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Mike · Site Admin Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 4359 Location:

What's cool about Japan? The premise of the new NHK-BS program called “Cool Japan” is that first impressions offer the best clues. It’s a reasonable assumption. The Japanese themselves, like natives anywhere, take their environment too much for granted to know. Long-term foreigners — like long-term foreigners everywhere — are probably too jaded to think anything’s cool.

Enter the wide-eyed newcomer. His or hers are the eyes that see what others miss. The program format confronts moderator Shoji Kokami with 10 greenhorn gaijin — anyone in the country longer than six months need not apply. Naturally, there’s a language barrier, and so Kokami is assisted by simultaneous interpreters. Budgetary constraints making it impossible for NHK to hire qualified interpreters versed in all the native languages of all the short-term foreigners in Japan, the choice of guests is restricted to those speaking English.

The program debuts in April. Writing in Spa! (April 4), Kokami tells us how things are going so far. The first program will deal with the Japanese home. What is cool about the Japanese home? Four things above all: tatami, sliding fusuma doors, high-tech toilets, and — slippers.

Slippers? Would you believe, Kokami, says, that the Japanese invented slippers? “In the Meiji Period (1868-1912), foreign guests would simply march into Japanese homes, shoes and all.” It was a problem — one of those cross-cultural misunderstandings that call for a tactful solution, which in this case, Kokami explains, proved to be a kind of primitive slipper that fitted over the shoe. Evolution took care of the rest, with results that are familiar to us all. We hardly think of slippers as exotic anymore, but the idea of shoes being inadmissible in the home is, and one of Kokami’s guests, from Holland, admires the stark simplicity of the Japanese custom.

“In Holland, you’re always wondering when you go to a friend’s house — should I leave my shoes on or take them off?” he muses.

No such quandary here, but, Kokami continues, delightful simplicity in one respect sets the stage for needless complexity in another. “In a tatami room, you must remove your slippers. In the toilet, you change into toilet slippers. Too complicated, my guests say.”

Ah, but speaking of toilets, and speaking of complexity, how about those state-of-the-art toilets with their bum-washers and temperature-controlled seats? Yes, they’re really something, his guests agree. You don’t see many like them in the West. And they’re not restricted to private homes. Kokami records his astonishment at their presence in Narita Airport.

“Where else in the world would you find toilets like these in an international airport?” he marvels. “On the contrary, you’re more likely to find the seats have been stolen and the toilets vandalized!”

Complex loos, simple rooms. Tatami mats and fusuma sliding doors that magically turn two small rooms into one spacious one, or one spacious one into two small ones, are hallmarks of Japan’s storied Zen-inspired simplicity. Kokami’s foreigners were very much struck by them.

But back to toilets for a moment. The assortment of bum-washers, Kokami informs his guests, have their rationale in the traditional Japanese grain-based diet, which apparently caused hemorrhoids. But isn’t that argument something of an anachronism, the Japanese diet nowadays being scarcely distinguishable from the American?

“But it feels good,” Kokami insists, and then asks, “Won’t you miss it when you get home?” The answer, hard to interpret, is “wry smiles” all around. Cool!

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/kuchikomi/402
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Hewer · Centurion Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 545 Location:

joojoo · Novice Joined: 23 Dec 2006 Posts: 30 Location:

I wouldn't wanna watch it.. Too fake. so pro-japanish. Never says what they really think. They should ask a native chinese or korean person about it and they will say something opposite of good (not environment wise).

junjunforever · Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 4 Location:

Liten up a little bit santa

I think the coolest thing about Japan is the alcohol vending machines, at least when i was young.

Mike · Site Admin Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 4359 Location: