Violent Media a like a Gateway drug into Violence and Crime?

Today, I have to mention something that I have though but have had little firsthand evidence of for a very, very long time: Video games, even violent, criminal video games, do not lead to violent, rebelious behaviour. Just as I have stolen thousands of treasure chests worth of booty in video games and have not stolen as a result, just as I have ended the lives of thousands of fictional people in games and never gotten even close to killing anyone in my life, just as I have read about horrific executions, treason, rape, torture of a thousand kinds: I have never once indulged in any of these things in my life. Dozens of so-called "experts" in America have their heads in a hole in the ground if they believe that poor behaviour by fictional or even real characters in the media leads to increased rates of malevolent action in the real world. People have done polls (none of them satisfying but a few), people have been interviewed, trials have been had, and now The National Institute of Media and the Family has found that 87% of pre-teen and teenage boys play games rated "M." Now, this seems somehow strange to me for one reason: 87% of teenage and preteen boys are playing games rated M, but our consumer base for all videogames is something around half to two-thirds that number.

In states like Washington, selling an economy box of cigarettes or a keg of liquor to a 16 year old is a much lighter fine and/or jailtime (most of the time it is a little jail time with a large fine) than it is to sell a game that depicts consensual sexual relations between married couples to the same young man/woman. 3 months jail time and at least a $500 fine as well as the loss of your job and probably any future job in the gaming industry. Even if a 15 year old with a fake ID, well on their way to becoming an adult, only a 1.01-2 years from possibly military service, and married himself will land a clerk a minimum sentence of 3 months in prison and $500 jail time, with additional charges to the home store of up to $5000, which is enough to shut almost any small business that doesn't have backup money and happens to sell games intentionally or accidently to minors. The same young man can buy a book with even more horrifically described events easily, and even acquire plenty of movies which describe much more graphically detailed events. But, he can still buy a video game with execution style-shooting, drug dealing, pirate-like swearing, physical abuse, psychological torture, and many other non-sex-related criminal or immoral acts, without the slightest bit of worry from or to the sales cashier. Strange?

Well, for decades now people have been trying to prove that violent media like television and video games lead to violence. Hmm. That's strange. Well, we wouldn't want to do any cross cultural research to see if other countries with similar habits in videogames but with other variables to account for are seeing the same problems, would we, Mrs. Senator Hillary Clinton? Senator Kohl? Senator Baca? (A sidenote, but by some coincidence, "Baca" means "idiot" in Japanese). Oh, I forgot Lieberman. Now, all of you claim to have good sources by people from the APA, and all the "logical" evidence is pointing the right way, right? For instance, crime has gone up since violent video games and sinful television shows have started to become common in our lives. Wow, well, that proves. You guys sure did a good job. Well, maybe we should look at someone else's data, you know, to double check our work off of someone else. Nah.

Well, I'm in Japan. This country has the largest base of gamers by precentage and by population in the world. They also produce most of our violent videogames, and produce a whole host of games with satanic messages, pornography, rapine, murder, etc. that obviously the root of so many of our problems in the US! Oh, and look! Disgusting B-class horror films are a huge genre here, one which an absolutely staggering portion of the population are involved in regularly! Well, if all the theories of Lieberman, Clinton, Kohl, Baca, and all the rest from high and low are right, we'd expect Japan to have high rates of murder, rape, suicide, torture, incest, robery, smuggling, rudeness, reclusive lifestyles, vampiristic blood-drinking, assassination, coups, assault, drug abuse, high birth rates...(I won't keep going. I could write for about every law that America has in common with Japan, because if there is anything "bad" portrayed in our media, it is almost always worse in the Japanese media.) Is this the case, as all the theories are leading us to believe? Or are conservative media people making this hype so as to promote their person moral ambitions?

Behold! Japan has some of the lowest crime rates in the world! They have less of all the aforementioned crimes in the US. Goodness! If only they were reading this now, they'd be forced to watch their fragile little conservative worlds so carefully constructed like a tower of cards, each base to build new knowledge and understanding more shaky than the last...if only they would have thought to simply think that the United States to see if anyone else had the answers, they wouldn't have had to work to persuade so much money to be spent on meaningless research that lead to false conclusions through its own false premises! What a setback. Now how will the get elected? They'd better find some other non-issue. Why would anyone believe something so ridiculous as what they were running on, after all? When news breaks, things will be awfully embarassing. A false epidemic? You'd better do more than that, Senators.

I've seen it with my eyes now. I've only seen the police have to speak to two people, one was me. Why did they speak to me? Well, it was obvious. I was a foreigner they didn't know from around Aoyama on a bicycle. (Bicycle theft happens occasionally around here, and a very disproportionately large percentage of crime is commited by non-video gaming foreigners, despite Japanese blood being more than 99% of the population. I was an American on a bike. Well, maybe I looked like I don't play enough violent video games. They pulled me over, asked for my passport, visa, and foreigner registration (green card), as well as what my exact address was. They interviewed me for 30 minutes, asked for the warranty and proof of sale on my bike, went to my house to see if I really live there, checked my documents for proofs with the government, and asked me everything they could to determine that I was not a criminal in their peaceful town. The other person I saw talking with police had a flat tire or something. They were very thorough. But chances were, if I was a foreigner, that my chance of being a criminal was higher by a rate of 1000's of % than anyone else in the entire city. I truly cannot blame them. I am not even the slightest bit angry at them.

I am however, angry at the "well-educated" band of anthropologically inept fools we call experts in America. We are supposed to be the elite. We act enough like it. So how is it that we behave like such fools? It really bothers me.

"But the poorly-parented children that never recieve any love or attention from their families or cruel and also-poorly raised children have killed other children, and said that they learned what to do from videogames!" Wow...really? Well, if we taught our own kids the value of reading, they would have come up with even more elaborate and though-through plans, wouldn't they? Phew, lucky for Columbine! Things could have gotten really hairy! But it is a good thing that they had all those guns in the house to protect their children in case anyone dangerous came around. Oh, wait, you and your kids are the dangerous ones! It's too bad that rushing into a wedding in order to have unsinful sexual relations created an unstable, family that just happened to be gun-toting. Must have been the videogames!

Well, here's a little something to lighten the mood:


This is a picture of a father taking his daughter videogame shopping. They are playing the demo together. Right now, Daddy is playing, and she is giving her advice. He listens carefully to what she says, not doing what she wants verbatum, but letting her know when she's given good advice. I'm guessing they trade off at this thing. They were both very content-looking when I saw them. Later I saw another father-daughter gaming combo come out of the store as I was leaving for my bicycle. They seemed even more smiley and pleased with themselves! Oh, but those poor children! They are doomed to lives as a part of an endless cycle of violency, felony, and mortal sin! If only they could do like Americans do and leave their children to be taught everything about their heritige in a few moments with thier parents when they aren't at work (if they have both of them), and, most of all, would keep videogames with consensual sexual relations away from their teenagers that have known all about sex for years. It's a good thing that months of legislation are going into action to ensure that violators of video game sales, wheter accidental or intentional, proper penalties are paid-out for a crime that is short only of felonous drugs that are illegal for anyone to consume.

God bless America (does that ever sound like a direct order to you?). We may need the blessing!

For Gamers (others will not be very interested)

A few things you may or may not recognize:

First, Eva, the videogame. I thought WOW how does that work? Then I looked at the price (pictured below).

Oh, because it is $90. Okay. Nevermind!

A sample of some plastic-wraped handheld games.

Monster Rancher ("Farmer" in Engrish) 5

Kirby games for Gameboy, Gamebody, and Gameboy color. If it still sells...why not sell it?

Disgaea 2! Disgaea 2!

The FFXII Playstation. Cry yourselves to sleep, because it only plays the Asian region game versions.

The pearl PS2. Pretty nice.

I purchased Ogre Battle 64 for $4.50 and Chrono Trigger for $2.50, in original Japanese cartridge formats. Note that this is much less than the at least $100 it would cost me to get both of them in the US. I also got Front Mission 5, which may or may not eventually come to the US. It has perhaps the hardest Kanji-level of any game I have evert seen. If there is a Kanji for a word--they use it. So it is about 1/2 and 1/2 or more. So, I'm basically going by the pictures and memory for how to play it! Wish me luck!

Katakana Spelling

When learning English in Japan, a common tool that is used (in and out of classrooms) is Katakana. Katakana is a representation of all the syllables that a person uses in their intended use of Japanese. If we did it this way in English, we would have over 148,000 symbols to remember. Nuh-uh. No good. In Japanese, this comes out to a rough 148, of which native (non-borrowed) words use less than a hundred. When words are borrowed from other languages (like English, with 1000's of words borrowed) they are translated into Katakana. That means that of all the possible sound combinations in English that could make up a word, Katakana reduces the number of syllables that could be accurately represented to less than 1/1000 of the native English. Did I mention that many people learn to produce English pronunciation using Katakana? Well, who could blame anyone with "less-than perfect" pronunciation when they only have 1/1000 of the syllables they need in order to have full control of the sounds? (note: it could be made easier if people were taught how to make our syllables not by syllables but instead as sounds, and this would reduce the ratio to something like 1/3 of all sounds being automatically known. However, Japanese is a language where syllable=sound, so that is not a native way of thinking for a Japanese langauge learner.)

The Japanese have a daunting task whenever they try to interpret English spellings into sound they can work out from the spelling. If they know how the word "MacDonald's" sounds in English, but they don't know the spelling, they might totally miss the fact that a label says "MacDonald's." Or the reverse: they have seen an English word many times, even tried to pronounce it with Katakana syllables, but when they hear the actual syllables (scoring perhaps one correctly syllable in the whole word right if they're lucky), they might not have any idea what was just said, no matter how clearly spoken or standardized the English used. When new words are coined, or worse: the latest fad (mixing french words with random accent marks, English-borrowed word segments, and slamming them together on a very fancy shirt). I see shirts everywhere now that say things like "Comme Ca Ism." Meaning...as far as I can tell, nothing. Theoretically, if we consult French and English, we get something like (half of the French equivalent of "so-so" or "ho-hum") and "an instance of." So Basically the shirt reads: "an instance of feeling so-so." I would not even hazard a guess to how a person might pronounce this, especially with those nasty capitals hanging on every word.

Here is something for a little fun for you, a bit of a game I learned in Japanese class: I've type-out the almost-exact sounds of Katakana into romanji which is an intimidating way of saying "English Type" for alot of people. These are all considered to be acceptable, standard pronuciations. Try to guess what each one means in English (where the words themselves come from.) If any reader that finds the time would like to give it a shot and post their guesses, I can confirm or deny those guesses and add them next to the ones on the list. Any of you of any level of Japanese, including zero, are free to try. Some of them aren't really so bad at all! I hope you like this little "game." I'll give 1pt of "honour" to each correct guess, and declare the winner once all have been filled in. Some of them I might have to fill in even for you long-time studies of Japanese (for you guys--you know who you are-- please don't jump in and fill in all the easy one's first, there are no "honour" points in an easy task!) Don't worry though--they start out pretty easy. Incorrect answers result in no loss of honour points. Have fun! Oh, and I can't post "honour" points for those who don't put their name on their answers, somewhere. They are all nouns, further narrowing your efforts.

The only thing that might throw you off a bit is that h and f is instead one sound between them, unless it is the h in the sh sound. a always sounds like ah, e like the e in eight, i like in the e in be, o like the o in open, and u like the ew in new.
Shikago
Huranku
Guliinu-san
Serusu (5 honour points for this one!)
kahein
Shiateru (not a bad word!)
misshon
suupaaman
jiiniasu (a riddle to help you: if you figure this one out, you might be one)
open caa
Ronguman
sakka boru
lemon
Lusaa
Ereveetaa

After this, if you would like to experiment with your knowledge of Japanese sounds, see if we Americans are pronouncing the names of Japanese products correctly, and if we are not, how we should be saying them. You might be surprised! Subaru, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Hitachi, Honda are a few to start you off if you cannot think of any right away on your own. Chances are, we all own some Japanese product that we are not pronouncing correctly.

Social Barriers & the Train

First thing to mention: I'm realizing that my status is confusing and perhaps uncomfortable to many people. American men are typically depicted as strong, tall, musically talented, good actors, tough, weapons-savvy, and coloured of hair and eye. In some instances, I might fit most of those traits, but none of them all the time. From these ideas (from the media), as well as a general x~e~n~o~p~h~o~b~i~a, I am a little bit scary to men here. Surprisingly, I don't seem to have any intimidation factor on the women, but in reflection it is probably partially because they aren't the gatekeepers of territory. (It certainly isn't the beard!). In addition to this, I have a wide variety problems with my general status. Guests are accorded some level of extra status. However, a guest for a year is hardly a guest. More like a part-timer. But not exactly. Also, the people here that are my age are undergraduate students. I've met 2 people that are graduate students and thus share that status-bond with me. However, both are gone! They've left the University. Further compicating matters is the fact that I am both Huranku-Sensei (the Prof, Frank) and simultaneously Huranku-san (Mr. Frank), student. So what am I? I can't very well be superior and inferior, I'm not sure if that even exists in a way that can be spoken about with typical dialogue of the nation. People just AREN'T students once they are teachers, not really. They are inferior to some other teacher (based mostly on age and sex, generally), and they are superior to all students.

So, I am inferior to almost all teachers because I am perhaps one of the youngest dozen-or-so people teaching university in this nation of about 1/2 the population of the States. My colleagues that would normally turn into friends through work could not credibly befriend someone as low of age/status as I am. To my fellow students (undergraduates), I am about 1-5 years older than, and of a blatant superior class of Sensei. This is in a place where a person can (in documented records) be left out of the inner circles of friends because they simply attended a different high-school that the rest of a faculty, or a better college even. This is especially severe in towns rather than cities where nepotism can only go so far in a business and remain successful. Midorigaoka is officially a "village."

So I will likely find the former trend to have a force in my life as I am here. One of my newest and growing to be my best friends in Japan (next to Tsune) has just finished her year here and is returning to Hong Kong en route to her university in China. People from the outside are my best chance right now, and the international population is being cut back, mostly in the area of my "favourites" category from a number of nations. So I might find September a little lonely.

The Train? I have not yet taken even one train since I have arrived. I have, however, spent about a half-day on a bus of some kind or another in the last month. A bit surprising! But it is slower and more expensive than bus for travelling across the rural landspace, so bus it is!

~A~

Learning Highland Scottish

Since I've arrived here in Miki, one thing has been a hindrance on my communication in the realm of Japanese more than any other. Not pronunciation, not grammatical structure, not even vocabulary so much as this one thing, which seems to work its way into almost every level of communication in the area. Dialect.


The dialect of the region is known as "Kansai-ben." Kansai-ben, I have been assured by those who know it, is not really all that difficult. However, let me make as close of a comparison for those back home to how it is different. Please try to imagine along with me as I attempt to create an English-equivalent of the dialect I am immersed in on a daily basis.

Most of the readers of my blog here are likely from somewhere in the U.S., between the areas of Spokane and Boston, of the Western, Northern, and Northeastern dialects. The differences between these can be argued all day, but needless to say, I think we could say that we all more-or-less understand eachother most of the time in spoken form, and almost all the time in written form. The dialects of Tokyo and the surrounding area, or "Kanto-ben" as a rough geographic term, has something like the variance within it as we have in across the Northern States, conveniently enough. Let's call these variations "Standard Japanese." Kansai-ben, what I am learning might be thought of as Highland Scottish. Why? Well, I refer you all to Tsuneyuki Nishi, my friend who attended EWU with me who has been a good student, model citizen, and an all-around smart, talented fellow most of his life. He's traveled widely and been exposed to a variety of language sounds in both English and Japanese. However, Tsune, who now works in Osaka, one of the 3 major cities in the Kansai Region, has a little problem in the workplace and out-and-about. "I can't understand Kansai-ben."

At least I'm not alone!

To give some examples about what words and phrases you would never hear in the English-equivalent
of Kansai-ben:

"Very"
"Goodbye"
"Bye"
"not"
"(almost any other verb-negation method you use on a daily basis)"
--and many more!

In fact, for these specific examples, if I was to say them in public, (as I often have, either through ignorance or forgetfulness), people would likely swivel around their heads at me, declare "who does he think he is??" or some equivalent, and quickly put me in the category that we might put someone with the highest and most snooty forms of British English. When I use any of these words direct equivalents that are listed above, I look snobbish, conceited, nose-in-the-air, rude, and like I am trying to hard. A quick way to get attention you don't want. I have, unfortunately, been caught a few times, but none of them have been too bad, since I am a foreigner and am expected to have Japanese, but...I have to relearn a bit more. I thought, when I arrived, that "using the Tokyo is a good idea because it is an accent that almost everyone will understand since it is the voice of the most of television, national representatives, the educated class, etc. Instead, it has likely been doing the opposite of what I want! Some people do understand me, and in those cases, are treating me like a rich tourist, rather than a person who would ever want to be a community member. Anyone who would want to live in Kansai as an equal would obviously use an entirely Kansai-ben form, so as not to make distinctions between his/herself and others. Well, for me, and even for people like Tsune, that is a rather tall order, with all the differences that exist in vocabulary, sentence form, tonal structure, and everything else, many of which I probably do not even have the slightest awareness of. So, instead of being able to be well understood by many, including tourists and fellow visitin educators or nothern students of KUIS, I instead find myself in need of learning the local dialect in order to ensure that I do not become a victim of self-inflicted exile from the community in which I live.

I'll leave you with a translated speach sample you might hear in Kansai. Please picture yourself as a student of only one year's experience in classroom English while you read it.

"I would nay be so bonnie f'weren't for you."