The plight of the poor Japanese taxi driver, finding government waste very close to home, and how to sound like a dirty old man in Japanese

I wrote a couple weeks ago that taxi fares were going to be going up 7%, a rare instance of inflation in a country where prices generally stay the same for years. Unlike the U.S., Japan is a very centralized place where change always happens from the top down, and I found it interesting to note that the decision to allow the raise in rates for the whole country was handled by a single government ministry in Tokyo, not decided on a local level as you might expect. The higher rates are to give drivers a long-overdue raise, since most of them are earning what they made in the 1980s, and with no custom of tipping in Japan to help make up the difference. Not every taxi company is raising their rates, however -- some are keeping them the same, which effectively introduces price competition in an industry where none existed before. While most of the world takes it for granted that taxi drivers will usually be from some often unpronounceable country, that's not the case at all here, where virtually 100% of drivers are Japanese -- after all, would you get into a cab driven by someone who couldn't read kanji? Once, I did catch a TV show about an American who had decided to become a taxi driver and had passed all the required tests, but the fact that this was rare enough to make national TV shows how uncommon this is.

Near our house, the powers that be have decided we need a new road, which would run alongside a neighbor's vegetable garden providing us with three routes out to the main street where we currently have two. They purchased the land, brought in machines to flatten the ground and laid gravel in preparation for the construction of the road. Next they did...nothing, allowing the half-built road to sit there for months. They're waiting, I'm told, for the next budgetary cycle to roll around, at which time they'll get more money from the central government to finish the project, and we'll finally have three ways to get out to the street -- yippie. The fiscal equivelent to unnecessary surgery, construction projects are often extremely wasteful in Japan, like a 500 meter ditch dug beside a road where a 20 meter one would have sufficed because budgetary aid is only available for projects of a certain size or larger, or a bridge and tunnel across Tokyo harbor that costs $40 to use yet takes slightly longer than just driving around on the normal roads. What's amazing to me is how little anger there is on the part of taxpayers when waste like this occurs, which is related to the Japanese tradition of saying shikata ga nai (or more colloquially, sho ga nai), meaning "it can't be helped," at the drop of a hat. To paraphrase Bill Watterson, I know the government is inefficient, but why isn't it ever inefficient in our favor?

The only constant is change, and Japan has had to deal with rather a lot of change over the past 150 years, essentially, going from a feudal country still in the Middle Ages to a modern, industrialized democracy in decades where other nations took centuries. This has brought about changes in the language, as Japan was forced to interface with the outside world more. Japanese is a linguistically impoverished language, with only 5 vowels usually paired into syllables with consonants (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc.), and due to a quirk of phonetics, the sounds "ti" and "di" sound could not be accurately written using the normal kana system. Without a way to express these sounds, foreign words like "Disneyland" and "party" could not be correctly represented, and would be converted to "Desneyland" and "parteh," which sound strange to the ear. It seems a "patch" was introduced at some time in the last few decades, allowing the sounds to be expressed in katakana by combining two similar characters, but unfortunately there's a whole generation of older Japanese who learned a slew of foreign loan words with the older, strange-sounding pronunciations. Now a common caricature of an old Japanese man is one who is sukebe (dirty-minded) and tries to catch a glimpse of a girl's panteh while riding the train. Since the last thing in the world a Japanese person expects a foreigner to do is use these oddly-pronounced English words, I like to go out of my way to use them just for the shock value of it. You should see the downstairs area of J-List: it's filled with about 500 packages of every size and shape, great anime toys and calendars and DVDs and other items that we're shipping out to customers around the world. J-List is primed and ready to serve you this Holiday season, so why not take this opportunity to browse the J-List site and see what cool new items we have for you?

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	Potion w/Trading Arts Mini ~ Final Fantasy 10th Anniversary. The Final Fantasy Potion Goodness continues, we've gotten the just-released FF 10th anniversary potions in stock, which are sold out throughout the country and very hard to find. Each gorgeous can comes with a random figure.
	Fuka Ayase - Yotsuba Figure. Here's a really nice figure from Kaiyodo, the super cute Fuka from the Yotsuba& (Yotsuba-to in Japanese, Yotsuba-and in English) manga and anime. In stock now!
	Cute Hello Kitty Holiday Snack Sets. Wow, these are extremely cute, a Hello Kitty stocking filled with fun Sanrio items including snacks, playing cars and other stuff, and a Hello Kitty Knit Shoulder Bag that's also loaded with good things to eat.
	Calcifur Fire Demon - Men's standard. Here's a new T-shirt featuring Calcifur, the cute fire demon from Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, who is perched on a piece of wood over the pan he lives in. We love the way this came out.
	niKyoro ~ Round 2 tier Bento Box Bowl & Chopsticks w/case --- Blue. The "Nikyoro" (from niko niko which means to smile, and kyoro kyoro which means to look around from left to right, don't ask) line of bento products is very poplar, and here's a cute new round bento box set with chopsticks.
	Hello Kitty Play Laptop Computer. How cool is this? A fun mini laptop for Hello Kitty fans, complete with mouse, keyboard, scroll wheel and a screen that scrolls to show different pictures. Vista capable! (Just kidding.)
	Hello Kitty Fluffy Hood. Keep warm this winter with the ultimate Sanrio item, a warm and fuzzy Hello Kitty Fluffy Hood that ties around your chin and protects your ears and head from non-cute coldness.
	Japanese Traditional Items. We have lots of restocked Japanese items too, including the Go Ninja Action Strap for your phone or keys, our popular Lucky Cat Lantern, a beautiful Owl Lovers Display and Japanese Fragrance Oil.
	Virtual Hiragana Class in One Week ~ Learn Japanese Characters on DVD. The most basic step in learning to read Japanese is mastering hiragana, and this is a great book w/ DVD that teaches it to you using shape associations to help make it easy. This is a great book for anyone starting out learning this rewarding language.
	Japanese Christmas Ornaments. Here's a rare and wonderful item from Japan: Christmas tree ornaments featuring daruma, the red round Japanese decorations that bring good luck to homes and businesses in Japan. What a great idea!
	AFRO Samurai Maniax!!! Visual Guide Book. Afro Samurai is one of the most fresh and innovative anime shows to come along in a while, and this is the awesome art book for the series.
	Anime Figures Now in Stock. Some popular items that were available as preorder have come in, including the cute Lilith and Sachiel Evangelion Angels, remastered as "Super Deformed" characters by the creator of Keroro Gunso. Also, the cool Lazy Saber Nendoroid is in stock now.
	COPIC Art Supplies. J-List is proud to announce that we're carrying drawing / writing supplies from COPIC, one of the most famous companies in Japan. Today we're posting a great collection of Multi Liner Pigment pen with a variety of tip sizes, as well as high-quality paper that won't allow ink to transfer to the page below.
	Rilakkuma Bobble Head Set. Rilakkuma (which means "Relax Bear") is the most popular character from San-X, the company that re-invented cute in Japan, and this is a set of great Relax Bear bobblehead toys that show the bears in many relaxing activities.
	Totoro Plush and Stamps Available Got some great Studio Ghibli restocked items too, including the classic gray smiling plush in two different sizes and more of those popular Totoro stamps made of real wood!
	Orogo -- Hatsune Matsushima. Feast your eyes on the beauty of 20-year-old Hatsune-chan, who shows you her beautiful bikini'ed body in many pleasing photos.
	Great New Manga Volumes. See some outstanding new "ero" manga from Japan, including Intense! Boin Sensei vol. 2, as well as I Want To Do It a Lot, a collection of 13 stories written from a girl's "H" point of view.
	Akiman Cover Girls. A really memorable artbook from illustrator Akira Yasuda, one of the designers of Street Fighter, Turn-A Gundam and Code Geass. Beautiful pictures throughout, with just a touch of "H."