Author: Charles

Disinfotainment is occasionally lucky to capture video of recent inventions in Japan. New technological devices can provide an insight into social problems and conditions, the way the inventor solves the problem reveals much about that culture’s mindset. Unfortunately, it also shows us their blind spots, as this news segment from FujiTV (4min38sec, Japanese and English subtitles) will reveal. I’ll skip most of the translation since English subtitles are available, but there are Japanese language points of interest for students as well.

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Japan has always had the reputation as a safe place where nobody even has to lock their doors and windows. But Japan’s burglary rate has increased 30% over the last decade. The newspapers and TV news are full of stories about gangs of foreigners that have learned to pick common Japanese locks, and can burglarize apartments at will. Some of this media coverage is outright racism against lower-class foreign residents, but regardless of the reasons, many households are rushing to upgrade their locks and security systems.

This video announces the latest security system by NTT DoCoMo, a door lock operated by keitai denwa, your cel phone. And what a system it is. You can activate the lock either by remote control, or by dialing on your cel phone. I can immediately see problems here. The lock can be accessed from the outside by anyone with a cel phone, you’re merely trading one security problem for another. You’re betting that there are fewer phone hackers than lockpickers. The announcer describes the lock as the kagi-ana no nai kagi, the keyholeless lock, it cannot be accessed from the outside. But this could also be a problem, I hope it has a battery so you can still activate the lock in a power failure, fire, or earthquake. But what concerns me more is the privacy aspects. Your phone is creating a complete database of every time you leave your house. I’m not sure I want this data collected. Advanced versions of the system have video cameras accessible by cel phone. The system may not stop a burglar from getting in the window, but the motion detectors will trigger the cameras, and conveniently email you an image of the burglar. These cameras will become attractive nuisances for hackers, especially since they are marketing these security systems to single women that live alone. Somehow I forsee trouble.

Japanese consumers are extremely well educated in the most trivial aspects of every product. In many cases, the presentation and packaging may be as important as the contents, and consumers are extremely particular about their preferences. It appears that this consumer education starts very young, as this video from a popular FujiTV morning show reveals. This video (4 minutes, Japanese subtitles) reveals knowledge sought throughout the ages, the secret Egg Salad Sandwich Recipe.

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Little 5 year old Hazuki-chan has written a letter to the morning show. She has a complaint, her Mommy’s egg salad sandwiches are boroboro, sloppy and loose. They’re not perfect like the lady-finger sandwiches you get in a store or restaurant. Hazuki-chan whines, why are Mommy’s sandwiches so crappy?

First, a little background is in order. Japanese bread is usually sold in loaves with the end crusts cut off, because nobody likes the crusts. The slices are usually extra thick so it’s easy to slice the crust off the edges. If you order a sandwich at a shop, it will usually come with the crusts cut off and sliced into four wedges.

As Mommy prepares Hazuki’s sandwiches, the announcer observes the problem, he shrieks kuzureta (it’s crumbling) as she tries to slice the bread into quarters. Of course proper video coverage must include interviews of people in the street, to see how the average person would attempt to cut their sandwich. They all have sloppy, loose sandwiches, just like Hazuki is complaining about.

Let us instead visit the hallowed halls of the Tokyo Culinary Institute, where dozens of professional chefs are prepared to examine this problem. A master chef demonstrates a common technique, the sandwich is wrapped tightly in plastic cling wrap and sliced right through the whole package. It works well but it’s time consuming and wasteful. On the other side of the kitchen, a row of students are mass producing sandwiches, they seem to be working much harder than the professor with the cling wrap. They’re chopping stacks of sandwiches into neat halves, using long knives. One woman declares the secret is the special knife designed just for this job, it would be impossible without the proper knife.

But the proprietor of a local izakaya insists that he can make a pefect egg salad sandwich with any old knife. So FujiTV brings Mommy and her old knife along so he can teach her the secret recipe.

The usual ingredients for this sandwich are a slice of lunch meat (looks like chicken or turkey), some lettuce, mayonnaise, and a dollop of egg salad. The threefold secret of the sandwich is thusly explained:

1. The hardest to cut ingredients go on the bottom. That means the lunchmeat goes first, then the lettuce. If you put them on the top, when you try to cut it, it just squishes.

2. Squirt some mayo in the center. This keeps the bread from getting soggy.

3. Hold the sandwich at the edges while cutting the diagonals. Hold the sliced halves together and make a second slice through everything, into quarters.

After all this research, we are reassembled at little Hazuki-chan’s lunch table, to place a new set of perfect sandwiches in front of the most spoiled child in all of Japan. Hazuki merely declares they are better than they used to be.

I was surprised to find Steve Jobs’ announcement of Apple’s new music service online only in Windows Media Format through MSNBC. But a few minutes later, I happened to see Jobs on CNN, so I rewound the TiVo and captured it for everyone to see.

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This is an experiment in “time-to-live” BlogTV, the interview took place around 2:15, the compression is done and I’m putting this online at 3:40. It takes extra time to prepare streaming video, I could have put it online in about 15 minutes but I must make the video non-copyable in order to preserve my Fair Use rights while not getting stomped on by CNN Legal. This server is also a small experiment on a tiny DSL line so I apologize if there is insufficient bandwidth for large numbers of viewers. If you get the “Not Enough Bandwidth” error message, this means all available streams are already in use, please try again later. If you have other difficulties with the video, please leave a comment. I’d like to hear your experiences viewing the streams, that’s why I’m doing this BlogTV experiment.