10 Aug 94 - waterday Well, I bought an obi for my yukata back home - and it's only 3 more days til I'm back home again. Last night the Yokohama baseball team kicked the Toyko Giants' collective butt - w/ a score of 18-2. I think that says it all. Last night I watched the Japanese "Candid Camera" and it was hilarious. The first thing I saw wasn't necessarily so funny -- there's a beauty contest and there's 2 ladies left and during the time that the people are supposed to be choosing they have a guy come and tell the one lady judge that #8 is his fiancee and could you please pick her and bribes her with the equivalent of $8000. She keeps trying to give the money back but her assistant keeps it. Of course, they set up the other judges to be evenly split between the 2 women so she has to decide. The next one was hilarious -- a guy has to wait by the road near a shrine. While he's waiting a kid comes up to him and asks to play catch. After a while, the kid goes away and the guy sees a lady put down bouquets and praying (that's what people do to honor the dead - =every= time someone has a violent death people put flowers where the person was killed -- like if kids were hit by a car, they leave flowers on the sidewalk near where they were killed.) Anyway the woman asks him to join her and says her son was killed and shows him a picture of the son -- the same kid he saw before. She leaves the pictures and flowers and he stays looking at the picture and keeps looking back into the forest where the kid came from. Later an old woman dressed in an all-white yukata carrying a flashlight comes and talks to him. and later both boy & old lady appear and do ghostly things. The guy's reactions were great. But the really funny one was simple - the shower mike. First of all, let me say that this summer here is hotter than normal. We've got up to almost 90 here and Tokyo has been 90-100. So all over the news people have been talking about the heat wave. Anyway, they give a mike to a person and ask them to talk about the heat and what people should do to make it bearable. Anyway, the mike isn't a real microphone - it's hooked up to water and in the middle of the person's speech the water goes out all over them. it usu. got people pretty good since they held the mike close to their faces. Then I watched a show on ghost stories. Then I watched a game show where they have people travel around the world, present something, and ask a question about it. For example, a guy went to Africa and watched an African wedding and afterward people went in long canoes. Anyway, the people took mud and dry clay and packed it in a square at one end of the canoe and the question was: What was it for? The hint was: it [was] something that people do in Japan also - it turned out it was for making a fire for cooking - since the canoes are wood, the clay protects it from the fire. One thing about the game shows I've seen - it's all minor TV celebrities who are on - they don't get prizes - the audience gets gifts. It's a weird TV system - all the same people are in commercials, game shows, news shows, and talk shows. The people just keep circulating around on TV. Also, the "news" show we watch - half of it is about Japanese celebrities dying, marrying, dating, giving birth, etc. I also saw a show on pets last night - how a guy trained his cat to use a regular western-style toilet. Restaurants where people are allowed to bring on their pets, etc. The hosts had a box w/ 4 kittens on their table, but they kept jumping out and jumping off the table and roaming the studio. Kittens are so cute. Also interesting -- companies own the pro baseball teams usu I think. One is owned by the akult yogurt company and its called the Yakult Swallows. Now on TV they're showing all the interviews w/ American actors. Richard Gere, Charlie Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, Robin Williams, Shawon Stone.... Well I don't know if I mentioned this before, but now they're =truly= allowing Californian and Australian rice in the country (I think that they're having a rice shortage in the first place.) It was on the news this morning - there was a picture of a store manager passing out the rice to the customers, who did not seem unhappy about buying foreign rice (someone told me that Japanese people think Californian rice is really delicious.) Also, my host ma says that Kansas beef is now coming into Japan, which was not allowed before. The truth is that the Japanese like to keep their market closed when they can and so alot of foreign food is not allowed in the country under the pretext of preventing the spread of plant diseases. But I think the problem is they =can't= afford to keep foreign products out - foreign beef and other foods are alot cheaper - and, of course, we're getting (we = America = Japan's largest market [I'm not sure how true that is anymore]) ticked and have no problem in putting on sanctions. But if Japan starts opening markets there's a very good chance Japanese farmers would be displaced and the Japanese would very likely find itself in the position the U.S. is in now - importing too much. It might be a good thing for the U.S. to impose sanctions on some products, for probably the U.S. wouldn't hurt too much and maybe we could get U.S. production of those products -- it =sould= be nice if there were U.S. TV manufacturing companies. It is telling that, a few years ago, when Wall Street fell the Tokyo market was sharply affected, but later when Tokyo had a drastic drop, nothing happened in Wall Street. Economics are messy anyway. By the way, I can believe that Japanese companies greastly underprice their stuff in the U.S., because Japan has been known for its cheap stuff -- but almost =everything= here is expensive (perhaps =that's= why they need only a 3% sales tax here...) It is =very= possible for American companies to come over here and do very well -- Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example -- it's everywhere! And Mister Donut, too -- there isn't even a McDonald's here, but those 2 stores have no problem getting business. It's a matter of getting one's product adapted to the Japanese market. On an entirely different topic - I want to see Brian! Ack!