The mystery of the Japanese town populated by life-size dolls has finally been solved

Five years ago, I ventured out on a week-long solo bike trip across a small chunk of rural Japan. I wrote about riding through ghost towns devoid of people but full of life-size dolls (here and here).

From a distance, I mistook the dolls for people since they were doing the usual things that people do. They were working in the fields, fixing cars, waiting at the bus stop, sitting in chairs, fishing in canals, puttering in gardens and sleeping on park benches. Except they weren't moving. It was only when I got closer that I realized they weren't people at all. In fact, there were no people anywhere. Just dozens of dolls. I was alone in a town swallowed by mountains and populated by life-size dolls. It was deeply unsettling. I took a few photos and didn't linger for long.

At the time, I didn't know who put the dolls there or what they meant. But now, five years later, the mystery of the Japanese doll town has finally been solved.

Someone by the name of Fritz Schumann made this short documentary about the woman responsible for creating the doll town. The story it tells is beautiful and sad and totally worth watching.

And just for fun, here are a few more photos from my own (brief) trip to this town five years ago.

Truth, lies, and the Japanese language

The Japanese language is a beautiful, maddening thing. Because it's more polite to speak in an indirect way, words become unhinged from their meanings, serving as signposts to the deeper subtext.

You have to learn that "maybe" usually means "absolutely not" or that "thank you" is a rude way to respond to a compliment. Politeness requires that you reply to a compliment by firmly denying it. Besides everyone knows that a compliment in Japan is not meant to be taken at face value. What's important is the subtext. A compliment is a foot in the door, a conversation starter, a way to express kind feelings. If, for example, you can string a few sentences together in Japanese, you will consistently be told, "Wow! Your Japanese is so good." The person saying this knows it's a lie. You know it's a lie. But you also both know the purpose of the lie is to foster friendly feelings. The words are fake but the kindness is genuine.

And while the dishonesty and restraint inherent in this style of speaking can be frustrating, it makes for a fluid, creative way of communicating. Japanese is dynamic in a way that English is not. English communication takes place on the surface -- what you see is what you get (unless the person is lying, of course). Words are not used as signposts to guide the listener toward a deeper meaning. Words are used to directly express what the speaker is thinking and feeling. English speakers define "good" communication as being clear and unambiguous. We chastise politicians for the way they speak because they carefully chose their words to dance around the subject, never confirming nor denying, using vague terms to avoid saying what they really think. Our politicians are masters of the polite Japanese style of speaking.

I'm equally fascinated by the way Japanese businesses appropriate English words to sell their products in a Japanese way. A billboard for a coffee company that reads "Good coffee smile" cannot be taken literally nor is it meant to be taken literally. The words allude to the way coffee makes you feel. "Good coffee smile" is a paradox: it makes no sense and yet it makes perfect sense. It's poetic. (Of course, this misuse of English can also be hilarious.)

Another one of my favourite differences between Japanese and English is the use of sound symbolism. In English, we limit onomatopoeia to words that refer to sounds ("oink" "bang" "pop"). But in Japanese, there are mimetic words for things that don't make noise, like glitter (kira kira) or slime (neba neba). Procrastination has a sound (guzu guzu), as does a dress covered in sequins (pika pika), as does a basket full of fluffy kittens (fa fa).

Its fluidity is what makes Japanese beautiful and its ambiguity is what makes it maddening. It's difficult to know what people are really thinking, which, in turn, makes it difficult to form close friendships. How can you get to know someone without open and honest communication? My closest female Japanese friend is a woman by the name of Sachi, who, upon meeting me for the first time, blurted out, "Wow! Your Japanese is terrible."

Heated maxi pads (and other ways to stay warm in Japan)

Winter can be particularly cruel in Japan, a land without central heating, insulation, and double-glazed windows. Paper-thin walls and flimsy windows conspire to let the cold in and the heat out. As a result, an entire industry has sprung up around keeping people warm indoors.

Winter in Japan is all about the heated toilet seats, canned coffee, high-tech underwear, hot water bottles, space heaters, heated carpets, electric blankets, hand warmers, fleece blankets and, my personal favourite, the kotatsu. There's nothing more snuggley than a kotatsu (a kotatsu is basically a coffee table with an electric heater screwed to its underside. A big, fluffy duvet goes between the frame and the table-top. You sit on the floor with your legs under the table and the lower half of your body covered by the duvet, which traps the heat from under the table. It's a lovely womb-like contraption.)

This year, there is one more way to stay warm in Japan: heated maxi pads.



The thinking behind this product is that warming up your crotch will also warm up your core. Sort of like peeing your pants but without the odour and wetness.

The pads use the same technology as disposable hand warmers. A thin hand warmer is attached to the underside of the maxi pad, which produces heat when the iron inside it is exposed to air. The manufacturer warns against sitting for extended periods of time while using the pads (to avoid burning your lady bits). And even though they're maxi pads you're not supposed to use them when you're on your period. They seem to be getting good reviews from the Japanese ladies but I think I'll stick with more conventional ways to stay warm.

Learning how to bow

A degree from Kyoto University is a golden ticket to a good job in Japan. As a result, the school feels more like an incubator for salarymen than a place for higher learning. Which is why a compulsory class on Japanese business manners is part of the curriculum.

I wasn't too happy about being forced to take a class geared toward future salarymen when I wasn't planning to work in Japan after graduation. Equally annoying was the syllabus, which explained that we would learn "how to make/receive phone calls" and "how to send/receive emails." The implication was that we somehow hadn't acquired these skills before entering grad school. I love Japan but I hate the hierarchical social structure that makes it acceptable to treat grown adults like 12 year olds.

I went into the business manners class thinking it would be a waste of time. But I was wrong: it turned out to be one of the most fascinating classes I've ever taken. It was both absurd and illuminating. Absurd in the sense that we learned looking cute was more important than being competent, and illuminating in the sense that we learned why looking cute is part of Japanese business culture in the first place.

The university had contracted the class out to Smart-i, a company that specializes in teaching new recruits how to fall in line with corporate culture. Our instructor was an impeccably groomed woman by the name of Akiko Sakamoto. It was her job to teach us how to dress, how to hand out business cards, how to bow, how to smile, and how to sit in a car. It was like boot camp for businessmen.

Learning how to dress

We were told to come to class wearing business attire. All of the Japanese students showed up in identical black suits and white shirts. Most of the foreign students showed up in suits as well, but with a dash of style -- a flashy pink tie or a purple blouse. After the introductory remarks, the first lesson was about appearance. Ms. Sakamoto geared her talk toward appropriate interview attire. She told us to stand up while she walked around the room and inspected our outfits.

She praised the Japanese students and scolded the foreign students. The way the Japanese students were dressed showed they valued the group, while the way the foreign students were dressed showed they valued their individuality. Generally speaking, interviewers in Japan are looking to see how well you conform to the group, while interviewers in the west are looking to see what sets you apart from the group.

When it was my turn to be inspected, Ms. Sakamoto was blunt. My blue silk blouse was offensive ("bright colours cause a feeling of strangeness"). My flared black skirt was too showy. My red nailpolish was inappropriate (nails should be clipped short and left unpainted). My earrings had to go (absolutely no accessories). My open-toed heels were wrong (plain, black low-heeled pumps covering the whole foot were best). My bare legs were scandalous (hose is a must). The only compliment she gave me was on my hair, which was pulled back in a bun ("avoid loud-coloured hair, it can make people uncomfortable").

According to Ms. Sakamoto, the most important thing is to look "clean" and wearing white shirt (presumably one without stains) is the best way to do that. A white shirt and a black suit creates a good first impression. Almost every Japanese job seeker will wear the white shirt/black suit uniform to an interview (they call it their "recruit suit"). Wearing something other than the recruit suit implies that you are not a team player. A good employee follows the rules and doesn't make waves. It's better to blend in rather than to stand out (therefore, no earrings, no jewelry, no nailpolish, no hair out of place). Of course, these rules are for the interview process, not the job itself. We were told the rules loosen up after you've been hired.

Learning how to give and receive business cards

Next on the agenda was the art of giving and receiving business cards. In Japan, the business card (or "meishi") is considered an extension of the individual. Exchanging business cards is a formal activity; therefore, the card must be treated with respect.

You give your business card with your right hand and you receive a business card with both hands. It sounds simple in theory but it's more complicated in practice. Technically, you're supposed to put both hands on your business card holder and hold your arms out in front of you when you receive a card, while saying "choudaishimasu" ("I will accept it"). Then you have to read the other person's card out loud, acknowledging their name and title. If you receive the card during a meeting, you put the card on the table in front of you and leave it there throughout the duration of the meeting. If you exchange cards in a place where there aren't any tables, you are supposed to put it in your card holder. Shoving someone's business card in your pocket or your wallet is considered rude. Ms. Sakamoto had us practice in groups of two and four.

The foreign students weren't the only ones fumbling around. The Japanese students were also having trouble remembering all the rules. My friend Abe-chan leaned across the table and said, "Don't worry. It's difficult for us Japanese too."

Learning how to bow

There are three different kinds of bows: eshaku; keirei; and saikeirei. Deciding what bow to use depends on the level of politeness required in a particular situation.

The eshaku bow is reserved for a light greeting, such as when you say hello to someone when you pass them in the office. The keirei bow is used for general greetings, such as when you welcome a customer into a store. The saikeirei bow, a deep bow from the waist, is the most polite bow of the three. It is used when you want to express a feeling of gratitude or apology. A prolonged saikeirei bow -- often lasting longer than 30 seconds -- is reserved for extreme contrition. It's the one you see on TV when a tearful company president takes responsibility for something horrible (a nuclear meltdown, for example) and bows so deeply he almost bends in half.

Ms. Sakamoto then had us stand up and practice the saikeirei bow. First we had to stand with our hands placed in front of us, with the left hand on top of the right hand. The reason for covering the right hand with the left hand is that (in olden days) you would pull out a sword with your right hand so covering up your right hand shows you won't give any harm. Then we learned how to bow down quickly and come up slowly. We were taught to come up slowly to prevent us from coming up earlier than the other person. Coming up more slowly than the other person is a sign of respect. It was highly entertaining watching two people bowing quickly at the waist and then trying to come up more slowly than the other. Competitive bowing. It could be an Olympic sport.

Learning how to behave

Smile, smile, smile. This was Ms. Sakamoto's main message when it came to proper behaviour. Judging by the smile plastered on her face throughout the entire class, it was a lesson she clearly took to heart.

Smiling, she explained, creates an impression of cuteness. Being cute makes you seem friendly and nonthreatening. Direct confrontation is a sign of poor manners so if you are cute, you are showing respect to other people (Ms. Sakamoto's words, not mine).

She also told us that "beautiful posture" would take us far in the business world. She barked out orders like a drill sergeant. Don't sit cross-legged ("it's bad for your back and bad for manners")! Don't cross your arms! Stand up straight with your hands at your side! The line dividing business manners and military training is a thin one in Japan.

Learning how to sit

Learning how to sit falls under the broader umbrella of "order of precedence." In Japan, there is an order of precedence in terms of where you should sit in a business meeting or where you should sit in a car. The order of precedence for seating arrangements follows a set of rules called sekiji. Customers, supervisors, or people older than you should have the best seats. Such seats are called kamiza.

For example, three co-workers sharing a taxi to a meeting downtown have to follow a strict seating arrangement. Where each of these employees sits in the taxi depends on their rank in the company. The most important person sits in the back, directly behind the driver. This is the most honourable seat because it is the safest seat. The next person down the ladder also sits in the back seat. The lowest ranking employee sits up front beside the driver. This is the least honourable seat because it is the least safe seat. So if there's an accident, it's better to sacrifice the 22-year-old intern than the 60-year-old boss.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rules. Consider, for example, the case of four employees taking a taxi. Suppose three of the employees are equally important, with one lower ranking female employee. Technically, the three important employees should sit in the back and the unimportant female employee should sit in the front. But if the three important employees are all large men, then the female employee should offer to take the middle back seat so that the important male employees are more comfortable. The lowest ranking female's comfort and safety are irrelevant (again, Ms. Sakamoto's words, not mine).

All the rules get thrown out the window, however, if the company president is the one driving the car. In that case, the intern gets booted to the back seat and the second-in-command takes the seat beside the driver. The least safe seat mysteriously becomes the best seat. Don't ask me how this works. It defies logic. The whole thing made me feel as if we had been transported back to the 1950s.

Learning how to speak

After being drilled on how to answer the phone and send emails, the last lesson of the day was on how to speak super polite Japanese ("keigo").

Keigo includes teinei-go (polite form), sonkei-go (honorific form) and kenjo-go (humble form). Deciding what form to use depends on the relationship between the two speakers. But it's not just who you're talking to that determines the form, it's also who you're talking about. For example, when talking with the boss in the office, the speaker uses the honorific form. But when taking with a client about the boss, the speaker uses the humble form.

It's confusing. Let's leave it at that.

Overall, it was a fascinating class. I fully endorse the general goal: respect, manners, and politeness are all wonderful things. The western world could use a few lessons from Japan on how to cultivate group harmony.

But I think Japan takes the repression of individuality a bit too far. It can't be healthy to hide your true emotions all of the time. The class reinforced so many of the little things that I'm not entirely comfortable with here. Like making myself small and submissive. Or blindly conforming to the group. Or putting in 12-hour days for the sake of company loyalty. Or putting everyone else's needs ahead of my own. Or simply not being able to call out, "shotgun!" when I'm sharing a ride with my colleagues.

The cute, the not-so-cute and the ugly

It all began when a cat named Tama was appointed stationmaster of a railway station in rural Japan. And then the wheels came off the cute wagon.

Eager to cash in on what turned out to be a money-making bonanza, other railway stations jumped on the animal-as-stationmaster bandwagon. They appointed cats, dogs, goats and rabbits as honorary employees at railway stations across the country.

But what started out as a cute copycat move has corkscrewed down into a lazy and unimaginative gimmick now that railway officials are appointing lobsters as stationmasters. Seriously. Lobsters. The animal-as-stationmaster craze has officially jumped the shark.

Who knew that such a heart-warming tale would end on such a dark note?

It all began innocently enough. Five years ago, several Japanese railway lines went from being manned to unmanned in an effort to cut costs. Railway officials selected local businesspeople to serve as honorary stationmasters.

At Kishi station in the Japanese town of Kinokawa, a local grocer was appointed stationmaster. A stray cat took up residence outside the empty ticket booth and the grocer would feed her while going about his stationmaster duties. Tama the cat became a regular fixture at the station. Her friendly personality made her a hit with the locals, who would stop and pet her on their way to work.

The cat's popularity caught the eye of the railway officials. For fun, they decided to name her honorary stationmaster in 2007. The cat was given an office (a ticket booth containing a litter box), a uniform (a cute little hat and collar), a salary (free cat food), and a job (greet passengers as they come in and out of the station). The story made headlines across the country and Tama the cat became an overnight celebrity in cute-crazed Japan.

Japanese tourists flocked to the tiny train station to pose for photos with Tama. The cat became so famous that the railway had to hire a human employee to assist her. A shop at the station started to sell a variety of Tama-branded souvenir goods, including buttons, snacks, and a special photo book. According to the Japan Times, the cat has attracted tourists from across the country and boosted the local economy by 1.1 billion yen.

Last year, Tama was promoted to corporate executive of the Wakayama Electric Railway Co. (making her the company's highest-ranking female executive).

It's the stuff American dreams are made of: one day you're nobody, the next day you're somebody. Or, in this case, one day you're a stray cat, the next day you're at the top of the transportation industry.


In an attempt to cash in on the success of Tama, other unmanned railway stations in Japan jumped on the animal-as-stationmaster bandwagon. There are now several cat stationmasters and at least two dog stationmasters, with the latest being a fluffy Akita named Wasao.


Wasao reports for duty at Ajigasawa station in Aomori Prefecture. His job is to help boost the local tourism industry, which has been suffering since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The other dog stationmaster was a Yorkshire terrier named Maron, who worked at a small railway station in northern Japan. Unfortunately, Maron passed away from bronchitis in 2009 -- you can view pictures of his funeral here.


This is where the story starts to get weird. Because it was no longer novel to appoint a cat or a dog as stationmaster, other stations had to get creative in order to generate both headlines and revenues of their own. So in an attempt to one-up the kitties, the next animal to be appointed to the role of stationmaster was a goat called Koma.


Koma reports for duty at Uzen-Komatsu station in Yamagata Prefecture. The goat stationmaster worked out so well that a station thousands of kilometres to the south stole the idea and appointed a goat named Taro to greet passengers in Fukuoka.


But the novelty of goat stationmasters was starting to wear off so the next animal to work the railroad was a rabbit. At Unomachi station in Ehime prefecture, railway officials chose a rabbit named Tsubasa to fill the position of honorary stationmaster. According to a news report, the railway station is the only one in Japan that contains the Chinese character for "rabbit" in its name. So a rabbit was the obvious choice.


It didn't take long for another Shikoku railway to rip off the rabbit idea. Yamagata Railway also named a rabbit as stationmaster and lined its gift-shop shelves with a stuffed bunny so cute your brain will melt just looking at it.



This is when things started to go horribly wrong. With all of the cute, domesticated animals spoken for, other railways took the animal-stationmaster trend one step too far. It stopped being cute with the appointment of two baby monkeys.


Nehime and Rakan were named stationmasters at Hojo-cho station in Hyoto prefecture. The monkeys were donated by a local resident, who was concerned about the railway's decreasing ridership and poor finances. The railway hoped the monkey stationmasters would help attract publicity and riders to the line's first biodiesel-fueled train.

It gets worse. Officials at JR Ibusuki Station in Kagoshima prefecture appointed a tortoise as stationmaster. Kotaro is a 25-year-old African Spurred tortoise who weighs 41kg. He has a custom-made stationmaster hat and it wears it on the job.



The prize for the least-cute stationmaster goes to a pair of lobsters at Shishikui station in Tokushima Prefecture. Yes, stationmaster lobsters. The local railway set up an aquarium in the station's foyer and placed a stationmaster's hat above the tank, after attaching little hats to the lobsters' heads proved to be too difficult.


Let's throw a lobster in a tank and call it a stationmaster. How uninspired can you get? What's next? A cockroach stationmaster? This is a trend that has gone one step too far. Monkeys are not cute. Tortoises belong in the wild. And lobsters are just plain ugly. The animal-as-stationmaster craze has officially jumped the shark.

Why I refuse to work in Japan

Kyoto University is a cross between a ghost town and a funeral parlor these days. There are very few students on campus and the ones that actually do show up are usually wearing black suits.

There are two reasons for the empty hallways and somber attire. First, winter classes have ended and spring break has begun. Second, it is now job-hunting season for the class of 2012.

Spring break is a misnomer in Japan. Spring break is not a vacation. It is a hellishly competitive and brutally stressful period of job applications and interviews. But it is not job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next month. It is job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next year.

They will go to dozens of interviews during the next couple of months in the hopes of signing a contract with a company one full year before they graduate. Students who haven't secured a job by the time the recruiting process ends in May will be out of luck by the time graduation rolls around 12 months from now.

Japanese companies like to hire far in advance and openly discriminate against students who are not new graduates. Students who missed out on this year's round of hiring will have almost no chance of getting a job next year because they will be trumped by fresh graduates. Their only option is to stay in school an extra year, take a part-time job or go on welfare. No freedom. No flexibility. No choice.

Japanese employers do not look kindly on Japanese students that take time off to travel or do odd jobs while "finding themselves" after graduation. This kind of behaviour, which can be framed as adventurous, independent-minded and well-rounded in the western world, is seen as immature, selfish and irresponsible in Japan.

Taking a year or two off to build up a resume overseas isn't going to put a Japanese student any further ahead in the job market back home. Most companies prefer to hire new recruits with zero work experience. Students straight out of school are seen as blank slates that can be easily trained (or, as a Japanese friend bluntly put it, "brainwashed") by the company.

For example, one of the guys in my graduate school got a job offer at a major investment company with a starting salary of $80,000 per year. He has no work experience but will be hired as an investment banker straight out of school. The company will send him to Hong Kong for six months of training. In return, he is expected to be a very loyal employee for a very long time. I swear he aged 20 years right in front of my eyes while he was telling me this story.

No one is forcing the Japanese students to hunt for jobs a year before they graduate. But they have very little choice in the matter. This is the way things are done. To not do it would be unnatural.

A portrait of the job hunt

The job hunting process in Japan is officially known as shushoku katsudo or shukatsu for short. It is a world unto itself, with a set of rules unto itself.

It is a grueling process that starts with attending job fairs, picking a company and submitting a resume. If your resume passes the initial screening, you will have a preliminary interview. If you pass the preliminary interview, you will take a written exam. If you pass the written exam, you will be called in for a group discussion with several other candidates. If you pass the group discussion, you will have an interview with HR. If you pass the interview with HR, you will get a second interview with middle management. If you pass the interview with middle management, you will get a third interview with upper management. If you pass the interview with upper management, you will get a final interview with the head honchos. If you pass the final interview with the head honchos, you may (or may not) be offered a job.

It's a long, slow process. The written exam to the final interview can take months. But most students don't just apply to one company. They apply to dozens of companies, which means they are constantly traveling to big cities, taking one exam after another, running from one interview to another.

The job hunters are easy to spot because they all wear the same "recruit suit." Although, technically, it's more of a uniform than a suit. White shirt, dark suit, and plain black shoes. No earrings. Minimal makeup. Black hair. Everyone dresses the same in order to suppress their individuality and show they can conform to the group -- a highly valued trait in Japan.

The pressure is suffocating. Job hunting in Japan feels less like cubicle shopping and more like coffin shopping. Of course, not everyone feels this way. One friend swears the process is fun -- she's having a blast wooing and being wooed by several different companies. I believe her. I was also eager to get out into the working world after my undergraduate degree. But after years of slaving away in front of computer, I've come to the obvious conclusion that there are few things in life more valuable than time. We have so little of it and I don't want to waste one second of it.

That's mostly why I have decided to opt out of the Japanese job-hunting process. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. My age, my work experience, and my embarrassingly bad Japanese pretty much disqualified me from applying in the first place.

I could apply as a "mid-career professional" but I don't want to work in Japan. I don't want to live in a shoebox apartment over some neon-lit noodle shop in the middle of Tokyo's never-ending concrete jungle. I don't want to wake up at 5 a.m. to join the dead-eyed masses that limply allow themselves to be pushed into packed subway cars by men wearing white gloves. I don't want to spend 12 hours a day toiling at some company that does little more than help the capitalist world go round. I don't want to endure enforced drinking parties with male colleagues who turn into lecherous gorillas after two drinks. I don't want five days of vacation a year. This is not how I want to live.

I want an intellectually stimulating career that is in line with my values. A career that allows me to do some good in the world. I want to be an active member of the community. I want to get off work early enough to enjoy the sunset from my balcony. I want time to connect with friends and family. I want to live somewhere with easy access to real wilderness. I want to live in a place where the skyline is dominated by mountains, not skyscrapers. I want a job with a modest salary and lots of vacation time. I want a balanced life filled with meaningful work, healthy relationships, community involvement and lots of time to indulge in passions, adventures and hobbies. This is what I want.

And I don't think I can find it in Japan. It's a difficult thing to come to terms with because there are so many things I love about living in this country. But living in Japan as a master's student is a much different thing than living in Japan as a salaryman.

So I will watch my friends run from interview to interview. I will watch them go down one path while I head down a different one. They are getting ready to become full-fledged members of Japanese society while I am getting ready to leave it behind.

Liquid pancakes

I found a vending machine in Kyoto that sells some sort of pancake-flavoured beverage. I didn't try it. Just looking at it made me want to vomit. I wonder if it tastes as bad as it looks.

Cigarettes and unexpected poetry

Japan is a smoker's paradise. The kind of place where you can light up in bars, restaurants and coffee shops. The kind of place where -- paradoxically -- it's against the law to smoke on the street but perfectly acceptable to puff away inside a McDonald's.

And should you doubt how pervasive smoking really is, let me quote from the 2011 Tokyo Marathon race guide, which asks participants to "refrain from smoking while running." Because, apparently, even marathon runners are chain smokers in Japan.


Everyone talks about how Japan's lax smoking laws are changing but I don't see it. It may be true that you can no longer smoke on most trains but some long-distance trains still have smoking cars. Last year, a new guideline (not a law, just a guideline) was put in place that "strongly recommends" employers to prohibit smoking in the workplace. But, as far as I know, the teachers at the junior high school where I used to work are still smoking in the staff kitchen. And while many restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, the dividing line between the two is usually invisible. It makes no sense. (But, then again, neither does Hello Kitty-branded booze. So I guess it's all relative.)

It's rare to see anti-smoking messages in Japan. Instead, anti-bad-smoking-manners messages are much more common. The biggest promoter of good smoking manners is Japan Tobacco, which created a series of ads to improve the image of smoking without (not surprisingly) actually discouraging smoking itself. You can find the ads in public smoking areas all over the country. They are plastered on ashtrays in train stations and outside convenience stores. There are more than 70 different ads in total.




The ads are interesting because they are so much more than just a plea for good manners -- they are a reflection of the Japanese psyche. In Japan, one must always behave honourably, even when smoking. To be rude or selfish is to commit social suicide. The ads hit where it hurts. But they do so in a way that is clever and unintentionally poetic.

I'm kind of obsessed with these ads. Each one contains an element of surprise and delivers an emotional punch. And they manage to do so with only a few well-chosen words and simple illustrations. It's not advertising. It's art.

I started taking pictures of the ads almost two years ago. Whenever I stumble across a new one, I take a picture of it. These are a few of my favourites.

Dude, where's my bike?

If there is one lesson I have learned during my time in Japan it's that a stress-free existence here requires a blind adherence to the rules and that you should always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic. Okay, technically, that's two lessons. But rules and bureaucracy go hand-in-hand here. Japan isn't the Land of the Rising Sun so much as it is the Land of the Red Tape.

Take bicycles, for example. Bicycles are treated no differently than any other vehicle in Japan. The upside is that cycling is a very mainstream form of transportation. The downside is that there are just as many laws for cyclists as there are for drivers. A partial list of things that are illegal to do while riding a bike include holding an umbrella, ringing your bell repeatedly, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, being drunk, riding through a red light, riding without a light at night, riding on the sidewalk, and parking in a no-parking zone.

Yes, you read that last one right. It's illegal to park a bicycle in a no-parking zone. Break this law and your bike will be towed to the pound. It seems kind of funny and absurd (there are no-parking zones for bikes? They actually tow bikes? There is a bike pound?) until it happens to you.

I will come clean and admit that I knew I was parking illegally. Mea culpa. There were signs explicitly stating it was a no-parking zone. But I had no other option. There is almost nowhere to park in downtown Kyoto. Of course, you can pay to park at one of those fancy bicycle garages but, to me, paid parking goes against the spirit of cycling. The beauty of riding a bike is that you never have to pay for gas or parking.

I wasn't the only one parked illegally. There were about two dozen other bikes in the same (very wide and very open) spot. It was a quadruple-wide sidewalk, with more than enough room for wheelchairs and baby strollers. I figured it was a safe enough spot to park. Besides, I was only going to be gone for 10 minutes. I just had to run into the bank and I'd be right back.

This was my tragic mistake. I should have known there is no such thing as "just running into the bank" in Japan. This country has an uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane errand into a bureaucratic nightmare. Forty-five minutes after I entered the bank, I was still sitting with a teller going over a pile of paperwork. She wanted me to sign a piece of paper that, despite her patient explanation, I simply didn't understand.

She tried switching to English but the only word I understood was "mafia." I was pretty sure her English was mixed up so I asked her to explain in Japanese. This time the only word I understood was "yakuza." A light went on above my head. She wanted me to sign a form declaring that I wasn't a member of the yakuza (because, apparently, the fact that I have two pinkies and zero tattoos isn't evidence enough). She nodded enthusiastically while apologizing that she clearly knew I wasn't a member of the yakuza but she needed me to put it in writing anyway.

With the question about my ties to organized crime finally answered, I was free to leave the bank. And so I half-jogged, half-walked back to where I parked my bike because I was late for a meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg (a shy undergrad rumoured to be a computer genius, complete with standard-issue hoodie and baggy jeans) who was making a special trip to my lab to fix my computer.

But my bike was gone. All of the bikes were gone. It was as if someone had taken a giant broom and simply swept them off the face of the earth. There was nothing but a big empty space where the bikes had been. I cursed and swore. I cursed the stupidity of no-parking zones. I cursed myself for parking in a no-parking zone. I cursed the stupidity of the bank for making me spend an hour testifying that I was not a member of the yakuza. I cursed the fact that I was now going to be late for my meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg. I cursed having to waste half a day getting my bike back from the pound.

But I didn't have time to deal with any of that now. I took the train back to school and spent the next few days bike-free. It's funny how much of an effort walking becomes when you get used to cycling everywhere. Wheels are so much faster than feet. The other day, I walked to Mister Donut (which is the closest thing to Tim Hortons in Japan) and all I could think was, "Oh my god! This is taking forever!" Everyone always talks up the benefits of cycling -- it's good for the environment! It's good for your health! But no one ever mentions the sinister side of cycling -- it makes you lazy and impatient.

It was good to take a break from the bike but by yesterday, I'd had enough of walking. It was time to go to the pound. I was kind of excited about going to the pound. I have never been to a real pound before, especially not a bicycle pound. But first, I had to return to the scene of the crime to figure out where the pound was exactly. Luckily, the no-parking sign contained a helpful map of where the bikes had been towed to.



I should probably explain that a bicycle isn't towed the same way a car is. There's no tow truck with a steel cable hooked up to the bike's front wheel, dragging it through the streets. What happens is a pick-up truck with an extra-long, extra-wide bed comes to a stop in front of a bunch of illegally parked bikes. A group of guys jumps out and hauls the bikes, one by one, over to the truck before lifting them up to another group of guys standing on the truck bed, whose job it is to pull the bikes up and arrange them in neat lines. They do this very quickly and very efficiently. It's like watching a well-oiled assembly line.


Getting my bike back required two train trips. One trip to where I had parked the bike (to take a look at the map) and another trip to the pound (or, as it turns out, the middle of nowhere).

The train took me south of the city. To the part of Kyoto you won't find in any guidebook. Unless it's to warn you to avoid going there. If Kyoto has a "bad" neighbourhood, then this is probably it. It was industrial, ugly and bleak. Nothing but empty lots, run-down houses, and tall fences. Exactly the kind of place where you would imagine a pound would be located.



I spotted the pound right away. It was cordoned off from the street with metal sheeting and barbed wire. But this is where the similarities between the cinematic pound and the real pound ended. Instead of being lunged at by snarling rottweilers, I was greeted by a group of friendly old guys. They directed me to a shed near the entrance-way where another friendly old guy asked me to fill out a form. I had to write down my name, my address, a description of my bike (I wrote down "black"), where I had parked it, and when it was towed. After I forked over 2,300 yen (about $20) and showed some ID, another friendly old guy escorted me to a long line of bikes that had been towed on January 28 (they were all neatly arranged by date. After four weeks in the pound, all of the unclaimed bikes are hauled out and crushed).

My bike was in the middle of the pack. The guy waited for me to unlock it and then I was free to go. Lesson learned. From now on, I will blindly follow the rules and always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic.

A very Japanese New Year

Because this was the first -- and probably the last -- time I would spend New Year's Eve in Japan, I wanted to ring it in right.

To me, ringing it in right meant celebrating the same way Japanese people do. The only problem was I didn't know what Japanese people do on New Year's Eve exactly. A quick Google search turned up a few answers. I learned that New Year's is one of the most important holidays on the Japanese calendar but that it is typically spent at home with family. It's more about quiet, quality time than it is about consuming copious amounts of alcohol and kissing a random pair of lips at the stroke of midnight.

I also learned that Japanese people clean their homes from top to bottom to start the New Year off on a clean slate. They spend New Year's preparing and eating traditional food, including rice cakes or "mochi." But because mochi is extremely sticky and chewy (the texture is best described as a thick ball of glue) a few elderly people suffocate and die every year while trying to eat it. The annual mochi death toll makes headlines every January.

Scrubbing the floors, slaving over a hot stove and choking to death are not my idea of a good time so I decided to westernize my Japanese New Year's Eve and look for a ball drop.

It turns out the closest thing to a public countdown and exploding fireworks is the traditional ringing of the temple bells. Before midnight on New Year's Eve, temple bells across Japan begin to ring 108 times. Apparently, the tolling of the bells purifies us of our 108 worldly desires (nothing like starting off the new year with a little self-loathing and flagellation).

In case you're wondering what all of these 108 sins are, many of them are your garden-variety sins. Greed, lust, envy, gluttony, gambling. That sort of thing. But the Buddhists aren't content to just cover the basics. They've included all kinds of bad behaviour in their long list of sins, including inattentiveness, stubbornness, stinginess, voluptuousness, capriciousness, a desire for fame, indifference, dissatisfaction, lack of comprehension (what does that mean?), and sarcasm (no, I'm not being sarcastic).

I managed to find a temple in Osaka that had both the traditional ringing of the bells and a public countdown. It seemed to be the Japanese equivalent of watching the ball drop in Times Square. So I had pinpointed where I wanted to be when the clock struck twelve. Now I just needed to figure out what to do in the last hours of 2010 and the first hours of 2011.

A little bit more digging -- clicking deep into the third and fourth pages of the search results -- revealed another Japanese tradition I could get behind. Part of celebrating the new year in Japan includes paying special attention to the first time something is done in the new year. For example, hatsuhinode is the first sunrise of the year and many people will often climb a mountain or drive to the coast to see it. Going to a temple to ring the bells and then heading somewhere to watch the sun rise seemed liked a good way to ring in the new year to me.

Sergey gave me free reign to plan the entire night. He claims this is because I am such an excellent planner. And while this is indisputably true, I suspect laziness may have had a small role to play in his willingness to let me be in the driver's seat. Although to be fair, he came up with the idea of going out to eat and he introduced me to the concept of coffee-shop loitering.

The New Year's plan in a nutshell was to head to Osaka for dinner, loiter in a coffee shop for a couple of hours, head to a temple for the countdown, stay up all night (more coffee-shop loitering) and then watch the first sunrise of the year from the top of a skyscraper.



The first part of our very long night in Osaka was spent inside an arcade trying to get our picture taken in one of those little photo booths where you can digitally customize the photos with a mind-numbing array of cute things like stars and sparkles and hearts. But we simply couldn't fight our way through the hordes of teenage girls who were monopolizing the machines.

So we gave up and headed to the first decent restaurant we could find, which turned out to be a Korean-style BBQ place where you pay to cook your own food. It was loud and the air inside was a fragrant mixture of two kinds of smoke -- one part cigarette smoke and two parts tabletop-grill smoke. But it was delicious and warm and we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.



After dinner, we enjoyed an hour of coffee-shop loitering before heading to the temple for our first traditional Japanese New Year's Eve countdown. At the temple we were given a numbered ticket and a sheet of paper with a detailed explanation about how the night would go down. We were ushered into a huge room with a few hundred other people and told to wait for further instructions. There was no room for spontaneity. Everything was highly organized, with lots of rules and procedures. It was fun because it was the opposite of fun.

Eventually, a guy with a bullhorn came into the room and told us to write a New Year's message on the little piece of paper we had been provided with at the door. My message was vague and general, something about wishing good health and happiness upon pretty much every person on the planet (like that's ever going to happen). Sergey's message was indecipherable (because it was written in Cyrillic).

The bullhorn guy then shouted at us to form a single line out the door in order to receive a balloon. We were told to tie our handwritten message to the balloon. The balloons and their accompanying messages were not to be released until midnight. Although some slippery-fingered folks let their balloons go early. We were then marched outside and up the temple steps where we waited for the clock to strike twelve. We joined the crowd in counting down from 10 to one (in Japanese, of course) and threw our balloons up into the air at midnight. Happy New Year, indeed!



And then the real fun began. Everyone who wanted to was allowed to ring the temple bell once. The only problem was that everyone wanted to ring the bell. Because there were so many of us, we were divided into groups based on the letters of the alphabet. There were about 100 people per letter, starting with A and ending with Z. We were grouped under letter M. By this point we had been outside so long that we were cold. Really cold. But we kept ourselves warm with the thought of the free soup after ringing the bell.



Next on the agenda was some more coffee-shop loitering until the first sunrise of 2011. The ability to spend hours in a coffee shop without buying a refill is one of my favourite things about Japan. I've said it before but it's worth repeating. When you buy a cup of coffee in Japan, you are not just buying a cup of coffee; you are buying a piece of real estate. That one coffee gives you the right to monopolize a table for as long as you like. One hour, two hours, eight hours. You can stay as long as the place is open. You don't have to buy anything else and no one will ask you to leave.

It seemed like everyone else in the coffee shop that night was also using it as free accommodation. Two Japanese girls sitting beside us were hunched over the table fast asleep with their heads cradled in their arms. One of the employees kept waking them up and telling them they weren't allowed to sleep. Eventually, the poor guy had to give up since practically everyone in the place was asleep at their tables.

The sun was scheduled to rise at 7:05 a.m., which meant we still had four and a half hours to kill when I took this picture. So we enjoyed some valuable times with our beverages.



By 4:30 a.m. we were tired of sitting in the coffee shop so we decided to make our way to the sunrise party -- a short 10-minute walk away. The elevator took us up to the 40th floor of the Umeda Sky Building, where we had a panoramic view to watch the sun come up. Except it was still dark at 5 a.m. and very, very, very cold. So we waited inside until the sky started to lighten. At the first hint of daylight, we joined the crowds of people on the outdoor observatory waiting for the sun to rise.

I can only remember a handful of times when I have experienced this kind of cold. Standing on top of the Osaka skyscraper waiting for the sun to rise ranks right up there with standing on an Ottawa street waiting for the bus to come in minus 30 degree weather. It was the kind of cold that seeps under your skin and into your bones, making you shiver uncontrollably while stamping feet you can barely feel.

It was also the kind of cold that makes you realize that life on earth owes its random existence to its random distance from the sun. If the earth was any further away from the sun, we would freeze. The universe kind of blows my mind sometimes.

All of this made the sunrise so much more awe-inspiring when it finally did arrive. To see the sky go from pitch black to navy blue to purpley pink to light blue as the earth rotated on its axis was an amazing thing.

When the sun finally broke above the clouds, everyone started cheering. I couldn't tell if they were happy because of the sunrise or because they could now get out of the cold.






It was a great way to mark the end of one decade and the start of another. We managed to combine a couple of Japanese traditions and create a few of our own. I think we rang in 2011 right. Happy New Year, everyone!