America; home of the free and land of the brave, loud and trashy... or so we thought. There tends to be a though that, compared to the Japanese, we are brash, rude, too open and completely uncouth. Some who fancy themselves more "World-view oriented" turn their nose up, listing all sorts of countries and how America falls short; too arrogant, too narrow minded, too lusty, too something. "Here are the pretty Japanese," some say inevitably, "all orderly, polite and kind. They NEVER stoop to our level."
Yeah, right.
Tokyo Confidential is a listing of tales from the Wai Wai column of the Mainichi Daily News. Wai Wai is the finest sludge dredged up from the weeklies, the Japanese equivalent of the tabloids and other forms of gossip magazines. Of course, these tales could all be dismissed as just invented stories, as the contributors to Wai Wai such as Michael Hoffman first thought. That is, until he looked under the table at the shabu-shabu restaurant Roroan and found business-dressed gentleman "examining" the panty less waitresses with a penlight. The underwear discarded is pulled over another bureaucrats head. This is the Japanese version of "breaking the ice" for high level bank managers and politicians.
And it gets better. Thought only women had to deal with sexual harassment in Japan from male superiors? Think again. Even the *guys* get hit on by their superiors! One poor businessman, after being assigned to the 50 year old President of a company as a personal assistant, got invited to the Pres private villa for a party. That party was just the President, some "interesting" videos and a bottle of brandy. Now the businessman drives a Porsche and his future is secured, but what a cost!
It's not just sexy escapades, either. It's hundreds and hundreds of pages of scams, weird businesses and other forms of madness. Japanese men going postal for *literally* no reason, (He never got mad, ever), the worlds worst airline passengers, (and they are there, in droves, doing things that here would get reported nationwide on TV) and black widow females who can only take familial piety for so long (when he becomes useless, rat poison is cheaper than divorce). There is also a section titled "Only in Japan" with incidents that can only apply there, such as the fashionable wedding custom of doing a Christian ceremony with a priest, regardless if he's a priest or not. Here is the Japan that gets cleanly and neatly swept under the rug, but with enough shakes comes tumbling out.
The book is compiled by a list of writers, and is divided by hilarious subject groupings. Each article is short, much like the real "Wai Wai" articles which paraphrase their original weekly source, listed under the title. There is every sort of shocking scenario and so something for everyone, some gross, some violent, some weird and just some that make you shake your head. If you can't wait for your copy of "Tokyo Confidential", bide your time with reading the more recent offerings at http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/.
So the next time one of those "Internationalists" go on and on about how uncultured or crude America can be and hold up Japan as one of their examples of refined living, kindly hand them "Tokyo Confidential" and walk away. It's a guaranteed win.
They'll be too busy reading about the panty shop that sells underwear "right off the rump" to go any further.
