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Hello from Japan where a corn dog is known as an "American dog" and coffee brewed weakly is called "American coffee."
Each country is unique and has its own style of government. One big difference between Japan and other Western nations has been the near-total lack of a role played by the courts in Japanese society. In the U.S., decisions by the Supreme Court have guided our history in many ways through many eras, but in Japan the courts do practically nothing -- they make few major decisions, don't fill a check & balance role for lawmakers, and don't shape any aspect of contemporary Japanese life. Lawsuits do occur here, of course, but they're so rare their effect on Japanese life is practically nil. The only major court decision I can think of over the last 14 years was the decision that held the government responsible for unconstitutionally keeping people with Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) in colonies. Big changes are potentially coming for Japan's legal system however: a decision to raise the number of lawyers in the country is creating a steady flow of young legal blood in society, and Japan also plans to enact a "lay judge" (i.e. jury) system by 2009.
As I mentioned last time, the Japanese can be very season-oriented, highly attuned to what they should be doing in each particular part of the year. For example, summer is when you go to the pool, which is open from July 15 to August 31st only. The very idea of going swimming on, say, September 1st, is all but unthinkable, even though it's still plenty warm outside -- there's a cultural divide between the last day of August and the first day of September that my gaijin brain just can't fathom. Perhaps its related to the phenomenon of koromo-gae (koh-roh-mo GA-eh, lit. "changing clothes"), which refers to putting away your winter clothes and bringing out the summer clothes you've got in storage. For Japanese school students, koromo-gae means the day you change from your winter uniform to the cooler summer uniform, or vice-versa in the autumn, and for virtually every student in the country, the changeover takes place on June 1 and November 1 -- on those days and only those days, regardless of the actual weather or what part of Japan you live in. The prospect of millions of students changing from warm-weather to cooler-weather clothing on the exact same morning of the same day is vaguely unsettling to me. Most foreigners tend to wear short-sleeve shirts fairly deep into autumn, and it's common for Japanese to ask "Aren't you cold?" to us even though it might still be a balmy October day outside.
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