Have I got a case for MTV. There’s a new music television entertainment program in Japan called Minna no TV (Everyone’s Television). It’s a pretty stupid name and the show is probably the most amateurish show I’ve seen in a long time, but if you take the initials of the title, you can see why they call it this. MTV. Yup. Officially they say the show is called Mintere for short, but there’s an English speaking DJ on the show, who clearly said: “You’re watching MTV.” I wonder how long before MTV gets on their case.

On the other hand, it might not be worth it for them because the show is pretty awful. Everyone interrupts each other, the adlib is awful, and the DJ is looking at the prompter out of the corner of his eye constantly. It’s amazing that Nihon TV airs this.

Of course Nihon TV is the network that Livedoor, a Japanese Internet company, tried to buy. They were totally the wrong company to try and bring about change in Japan’s staid media industry, but I can see why some people suppported them. Someone really has to do something about the quality of television here. It doesn’t necessarily stop me from keeping the TV on in the background, but it can be really painful.

(Actually I just got it. The show was trying to be like Saturday Night Live except on primetime. How do I know? They did this silly “news” corner that was meant to be funny in addition to little skits making fun of some of the guests.)

Last month, we had several friends come visit us in Japan in the hopes of catching the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, they were too early because the blossoms came out a couple weeks after our last guest left.

But it might have been just as well. PMK and I went to Osaka to see my dad, who invited us to see the cherry blossoms along the river right near his apartment. There were so many people that they made the main stretch one way, and you had to push against everyone else to make your way through. They also had loud speakers blaring instructions on which way to go and words of caution.

PMK said cherry blossoms in Japan are revered because it represents the fleeting human life. They’re certainly beautiful to look at, but modern ohanami (blossom viewing) definately lacks that spiritual component.

This is my best work so far. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s a chef d’oevre. You’ll notice that the top of it is perfectly round. My teacher took a picture of it when I was done.

I take this class with a friend from work, and the interesting thing is that we work with the same material, but our end results are completely different. She ended up with a cute masterpiece herself.

I don’t think it’s an either-or thing, but it seems to be in the case of my office building. A few times a week recently, I’ve noticed a really foul sour odor in the hallway and the bathroom. I can’t really describe it, but I recognize it — it’s the smell of really stale water. You’re probably familiar with the smell if you’ve ever left your just-cleaned clothes in the washer for a few days. It’s similar to the smell of an old pair of sweaty sneakers.

There could be only one reason for the odor — the cleaning lady has been using a mop or some towels that haven’t been thoroughly washed. Or both. Eew.

At the risk of offending my fellow countrymen, this actually strikes me as not an uncommon occurrence in Japan, where most people are very conscious about waste and conservation. Why use a clean, new rag, when the funky smelling one is perfectly fine? Why use a machine to wash rags, if you can do it by hand? It also probably comes from a skewed, if you ask me, sense of cleanliness. (How can you wash rags in the same machine that clothes are washed in?)

My mom was shocked when I threw a kitchen rag into a load of clothes (Of course, she shocked me when she resisted re-washing some odorous laundry that stayed in the washer too long on the basis that they’re technically clean. I won). Who cares since they all get practically boiled anyway? But wait. I forget that in Japan most people do their laundry with cold water. And they line dry their clothes instead of using a dryer (not that it matters in this context).

All of these qualities are probably positive in most parts of the world, and I’m the one that’s insane. But I’ve spent too much of my life in the U.S. — the land of waste. I’m going to go out on a limb here , but why can’t the cleaning lady just toss the rag and use another one?

They don’t have them in Tokyo, but some of the Osaka trains have women only cars during rush hour in the morning and the evening. I think they came up with this concept around the time perverts (the touching kind) became a problem. And I don’t mean that there was a sudden spike in perverts, it was just that people finally began to consider their acts as criminal.

Anyway, I was in one of these cars for the first time on Friday evening. If you’re curious about what they’re like, just imagine yourself spending an extended amount of time in a moving ladies room.

I’m in Osaka this weekend. When I got off the bullet train, and got on the escalator, a man glared at me as he brushed past me. I realized two seconds later that I was standing on the wrong side of the escalator.

There are some strange public rules in Japan that everyone follows by some sort of unspoken agreement. One such rule dictates which side of the escalator you can stand on. The problem is that the rule is different depending on where you are. East of Kyoto, including Tokyo, people who want to stand are on the left side of the escalator while the ones who are in a hurry walk up the right side. West of Osaka, this rule flips around. Hence, my faux pas. I was too busy reading a book and forgot which side was the correct side.

Of course , given that the Japanese tend to be outwardly polite, if you break the rule (which is the case with the foreign tourists), nobody says anything. They may be seething inside, but they’ll just stand behind the offender.

I’m watching a television show that gives “all you can eat” a whole new meaning — it’s an eating competition. The first round was gyoza, which was won by a relatively skinny guy. I wasn’t paying attention but I think he ate about 26 plates of 8 gyozas. The second round is thinly sliced raw cabbage, a typical accompaniment to pork cutlet in Japan. Stay tuned to find out how much they can eat in 45 minutes (One guy’s technique — use the residual heat from the accompanying pork cutlet, which they don’t have to eat, to soften up the cabbage to make it easier to eat.)

Japan is actually a big producer of eating champions. You may have heard of Takeru Kobayashi, the four-time champion of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. The interesting thing is that the champions are never the large guys.

If you’re thinking that it’s a pretty disgusting competition, you’re right. It’s mesmerizing though. Plus the show is not completely irresponsible. They have a caption that lets viewers know that the competitors are advised to chew thoroughly in competition.

(The cabbage round was a tie by two guys who ate 16 plates of 250g of cabbage. Third round was natto sushi rolls. The winner ate 36 natto rolls, which weighed 3.5 kilograms. If you lined them up, it measured out to be 7.5 meters)

There’s a lot of things I don’t like about Japan, but there’s a lot of things I do. One of them is the fact that most people don’t steal.

I forgot my umbrella today in the umbrella holder at a convenience store that I was at. I went back four hours later to find my umbrella still there. By contrast, I remember forgetting an umbrella at ANA Hotel in San Francisco five years ago. I went back five minutes later to find my umbrella gone.

PMK has forgotten his cell phone in a cab a couple times as well, and he always gets it back.

Why sleep on your own bed, when you can squeeze yourself on to someone else’s? My dog, Ada, and her cousin Tristan. My dog is the whiter one. Note that Ada is sleeping content as can be, but Tristan looks uncomfortable with his eyes open. Who knew that two 50 pound plus dogs can fit onto a large (not extra large) dog bed.

As you can see from my blurry picture, it’s cherry blossom season, but it’s also allergy season. The allergy products industry is alive and well in Japan, thanks to all the cedar trees that have been planted all over the country.

Sneezing, reddened eyes and runny noses are par for the course around this time of year. Television programs introduce effective ways to fight allergies (e.g. drinks and food that will help keep it down), and people like the man in the picture wear disposable paper masks. New this season, I think, are goggles that you wear to keep the pollen from getting into your eyes. You can see people with these goggles in trains and on streets. I’ve even seen a kid wearing one. Apparently, this year is worse than usual.

All of this begs the question why people aren’t taken drugs. They would rather put on these awful paper masks? I take Allegra and I’ve had no problems this season (knock on wood!).

A hit song these days is something called “Matsuken Samba”. Matsuken is short for Ken Matsudaira, a famous (albeit washed-out) television star known for a long-running Japanese Western called “Abarembo Shogun” (The Uncontrollable Shogun), in which he had starred from 1984 to 2003. The song is of course sung by Matsudaira in a shiny gold samurai outfit as he dances the Matsuken samba dance.

If I were to make a comparison, it would be like John Wayne, dressed in a glittery gold cowboy outfit, singing and dancing. Weird, yes. Hilarious, also yes. You can click here to see what he looks like. If you scroll down, you’ll see icons saying “REAL” and “WMP”. Click on those to hear what the song sounds like.

I’m not exactly sure what the atttraction is, but a recent concert of his attracted 20,000 people at Tokyo Dome. Pretty impressive when you consider that his only song is Matsuken Samba (I think he does variations of it throughout the concert).

April 1 may be April Fools’ Day in the U. S., but in Japan, it’s the first day of work for first year employees. If you look around on the train in the morning, you see young faces, dressed in crisp shirts and brand new suits, holding brand new briefcases and work bags. They don’t look yet look quite comfortable in their suits, which are uniformly dark in color to err on the side of conservatism.

It’s one of those scenes that remind the Japanese that spring is here.