Warning: Our product may kill you

I finally went out and got myself an MP3 player as a reward for climbing Mt Fuji. Actually that's a complete load of crap-I just needed an excuse to spend some money. I thought as long as I'm living in the land of futuristic technology then I really should impart some of that technology upon myself. So I went out and bought the new Sony NW-HD5 MP3 player. It's 20 gigs, small, sexy and allows me to feel superior to all the Ipod sheep...err people who want to be cool.

My only complaint is that it comes with a ridiculously crappy pair of headphones. I remember the days when Sony had the decency to provide you a pair of headphones that came with a remote control when you dished out $300 for one of their products. Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to go out and spend another 6000 yen for a pair of decent headphones and then download a couple of Sony games to balance the ledger.

After buying a couple of Japanese products I'm starting to notice a trend when it comes to the manuals. The manuals for both my bike and my MP3 player seem to devote an exhorbitant amount of space for pages filled with cute little drawings describing how their product could potentially maim or kill you. It's quite humourous to see how you could be minding your own business one moment, only to be tackled by a murderous, bloodthirsty bicycle the next.

If you look at the top lefthand corner of the bike manual you will see a happy-clappy Jappy chappy riding home quite drunk. I seriously doubt any bicycle manuals from North America warn you against riding while inebriated but when it comes to drinking in Japan you can't take anything for granted. Actually Japanese attitues towards drink are quite interesting. It really is a more relaxed atmosphere compared to North America. In fact, I see now that drinking in N.A. is actually rather taboo.

That may be hard to believe when every other commercial is a beer commercial but it's true. We like to drink but we don't like to admit it (I'm talking about the collective "we" here-I detest drinking.) I doubt that anyone over the age of thirty, when asked, would say "Oh I went out drinking last night," even if they did. They would probably say 'I went out' or 'I saw my friends' or 'I went to a party.' Yet if you ask a random Japanese person what they did last night, they will say "I went drinking." In fact I've gotten so used to the casualness of it all that I will often ask students that I've just met if they went out drinking last night. Even if they're 35 or 40 years old. No one is afraid to admit it and no one is offended by your query. It's certainly quite refreshing-too bad I don't really take advantage of it.