Many Japanese companies are dominated by executives and middle managers from one Japanese university. This situation is known as gakubatsu. In such companies, employees that are not connected to the dominant school may have little hope of meaningful promotions.
If you ask Japanese people 90% will say that they are middle class (churyu). Interestingly, if you ask these people how they rank within the middle class 70% will say they are upper middle class.
An ancient pastime of Japanese nobility was sitting beside a quiet stream and writing a short poem known as a Tanka. A cup of sake in a lacquered wood cup was placed in the stream and the poem was to be finished before the cup reaches the participant. When the cup floats by, the participant drinks it and the ceremony is completed.
In Japan there are numerous festivals known as Hadaka Matsuri that involve male participants wearing nothing but loincloths performing various feats or just jostling and fighting with each other.
I have this general impression that the Japanese love burning things. I mean in Japan 90% of the garbage gets burned, if you are in the countryside you always smell fire from farmers touching their land, even in the city people burn their own garbage sometimes. My suspicions were confirmed when I found out about the Wakakusayama Yaki festival.
Japanese public TV (NHK) is tracking me down. Sunday morning the NHK guy came to my door and told me I owned him 2,690 yen for two months of public TV. I pretended not to speak Japanese and in the most complex English I could muster said that I don't watch TV and I am not interested in paying. I closed the door and he disappeared.
