clothes that doesn’t want to be bothered with a girlfriend. If you ever come to Japan, Christopher, you are going to have to recalibrate.

I had never heard the term, “Herbivore men,” until today. I happen to get a link to a CNN article. I am going to quote freely from the article since I reference it above.

Author and pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa coined the term in 2006 in a series of articles on marketing to a younger generation of Japanese men. She used it to describe some men who she said were changing the country’s ideas about just what is — and isn’t — masculine.

“In Japan, sex is translated as ‘relationship in flesh,'” she said, “so I named those boys ‘herbivorous boys’ since they are not interested in flesh.”

Typically, “herbivore men” are in their 20s and 30s, and believe that friendship without sex can exist between men and women, Fukasawa said.

The term has become a buzzword in Japan. Many people in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood were familiar with “herbivore men” — and had opinions about them.

Shigeyuki Nagayama said such men were not eager to find girlfriends and tend to be clumsy in love, and he admitted he seemed to fit the mold himself.

“My father always asks me if I got a girlfriend. He tells me I’m no good because I can’t get a girlfriend.”

…

Takahito Kaji, 21, said he has been told he is “totally herbivorous.”

“Herbivorous boys are fragile, do not have a stocky body — skinny.”

Fukasawa said Japanese men from the baby boomer generation were typically aggressive and proactive when it came to romance and sex. But as a result of growing up during Japan’s troubled economy in the 1990s, their children’s generation was not as assertive and goal-oriented. Their outlook came, in part, from seeing their fathers’ model of masculinity falter even as Japanese women gained more lifestyle options.

Former CNN intern Junichiro Hori, a self-described herbivore, said the idea goes beyond looks and attitudes toward sex.

“Some guys still try to be manly and try to be like strong and stuff, but you know personally I’m not afraid to show my vulnerability because being vulnerable or being sensitive is not a weakness.”

Older generations of Japanese men are not happy about the changes. At a bar frequented by businessmen after work, one man said: “You need to be carnivorous when you make decisions in your life. You should be proactive, not passive.”

This is directly related to my comments in a previous post where I said, “Japan is a land of crazy fashions. This is the land of tight T-shirts with fancy, sparkly cursive writing words, dyed hair, hair clips, and extremely manicured eyebrows. And those are just the boys!” It is extremely true, and really throws off the whole sense of masculine / feminine, straight / gay that Americans and Europeans come to expect.  I find it fascinating and perplexing and definitely makes people watching more interesting.  I think I’ve seem more macho looking guys in Ni-chome compared to the herbivores elsewhere.  Apparently the gay community is taking a more masculine approach to attraction.