ctrp339 Sharing Culture in Japan

Yuuki Aki is no ordinary Japanese writer. He’s been living and writing an issue that many westerners wouldn’t believe would be so contreversial in such a modern place: room sharing.

In an unexpected podcast conversation, Aki takes us to post-war Japan where the country adopted a tradition of renting only single rooms or apartments for people unless they were married. As a result the idea of having a roomate, or living together with someone without getting married, is not only unheard of, its considered unacceptable by many landlords.

Then came the television program Friends along with a whole generation of Japanese young professionals who had lived abroad, they wanted to live with roomates and had to find ways to get past cultural restrictions. Aki tells the story of how this movement came to be and what kinds of situations they find themselves in. In between we also learn a whole lot more about Japanese urban culture.

Roomshare Japan (classifieds)
Roomshare Guide (online guide. Japanese)
The Book “Roomshare suru seikatsu“(A Life in Roomsharing)

Vlogging the Ger District

While recording the podcast of the Ger district tour, these images were also captured.  This video doesn’t include the detail and background info that you can hear in the podcast, but I think the images speak for themselves.

Another Nail in the Dutch Coffin

There’s what people think the Netherlands is like and then there’s what the Netherlands is actually like. Reality does not always fit the internationally renowned fantasy. From drugs, to prostitution and now to squatting; much of what the world claims to know about the land of orange, stopped being true some time ago.

The latest victim on the list of celebrated traditions that exist in few other places the way they exist in Amsterdam is the tradition of squatting.  At the height of squatting in the 1980’s, in Amsterdam alone there were at least 20,000 residents living in occupied buildings. Long after the city and private owners had left buildings abandoned and in disrepair, this community of hands-on, do-it yourself individuals took the initiative to not only take over these buildings, but to repair them and create a new community around them.  An empty hospital, a forgotten warehouse, an obsolete police station, a crumbling school house, no matter where you look in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, there is surely a squat that has been repaired and re-purposed by groups of artists, activists, and other creative types. And they don’t stop at housing, in the city of Amsterdam alone squats are home to organic vegetarian restaurants, affordable atelier space for artists, live performance spaces, film houses, saunas and more.

Yet despite the unique and incalculable contribution squatting brings to a city such as Amsterdam, in the halls of city and national government there has apparently not been enough voice to defend that tradition.  As June 1st, 2010 came and went, Dutch parliament passed a law making squatting illegal, in effect turning hundreds if not thousands of citizens  into instant criminals. This comes only days before a parliamentary election where the ruling parties are expected to lose badly, the very political elites who have led the charge against squatting.

A bizarre juxtaposition, as governments throughout the world sit around having meetings about how to attract the “creative class” to their cities. They spend millions on urban planning consultants and sociologists who subscribe to the Richard Florida school of finding ways to bring smart people to your town, thus creating vibrant and interesting cities for work, life, and visiting.  These same decision makers who dedicate so many resources to trying to make a city special, now stand by idly- or worse, lead the charge, to turn one the most innovative urban movements on the planet, into a collection of criminals forced to leave the hubs of creative energy and homes that have been part of the urban social fabric for more than 50 years.

ctrp338 The Story of the Living Planet Fund

What happens when a someone living in the big money banking sector one day quits it all and tries out the world of environmental activism and conservation? Chiew Y. Chong did just that over 18 years ago when he joined the WWF.

As we strolled through the beautiful gardens in the Chinsan-zo area of Tokyo, Chiew told the story of how once he got to WWF, he had some ideas that had never been tried before by that organization… a sustainable investment fund. He explained the goal of such a fund and what makes it unique. Beyond all that, with a wise and curious spirit, Chiew tells more than a story about a fund, he tells the story of a personal evolution that he believes has been and will continue to spread throughout the planet like wildfire.

To read more about the Living Planet Fund, visit their website.

Cat Interlude

Greetings once again from the neon streets of Tokyo. The TBLI conference is in full swing here and that means yours truely is working hard to make sure technology works during this two day event. Therefore I shall interrupt the serious citizen journalism with a little interlude worthy of the worst and most distracting entertainment websites on the internet today. Yes as of this post, I too am guilty of promoting cat humor.

The following is what I believe to be a very unique cultural experience here in Tokyo, a place where those who cannot or do not own cats can pay a small fee and go spend time in a wonderland of felines.  Here they can sit for hours just watching cats or actively petting and playing with them.  Why? Who cares? All these questions are valid, and as your intrepid reporter, I considered these questions.  With help from my Japan anthropologist friend Semisara, here is what we learned in the form of a video entry.

Tokyo Type Questions

After 36 followed by 25 hours on the Trans-Siberian train last month, flying 12 hours to Tokyo was a walk in the park.  A walk in the park followed by a long nap where you wake up in a mecca of neon lights and video-game-style pre-recorded voices.

Wandering the streets of Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Akihabara and beyond, I’m observing a culture and a city that for my entire adult life people have been explaining or trying to describe to me.  Yet of course it is one thing to be told about Japan and this crazy capital, yet it is entirely something else to experience it first hand.

This type of writing isn’t unique because it is found on this blog; throughout the internet, intrepid and less-intrepid travelers have been musing about Japan for as long as there has been a WWW.  Before that they stuck to tv documentaries, films, novels, and I’m sure many a pamphlet.

Still, my Japanese experience is most unique in that it is shaped by all of you. You being the twitter people, the facebookers, the comment leavers, the online and offline friends. Through your recommendations, your photo-memories, and your in-person meetups, in what is a short visit to such a culture and adventure rich nation, I manage to learn and soak in more than I would have otherwise; on my own, with a guidebook.

Many would say, I’m curious to travel to Japan and far away places like that, but I would feel lost or intimidated by things I don’t understand.  But the online-offline communities I have the good fortune of being a part of – the hackers, the journalists, the podcasters videobloggers, the couch surfers, the frisbee players – they all ensure that no matter what, I’m never truly traveling on my own, unless I want to.

I hear the lamenters. Those who say – ah but traveling on your own is rewarding too. Discovering things for yourself is important. I hear them and I keep this in mind as I do indeed take the time or the effort to discover things for myself. However when I turn a corner that I would not have otherwise turned, because someone walking next to me or following me on twitter recommend I do so, and I find myself somewhere magical, those fears about how things are changing, don’t seem so important.