Skin Color Prejudice - Japanese Version

(Image from blog.gaijinpot.com)

In decades past your humble blogger flew frequently to Japan, and one of the top-five pleasures (after food, cleanliness, public transportation, and absence of crime) was the hot-springs bath. The travel industry has spread the word, and tourists are now a lucrative market for the bath industry. Except...[bold added]

the staff increasingly find themselves turning away tourists, too, [spa manager Yuichi Ohama] laments: “We’re surprised by how many have body art.”

In Japan tattoos are associated with criminals....the mere sight of a tattooed thug is enough to frighten other customers away, so many gyms, pools and onsen (hot springs) ban tattoos or at least insist they be covered up. Japan’s growing army of foreign visitors has inadvertently stumbled into this cultural minefield.

Despite the cultural overtones, it looks like the deciding factor is economics.

Foreign tourists have helped offset the long-term decline of the onsen industry, admits Masao Oyama of the Japan Spa Association. But government pleading cannot remove the deep taboo on tattoos, he says. “There are still many more Japanese customers than foreigners and their feelings must come first,” he says.

Look for the prejudice against skin coloring to change as the customers for traditional bathing decline.

Not a Huge Fan

A(nother) home-repair saga that took six months to complete but finally only a few hours to resolve. A 35-year-old bathroom fan began to rattle last year, and your hubris-infused handyman hied himself to Home Depot to pick up a replacement. All of the new fans were too big; cutting of ceilings and ducting, all beyond my skillset, would be required. I dampened the sound as best as I could and hoped for the best.

Last week the decibels rose until the fan sounded like an unmuffled car engine. I went back to HD as a last hope before calling a contractor. No luck, the fan selections all were the same, until....I spoke to an older worker.

The new motor is quiet, more powerful, and only $15.

John said he was sure that HD had replacement motors, though neither of us could see one. He went back to the warehouse and returned empty-handed. Finally, he got on his knees and rummaged around the bottom shelf (HD's shelves go back several feet) and voila(!) found a boxed motor. We opened the box and compared it to the old rattler. All the screwholes and wires looked to be in the same places, a perfect fit! And so it was.

Comments on hardware stores:
1) Always bring the old parts for comparison. It saves a lot of running back and forth.
2) Always seek out the older guys for advice. Some of them, like John, have even worked the same problem that you have.
3) The cost of contractors is so high that it's usually worth it to invest a few bucks (even up to $100) on parts and attempt the fix yourself. There's a good chance of failing, but the risk-reward ratio is huge. Just don't make the problem worse.

Double Bellows

30 years of progress:
unibody construction

The old toilet-bowl plunger--a rubber suction cup affixed to a wooden stick--finally crapped out, the cup snapping in half due to age and overuse.

At Home Depot there were four different replacement alternatives, each sturdier than the broken one I had, plus machines that could probably unplug all the toilets in the house at the same time.

I settled on a cheap but durable polyethylene model, which had double bellows for "extra force." (We'll probably all be on waterless waste systems--ugh--in 15 years, so one shouldn't make a huge investment in today's toilet technology.)

It did the trick in less than a minute. If more of life's emergencies could be solved for the six dollars spent on this one, the world would be a much happier place.