When you see the words "technology" and "Japan" appear together in the media, it's usually in the context of "Wow, Japan is a high-tech wonderland so many years ahead of us!"

Those of us living in Japan see a much more varied and complex picture. Thus, it was nice to come across the BBC's Revealing Japan's low-tech belly, a look at the computer-clumsy, Internet-inexperienced potion of the country that will never use the living room VCR as a clock (because it's been blinking "12:00" for the past nine years). Read more

You know what's so annoying – very mildly annoying, yes, but persistently so – about "cultural contrast" discussions? It's really not so much the more elaborate made-up claims backed by laughably imaginary evidence (the "special relationship with robots" is a good example). Rather, it's the non-stop rain of little claims, the ones that paint everything in site as a "difference" or a "unique twist" – but then just leave those assertions hanging, without any attempt at support.

Below is a fine example: a piece on the impressive uptake of mini-blogging service Twitter in Japan from the Mainichi Daily in June. (I've been told that it first ran in the Japanese version of the paper, though I haven't been able to locate a Japanese original). It was picked up by news services everywhere; here's the full article, which you may have already seen: Read more

Hey, how'd I let this one go untouched for so long? Of all the misconceptions about the Japanese language, "three writing systems" has got to be the most widespread, even among people who really should know better. Lately the meme has been working overtime on this Slashdot thread – which is so all-round packed with misconceptions about Japanese that my head gets all asplodey just trying to keep track.

I'll stick to addressing just one mistake here. The question to be answered is: How many writing systems does Japanese use?

And the answer is: ONE. 

Yes, whatever you may have heard, Japanese does not use "three writing systems". It uses precisely one. No more, no fewer.

"Huh? There are three: Kanji, then hiragana, then katakana.. That's three writing syst..."

No. ONE. Read more

I watched Steve Jobs unveil the new iPhone 4 today. As part of his demonstration, he invited the audience to look at a non-English language on the phone's high resolution screen:

When you get to character-based languages... Kanji in this case... it's also striking...

Hey, that text does look great on the gadget! But...

Dang it, there is no language called Kanji. This mistaken idea keeps on spreading, so let's make a tiny contribution in trying to squash it:

The word 漢字 kanji is Japanese for "Chinese character". That's the literal breakdown – 漢 kan is one of several Chinese characters meaning "China, Chinese", and 字 ji means "written character" or "written letter". (For the scholars: the 漢 part comes from a historical area of China. If you've heard of the Han Dynasty, that "Han" and 漢 are one and the same.)

And that's all there is to kanji. It's the Japanese word for "Chinese character(s)", whether those appear in written Chinese, or in written Japanese, or in written Korean, or in a hamfisted tattoo on some wretch's leg (with random strokes missing and ninja written upside down).

Sure, kanji are used in written Japanese. So are the homegrown phonetic characters called kana, and so are Arabic numerals, among other bits and pieces. But the presence of those Chinese characters in Japanese no more gives the language itself the name kanji, than the presence of those Arabic numerals gives the language the name arabia suuji. Either of these is simply one component of the written language.

So what is the proper name for the Japanese language? In English, just "Japanese". That's it. Whether the written or spoken language, it's "Japanese", and never anything else. 

Unless you're speaking something other than English, in which case it'll be (for example) Giapponese (Italian), Японский (Russian), Japansk (Norwegian), or even nihongo (Japanese). That latter is a combination of nihon ("Japan") and go ("language") – i.e., pretty much the same construction as the English name "Japanese".

Of course, you could write the word nihongo using hiragana, as にほんご. Or using katakana (should you for some reason want to do so), as ニホンゴ. You can also write nihongo using kanji, as 日本語 – and in Japanese, you normally would write it that way.

Just take note that whatever language you're speaking, the word which names the Japanese language is not kanji. Never was and never will be.

So. Now, when you see someone make that mistake, you know where to send 'em for a straightening-out! (Let's see, what was Steve J's famous email address?)

The goofiness of culturology doesn't always stop at fuzzy fantasies about cherry blossom appreciation and negative-space discernment and robot chumminess. Sometimes it gets down and physical, as seen in mightily suspicious claims of magical ethnic hearing powers and super-long Japanese intestines.

But wait – hold those bowels! Maybe there is something special going on in Japanese guts! Or so says a researcher in France, who claims to have found evidence of enhanced nori-digesting ability inside those insides. Uh-oh! I've long joked that I'd have a heart attack if any of the common and loopy "uniquely Japanese" claims ever turned out to be true; is this my end in sight?

Well, not quite, but there still seems to be something interesting going on. As reported in perfectly respectable journals including Nature, Mirjam Czjzek, a chemist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, found bacteria in the gut of some Japanese that excrete enzymes able to efficiently break down the nori seaweed found in sushi and other dishes. Why would bacteria that live in human intestines have this ability? The researchers suggest that it may have come from marine bacteria that make seaweed part of their normal diet, which were ingested by nori-eating people, and then genetically transferred their enzyme-producing ability to the normal intestinal bacteria they met. (Bacteria can do crazy things like that.) 

See the link for more details; it's rather interesting. You'll probably see summaries in many other news outlets too. But science news like this doesn't always get reported and re-reported accurately, so take care to note what the researchers aren't claiming. There's no claim of special enzyme production or anything else different in the Japanese gut itself. There's special nothing in the Japanese human DNA itself that's being passed down. It's the bacteria found in the gut, at least in some individuals, that have the unusual genes and the unexpected ability. The basic idea – that eating a given food may introduce you to bacteria that are good at digesting that food – isn't itself the least surprising. The newsworthy part is the possibility that the ingested nori-eating bacteria may have transferred their ability to other gut-dwelling bacteria, and (the big picture item) that similar transfers involving other foods may have shaped all humans' internal flora immensely over our history. 

There are a lot of questions still hanging. Many people have pointed out that the study's sample size of subjects was very small, and thus the results are quite tentative, especially on whether non-Japanese who eat sushi might have the bacteria. Also, I'm left scratching my head over how things work at the individual level; after reading several articles on the findings, I don't yet see whether there's a claim that the transfer of genes from marine bacteria to gut bacteria happens anew within each individual who eats plenty of nori, or whether such modified intestinal bacteria are passed from person to person. (If the latter: How?)

But in any case, it all points to an actual Japanese difference. Of sorts. Not in "the Japanese" themselves, but rather in the hitchhiker bacteria they carry. Or some of them carry. And it's all quite tentative and need of further study. Still, what with all the completely unsupported "uniquely Japanese" nonsense out there, this may be at least something!

Know how you'll sometimes see a definition of a foreign-language word that just seems to pack way too much meaning into that single bite? Like this, from the Kara people of the Omo valley in Africa, as reported by the March 2010 National Geographic:

The name of the village – Dus – means, roughly, "I have seen other places, but it is good here. I'll stay."

Wow. Now that's efficient!

I made a small addition to What's easy about learning Japanese, noting the nice way in which you can speak about anyone in Japanese without having to know (or even care about) the person's gender. It's a pleasure to avoid English's required concern over Mr vs Ms or he vs she.

Actually, this is not so much something that makes Japanese easy to learn; it's more a simplification that makes the language easy to use. Hmm, perhaps a separate series of articles could be written on that topic? What do you think, reader: Do you have any examples of things that may or may not affect ease of learning, but that affect the ease of using Japanese?

Here's a bit of goofiness unearthed in the old scrap clippings pile. It's such a minor thing that I hesitate to apply my frequent "A dose of dumb:" preface to the title. Anyway:

The October 2003 issue of JETRO's Focus Japan magazine reported that the French animated film Kirokou et la sorciére (Kirikou and the Sorceress) proved popular in Japan. The tidbit of commentary notes: Read more

Back in 2005, Japan Times science writer Rowan Hooper noted US-based medical studies which, although inconclusive, suggested that aging-related conditions could be ameliorated through transcendental meditation (TM) techniques such as mindfulness and progressive muscle relaxation. Hooper went on to suggest that Japanese lifespans may be long due to similar effects brought about by two factors: Buddhism and "shikata ga nai mentality".

If you have any contact with "Japanology" musings, you've no doubt heard of shikata ga nai, or its other common form shou ga nai, as yet another entry on a loooong list of "uniquely Japanese" concepts. The phrase, as normally used, is a simple expression of resignation, of giving in or going along when things are beyond one's control – as in, "Oh well, what are you gonna do." Read more

Meet Poppy the Pig. From her online introduction of a few months back (the website text is different now): 

She goes to the flower market and likes gardening and doing household work. She is very sociable and she is kind to her friends and to her niece Grunty. The reason she has such Dutch characteristics is because Bruna created her modeling after his children's grade school teacher. 

Hm? What are these "Dutch characteristics"? Enjoying gardening and household work? Being sociable and kind? Having a niece named Grunty? All of those?

Do you have "Dutch characteristics"? I'll bet you do, and don't even know it!

All right, the above text is clearly as harmless as a bit of writing can get, but I'll say it once more anyway: I'll never understand made-up culturology, and am sure glad that I don't partake in it.  

But moving on: In case you're unfamiliar with Poppy, she's a friend of Miffy, star of over 100 children's books by Dick Bruna. While I don't think Miffy's caught on big in the US, she's a popular character in Europe and here in Japan as well.

A glance at Miffy should remind you a lot of another cartoon character, [Hello] Kitty. They're almost twins, though the vacant-eyed pair are separated not only by species but by age as well: Miffy was born in 1955, while Kitty didn't appear until 1974.

 vs

Actually, according to this interview, the similarity seems to have the pioneering Bruna a bit... er, miffed: 

'That,' he says darkly, 'is a copy [of Miffy], I think. I don't like that at all. I always think, "No, don't do that. Try to make something that you think of yourself" '

Wow; for a guy as nice as Dick Bruna, that's almost a jump from "Hello" to "Screw You, Kitty". The characters' resemblance is indeed suspicious, though in Sanrio's defense, we could note that the simplicity of Miffy doesn't leave much room for a similarly-sparse design to differ. (I was about to joke that maybe Sanrio should have given Kitty facial hair – when I recalled that they did.) 

Well, there's really no need for the two to compete; the affection of children is a thing to be shared, not divided. (Awww.) Though on the other hand, a Miffy vs Kitty no-quarter cage match does have its appeal. Who do you think would win? (Why, we the viewing audience, of course.)