Thursday, December 4, 2008
Burning Question
Why is there no Chicken Soup for the Atheist Soul? Everyone else has one. I like sappy overly moralistic stories as much as the next chick, just without the whole Jesus element. I think they're missing out on a serious demographic here.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Want to improve the economy? Get diabetes!
The newest idiotic scheme to improve the Japanese economy from the people who brought you "cement every river" and "work 100-hour weeks" is: eat more rice.
Huh?
Shigeru Ishiba, the Minister for Agriculture and Idiocy, suggests that an additional bite of nutrient-free white rice at every meal will save the Japanese economy. Oh rly? He wants Japan to be more self-sufficient.
How is this going to happen? Even though tariffs on imported rice exceed 700%, rice is still imported. If it wasn't, Mikasa Foods wouldn't be in a world of trouble after the tainted rice scandal earlier this autumn. Even if Japanese people do increase their average annual rice consumption from 60kg to 63kg, that money might be going into the pockets of a farmer in California, Kunming, or the Philippines. Personally, I am not opposed to that, but I'm pretty sure Minister Ishiba's tighty-whities would be permanently knotted if that happened.
The big problem with increasing rice consumption? It's bad for people's health. With all the focus on the Japanese "metabo," a made-up "disease" which takes attention away from the real health problems of diabetes, stomach cancer, and heart disease, you'd think that the Japanese government would try their damndest to get people to eat healthier food, right? Wrong.
White rice is pointless. After the war it was a luxury people could not afford before the war. Just like ugly Louis Vuitton knockoffs, eating white rice is a holdover from the poor days of Japan's past. Everyone in Japan wants to ignore their lack of central heating by pretending they are rich. Eating brown rice (you know, the stuff with nutrients in it) is looked down upon. My own mother-in-law told off my midwife for suggesting it for post-baby regularity. Good thing she's never looked in my pantry.
It's not 1946 anymore. It's time that Japan stopped its focus on unhealthy white rice as its staple food and returned to its roots- by eating high fibre carbohydrates including brown rice. It would be nice to see whole wheat pasta and bread on store shelves as well. The price should be lower than white rice or white bread, because they don't need to overprocess the food to take out all the taste.
Unless the Agriculture Ministry is working with the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare to ensure jobs in the future for Filipina nurses who will take care of those dying due to their unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Huh?
Shigeru Ishiba, the Minister for Agriculture and Idiocy, suggests that an additional bite of nutrient-free white rice at every meal will save the Japanese economy. Oh rly? He wants Japan to be more self-sufficient.
How is this going to happen? Even though tariffs on imported rice exceed 700%, rice is still imported. If it wasn't, Mikasa Foods wouldn't be in a world of trouble after the tainted rice scandal earlier this autumn. Even if Japanese people do increase their average annual rice consumption from 60kg to 63kg, that money might be going into the pockets of a farmer in California, Kunming, or the Philippines. Personally, I am not opposed to that, but I'm pretty sure Minister Ishiba's tighty-whities would be permanently knotted if that happened.
The big problem with increasing rice consumption? It's bad for people's health. With all the focus on the Japanese "metabo," a made-up "disease" which takes attention away from the real health problems of diabetes, stomach cancer, and heart disease, you'd think that the Japanese government would try their damndest to get people to eat healthier food, right? Wrong.
White rice is pointless. After the war it was a luxury people could not afford before the war. Just like ugly Louis Vuitton knockoffs, eating white rice is a holdover from the poor days of Japan's past. Everyone in Japan wants to ignore their lack of central heating by pretending they are rich. Eating brown rice (you know, the stuff with nutrients in it) is looked down upon. My own mother-in-law told off my midwife for suggesting it for post-baby regularity. Good thing she's never looked in my pantry.
It's not 1946 anymore. It's time that Japan stopped its focus on unhealthy white rice as its staple food and returned to its roots- by eating high fibre carbohydrates including brown rice. It would be nice to see whole wheat pasta and bread on store shelves as well. The price should be lower than white rice or white bread, because they don't need to overprocess the food to take out all the taste.
Unless the Agriculture Ministry is working with the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare to ensure jobs in the future for Filipina nurses who will take care of those dying due to their unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Japan’s foreign worker training program is a pile of steaming crap
New data on the foreign worker training program shows that it is so bad many workers don’t even complete their terms. The program started as a way to recruit foreign workers for the 3K jobs (dirty, dangerous, and under terrible conditions) most Japanese don’t want to do. The benefits the Japanese government touted were that these jobs would be filled and these workers would take back technological skills to their own countries. The key part of that is actually not the feeling of noblesse oblige, of First World Japan doing its part for the dumpy nations of Asia, but the part where the foreigners go home.
The Japanese government poured money into this program, not just the recruitment part or matching of potential employees with employers, but they subsidize the pitiful wage. All for what? I don’t want foreigners to be exploited on any level, but using my taxes to do it? Shameful.
So why don’t employees want to stay? Isn’t this just like a college study-abroad term?
No way. I’ve known about 6 people who worked in Japan as foreign trainees, and the term “trainee” is a misnomer. Training is usually limited to Japanese conversation, usually provided free by female university students. Otherwise these trainees are supposed to show up at their manufacturing or garbage-picking job (sorry, recycling technology)and just do their jobs. They stay in rooms provided by the company with other trainees. I have never known a Japanese person to have a roommate in this country, it’s just not done, but they force roommates (and in tiny Japanese apartments) on their trainees. My trainee acquaintances complain of the same thing other foreigners do; since they won’t be staying long none of the Japanese employees tries to get to know them. Then there are the working conditions; long hours, peer pressure to do overtime without recording it, no days off, no sick time. Basically it is the sad plight of most Japanese blue-collar workers but with two big differences; there is no hope you will one day become manager if you keep your head down, and the salary is vastly lower than the measly one given to the Japanese in the same positions. That’s right, even though the Japanese government subsidizes the wages, they can’t even be bothered with minimum wage which does not apply to trainees (Japanese or not).
My first few years in a Japanese company were hell. The problem with coming from another country to Japan is that you know how productive people can be, and you know how workers should be treated. Japanese workers are neither respected nor productive, but they don’t know anything else. If I hadn’t been given a living wage, I would not have stayed. There is no incentive for foreign trainees, primarily from countries with lower costs of living than Japan, to go into debt to come to Japan to be exploited.
This system has to change. There have to be stricter regulations. The employers should prove not only that they have a training regimen, but also how it will be useful to the trainees in their own country (carefully placing a key into a cellphone keypad: not useful). The way blue-collar workers are treated in Japan is disgraceful, and the fact that foreign trainees are treated even worse is despicable. Japan has already been called out by the US for its role in trafficking women, and it must change its foreign trainee system before once again faces censure from the world for continuing its slave trade from the 1930s.
The Japanese government poured money into this program, not just the recruitment part or matching of potential employees with employers, but they subsidize the pitiful wage. All for what? I don’t want foreigners to be exploited on any level, but using my taxes to do it? Shameful.
So why don’t employees want to stay? Isn’t this just like a college study-abroad term?
No way. I’ve known about 6 people who worked in Japan as foreign trainees, and the term “trainee” is a misnomer. Training is usually limited to Japanese conversation, usually provided free by female university students. Otherwise these trainees are supposed to show up at their manufacturing or garbage-picking job (sorry, recycling technology)and just do their jobs. They stay in rooms provided by the company with other trainees. I have never known a Japanese person to have a roommate in this country, it’s just not done, but they force roommates (and in tiny Japanese apartments) on their trainees. My trainee acquaintances complain of the same thing other foreigners do; since they won’t be staying long none of the Japanese employees tries to get to know them. Then there are the working conditions; long hours, peer pressure to do overtime without recording it, no days off, no sick time. Basically it is the sad plight of most Japanese blue-collar workers but with two big differences; there is no hope you will one day become manager if you keep your head down, and the salary is vastly lower than the measly one given to the Japanese in the same positions. That’s right, even though the Japanese government subsidizes the wages, they can’t even be bothered with minimum wage which does not apply to trainees (Japanese or not).
My first few years in a Japanese company were hell. The problem with coming from another country to Japan is that you know how productive people can be, and you know how workers should be treated. Japanese workers are neither respected nor productive, but they don’t know anything else. If I hadn’t been given a living wage, I would not have stayed. There is no incentive for foreign trainees, primarily from countries with lower costs of living than Japan, to go into debt to come to Japan to be exploited.
This system has to change. There have to be stricter regulations. The employers should prove not only that they have a training regimen, but also how it will be useful to the trainees in their own country (carefully placing a key into a cellphone keypad: not useful). The way blue-collar workers are treated in Japan is disgraceful, and the fact that foreign trainees are treated even worse is despicable. Japan has already been called out by the US for its role in trafficking women, and it must change its foreign trainee system before once again faces censure from the world for continuing its slave trade from the 1930s.
What is this blog?
This blog is the honest ramblings of a mouthy expat working mother in Japan. It is inspired by the emotionally honest blogs that drew me into the blogging world, like A Little Pregnant, Uppercase Woman and other infertility blogs, as well as feminist and political blogs that inspire me. I hope to blog about news in Japan, from the absurd things that make up an anime geek's wet dreams, to the politics that shapes my world. As an added treat: lots of dirty posts and filthy language.
What this blog isn't
It's not a travel blog. I will give recommendations if you request them, but I am not a tourist in Japan. Living somewhere for more than a decade pretty much means that the wide-eyed newbie who loves the magic of temples and pottery shops is gone and replaced with someone who is more likely to point out the motorcycle gang hangouts and most obnoxiously neoned pachinko parlors than a place to buy postcards.
This is not a blog for my grandma and grandpa at home who want to see pictures of their great-grandchildren. Mostly because I no longer have any grandparents left, but also because those are the blogs which are not emotionally honest. You, dear reader, are just as anonymous to me as I am to you.
This is not a blog where I will complain about my spouse. To me, those are the worst blogs in the world. Possibly because I married the world's best man, but I would be unbelievably pissed off if I found out he was complaining about my cooking or the way I fold clothes or pretty much anything else about me on the internet. So I won't do it to him.
This is not a food blog either. If you want Japanese recipes, try OishiiOishii. If you want bento tips (other than get your child into a daycare or kindergarten where they are not required), try Lunch in a Box.
What this blog isn't
It's not a travel blog. I will give recommendations if you request them, but I am not a tourist in Japan. Living somewhere for more than a decade pretty much means that the wide-eyed newbie who loves the magic of temples and pottery shops is gone and replaced with someone who is more likely to point out the motorcycle gang hangouts and most obnoxiously neoned pachinko parlors than a place to buy postcards.
This is not a blog for my grandma and grandpa at home who want to see pictures of their great-grandchildren. Mostly because I no longer have any grandparents left, but also because those are the blogs which are not emotionally honest. You, dear reader, are just as anonymous to me as I am to you.
This is not a blog where I will complain about my spouse. To me, those are the worst blogs in the world. Possibly because I married the world's best man, but I would be unbelievably pissed off if I found out he was complaining about my cooking or the way I fold clothes or pretty much anything else about me on the internet. So I won't do it to him.
This is not a food blog either. If you want Japanese recipes, try OishiiOishii. If you want bento tips (other than get your child into a daycare or kindergarten where they are not required), try Lunch in a Box.
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