Let's make a Baby

So this is something I have found I am pretty passionate about. So this might be long. Or short. Depends on how irritated I get. The long let me rant for hours. Or the short I am so irritated I can' even type straight anymore. Just to warn you.

So Japanese women are sooooo much better than the high schoolers in America who don't really look twice at getting knocked up. Yeah sure some do, but I feel like morals are degrading as a whole. And that some women are just meant to live lives such as those in story books like The Giver, as breeders. They were just here on this earth to reproduce and not really support or impact it at all.
At least in Japan you don't have high schoolers getting knocked up every couple of months. But that is about all I can say for them. In America, I am kind of proud of the fact that when you get knocked up, for a large part, women don't feel the need to marry their baby-daddy. I think that is a good thing. Sure the child should have a solid mother and father figure in their lives, but I still feel that if you want to marry it is a very important thing and you should try to live in love for the remainder of your lives. I can't claim to be super Christian or anything, but perhaps that one fact was ingrained in me pretty good when I was younger. Now, living with someone as if you are married, much like the French do, for all goals and purposes pretty much carrying about as if you are married. I am all for that. And if you break up? No divorce. No worries. And you can go live with the next person of your hearts desire. Not saying that it wouldn't be slightly detrimental for any child, but at least it isn't divorce and you don't have to have bitter fights and arguments and lawyers and such. That stuff is wretched. This isn't to say that that isn't how it normally it, but more and more recently, in teens and young adults and even my mom said something to this effect, that it was more commonly acceptable to not marry and just live with a partner (or not) and just live your lives. Though personally, if you ask me, she is saying that so I won't go off and get married in Japan and threaten to live here forever.

But in Japan. Oh Japan.
In the last 3 completely Japanese weddings that I have been made aware of, all three of them had knocked up their girlfriends first. They feel a certain sort of obligation to the unborn. They don't want it to turn out like John Snow. A bastard loved by no one. Right. Not completely true. Regardless. They feel like pregnancy is an excuse to get married. And even if they want to get married beforehand, they will wait until they put a baby in her belly before breaking out the marriage proposals. Honestly, how lackluster. What the test is positive? Then let's get you fitted for a gown. I guess we are walking down the aisle. What should be the most romantic time of your life, suddenly turns into a chore and an obligation. And suddenly you are too fat for dress fittings and you are supporting a huge baby bump and that honeymoon special time is suddenly dashed because you already had it and now have to wake up to either vomit or feed the baby.
The last couple I know wanted to get married, but waited for the excuse of pregnancy to decide to do so. Their wedding party is this weekend. She is 5 months. Also they have known each other less than a year. In the time I have been in Japan, he was dating someone else first for way longer than his current girl and when they broke up he was devastated and wanted to get back together. I met him around a year ago as they just started dating (2 weeks) and he was making some comments towards me that he really shouldn't have in presence of a significant other. I mean nothing too bad. And here we are now. A year later....
There is no romance in Japan. Just people who don't love each other making babies.
I know that was a terrible thing to say. Terrible and true. You will find no hand holding in Japan. No public kissing. No 'I love you's' no over the top ohmygosh proposals. This is not a country for romance. All the women and men are reserved, yet in secret love reading about all these cute over the top little romances in their mangas. Know what doesn't happen in their mangas? Unexpected pregnancy and obligatory marriage. But what can you expect from a country with hardly any sex education and women's contraception not being easily availble and super expensive. Not to mention they look down on you for having it.
To expand upon the our romance issue, let me supply you with a lovely little example I got to witness first hand last weekend I was in Kyushu and saw a couple. She was perhaps 6-7 months pregnant. They were going over rocky terrain, up and down hills, stairs, slippery areas next to a waterfall, and all sorts of stuff  on their way to a sacred shrine (Amano Iwato Jinjya). He supported her, exactly not at all. She is carrying your prodigy around inside her for 6-7 months so far, I think you owe it to her to watch out for her and care a little. But that is just me. I was flabbergasted at lack of  effort.
Before you go about thinking that oh maybe she was just independent, and perhaps she was, this is the thought you have about a country where most adult women either have no job or pretty easily replaceable meaningless jobs by 30 so that they can pop out them babies. In fact, companies prefer not to hire women over here out of college. The reason being is that once they are trained and finally have the routine and have been working 2 or 3 years, they will be looking and getting married and then quitting and then the company has to spend time training and hiring new people to fill those spots and production levels decrease for a while.  Sure it is discrimination, but pretty true discrimination. Of the three purely Japanese marriages I mentioned that I knew of personally, none of the women currently work. Sure that is because one is pregnant, one just had a child and well, so did the other one. But the first of those marriages, she quit her job the day after he proposed. Yup. Guess it is about that time, eh? Finally bagged me a man, guess I don't have to work no more!

I honestly can't decide whose mentality is worse.
The men's who completely disrespect women by using pregnancy as an excuse to get married or think of it as an obligation. If you didn't want said obligation. Then it is your, and solely your responsibility to wrap it. Women don't want to risk that social stigma of contraceptives and have to pay a shit ton for it. But men, men have no excuse for not buying condoms.
Or women, who think that the whole point in life is to find a man and breed. Perhaps that is exactly what it was 200 years ago. But not in the present day. They are making and maintaining their own insipid archetype.
Or perhaps just everyone who thinks that love is not a necessity or prerequisite for baby making. And for some perhaps it isn't. But in Japan apparently just about anyone will do. Know them about 6 months? Better get working on making that belly round. I know a couple who even broke up because the girl wanted no children due to the fact her was a strong carrier for certain undesirable traits, and the man did. So he broke up with her. No love there. Only the biological clock saying BABY TIME for the young buck.

April Showers, Bring May Flowers

Only it isn't April showers, it is June showers. And the flowers don't come a month later, they are in bloom them. But saying that June Showers, tsuyu, bring June Flowers just doesn't sound as good...

But the flower in question is the hydrangea. In Japanese it is called ajisai. It is kind of a big deal about this time of year. As there are temples that revolve around cherry blossom season and their sakura trees, as there are temples with tons of Japanese maple trees and this beautiful fall foliage, there are a few, temples dedicated to the beautiful blossoming of hydrangea flowers. The temples for hydrangeas are definitely a minority as far as themes go for temples.

Also it is oddly more popular to see in the rain. You would think that all the Japanese ladies in the finery would want to stay inside and do their nails or something, but you will see all sorts umbrella-ed out at these temples on a nice rainy day. They think that the rain is the best natural way to view the hydrangeas and that it brings out their very best colors.
And what is more special than sharing this very wet moment of color with your sweetheart? It is finding the blossom that is heart-shaped. Apparently they are rather rare and considered to be pretty special.
Another thing to look for are snails. I am not sure why, but people will constantly draw pictures of hydrangeas and snails together. Perhaps they are a good combination or they both thrive in the rain. Either way, once a snail is spotted people will crowd it trying to take just the right picture of the spirit of the season.

Death and Taxes

There are two things that are certain about Japan. Taxes in particular can be the death of anyone.

Ok, it is not so cool. I am not sure about how much I would have to pay in America, but here I certainly have to pay an arm and a leg for not even being full time employed. I mean, yes, I make more than just about every other girl my age here. Actually I probably average about probably all women in Japan. This would be because they are domesticated house gnomes that waddle about dressing like a cheap night and pushing around their kids. But we aren't talking about them. We are talking about taxes. Statistics show they they can pull in an astounding 1,900,000 yen a year. It looks like a lot, but really it is about 19,000 dollars. That is about average. Men tend to make more. Still a very male dominated society.
So anyways, after my first 'year' in Japan, I actually got paid back for my taxes. This is when you remember that that 'year' consisted of the months August to December for that tax period. And I got paid back very little. Perhaps 3000 yen and change. A nice dinner. Really nice.
This last year, I worked nearly every one of those months, or at least 175 days worth of the year, and I got rewarded for my services with a very nice heavy tax. The funny thing? My taxes pay me. HAH!
Whats more, is that heavy tax right there? We, the gaijins of Japan, actually pay less (albeit not by much) than the citizens. And many of the citizens are kind of furious about it. They want us to be paying the same amount as them. And to enrage them further, there are many gaijins that don't pay. And continue to live here. Perhaps tax evasion is not as big of an issue here in Japan, and people just don't get arrested or deported for it or whatever, but a large amount of self proclaimed people (not working for anyone I am affiliated with) that they just don't pay taxes with no repercussion. Perhaps they have never tried to leave the country and have a fake address registered though...

And for anyone wondering what you should do if you are still an American citizen and living in Japan and what exactly you need to be doing about taxes, you want to be filling out

• 255EZ
• 1044EZ

The 2555EZ form. It essentially is a tax exemption form that you can only fill out that if you made less than 95,000 US dollars outside of the US. And if you are making that much, you need to be getting me a job! You would also fill out the 1044EZ form.  This form pretty much states that you made no income in America for that calendar year.
This process prevents you from being double taxed in both American and Japan.

In addition to the awesome tax money that I have to pay, which is over a thousand dollars, or 100,000yen, your health insurance will also go up.
Your health insurance is at a minumum in the first place because it is based off of what you made the previous years. So my first year, it was about 1,500 because the previous year I was unemployed in Japan. My second year was about the same because I had only worked 3-4 months the previous year in Japan; thus the income for that year was so low, it was considered unemployed. This year however, I worked a full year the previous year and have the taxes to prove it, thus my health insurance skyrocketed. I am now to pay somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 yen, or 200-300 dollars every month. And this is still considered the kokumin hoken that I wrote about previously. If you have the shakai hoken (shakai meaning society so basically declaring yourself a working member of society), you will pay a lot more. But if you have the shakai hoken, then your company must pay for half. So if your total there was 80,000 yen, you company would pay 40,000yen and you the other half. You can see how the kokumin hoken is still cheaper. Also since I am not considered a full time employee, I would not be eligible for the shakai hoken. 
So pretty much at once, within the same week, you will get hit with a nice heavy tax and a much larger health insurance bill. My total is probably over 300,000 yen. Being an adult sucks

Tsuyu

Tsuyu is the rainy season of Japan. It usually happens from the middle of June to the middle of July or there abouts. It is when Japan is just expected to get a solid month of rain, which will be good for all the agricultural products and whatnot.

An interesting thing about the Japanese government, is that they feel the need to announce everything. So they are always the one telling the public when it is summer, when it is autumn, winter, spring, and when it is the rainy season. Kind of silly if you ask me. They go on TV and all officially announce it and whatnot, every one then knows it, it is on the news sites and newspapers which vary between regions ( Okinawa's tsuyu started nearly a month ago). Supposedly it is to help out the farmers to determine how best to manage their crops at the given time. But recently, the Japanese government made a mistake. They said tsuyu began at the beginning of June this year. The reason for this is because there were 3 straight days of those dark fluffy ever-looming grey clouds and an endless soul-sucking slightly heavier than light drizzle. It looked like for sure tsuyu had come. Funnily enough, it hasn't rained a day since then. There was even talk of renouncing their decision. But like a child who won't eat his peas, they have been obstinate about their course of action. Two weeks later they look like a fool and still haven't renounced it because surely it must be coming soon right? Right?

Call my honey

Honey is a pretty expensive thing in Japan. I mean sure you can find like half a liter of it on sale for 6 bucks, but not the good stuff.

For whatever reason Japan has a sincere lack of honey bees which is rather odd due to how involved they are with their agriculture. And even then, the bees in Japan are just not your usual honey bee. There are no bee keepers with their little collection of traditional white box hives that go and maintain everything in their tan bee keeping suits. Rather there are every so often and in isolated locations these crappily assembled industrial looking cylindrical metal structures. Which probably haven't been checked since the day of their existence. And those, those are the bee hives of Japan. I can't claim to have ever seen a bee near them, but I suppose they must be some what functional since somehow things are getting pollinated. From what I have found, their locations are often somewhere on the mountain side. Not really any where near farms, but cedar trees, which are a whole other sort of farm.
The one pictured here is actually the best one I have ever happened upon. Well maintained, made of wood and more importantly, it doesn't look like someones junk that they just happened to trow away on the side of a mountain. The owners have a little home-grown kind of cafe that they use their spoils for. Really sweet place.

Supposedly in Kyushu there must have some semi successful beekeeper  or another since Japan's only widely publicized honey I know of comes from there. So I suppose it is possible there is an actual beekeeper of sorts in Japan, it is just pretty rare.
Well there is one other place, how famous is it or successful it is I cannot say, but it gained itself a bit of notoriety last year as it happens...these beehives of which I speak, happen to be near  a Hershey's factory. And last year, instead of pollinating flowers like good little bees, the Hershey's factory just smelled oh so much sweeter and the little bees went there to collect their sugar instead. They went home to their hive in droves and again returning like junkies to their dealer needing a fix. With so much manufactured sugar in the honey, it turned it green and needless to say super sweet. And like all other hard drugs, it killed its users.

Bookends

On of the silly things about Japan is that they never want you to know what you are reading.
Which in some respect can be a little more detrimental for the authors if no one is publicly displaying reading your book and thereby advertising it. That's right you! No free advertisement for you! But in actuality, it doesn't hurt the authors terribly. At least Haruki Murakami seems to be doing just fine.

In Japan, every time you buy a book the cashier will either usually ask you if you want your book wrapped, which would mean to cover it in a temporary paper book cover very much like a book jacket, or they would just do it without asking you. This is one of the most bizarre things to me seeing as I am the kind of person to remove a book jacket from a hardcover immediately upon opening it. Not just to preserve the tender paper, but also because the book will slip a little if you use it. The book slowly creeps down and you will see more and more of that book jacket, until you get to a pretty intense scene. The hero has just discovered it!His old professor and ex girlfriend worked up some sort of scheme to use him in a psychological conditioning experiment in which they could profit from loads of blackmail from all sorts of important people affiliated, including the person in charge of the company who provides him sponsorship to continue with his studies with the graduate program! And now, she has caught on to his knowledge and is...SLIPPED there went your book.
And that is why I don't us a book jacket. Also I hope you enjoyed my crappy story I made up!...I didn't think to hard...
Anyways in Japan, everyone has a book cover or two to ensleeve their books. If you are like me, then perhaps you like a bunch of varieties of books and with varying sizes. Not the Japanese. There seems to be three standard sizes of book here in Japan. And really only one that most every book will appear in. But what about Harry Potter? Surely they read that right? and that is a big book. Yeah sure. But they split one book up to 3 or 4 books. Which really gets them like 3-4 times the profit from Japan. If you are familiar with Haruki Murakami, you might know 1Q84. In America, it is sold as one book, but in Japan it is split up into 4 books. All of which will fit that little books cover you have.
The reason for those book covers is that people are exceptionally paranoid in Japan. They don't want you to know what they are reading, they don't want you taking their picture, and yes, they know Big Brother is always watching them. But also it is a matter of privacy. For example, if they are reading a self help book, they don't want you knowing it. But let's be honest. That's ridiculous. The real reason is that it is porn. But then again, oddly enough, people are not so shameful about that. They sit there and read their manga smut rags on the train and you can see all the steamy scenes sitting next to them. And these rags come in those giant magazine sizes that are about 6 or more times the size of a normal american magazine with a very provocative picture on the front. And you can find all these at the local convenience store.
So why the covers? It is just another ridiculous quirky thing about Japan.

Osaka Obasans

The old biddies of Osaka are ruthless. And shameless


I have had several encounters, but the last one just takes the cake. And yes, Osaka biddies are just different. Way different than Kyoto. And I cant really comment on Tokyo or other places, but you will know what I mean.
So first of all, you need to know how to spot them. They look like cougars. And I don't mean the 40ish old women in America who have an affinity for young men, I mean they dress themselves head to toe in leopard print. In fact, while perusing the recent H&M fashions in Osaka, one of my friends commented on how the Osaka ba-chans must love this shop with all their animal print. Usually it is leopard, though on occasionally your standard zebra or tiger print is also acceptable.
Next you need to know their demeanor. This is no easy thing to describe. If you are accepted by them, you will know it, but if you are not, you too will know it. If they don't outright confront you, because remember,they are still Japanese with all their politeness burdening them, they will mutter or cast those glances at you or possibly talk about you with a nearby person while casting those side-long glances in your direction. But there are the few that will approach you. They will just chat with you and possibly invite you into their home and make you drink tea and talk with them for hours and promise to teach them English. Oh boy. And then keep heckling you to come back and have dinner or go to events, and at this point it is like you have a whole new mom!
But the best and most fun scenario, is to involve yourself in an event. Go to whatever event Osaka is advertising, be it a craft fair, flea market, mini festival, open air arts event, and you will find them. Recently I went to one such event and there were tables set up for arts and tables set up for vending wears and there was a table set up to talk to biddies. And they would accost you in the promenade to come visit their store and once you got close enough to their booth, they would just reel you in. They hunt you, they find you, and then they sit there and chat with you. You would think you would normally make some empty promises and then be about your way, but these ladies don't let those promises go. And you would think to just avoid their booth, but it is right at the entrance, perfect for easy prey.
So they get you sitting down at their booth and there is maybe like 10-15 ladies there and a chair for every ladies' companion. And then they just sit there and have what you would think would be the most awkward conversation ever, but just them sitting there in their crazy cougar outfits and their over the top make up and electric purple eye shadow and wild hair and them asking you about your love like...it is just so hilarious that you can't help but laugh the entire time. Of course if you aren't laughing they are probably berating you for not having a girlfriend or not keeping yourself clean and handsome looking etc. For me, who doesn't speak much Japanese, it was even more hilarious. Imagine a bunch of old biddies fighting over themselves to shake my hand and touch my hair and skin. For some reason Japanese people almost as a whole have gotten it into their heads that we are so different. But I suppose I can understand. I might have been like that in first grade... My kids really love to touch my hair especially. So these biddies were trying to ask me all these questions using English with the easy words and then the hard parts would go off into Japanese. Luckily I have my friend and translator handy. Some of their questions were like Have you found the one yet? Make sure to invite us to your wedding! Get married soon OK?! How old are you (a little rude to ask in Japanese culture)? Who is most beautiful among us? etc. It was really funny. And then came the pictures and everyone clamoring to shake everyone's hands as we left.
I would totally do it again. I also recommend it in this kind of setting. The lonely biddy who has nothing but time is nice occasionally, but remember, they have nothing but time and always want to see you so it becomes a bit burdensome as you make and arrange plans around them.

It was these ladies here.