Q10:YUBINKYOKU

YUBINKYOKU means a post office.
In Japan, post offices provide not only postal service but also banking service and insurance service as in the U.K. and some other European countries.


Privatization

Post offices had been managed by the government for more a hundred years since 1871. But the 87th prime minister(2001-2006) Junichiro Koizumi made a law which privatize post offices in 2005, and they were privatized and their services were divided into four companies in 2007.


Banking service

YUCHO-GINKO, or Japan Post Bank, provides the banking service and is one of the largest bank in the world. Probably, more than half of Japanese people have an account of the bank, and some have more than one.
Of course, there are many other banks in Japan, but YUCHO-GINKO is much more popular than them because it has many branches all over the country and many people, especially elderly people, think it's reliable.


Insurance service

KANPO-SEIMEI, or Japan Post Insurance, provides the insurance service and is one of the largest insurance company in the world as well.


Postal service

NIHON-YUBIN, or Japan Post, provides the postal service.
There are about a hundred thousand post boxes in Japan. Most of them are placed on the street and some are placed in convenience stores. Like in many other countries, a post box is painted in red, so you can easily recognize it.


NENGAJOU

Because of the widespread use of the e-mail, fewer and fewer people write letters nowadays.
However, most people write a special letter called NENGAJOU(New Year's cards) to their relatives, friends and colleagues on New Year's Day. While Average people send about 10 to 20 NENGAJOU, some people in high places send more than a thousand NENGAJOU to their customers and business partners. Of course, most people write a letter with a PC these days, but some people write hundreds of NENGAJOU by hand because many people prefer a letter written by hand.




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Q9:TAKUHAI

TAKUHAI, or DEMAE, means home delivery services. In Japan, you can order various kinds of foods such as sushi and pizza on the phone.

Almost all sushi restaurant offer a delivery service and it's very popular. But sushi is too expensive for ordinary people. So they can order out for sushi only on special days such as their birthday and New Year's Day. However, some sushi franchises offer a delivery service at a very low price recently, which has been attracting many young people.

Link to a sushi delivery franchise:"Chagetsu"


Pizza is also very popular and common. There are more than a thousand pizza delivery shops in Japan. So you can order out for pizza wherever you are.

Link to a pizza delivery franchise:"PIZZA-LA"

Chinese dishes such as Ramen and fried rice are inexpensive and hearty meals. Many Chinese restaurants serve not only Chinese dishes but also other kinds of foods such as curry and Donburi.

Unagi dishes are very expensive and high-class meals. Unagi, Japanese eels, are usually served at upscale restaurants called Ryotei and they cost around 3000 yen. A eel is very tasty but you cant't cook it on your own because it has a poisonous blood, and that's why it's so expensive. Most people order it on a special day called "Doyo Ushi No Hi" as a traditional custom. "Doyo Ushi No Hi" is not a holiday or a national event, but it has been said since the Edo period(1603-1868) that eating eels on the day make you healthy and prevent you from illnesses. In fact, a eel is very healthy and nutritious food. So, people of the time probably knew the fact from their experiences.


In Japan, there are many other delivery services such as newspapers, milk, and so on. And you can get these services wherever you live. This is probably because Japan is a heavily-populated country as companies providing delivery services can carry their goods very effectively.




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Q8:Dagashi

The word "Dagashi" means Japanese cheap snack foods. It consists of two words, "Da" means futile or negligible and "Kashi" means a snack food or a sweet stuff. Most of them are priced very cheap because the main consumers of them are kids, especially elementary school students. There are hundreds of kinds of Dagashi and each of them has its own distinctive flavor.

Link to the Japanese Wikipedia:"Dagashi"

Generally, they are classified into chocolates, gum, corn(or potato) snacks, and sour or spicy snacks. Su Kombu, a pickled kombu, is a very sour Dagashi. It is popular not only among kids but also among adults because they eat it as a appetizer. Tirol-Choco is a very popular chocolate which has a wide variety of flavors such as strawberry, green tea, Mochi, pudding, and so on. Umai Bo is the Japanese most popular Dagashi. More than a million packs of it are sold every day. It is extremely cheap, at 10 yen a pack, and it also has a very wide variety of flavors such as cheese, curry, Natto, Mentaiko, and so on. Maybe you don't know Natto and Mentaiko, but they are very common and popular foods in Japan.

Stores selling Dagashi are called Dagashi-Ya. You can buy hundreds of kinds of Dagashi and some toys there. And some stores serve light meals such as Okonomi-Yaki and Yakisoba. In the 1970's and 80's, a number of Dagashi-Ya had had arcade games, which attracted many kids.

In the past, there had been numerous Dagashi-Ya in Japan, but most of them had closed in the 1990's and 2000's. There are several reasons why they had closed in a short period of time. The biggest one is , I think, the increase of convenience stores. The number of convenience stores in Japan had risen very rapidly in the 1980's and 90's. Almost all of them sell snacks, sweets, some toys and video games at all hours. So the number of Dagashi-Ya had fallen as the number of convenience stores rose.

Most Japanese people feel nostalgic when they think about Dagashi-Ya because it reminds them of their happy childhoods and their old schoolmates. But none of convenience stores bring such a feeling because they are standardized by its franchisor and don't have its own characteristics. Convenience stores improved the lifestyles of Japanese people, but also deprived them of precious experience.





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Q7:HORUMON

HORUMON stands for HORUMON-YAKI. HORUMON means "offal" and YAKI means "burned" or "grilled", so the word HORUMON-YAKI means a grilled offal. It's a kind of YAKINIKU, a grilled meat, and it's popular in the Kansai district, especially in Osaka.

There are various kinds of offal served as HORUMON-YAKI such as a liver, a tongue, a intestine, a stomach, a heart and a uterus. And both a cattle's offal and a pig's offal are served in the same way. HORUMON-YAKI is a very cheap and nutritious food, so it's popular among men. Recently, some young women also eat it because they think it has a positive effect on their health and beauty.

Link to a Japanese site:"JONETSU HORUMON"

The Japanese hadn't eaten offal for ages. In other words, they hadn't considered it as a food because they didn't know how to eat it, and didn't have a good way of transportation. However, Japan had suffered from the serious food shortage after the World War II, so they had to eat everything they had whether they like it or not. Fortunately, there were some Korean people in Osaka who knew how to cook offal and they taught it to the Japanese. The Japanese people called the cooked offal HORUMON, it means "garbage" in Kansai dialect. It had become popular soon. At that time, HORUMON-YAKI was just a vulgar food, but it has been improved for years and become popular also among young people.

Thus, the custom of eating offal became common after WWII. And now, there are various kinds of offal dishes in Japan. MOTSU-NABE, a offal stew, is more popular than HORUMON-YAKI in Tokyo and Kyushu. DOTE-NI, a offal dish stewed in miso, is popular in Nagoya and Osaka. The people in Okinawa has a unique cuisine culture, the Okinawan cuisine, which includes many kinds of offal dishes.

There are thousands of restaurants serving offal dishes now in Japan. I think a reason why that custom had become very popular in such a short period of time is that the Japanese have no taboo foods. They can eat almost all kinds of foods. In fact, most of them eat cattles, pigs, birds, fishes, shellfishes and some of them eat even sharks, snakes and insects. Styles of cooking is also various. There are many kinds of restaurants in Japan such as, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, German, Mexican, Hawaiian, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish, and so on. You may think that they have no policy or belief or their own culture because they accept everything, but I think that accepting everything regardless of its origin is their culture and belief.





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Q6:YU(SENTO)

YU means a SENTO, which is a Japanese public bath. SENTO has become common in the Edo period(1603-1867) and even now there are thousands of SENTO in Japan.

In Japan, almost all people take a bath every day. Because Japan is a humid country, it make them sweaty, so they have to take a bath or shower for their health maintenance. Most of them have a bathtub and a shower in their house, but they love public baths also. One reason is that they can use very big bathtub, 20 to 30 people can use it together , there. And another reason is that public baths are a kind of gathering place, where they can talk with their neighbors casually and comfortably because they are all naked.

A link to a Japanese site(in English):"About 'Sento' - Tokyo Sento Association"

The charge is around 400 yen, and you can also take a sauna and a cold bath there. A cold bath is not tepid water but truly cold water. People use a cold bath after taking a sauna, because it improves the circulation of the blood and makes them healthy. After a bath, you can buy some drinks, a Cafe au lait is very popular, and can watch TV and read a newspaper or some magazines. That's a very comfortable time.

There are also other kinds of public baths such as "Super SENTO" and "KENKO Land". A Super SENTO is a more big and luxury public bath. You can soak in a outdoor hot tub or a hot spring(ONSEN), and can eat foods in a restaurant and get a massage service. A KENKO Land, KENKO means health, is a kind of spa, where you can swim in a pool and work out at a gym.

These kinds of public baths are more and more popular lately, and there are some theme parks featuring baths like Hakone Yunessun, where you can take a wine bath and a coffee bath and so on. Thus, taking a bath is not only a custom for health but also a kind of amusement for the Japanese people.








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Q5:100-YEN SHOP

100-YEN SHOP is a Japanese variety store where you can buy almost all of the goods at a hundred yen(about a dollar).

DAISO, the largest 100-yen shop franchise, has more than 2,400 stores in Japan and also has more than 300 stores outside the country. The number is higher than the number of local governments in Japan. And there are many other franchise chains and independent stores. So, it would be safe to say that all the Japanese cities has a 100-yen shop.

Link to the Japanese Wikipedia:"100-YEN SHOP"

Almost all items, except some big items or hi-grade ones, in the store are priced at a hundred yen. But actually you have to pay 105 yen for a item because of the value added tax(5%). You can buy necessities, electronic devices, stationery, cookwares, party goods, even some CDs and books there.

Some stores also sell fresh foods and drinks at all hours, like a convenience store. In fact, some convenience store franchises have been interested in that kind of business, and opened some stores for market research a few years ago. That kind of stores, 24-hour 100-yen shop with fresh foods, are very popular and common in big cities recently.

Link to a Japanese site:"Shop 99"
- A example of that kind of stores -

Despite the very low price, the quality is good. Most items are made in China, where the average wage is lower than Japan by more than ten times. It means that you can buy a item which is worth more than a thousand yen at only a hundred yen. And the low price induce people to buy things they doesn't really need. That's the secret of this business. When you go to a 100-yen shop you should take care not to buy too much, or you'll regret afterwards.



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Q4:MANGA-KISSA

MANGA-KISSA(manga cafe) is a combination of two Japanese words MANGA, a Japanese comic book, and KISSA, a cafe. And it means a place where you can read many comics and can drink a coffee and some soft-drinks.

There are more than a thousand manga cafes in Japan. Of course, all big cities have many ones and almost all local cities also have some ones.

Link to a Japanese site:"Net Cafe Navigation"

Average Japanese people read more than a thousand comics in their lifetimes. But most of them can't store so many books since they live in a small house, or an apartment. So they have to sell or throw away old books. That's why there are so many manga cafes in Japan. They can read thousands of comics there without buying and storing.

Many cafes serve a lunch or snacks such as rice balls and spaghetti. And some of them even have shower rooms and massage rooms. Therefore, some people use these cafes as a cheap hotel. They stay there all night not for reading books but for having a sleep.

The charge varies according to the length of time. Generally, you can stay there for about 350 yen to 500 yen per hour. And you can drink coffees, teas and soft-drinks for free.

Most of them also have internet-connected PCs, various magazines and DVDs. These DVDs are not for rental. You can watch them there because they also have DVD players.

Thus, manga cafes are very convenient and comfortable place. But some people, especially parents, say these cafes have a bad influence on kids. The same phrase was used when the Karaoke Box first appeared. But now, karaoke boxs are one of the most popular amusements and it's considered as a Japanese culture. I hope manga cafes will be developed in the right way and make a culture since I think MANGA is a brilliant Japanese art.




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Q3:SYOTEN

SYOTEN or HONYA is a Japanese bookstore where You can buy hardcovers, paperbacks , magazines, and so on. In addition, almost all bookstores sell various kinds of comics(MANGA), and some of them sell CDs and video games.

Unlike US and some EU countries, all bookstores in Japan sell a book at exactly the same price because of the Resale Price Maintenance Agreement. It means that wherever you buy a book, you can't get a discount. But some bookstores have a membership program that bring you benefits. So you should select a bookstore not by the price of a book but by their locations, assortment of books and a membership program they have.

There are some famous bookstore chains such as

Kinokuniya Syoten
Sanseido Syoten
Junkudo Syoten
Maruzen


And there are some famous used bookstore chains such as

BOOK-OFF
Furuhon Ichiba


Bookstore sales have been declining in this decade dramatically as more and more people buy a book at convenience stores and online shopping sites like Amazon. So many bookstores, especially local bookstores, have been driven into bankruptcy in recent years.

However, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Japanese have lost interest in reading books. In fact, more and more people read novels and comics on their mobile phones lately. In Japan, Mobile Phone Novels are considered as a kind of literature. It may be just a temporary fashion, but it may be the evolution of writing.




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Q2:TODAI

TODAI stands for Tokyo Daigaku(University of Tokyo), which is the most famous university in Japan.

There are more than 700 Daigaku, which includes Universities and colleges, in Japan. Every prefecture has some national or public universities and almost all prefectures have some private universities or colleges. Especially, Tokyo has more than a hundred of Daigaku, including many famous and historic universities.

There are 4 very famous and historic universities in Japan, such as

University of Tokyo : a national university in Tokyo
Kyoto University : a national university in Kyoto
Waseda University : a private university in Tokyo
Keio University : a private university in Tokyo


University of Tokyo is well known by its difficult entrance examination which requires a exceptional intelligence and a great deal of effort. Those people who want to enter the university make a major effort to work harder than others, and almost all of them go to a cram school(JUKU), some of them attend several cram schools, or take correspondence courses.And the university is well known by its great graduates, including several Nobel Prize winners like Yasunari Kawabata and many previous prime ministers such as Eisaku Sato and Shigeru Yoshida.

Kyoto University is well known by its extremely high level of researches in biology, and it has produced 7 Nobel Prize winners such as Hideki Yukawa and Ryoji Noyori.

Waseda University has been producing many famous writers and athletes, including several gold medalists like Shizuka Arakawa.

Keio University is well known by its researches of the Internet. Professor Murai had built the Japanese base of the Internet. And the Keio University and the Waseda University are known as traditional rivals. They have been competing with each other in many areas, especially sports.


Japanese university(or college) entrance ratio is about 40%, and it has been rising lately. And the ratio will rise more and more because the population of Japan has been decreasing in recent years. Therefore, university students and graduates are not so uncommon nowadays.




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Q1:RAMEN

RAMEN is a Japanese noodle.It has its origin in Chinese noodles, but it has been improved in Japan for more than 80 years. So it is considered as a kind of Japanese dish lately.

Ramen consist of noodles, soup and toppings.Each of these elements vary by locality and there are hundreds of varieties like pizza.They are generally divided into 4 categories by types of soup.

Soy sauce soup is the most popular flavor in Japan, especially around Tokyo.Pork bone soup is also very popular recently, especially around Fukuoka.Miso soup is popular in cold region, especially in Hokkaido.Salt soup is not so popular, but some females and ramen maniacs like it.

There are famous brands of ramen such as

Hakata ramen : pork bone soup with sesame
Tokyo ramen : Soy sauce with MENMA
Sapporo ramen : Miso soup with butter and corns

Link to a Japanese Wikipedia page:"RAMEN"


There are dozens of topping such as

Char siu
MENMA
Welsh onion
Boiled(or smoked) egg
Corn
Nori

Link to a Japanese site:"What kind of toppings do you like?"


If you have a chance to come to Japan,you should go to some grocery stores,especially convenience stores.You'll see dozens of kinds of instant noodles(cup ramen) there.Instant noodles are the most popular preserved foods in Japan.You have to select a brand by your own taste since each of them has it's own features.It is said that more than 500 kinds of new instant noodles are released every year.

There are famous brands of ramen such as

Nissin Cup Noodles
Nissin Chicken Ramen
Nissin Demae Itcho
Sapporo Ichiban
Sugakiya

Link to a Japanese Wikipedia page:"Instant Ramen"


As well as ramen,Japanese people eat other various kinds of noodles such as Japanese UDON and SOBA. In addition, Italian Pastas and Korean cold noodles(Reimen) are popular in Japan nowadays.Most of you may think that Japanese staple food is rice,but noodles are also staple food in fact.





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