Actually, the polls have been open since 7:00AM and Asahi says voting in the first two hours was 3.98% of total eligible voters, up from 2005’s 3.20%. Could be people are out early, with a forecast of afternoon rain, but a high turnout will hurt the LDP and Komeito, who know that non-partisan voters are more likely to float to the opposition. Which reminds me of something that has been nagging me: Why did Aso draw attention to the elction by making himself so visible in the campaign? It drew media attention, and also made his denials of national impact ring hollow. That is like pushing for his own downfall before he gets to call snap election.
That’s it for now. I’ll get to your comments, Ross and Mark, later in the day.
Showing posts with label Tokyo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tokyo. Show all posts
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Friday, April 11, 2008
Robert Dujarric Gives Us the Good News and Bad News (about Japan, of Course)
Today, I went to the TUJ Mita Campus to hear our good friend Robert Dujarric give a talk. The good news? Japan is rich, stable, and peaceful. (Hey, that’s why he’s here, isn’t it?) The bad news? Japan is missing out on the 21st Century.
I’ve asked him to give a similar talk at another forum, sometime in June. If you’re interested and will be in Tokyo then, send me an email. It’s by invitation only, but it won’t be difficult to convince the sponsor; there’s no refreshments.
There’s another, related story that I want to tell here. It’s a ten, fifteen minute walk from the subway station to the TUJ Mita Campus, and, along the way, it’s mostly machine shops, little office buildings, restaurants, groceries, an odd Buddhist temple or two － the not old, but aging, face of Tokyo. This was the first time that I had been in the neighborhood in broad daylight, so I was surprised by the number of shuttered stored fronts and closed offices along the way.
They talk about the hollowing out of the provinces, the inaka, once teeming city centers that have lost their trade to larger metropolitan centers. They’re not the only ones. Do you remember the 2003 Tokyo office space market collapse that never happened? I think that I have some idea how the Tokyo real estate market absorbed it.
On the way back, I stopped off at Shinjuku and walked through Kabukichō. Do you know that short, wide street that looks like the center of Kabukichō, if anything that can be called that? Sure enough, there was an unmanned information center. Is the rot reaching the core…
The silver lining? I passed through the love hotel district (Kabukichō, not Mita), and all the hotels were open for business. There were even a few couples answering (or having answered) nature’s calls on the streets. One of Mr. Dujarric’s most serious charges is aimed at the very low, Japanese fertility rate. Let’s give those enterprising couples any encouragement we can give them, no?
I’ve asked him to give a similar talk at another forum, sometime in June. If you’re interested and will be in Tokyo then, send me an email. It’s by invitation only, but it won’t be difficult to convince the sponsor; there’s no refreshments.
There’s another, related story that I want to tell here. It’s a ten, fifteen minute walk from the subway station to the TUJ Mita Campus, and, along the way, it’s mostly machine shops, little office buildings, restaurants, groceries, an odd Buddhist temple or two － the not old, but aging, face of Tokyo. This was the first time that I had been in the neighborhood in broad daylight, so I was surprised by the number of shuttered stored fronts and closed offices along the way.
They talk about the hollowing out of the provinces, the inaka, once teeming city centers that have lost their trade to larger metropolitan centers. They’re not the only ones. Do you remember the 2003 Tokyo office space market collapse that never happened? I think that I have some idea how the Tokyo real estate market absorbed it.
On the way back, I stopped off at Shinjuku and walked through Kabukichō. Do you know that short, wide street that looks like the center of Kabukichō, if anything that can be called that? Sure enough, there was an unmanned information center. Is the rot reaching the core…
The silver lining? I passed through the love hotel district (Kabukichō, not Mita), and all the hotels were open for business. There were even a few couples answering (or having answered) nature’s calls on the streets. One of Mr. Dujarric’s most serious charges is aimed at the very low, Japanese fertility rate. Let’s give those enterprising couples any encouragement we can give them, no?
Monday, April 07, 2008
Is Kabukichō Dying?
If you’re not familiar with the Kabukichō neighborhood, chances are, you won’t be interested in this post. There’s a fairly lengthy English-language Wikipedia entry on the place, though, and I’ve used it to append a sidebar (underbar?).
I pass through Kabukichō once in a while, but it’s only this winter that I first noticed information centers cropping up there. The gaudy, brightly-lit information centers － they resemble game arcades more than anything else － do not have any attendants to assist you; instead, they have computer terminals where you can browse (I assume) the Kabukichō commercial cooperative’s database for cabarets, host clubs and other (I assume) legal forms of entertainment.
Over time, there appeared to be more and more of these information centers. Now, each small block of buildings is more likely than not to have one of these unmanned information centers on one or more of its sides. Last week, I even found two information centers sitting right next door to each other. I also realized that the information centers now had noren-like curtains hanging down to waist level. Not that you ever see anyone in there, though, so there’s no one to appreciate the Kabukichō cooperative’s concern for the browser’s privacy.
As if.
These are all ground-level, street-front locations. Can you imagine what the vacancy rates must be in the upper stories and basements? The Internet is a killer.
Wikipedia begins its entry on Kabukichō with the following paragraph:
Kabukichō (歌舞伎町) is an entertainment and red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Kabukichō is the location of many hostess bars, host bars, love hotels, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, and is often called the "Sleepless Town" (眠らない街). The district's name comes from late-1940s plans to build a kabuki theater: although the theater was never built, the name stuck.
Seems about right to me. One of the three substantive entries is on “Crime”. That, too.
The article goes on to say:
Recently, tourism from China and Korea are on the rise, and so, many tourists can be seen in Kabukichō even during daytime.
You may also catch glimpses of beefy men in black with cropped hair getting in and out of large black cars, with and without their women, slightly intoxicated, “even during daytime”. It’s that kind of place. But very few Caucasian or black tourists (or residents, for that matter), though you still may have seen the place in the gritty, realistic work of photographers like Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama.
I pass through Kabukichō once in a while, but it’s only this winter that I first noticed information centers cropping up there. The gaudy, brightly-lit information centers － they resemble game arcades more than anything else － do not have any attendants to assist you; instead, they have computer terminals where you can browse (I assume) the Kabukichō commercial cooperative’s database for cabarets, host clubs and other (I assume) legal forms of entertainment.
Over time, there appeared to be more and more of these information centers. Now, each small block of buildings is more likely than not to have one of these unmanned information centers on one or more of its sides. Last week, I even found two information centers sitting right next door to each other. I also realized that the information centers now had noren-like curtains hanging down to waist level. Not that you ever see anyone in there, though, so there’s no one to appreciate the Kabukichō cooperative’s concern for the browser’s privacy.
As if.
These are all ground-level, street-front locations. Can you imagine what the vacancy rates must be in the upper stories and basements? The Internet is a killer.
Wikipedia begins its entry on Kabukichō with the following paragraph:
Kabukichō (歌舞伎町) is an entertainment and red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Kabukichō is the location of many hostess bars, host bars, love hotels, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, and is often called the "Sleepless Town" (眠らない街). The district's name comes from late-1940s plans to build a kabuki theater: although the theater was never built, the name stuck.
Seems about right to me. One of the three substantive entries is on “Crime”. That, too.
The article goes on to say:
Recently, tourism from China and Korea are on the rise, and so, many tourists can be seen in Kabukichō even during daytime.
You may also catch glimpses of beefy men in black with cropped hair getting in and out of large black cars, with and without their women, slightly intoxicated, “even during daytime”. It’s that kind of place. But very few Caucasian or black tourists (or residents, for that matter), though you still may have seen the place in the gritty, realistic work of photographers like Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
The Blog Plays Assistant as Trend Spotter Flies in from New York New York
JK is in town with his trend spotter wife. As far as I can gather from what he tells me, a trend spotter gets paid to go to fashion hotspots like Tokyo and Shanghai and walk around soaking up the latest next things. JK, who has the face of a Roman senator and the body of an Ivy League fullback, and I decide to help out by doing a little trend spotting of our own. We quickly agree that all the hot Tokyo women are wearing short shorts. That, and denim cutoff microskirts. And we mean micro. I later find out that there are no hot women in Ginza.
Hey, we were only trying to help.
Smelly, dirty, noisy New York, where everybody walks as fast as the rest of the world runs; the big fat capital of the global community; the Naked City where The Naked Cowboy is but one of the eight million stories; what other place could be so American?
Ah, America, the only major power where a serious demographic crunch does not loom. No wonder Russia and China are scared. Russia has the more immediate problem, an imploding male population, but China does not have a natural resource crutch (curse?).
Hey, we were only trying to help.
Smelly, dirty, noisy New York, where everybody walks as fast as the rest of the world runs; the big fat capital of the global community; the Naked City where The Naked Cowboy is but one of the eight million stories; what other place could be so American?
Ah, America, the only major power where a serious demographic crunch does not loom. No wonder Russia and China are scared. Russia has the more immediate problem, an imploding male population, but China does not have a natural resource crutch (curse?).
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