Will Miss #488 - people (usually) sit at concerts

The tiny figure in white and black in front of the Budokan was my boyfriend at the time, now, husband. It's the only time I'll put his "face" on the blog. ;-)

I didn't go to many concerts in Japan, so my observations may be inaccurate (or outdated), but one of the things I did experience when I went to them was that people stayed in their seats. One of the things I hated when I went to concerts in the U.S. was that the second the show started, people stood up and that forced everyone else to do so as well. I don't know about you, but I am not a fan of spending two hours on my feet when I paid a fair bit of money for a seat. I realize that concerts are exciting experiences, and people may like to "dance", but the truth is that there is little room for people to move around anyway if they don't want to be bumping into the person next to them. In Japan, where the seats were even tinier and closer together, perhaps they knew that standing and jumping around for the duration was just going to put everyone out.

I will miss the fact that people tend to remain seated when they go to rock concerts. 

Will Miss #468 - songs with random English

If this is the proper embedded video, you'll see what I mean. If it's not, you'll wonder why this is here. The song is Inside Your Head by Daichi Miura.

It's pretty rare for me to listen to an English song and hear a random word in Japanese thrown into the lyrics unless that word is something for which the English is also the same as the Japanese (like "sushi"). In Japan, however, it was not the least bit unusual to hear pop songs which would toss in English phrases or words for no reason other than they felt it would be cooler to sprinkle in a bit of their second language of choice. It would seem incredibly incongruous to hear a steady stream of Japanese punctuated by the odd bit of English. It's one of those things which I will always see as very "Japanese" because it reflected the way they absorb and incorporate foreign culture, but twist it to suit their sensibilities.

It always amused me to hear the bits of English and consider how it reflected the benevolent incursion of Western culture into Japan, and I will miss it. 

Will Miss #405 - playing Auld Lang Syne for shop closing

A crowded department store during New Year's sales. I'd love to see this bunch cleared out with a song.

When shops are about to close back home, announcements are often made which are the polite equivalent of "we're closing soon so finish what you're doing and get out." In Japan, they handle it in a gentler way. When the time for the shop to close is coming up, they start playing Auld Lang Syne. The funny thing about this is that they don't play this New Year's classic during the actual holiday, but many shops play it every day to bid their customer's farewell. 

I think this is a gentle way of ushering customer's out of shops and I imagine that, for the rest of my life no matter where I am or what the situation, I will always associate this song with Japanese stores offering a genteel goodbye to their patrons. 

Will Miss #402 -the AFLAC duck, Japan-style

Not one, not two, but 3 variants on the duck, and they're all decked out for Halloween!

In the U.S., the AFLAC duck mascot is shown as a real duck. This makes sense since insurance is serious business, well, except for the part where ducks aren't exactly representative of maturity and responsibility. In Japan, the duck gets the same makeover as everything else. It is "cutified" and most of the AFLAC storefronts that I saw included an enormous and utterly adorable stuffed toy version of said duck.

Seeing it there made the whole sense that buying insurance was this adult thing which addressed the need to be secure in cases of death or destruction a little less daunting, and I miss the way that this soft toy softened the feeling associated with something like insurance.

Will Miss #322 - traditional music

I'm not sure I'd ever buy a CD of Japanese traditional music or sit around listening to it for hours. It's not much of a toe tapper, but there is something about it which puts you very much in the spirit of living here and reminds one of nature through its simplicity. Most places are overwhelming you with annoying pop music or, worse, muzak, so it's a refreshing change of pace and a reminder that, yes, you are in Japan, when you happen across either a performance or a playing of said music.

I'll miss the refreshing random encounters with Japanese traditional music.

Will Miss #79 - legal bootlegging

Everyone knows that bootleg recordings of concerts are sold through various sources worldwide. In the U.S., I used to buy these through various gray market sources via mail order. Occasionally, I'd run across the odd shop which stocked some bootlegs in some hippy area, but it was uncommon for such shops to stock only bootlegs or a plethora of them. In Tokyo, there are shops that sell nothing but bootleg performances both on video and audio, all with professional-looking covers and many with cleaned up content. Since bootlegs are only purchased by serious fans who already have bought all of the official releases of a musical act, the chances that the sales of bootlegs undermine the income of the performer are very low.

I'll miss the easy, upfront, and bold sales of bootleg recordings that serious fans can take advantage of in Tokyo.

Will Miss #61 - "go home kids" music

Everyday around 5:00 pm, some unknown and unseen force in my neighborhood plays a little tune. I've been told that this music is played at that point in time to remind kids who are outside playing to go home. I will always associate this daily public music with life in Japan. The first month that I stayed with my boyfriend (now husband) in Tokyo, I heard this music everyday while he was at work and I waited for him in his apartment. It somehow became linked to my missing him and now it always makes me remember how I felt at that time.

I'll miss the sense of benevolent paternalism and strange sense of melancholy that hearing this music always brings to mind.