The nature of competition in Japan, and all about Japanese bathing

One unique aspect of Japan is how many industries have to deal with competition from the government, which interferes with the private sector in ways that wouldn't be acceptable in the U.S. When you think of your local post office, you probably think of stamps and mail delivery, but the government-run Japanese Post Office does a lot more: it's the world's largest bank with some $3.2 trillion in cash deposits in postal savings accounts. The Post Office has so much money sloshing around that it uses it to build subsidized entertainment facilities around the country, like hotels and a giant sprawling indoor pool near Nikko which never has anyone using it. It also sells life insurance, something that's totally unnecessary in Japan, a country with a strong and competitive insurance industry. Prime Minister Koizumi aims to convert the Japan Post Corporation into a private company, hopefully repeating the successful privatizations of the Kokutetsu railroad monopoly (now known as the six JR companies), Japan's largest tobacco company JT (once operated directly by government, ugh) and Japan's old telephone company (now known as NTT, one of Japan's most vibrant businesses).

My son just finished with his final tests, his last of the third grade. He did really well in his science final, only missing one question, which was about the shadow cast by a stick in the ground. Over the course of several hours, the position of the shadow moves -- why? My son, who is no fool, wrote that the Earth is moving, but he was disappointed to find this marked wrong, however -- "the sun moves in the sky" was what was in the textbook, and that's what he was expected to write. We took the teacher to task on this, which surprised him, since questioning educators is seldom done in Japan. In the end, I think we taught our son an important lesson about not automatically accepting what he hears.

I love Japanese public baths (sento) and hot springs (onsen, pronounced OWN-sen), and take my kids almost every week -- sometimes twice a week. Public baths hail back from the Edo period when people didn't have private baths in their homes, and had to go to community facilities to bathe. Volcanic hot springs also have a long history, and popular onsen towns like Kusatsu, located in the mountains near J-List, have been in use as resort towns for hundreds of years. Once my son saw a young boy in the bath and asked me why he had a blue bruise on his rear end. This is the Mongolian Spot (mokohan in Japanese, "the Old Spot of Mongol"), a blue bruise-like spot which is found on Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian children, including my own kids when they were young. The spots go away when the children reach age five or so. In Japanese, the word for someone who is still a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn is ao ni-sai (AH-oh NEE-sai, "still blue 2-year-old"), which probably has something to do with this spot.

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	FRUITS Reserve Subscription. Meet FRUiTs, the most popular magazine in our revolving monthly subscription system at J-List. A really cool magazine that just shows page after cool page of young people in Tokyo's fashionable Harajuku area. And no ads! Apparently everyone at this magazine is working for free.
	Japanese Patch -- Hisshou *Certain Victory* Another cool patch from Japan, something we've been working on selling for some time. It may look like just a patch, but it's really a wappen, the badges that are worn by tough and rebellious young people in Japan's society. They have some right-wing affiliations, but nothing worse than, say, Stars and Bars.
	Azumi 2 Death or Love -- Aya Ueto. Aya Ueto is the currently darling of Japan, a young actress who distinguished herself and now has many popular roles, including Azumi and Azumi 2 (both directed by Ryuhei Kitamura) and a great drama on NHK right now. Here is her latest photobook.
	My Melody Plush Pencil Case. We love to bring you cool things from Japan, and this caught our eye immediately. A plush pencil case (useful for things besides pencils of course), it's a plush My Melody character. There's a Hello Kitty one too. When I was attending SDSU, I'd go out of my way to bring cool items like this to class to get comments from other people.
	Kimono Collection 4 Hours. Among the many fetishes in Japanese adult video is "kimono fetish" which is understandable, since this is Japan and all. This is a 4 hour DVD featuring nothing but wafuku (various kimono styles, yukata, hakama and so on).
	March of Koala -- Melon Soda Cream. Sure, it's not that hard to find March of the Koalas, or Koala no March, in the U.S. -- they even sell it at the San Diego Zoo (which freaked me out more than a little). But can you get Melon Soda Cream flavor? Huh? Okay then. That's what I thought.