Japan's Valentines Day!

Of course everyone has heard of Valentine's Day, and it's as big a deal here in Japan as anywhere else. Everyone loves receiving gifts like a dozen roses for Valentine's Day, right? Indeed it's a rare chance for the notoriously reserved Japanese people to show a bit of love. But how many of you know about White Day? No, it has nothing to do with racial pride or laundry detergent.

It's exactly one month after Valentine's Day and the two are a pair. In Japan, the Valentine's Day tradition is for girls and women to give gifts (usually chocolate or cookies) to the boyfriends, husbands, fathers, teachers, bosses, co-workers, guys they pass on the street...no, wait, it's not quite that extreme. But the concept of "giri-choco", or giving chocolates out of duty rather than love is common though not something most women really feel like doing. If the gift is to be seen as really heartfelt, it needs to be handmade. So department stores will do a brisk trade in the various ingredients needed to make chocolate confectionaries. With all the romantic hype in stores and the media, as well as the pressure of giri-choco, a guy who gets no chocolates on Valentine's Day is entitled to feel like something is seriously wrong with not just his social life but also his workplace.

Anyway, for the ladies the pay-off comes a month later on March 14, when it's the guys' turn to give something back. With the name White Day, I suppose the gift should be something white, and the only "tradition" I have heard regularly is that it was white lingerie. But I can't imagine that actually happens so often except between particularly romantic couples. The other rule, called "sanbai-gaeshiin," is that the guys are supposed to give a gift worth three times the value of what they received a month earlier (oh right, that's fair!). And certainly it's common to hear high school girls saying they give a couple of hundred yen's worth of giri-choco to their Dads only with the ulterior motive of getting a Gucci bag or something similarly extravagant in return. Such is the materialism of today's Japanese youth! But the most common gifts semm to be chocolates, cookies and flowers, all the way up to jewelry and those expensive accessories that many ladies hope for and hint at but don't ask for outright.

White Day, as you have probably already guessed, is a creation of marketing minds rather than anything remotely traditional. Though some sources talk about similar ideas in the mid-1960s, it's popularity only dates back to the early 1980's and so it doesn't have quite the marketing punch of its February partner. But if you got something from a young lady last week, you might want to consider the consequences of not giving something back...

Transformational Akihabara has its finger on the pulse of pop culture

Tokyo’s Akihabara district is always transforming itself.

Once promoted as the nation’s largest shopping area for home electronics and computers, where vendors thrived in line with Japan’s postwar surge in prosperity, Akihabara — or “Akiba” for short — is now the center of the nation’s pop culture as well, as typified by pop idol music groups such as AKB48.

The groups regularly perform shows at a special “live house” in an entertainment complex called Pasela Resorts Akiba, where an outlet of major electronics vendor Ishimaru Denki once stood.

In stark contrast with the chilling cold outside, there was a fiery scene inside earlier this month as young men waving penlights cheered on their favorite idols as they danced to blasting music on a smoky stage bathed in colorful lights.

Indeed, the areas around what is now Akihabara, home to lower-ranking samurai warriors in the Edo Period, were prone to fires back then. “Fires and fights are common scenes of Edo,” an old saying goes.

After a fire swept through in 1869, the Meiji government built a shrine, later known as Akiba Shrine, to a fire-fighting god. A train station built in 1890 was named Akihabara.

Akihabara’s rise to the center of pop culture today, however, has its downsides.

The main street was the scene of a tragic killing spree in June 2008, when a truck driven by Tomohiro Kato plowed into a crowded intersection on a busy Sunday.

Kato, then 25 years old, got out of the vehicle and began stabbing pedestrians, killing seven and injuring 10 others.

Kato, whose death sentence is still pending at the Supreme Court, is said to have nurtured a grudge against his company and society and targeted Akihabara because young people flock there to have fun.

After the incident, the vehicle-free “pedestrians’ paradise” on Sundays was suspended, and didn’t resume until 2011. But the closed-off streets where visitors are free to stroll are becoming popular again, according to local merchants.

With the help of the nationwide “Cool Japan” campaign to promote anime, “cosplay” (large-scale costume parties) and other things peculiar to Japanese pop culture, Akihabara is drawing the attention not only of young people in Japan, but also overseas.

Local residents hope that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will provide a platform to promote Akihabara to the world.

JAPAN NEWS TRENDING: Women give men Valentine's Day chocolates made with their own menstrual blood

Here's a Valentine's Day surprise that nobody would like, and we should also warn you that if you are currently eating something you might want to stop before you keep reading. A disturbing new trend has recently surfaced in Japan where women mix spit, hair and menstrual blood in the chocolates they make for men on Valentine's Day.

 

In Japan, when girls give chocolates to the boys they like on Valentine's Day, it's known as "honmei choco," which translates to "true feelings chocolate," but this chocolate contains way more than feelings.

One such woman posted, "This year too, I’m praying that I can succeed in love, and the time has drawn near when there will be lots of boys around who will eat my scary hand-made chocolates — that I’ve made by mixing in my own blood and spit — without even knowing it."

Another person said, "It’s Valentine’s in just two weeks’ time. All you virgins who’ve never received chocolates probably don’t know about this, but in hand-made chocolates from girls, at the very least, there’ll be blood and spit, and hair that has been ground finely in a mixer. Since these are hand-made from the heart, please be sure to eat them alone in secret ♥︎" YIKES!!!!

Although we're hoping it is, no one knows for certain if the whole thing is a hoax. Either way, the trend is drawing a lot of attention as the thread of posts talking about these scary chocolates has already been re-tweeted over 15,000 times.JAPAN NEWS TRENDING: Women give men Valentine's Day chocolates made with their own menstrual blood

Kampo: A Japanese Traditional Medicine

What are Kampo medicines?

Kampo medicines are herbal drugs made from natural ingredients of plant, animal, and mineral origin that are prepared according to classical Kampo theories. Kampo uses many familiar materials as medicinal ingredients; for example, "Keihi", commonly known as cinnamon, and "Borei", which is oyster shell. Several natural ingredients are mixed according to traditional formulae to draw out a synergistic effect from each other. In Japan today, Kampo drugs for medical use are prescribed by licensed medical doctors while some are available at pharmacies and drug stores without prescriptions.

History of Kampo in Japan

Kampo originally came to Japan from China in the fifth to sixth century. Based upon this traditional Chinese medicine, Japan has developed and systematized its own unique medicine through a long empirical tradition of study.

The name "Kampo" first came into use in the latter half of the sixteenth century to distinguish traditional medicine from newly acquired western medicine. Kampo means the medicine transmitted from Kan (the Chinese Han dynasty), while western medicine was called Rampo (medicine from Holland). Kampo was the mainstream of Japanese medicine at that time.

In the latter half of the nineteenth Century, Japan's government developed a new medical system centering on western medicine. As a result, Kampo fell into decline and it disappeared from center stage and was all but forgotten for a period of time. Nevertheless, its tradition survived and eventually interest in Kampo was renewed. Though there had been great advances in western medicine it was not a panacea for all illness and accordingly Kampo gained popularity as an effective complementary and alternative medicine. In 1967 Kampo extract medicines were included under public insurance coverage for the first time in Japan, triggering new progress in Kampo and its application in the framework of modern medicine. Since then Kampo medicines have become widely used for clinical therapies. Today they are not only used in primary care for common colds and other minor ailments but also as cutting-edge medicines for cancers, etc.

Production of Kampo

Traditionally, Kampo medicines are prepared by blending cut natural herbs and boiling them in water to infuse them. The resulting decoctions have distinct tastes and flavors. Today in Japan the traditional method of preparation is still practiced, but more widely used are ready-to-take Kampo extract granules or tablets produced from herbal extracts in pharmaceutical factories.
The production system for these Kampo medicines is supported by techniques of the highest level in the world, enabling stable supply of quality Kampo medicines with high concentrations of herbal extracts, while precisely following the authentic recipes in classical prescriptions.

Today Kampo medicines are available in a wide range of formulations such as fine granules, powders, tablets, capsules, and solutions, just like modern western medicines. These extract medicines, unlike old-style Kampo crude herb mixtures, are easy to carry around, can be taken anytime anywhere, and have a good shelf life.


Kampo now used together with western medicine

Western medicine focuses on individual organs or parts of the body. It seeks to target the sick parts of the body to identify and remove the cause of a sickness. The effect is direct and sharp. Today many diseases have become curable with this style of medicine and new discoveries continue to be made. Yet as powerful as western medicine is, it is not versatile enough to cure all types of sickness and there are limits to what it alone can do. Additionally, western medicine is known to produce many adverse side effects and sometimes cannot give patients relief when the exact source of a symptom cannot be identified.

In contrast, Kampo employs a symptom-oriented, holistic approach. It does not just focus on the condition of diseased parts but checks the condition of the entire body and mind. Then it seeks to produce a proper balance of all organ systems to recover health in patients. The effect is weaker and slower compared to western medicine, but Kampo is better in alleviating the symptoms suffered by patients. Accordingly, Kampo has attained a high level of patient satisfaction.

In Japan today, based on a deepened understanding of their respective strengths, western medicine and Kampo are being used together in clinical treatment, where the most effective ways to combine their advantages are being explored. This "combination" therapy has contributed to enhanced patient quality of life.

Kampo medicines have taken firm root in Japan and currently more than eighty percent of doctors prescribe Kampo medicines, which are also widely available at pharmacies and drugstores.


Kampo for further development of medicine

In Japan, Kampo medicines both for clinical use and over-the-counter sales are contributing to public health and are expected to evolve even further. Currently, Japan is the only country where clinical doctors are permitted to prescribe both western types of medicines and Kampo medicines at the same time and where both are covered by the same public insurance system. Therefore the application of Kampo medicines and their contribution to clinical treatments in Japan are very worthy of attention, to fully appreciate the great future potential of Kampo for opening a new path for modern medicine.