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Please join us in the journey from the past to the future!
Vending machines are ubiquitous on Japanese streets. About 5.5 million units of these machines are installed across the nation, with those for beverages accounting for the largest 2.7 million units. Other than beverages, these machines sell a variety of food products, including chewing gums, buns, ice cream, and cup noodles. Also being sold are train tickets, cigarettes, postage stamps, postcards, newspapers, batteries, a bouquet of flowers, and fortunes.
Japan leads the world in the number of these machines and varieties of products being sold. Behind their proliferation are Japan’s outstanding mechatronics and the relative safety on the Japanese streets. While you were studying in Japan, you might have visited these machines frequently.
One of the products available at these vending machines is getting popular now. It is the “ODEN” can. What is the “ODEN” can? It is canned “ODEN”, a popular Japanese dish. It first appeared in Akihabara, Japan’s largest district of electronics shops. Its fame quickly grew after extensive media coverage, touting it as a new specialty of Akihabara.
“ODEN” is made by cooking all kinds of ingredients such as Konnyaku (a gelatinous food made from devil's-tongue starch), eggs, radish, and grilled or deep-fried fish paste in a special broth of soy sauce, shaved dried bonito, kelp and other seasonings. It is now widely sold as a regular winter item at convenience stores. You might have sampled some of these ingredients while you were in Japan.
When you make “ODEN” at home, it is a normal practice to dump whatever ingredients you like in a pot, cook them and eat them with your family members or friends. It was surprising to see “ODEN” in a small can. Even more surprising is the fact that it is being sold alongside beverages in vending machines. The “ODEN” can contains the broth, Konnyaku devil’s tongue, kelp, radish and some others. All these ingredients are cut into a bite-size, and they taste as good as home-made ones.
The “ODEN” can is being closely followed by ramen noodle cans, udon noodle cans and other interesting canned products. Being canned, they last for a long time, and for this feature they are attracting attention as emergency foods that come in handy in disasters such as earthquakes and flooding.
When you see them at vending machines and train kiosks, how about buying some as souvenirs?
The other day I was hit by a car while I was crossing a pedestrian crossing by bicycle. I was rushed to a hospital, but fortunately my injuries were minor. Traffic accidents in Japan peaked 20 year ago, and they have been declining ever since.
They numbered about 7,000 cases a year in recent years. Even so, traffic accidents caused by drunken drivers and inattentiveness are daily occurrences. The number of suicides, on the other hand, has hovered over 30,000 every year in the past decade. People kill themselves for a number of reasons, such as health problems, financial difficulties, and problems at home. But the loss of precious lives leaves a deep psychological scar in those who are left behind.
I was mulling this matter over when I saw a television program that introduced several Japanese people who were active in various parts of the world to save irreplaceable lives.
Life is invaluable regardless of nationalities or races. All of the international students are expected to remove those national or racial barriers and bring peace to the world. These three Japanese people shown in the TV program are committed to saving lives across national borders as long as there are people who need their help.
1) One of them is Ms. Akiko Nohara, 50, who operates in Bolivia.
Bolivia has cold regions over 3,000 meters above the sea in the Andes mountains, tropical areas along the Amazon, and temperate zones in between. When she was seven, she lost her 2-year-old sister with disabilities. This sad experience has motivated her to build by herself facilities to support the independence of disabled people who are often abandoned or kept confined. It is very difficult to keep the facilities running as they are totally dependent on private donations. There are no subsidies from the government, she says.
2) Another is Dr. Yuzo Tanigaki, 66, who is active in Niger.
Niger is a country of desert. About two thirds of its land are desert on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, which covers nearly one third of the African continent. It was 1979 when Dr. Tanigaki was sent to the country to work as a JICA doctor at a national hospital in capital Niamey. After his tenure was over, he has stayed on for 28 years to provide medical care with scant salaries. In the spring of 1992, Dr. Tanigaki gave his whole personal fortune, 80 million yen, to build a hospital where he has continued to perform over 1,000 operations a year. With limited funds he has to economize, using sewing threads instead of proper sutures and towels donated from Japan instead of gauze. He lost his wife to an endemic disease, but this tragedy has not deterred Dr. Tanigaki from doing what he believes. His dedication is highly respected by local people.
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) The third person is Kazumi Akao, 44, who provides nursing services in Cambodia.
Cambodia is a country of diversity. It had the Angkor dynasty that prospered along with the great Khmer culture, has about 800,000 landmines still strewn around the country as a result of a recent civil war, and is saddled with the high mortality rate of children who die from dire poverty and appalling hygienic conditions. A reason for the country’s high infant mortality rate, about 24 times that of Japan, is the lack of medical facilities. Akao visited an Angkor pediatric hospital to train nurses there in 1999. Located in Siem Reap where the famous Angkor Wat is located, the hospital provides medical care free of charge. With local nurses, she makes a round of houses with children suffering malnutrition and infectious diseases as a way of training these nurses. Her efforts have made tangible differences for people who cannot come to the hospital or receive medical care.
What motivates these people to work without pay and even giving their personal fortune in what they believe in this world awash with people who live only for money or fame? I suppose it is the smiles of children, and a sense of achievement and satisfaction that drive them forward.
“What can I do now?” Let us ask ourselves this question once more to value our neighbors’ lives as well as our own.
What are your favorite animals? Looking at their behaviors and activities, do you ever ponder or feel anything? It must be so exciting to live in countries where you see elephants, lions, giraffes, and zebras in the wild rather than on TV or at zoos.
Did you go to zoos in Japan while you were here? Of about 100 zoos in Japan, the one attracting the most attention is in Hokkaido. The Asahiyama Zoo attracted over 3 million visitors last year, but only one tenth of them attended the zoo 10 years ago. The zoo was on the brink of extinction. What happened after all?
“We wanted to draw the most out of individual animals’ appeal,” said zookeepers who got together to come up with bits of ideas that were gradually put into practice. The 
result is a zoo that shows animals in action and their abilities, rather than the traditional way of just displaying inactive animals.
There are many examples of the changes. Amur leopards resting in an aerial cage. Orangutans walking a tightrope. Japanese monkeys deftly taking feeds out of a container. Penguins swimming fast in the water as if they were flying. Curious seals staring back at visitors through a cylindrical glass tank. Polar bears diving at visitors. The zoo’s visitors can see these animals in their element.
As you can see, these animals are placed in their natural environment as much as possible: animals that live in the trees are placed high and those that live in the sea 
are in a deep water tank. In this way, we can see them alive and full of life, feel overwhelmed by the power of wilderness, and get amazed at their high intelligence. These animals look fresh and even shocking to people who are used to seeing inactive, sleepy animals at other zoos. These changes have strongly appealed to many people, bringing about the miraculous recovery of the Asahiyama Zoo.
There is no end to the pursuit of discovering animals’ unknown abilities and behaviors. Today, the zookeepers are again busy preparing a stage on which those animals shine in their most natural ways. By the time of your next visit, you will experience a further improvement at the Asahiyama Zoo.
Miracles--brought about by people who are unsatisfied with the status quo, never giving up pursuing their dream. What miracles can you make? What triggers a change may be a flash of ideas in your head and passion in your heart.
Mt. Fuji is Japan’s symbol. I’m sure that many foreign students tried scaling the mountain while they were in Japan.
At 3,776 meters, Mt. Fuji straddling Shizuoka Prefecture and Yamanashi Prefecture is the highest mountain in Japan. Around the year 1,500, a local warlord called Shingen Takeda ruled the Yamanashi areas. One of his achievements was the dikes he built along the river Kamanashi to contain its frequent flooding, a cause of great affliction for local farmers. The dikes enabled the development of new rice paddies. Even today, the embankment controls the water flows, protecting the Kofu Basin from flooding.
On the opposite side of these dikes is a company called Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd.
Those of you who learned construction, civil engineering, agriculture, and livestock while you were studying in Japan must be familiar with shovels, cranes and other heavy construction machines and agricultural machines such as tractors. Even in our daily lives, we sometimes see cranes lifting heavy steel frames at building and road construction sites, or snowplows in northern regions.
President Amamiya of Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery saw first hand the wounds of many people caused by landmines in Cambodia while he was visiting there on business in 1994. “What can I do for them?” He had kept asking this question to himself, leading to the development of a landmine-removing machine based on his experience as a builder of construction machines. By trial and error and through repeated improvements, the first model was completed in 1998. Efforts to make further improvement still continue.
Shrubs are cut down, the landmines removed, and the land cultivated. On the land are built schools and agriculture training centers. Some land is turned into a farmland.
Today, remaining landmines are said to number 110 million scattered over 83 countries. How many more years will it take to eliminate all these hideous weapons? A total of 56 landmine-removing machines are in operation in six countries—Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Angora.
They continue to remove landmines, the source of great affliction, sowing the seeds of peace around the world.
President Amamiya, whose commitment to helping people conjures up the image of Shingen Takeda, continues to emphasize in his speeches to Japanese children the importance of human lives, advanced Japanese technologies, and need to make contributions to the world.
Those International students who once studied in Japan must have gone home bearing firmly in their mind the Japanese approach to not only making things, but also developing human resources.
The images of this speech can be viewed on the following Hitachi group’s Web site.
Hitachi Construction Machinery’s Commitment to Removing Landmines
(Japanese only)
http://www.hitachi-kenki.co.jp/company/environment/mine.html
Popular local foods across Japan are ranked as follows (according to a survey conducted by Oricon Inc.):
No.1 Misokatsu (fried meat cutlet basted in miso), Aichi Prefecture
No.2 Gyutan (beef tongue), Miyagi Prefecture
No.3 Sanuki Udon (Sanuki noodle), Kagawa Prefecture
No.4 Hitsumabushi (cut eel pieces scattered on a bowl of rice), Aichi Prefecture
No.5 Hiroshima-fu Okonomiyaki (Hiroshima-style meat and vegetable pancake), Hiroshima Prefecture
No.6 Hakata ramen (Hakata-style noodles), Fukuoka Prefecture
No.7 Jingisukan (Mutton barbecue), Hokkaido
No.8 Kaisen-don (bowl of rice topped with seafood), Hokkaido
No.9 Okonomiyaki (meat and vegetable pancake), Osaka
No. 10 Takoyaki (fried dumping with bits of octopus), Osaka
How many of them have you tried?
The first place is taken by Misokatsu, a typical food in the Chukyo central area centered on Nagoya. It is said to have begun in early 1945 when people dipped kushikatsu (fried meat on a skewer) in thick miso gravy. Misokatsu was expensive in those days, and ordinary citizens were able to eat it only infrequently. Nowadays it is also served at college lunchrooms in Aichi Prefecture. Those of you who stayed in Nagoya and surrounding areas might have had many opportunities to eat it.
Also in Aichi, Hitsumabushi is ranked 4th. This dish is cut pieces of a broiled eel scattered on cooked rice in an ohitsu, a wooden container or tub. There are some established rules for eating it. First, a diner divides the meal into four equal portions. The first portion is eaten as it is. The next portion is eaten after such condiments as horseradish, dried laver, and green onion are added. The diner eats the third portion by pouring either the broth or tea over it. The remaining section is then enjoyed by repeating the favorite method.
The areas in and around Nagoya have a distinctive culinary culture, collectively called “Nagoya-meshi (Nagoya food).”
Other well-known foods in the area include Kishimen (flat udon noodle), Tebasaki (broiled chicken wing), Miso-nikomi Udon (udon noodle cooked in miso broth), Ten-musu (rice ball topped with fried shrimp), Ebifurai (fried prawn), and Ankake spaghetti (spaghetti with thick gravy).
I’m sure that Udon, Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki, which are in the rankings, are familiar to almost all of you.
We are eager to hear from you those popular foods served at the schools where you studied in Japan and your favorite Japanese foods.
Nowadays Japan is buzzing with a “Prince Boom.” There is the Handkerchief Prince in baseball and the Hanikami Prince in golf.
Here, let us talk about the Japanese amateur baseball, whose popularity has recently been boosted by the Handkerchief Prince.
While you were in Japan, did you watch high school baseball games on TV in spring and summer? Some of you must have found it strange that so many Japanese people, who are normally uninterested in baseball, become so wrapped up in those games.
The Koshien ballpark in Hyogo Prefecture is like a mecca to high school baseball players. Many of those Japanese players active in the U.S. Major League Baseball once played at this ballpark. Baseball has recently lost some popularity ground to soccer, but a savior came in the form of Yuki Saito, an ace pitcher, whose wiping his sweat off with a small blue towel on 
the mound raised him to an icon status at the summer high school baseball games at Koshien last year. This use of a small towel has given Saito a nickname “Handkerchief Prince.” He enrolled in Waseda University this April, quickly pushing the popularity of college baseball almost past that of professional baseball.
Why are Japanese people so much engrossed in high school baseball?
Those high school baseball players who have made it Koshien each represent the 47 prefectures of the country. Their presence at the ballpark is probably a strong reminder of from where they have come for many people scattered across the country away from their hometowns. They think of their homes when they see those high school baseball games. It’s just like the Olympics raising patriotic sentiments. Occasions like that may also rekindle your memories of Japan as your second home.
Japan will soon be out of the rainy season and enter a hot summer. Another season for hot high school baseball games is fast approaching.
Please share your memories of Japan, your second home. We eagerly look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.
What first comes to your mind when you hear “Sakura Saku”?
In Japan, a school year usually starts in April. In other words, as soon as a new year starts, it’s time for entrance examination. Most of examinations take place in cold January and February, followed by announcement of successful applicants.
When you “pass the exam”, we may rephrase it as “Sakura Saku”. “Sakura Saku” literally means cherry blossom started to bloom. As you may know, cherry flower is the symbol of Japanese spring season. A student’s hard p
reparation for an exam and finally scraping a pass uses an analogy from cherry blossom’s blooming in warm spring after enduring cold winter.
If you have any custom and habit regarding taking examination, let us know!
Have you been to Tokyo Tower?
Although it’s mainly known as a sightseeing spot, its’ real roles are very public; one example is to transmit a number of signals for TV and radio stations. It first opened in 1958 and is 333m in height, 9m taller than the Eiffel Tower in France which is 324m. It is the world’s tallest self-supporting steel tower.
One of the famous features of the tower is night illumination. But did you know the illumination color changes according to the season? In summer, white incandescent lights called “metal halide lamp” illuminate the tower to give refreshing and cool images, while in winter, orange lights called “high pressure sodium lamp” illuminate the tower.
If you haven’t notice the difference before, why don’t you come and see for yourself next time you are in Japan?
Tokyo Tower Summer Tokyo Tower Winter