The guy who writes the blog Tokyotimes published some interesting Tilt-Shift photos on his site the other day. You might remember from a past post that I love those kind of shots.
Worth noting in this case though, is that they are all taken (and post-processed) with an iPhone! Mighty impressive work if you ask me.
Here are the link to his photostream: Tokyotimes posterous
Generally speaking, getting fired from a Japanese company is virtually impossible. Although, I do want to stress that due to the recent worldwide economic downturn, even Japanese companies have changed a bit in that sense. I do believe though, that when we see an upturn again and the Japanese economy gets better, most companies will fall back to their traditional post-war economic boom ways of working again…
Anyway, back to my original point – due to many factors, people don’t tend to get fired from Japanese companies, instead they get pushed aside and placed at “the window ledge” (madogiwa – 窓際) – the term for these workers are “window ledge tribe” (madogiwazoku – 窓際族). What is means in reality is that they get placed somewhere in the company where they don’t get in the way, don’t get any work to do, but still receive salary. They are completely frozen out of the community and by their peers, leading to either a) they leave the company voluntarily, or b) they stick it out until the bitter end (i.e. retirement, as there is no, absolutely no, way back into the warm company family). There is of course a c) as well – although it’s very drastic and I would hope that it’s decreased recently, and that is the suicide option. Being placed by the window ledge can mean so great shame to a person that he/she feels that taking his/her own life is the only option.
Now an important note about being placed by the window ledge – in most cases it’s less about being an unskilled person and more about being problematic and “not fitting in.” Common reasons for being relegated to the “tribe” are:
and of course, last but not least
Of course, apart from the above signs of not fitting in and thereby being moved to the side – historically it was perhaps not such a dramatic affair. Due to the traditional, post-war corporate style of giving everyone life-time employment as well as pay & titles based on seniority, it was a rather natural next step for people around middle management who did not seem fit for top management, but had “paid their dues” and could not be fired, but kept their nice title and paycheck and was sort of “pre-retired” to the window ledge.
After the economic bubble of post-war Japan burst in the late 80’s, it obviously became more difficult for companies to retain “madogiwa-zoku.” Three different approaches have emerged since then which are preferred by companies in a bit of an economic squeeze, and they are: (1) re-education or similar activities to increase productivity of unproductive workers, (2) outplacement to subsidiaries or other companies, and (3) foreign-style pre-retirement packages. I will go out on a limb here and say that option (3) is a very recent addition to Japanese companies management of unneeded staff, and probably still is almost unheard of. Even in international companies acting in Japan, “coaching out” unproductive staff by giving them a package is seen as something inherently strange and all other options will evaluated until taking that option.
Photo by rambingrovers
We’re in the middle of a huge O-Warai (大笑い i.e. “Big Laugh”, meaning comedy usually in stand-up/skit form) boom which has continued basically since sometime in 2007 when the likes of Kojima Oshio (Oppapi) and Harisenbon. It seems that what Japanese people like to do the most is to laugh; because there seems to be no end to this boom. At the end of last summer at least I thought that the quality of comedy in Japan was stalling; there were no great new acts coming on to the scene, and the people who had broken onto the comedy scene earlier that year seemed to go nowhere… I felt that the boom was over; but then something happened and we saw some extremely great acts shoot up onto the scene: Audrey (see picture above), Naname 45 (Tsugi wa Kanda desu!), Wagaya (Iwaseneeyo!), Hibiki (Senpaaaaai!), Mono-ii (Chigauka?), King of Comedy (Daifanmitaina!), Joyman (Here we go, here we go!) etc. etc.
Basically there is one TV show that feeds the comedy scene with good acts, and that is Bakusho Red Carpet which currently shows here on Wednesday evenings. The concept is simple, bring on fresh comedy acts to do short stand-up/skit comedy. Basically each act has about 1-3 minutes to perform their act, so it needs to be explosively funny. Then they are ranked by a jury of celebrities on a scale from “Small Laugh”, “Medium Laugh”, “Big Laugh” and “Perfect Score Big Laugh”. Each night, one jury member chooses the top performer who gets a small award. Somehow, this TV show gets all the good new acts, and as the popularity of the show has skyrocketed, comedy veterans now also often feature on the show intermingled with the recurring fresh young acts.
Red Carpet is about 1000 times better than the closest rival show in the same genre, Enta no Kamisama which has a simple concept, comedy acts perform in front of a studio audience. Somehow they manage to only find the most boring and ridiculous acts, although on some shows, sprinkled in between the losers are some of the great acts that got their break on Red Carpet.
There is one more hugely brilliant comedy show, and that is “The Iromonea” which is a competion-style comedy show, where comedians fight their way through five levels, each featuring a different style of comedy they must perform, and if they get the audience to laugh (3 out of 5 randomly selected audience members must laugh on level 1-4, and all 5 must laugh on the last level) they move on to the next level, can can ultimately win 1 million Yen if they clear the fifth stage. This show used to be a sort of boy’s club for the already comedic elite, with seasoned veterans only participating, but with the success of new comedy acts recently, they have introduced a sort of qualification round part of the show, where new comedy acts go through similar trials and have to get a jury of celebrities to laugh on three consecutive tries to be able to qualify for the “real” part of the show and compete for the money. This show is also pure brilliance! It’s awesome to see people squirm during the last few seconds of their performance when they are desperately trying to get that sorry son of a bitch in the audience to laugh who seems to think nothing they pull out of their comedic repertoire is funny!
Anyway, to sum up, I used to think Japanese comedy was pretty lame. I guess it had something to do with not understanding fast-talking Manzai-acts (I still don’t catch all the puns), but there was also too many un-interesting comedy acts which had ridiculous shtick like Ed Harumi (I can’t stand her), Daita Hikaru, Moody Katsuyama, DJ Tiger Lee etc. whose acts basically consists of bad rhymes, boring jokes and some kind of funny sound or saying that they repeat until it just gets nauseating.
However, since last year, I’ve become a huge fan and it seems like this boom will continue for yet some time. I guess nothing gets you through an economic recession like a good laugh!
Many Swedes, like myself, have a special love-hate relationship with the likes of H&M and IKEA – publicly we might say that we despise them for being providers of cheap crappy goods and marching towards world expansion in an imperialistic manner. Privately, however, we all shop (or have shopped) furniture at IKEA, praising them for their low prices and relatively good quality, and we secretly buy lots of basic wear at H&M because of their equally low prices and decent quality.
So, it is actually with excitement that I note that it’s just two weeks until H&M open their first store ever in Japan, in Ginza’s exclusive shopping district in central Tokyo. Opening date is set to September 13 when the new “GINZA gCUBE” opens up – the “g” apparently stands for “good” as in “good food,” “good life,” and “good fashion.” (Although, I suspect that originally the “g” stands for “gas” as the building is owned by Tokyo Gas Company)
You can see the exact location of the building here:
大きな地図で見る
In answer to the poll “What foreign TV series do you want to view thoroughly this summer holiday?”, in itself not such a strange question, there were some in my opinion highly unexpected results – please see below:
1. Full House
2. Bewitched
3. Columbo
4. 24
5. ER
6. Dae Jang-geum (Korean)
7. X-Files
8. Winter Sonata (Korean)
9. Knight Rider
10.Beverly Hills 90210
11.Prison Break
12.Lost
13.CSI
14.Desperate Housewives
15.Sex and the City
16.Heroes
17.Ally McBeal
18.Jumong (Korean)
19.All In (Korean)
20.Friends
Well, what can you say? I must say that I’m really surprised that the top 3 are virtual classics by now, although calling “Full House” a classic might be a bit of a stretch. I was aware of the show’s popularity here in Japan since before, but I didn’t think it was the thought to be the most popular show ever! Also, I’m wondering about Bewitched – how come that is so popular here? Was there some kind of revival after the Nicole Kidman movie, or something? Also, I definitely thought that “Winter Sonata” was going to be the highest ranked Korean drama, but perhaps everyone has already seen it 100+ times, so they see no need in renting it and watching it yet again….
Here is a link to the original poll results on Goo (in Japanese)
