レビュー:おーい竜馬 Review: Oi! Ryouma

In recent posts I told you more and more about the Japanese Revolution (明治維新) also referred to as Bakumatsu Period (幕末時代), which translates to "end of the Shogunate". You might think that I have studied the time from history books, but in fact I got most of my knowledge from a very excellent Manga, which I'd like to introduce today together with its main character:

坂本龍馬 Sakamoto Ryouma

The Manga features one of the revolution's main characters, without whom the revolution could not have taken place: Sakamoto Ryouma 坂本龍馬.

(I quoted the following text from my 長崎 Nagasaki post)

Sakamoto Ryouma was born 1835 in 土佐藩 Tosa Province (now 高知県 Kouchi Prefecture) on the island of 四国 Shikoku. In Tosa Province a couple of 上司 Joushi (upper class samurai) ruled with iron hand and Ryouma had to experience many cruelties during his youth. He was the son of a family of 郷士 Goushi (lower class samurai), which became wealthy in the Sake business. He was known around town for bed wetting until his adolescence, his bad writing and slow learning and was generally considered an idiot.

When he witnessed how the 大名 Daimyou (feudal lord) or Tosa killed friends of him, because of showing improper politeness when he was crossing a bridge, his life changed. He sought for a way to have an influence in the world and change it and what he found was swordsmanship. His simple childish plan was to become the best swordsman of Japan and by that gain influence. And so he did, with the burning passion and motivation of dreams behind him. Also 乙女 Otome his bigger sister played an important role, always seeing a great man in him and personally teaching him sword fighting lessons.

his big sister 乙女 Otome

When his skill reached a high level he joined tournaments in Edo (now Tokyo), which he was able to win. By that he made important contacts and friends in Edo. When he returned to Tosa, childhood friends of him created a local branch of the 尊皇攘夷 Sonnoujoui (a league to expel foreign dominance and influence on Japan and restore the power to the Tenno). At this time he met 吉田松陰 Yoshida Shouin and his students and was inspired by his teachings.
He initially joined for a certain time until they started to kill important leading figures of the feudal political structure of Tosa and Japan using the slogan 天誅 Tenchuu (heavenly punishment). At some point he got himself into an assassination mission of an important navy instructor in Edo called 勝海舟 Katsu Kaishuu. When he was about to kill him, he asked him to listen to him first and then decide whether to kill him or not.

吉田松陰 Yoshida Shouin

勝海舟 Katsu Kaishu

Katsu Kaishuu was on of the visionaries of the time and foresaw that a nation wide Civil War would weaken Japan to such a high extent that foreign powers could easily turn it into a colony of slaved. He saw the only way out in learning western science and building war ships like they do, building relations and find a peaceful way to change Japan into a strong modern country. Ryouma was immediately able to see the wisdom in his words and shared the passion of his dreams and thus in spite of killing his target, he became his 弟子 Deshi (disciple).

Together they worked on improving Japan's navy and acquired skills in how to operate steam powered war ships. They built a navy academy in Kobe, which became a place for free thinking, philosophy and dreams. The same as around Yoshida Shouin, the Kobe Naval Instruction Facility became a magnet for 志士 (shishi free thinkers and revolutionaries) from all over the country. At this time Ryouma was a 脱藩者 Dappansha (a person leaving a province without allowance by the feudal lord, a crime punished by 切腹 seppuku). Along with him many other people commit ed 脱藩 Dappan and joined Ryouma at the Naval Academy.

Although Ryouma was nor formally working for the Shogun he was still in good terms with the 尊皇攘夷 Sonnoujoui and other 志士 Shishi. When he met 吉田松陰 Yoshida Shouin, he also formed strong bonds of friendship with 高杉晋作 Takasugi Shinsaku, and 木戸孝允 Kido Takayoshi, which would influence the outcome of the revolution. When he was visiting 京都 Kyoto together with his 先生 Sensei, he also eye witnessed the 御門事変 Gomon Incident and at this time also made friends with 西郷隆盛 Saigo Takamori. Because of these connections he was later able to convince the two hostile provinces of 長州 Choshu and 薩摩 Satsuma to form an alliance the famous 薩長同盟 Sacchou Alliance to revolutionize the country.

西郷隆盛 Saigo Takamori from 薩摩藩 Satsuma Province



and 高杉晋作 Takasugi Shinsaku



and 木戸孝允 Kido Takayoshi from 長州藩 Choshu Province

After his protegee Katsu Kaishuu had to return to Edo and abandon the Naval Training Center in Kobe, Ryouma was on its own again. However by that he and most of the 志士 Shishi became targets of feudal lords again and had to flee. The found refugee in the 薩摩藩邸 Satsuma province feudal lord villa (like an embassy) where Saigo Takamori was residing. Having time to think about the future he decided to follow the ideals of his Sensei and form a company, Japan's first company, independent of political power. For that he had to move to 長崎 Nagasaki, the only city with an open port.

In 長崎 Nagasaki he formed the company and named it 亀山社中 Kameyama Company. With some initial support from Satsuma the trading company prospered and brought Japanese goods as silk, green tea, spices and pottery to the western world in return for weapons and later war ships. Later he realized the significance of his position, and part of his success in forming the 薩長同盟 Sacchou Alliance was to promise to supply the Choshuu army with fire arms, while Satsuma would get rice from Choshuu to supply their troops after a bad harvest. After that he continued supporting the revolution by making his company buy war ships for the revolutionaries. Therefore at this point he decided that his organizations needed a new name and he renamed it to　海援隊 Kaientai (sea support troop)...

the flag of the 亀山社中 Kameyama Company

So far the quote from Nagasaki, but of course Ryouma's story didn't end in Nagasaki, directly after he founded it, he gave the Kameyama comapany into the custody of his fellow Shishi and returned to the political tables of the period. Although the Sacchou Alliance was agreed upon, the revolution was only at its beginning. Throughout the political games, his foremost goal was always to avoid a civil war and any bloodshed at all. As long as he lived he successfully found means and convinced parties to unbloody compromises.

On a boat trip, all by himself he wrote down 8 paragraphs that would secure Japan's future as an independent country and a fair democracy. He presented the plan to the Tenno, who accepted it.

一策　天下の政権を朝廷に奉還せしめ政令よろしく朝廷より出づべき事
二策　上下議政局を設け議員を置きて万機を参替せしめ　万機よろしく公議に決すべき事
三策　有材の公卿×諸候×および天下の人材を顧問に備え官爵を賜い
　　　よろしく従来有名無実の官を除くべき事
四策　外国の交際×広く公議を採り新に至等の規約を立つべきこと
五策　古来の律令を折衷し新に無窮の大典を選定すべき事
六策　海軍よろしく拡張すべき事
七策　御新兵を置き、帝都を守護せしむべき事
八策　金銀物価よろしく外国と平均の法を設くべき事

1. Political power should be restored to the Imperial Court and all decrees should be issued by the Court.
2. Both upper and lower legislative houses should be created and government policies should be decided by this legislative body.
3. "Men of ability" from the former daimyo, nobles and general population should be appointed councilors. Traditional posts of power that existed under the Shogunate system should be abolished.
4. Foreign affairs should be conducted in accordance with regulations agreed upon on the basis of general consensus.
5. Rules and regulations created during Japan’s feudal days should be abolished and a new, modern legal code should be created.
6. Naval forces should be enlarged.
7. An Imperial Guard should be established for the purpose of defending the capital.
8. The value of goods and silver should be aligned with the going rates in foreign countries.

He also proved very wise and clever. His goal was to establish a democracy with equal rights for all humans, and a equal distribution of power. However if the two alliance leaders Satsuma and Choushuu would fight and win the revolution, they would take the greatest share of the power and thus prevent a real democracy from happening. Thus Ryouma cleverly introduced his home province Tosa as a third party to the alliance. The alliance gladly welcomed them, but they did not know about the good relations to the Shogun. Ryouma and Tosa's representative used these relations to convince the Shogun to return the political power to the Tenno (as it was goal of the revolutionaries). With this move a civil war was avoided, but the Shogun remained as a fourth political power in the game and the Tenno entered as a fifth. Thus Ryouma always tried hard to keep a power equilibrium, while fostering the revolution.

Eventually he moved from one political leader to the next and presented a sketch for a first democratic government to all of them. All five parties: Tenno, Shogun, Satsuma, Choushuu and Tosa would send representatives and build a common government. Although it was hard to convince Satsuma, Choushuu and the Tenno to give a big part of the power to the Shogun, they eventually accepted his scheme.

Sakamoto was assassinated along with his life long companion and friend

中岡 慎太郎 Nakaoka Shintaro

Alas Ryouma was assassinated under unclear circumstances at last, when the revolution already seemed as good as done and the cities were safe again. After his death, probably due to his missing guidance, a small war broke out despite all his efforts. Shogun Yoshinobu decided to challenge the alliance, and fought with what was left of his forces. However with the political power having been given to the alliance the new formed national army, equipped with the newest weapons and versed in the newest battle tactics quickly won over the Shogun's forces. When Sakamoto's sensei Katsu Kaishu over that surrendered Edo to the alliance, the Shogun retreated with some remainder of his force and some unhappy Samurai to Hakodate in Hokkaido forming a counter nation called the "Republic of Ezo". However even this resistance was broken by the fast moving national army in the 戊辰戦争 Boushin War.

戊辰戦争 Boushin War in 函館 Hakodate

坂本龍馬僕の英雄 Sakamoto Ryouma My Hero

He truly has become my hero and inspiration.
As an independent person, never belonging to any of the five forces, he always managed to negotiate between all of them and thus find peacful solutions to what looked like certain war. Also despite the objections of his fellow Shishi he never recommened himself as carrier of any political office in the new government, although nobody would have earned this honor more than him. Also the other forces, when he was representing the scheme, asked him to also take some office for his hard work, but he answered "All I wish is to sail across the oceans and visit far away lands, knowing that my home is safe".

More than that he took more sacrifices than anyone at his time could imagine. His two best childhood friends Izo and Takeshi were captured and tortured for weeks in Tosa, until finally being executed or forced to Seppuku. Along with them all of the first Shishi of the 尊王攘夷 Sonnou Joui league, which came from Tosa, were also tortured and killed. All of this for the maintaining of an unfair social class system of 上司 Joushi (high samurai) and 郷士 Goushi (low samurai). The Shishi staying with him and running the Kameyama Shachu, his big sister, Takeshi's wife, and many more friends always grieved after their friends and longed for revenge and justice/satisfaction/revenge. Sakamoto deeply shared their grief and anguish and tried to support them as best as he could. However in the end, he saw taking exactly the Tosa leaders who were responsible for all the cruelty, injustice and bloodshed into the alliance and the new government, because it was the only way to secure a balance of power and secure a safe development for the future after revolutionary Japan. With this decision, which hurt himself more than anything else, he also procured the hatred of all his friends left on this world. To be capable of taking such a road, you need to be a hero.

僕の道 My Road

I myself am also thinking about how to bring the world closer to peace of more far away from war, how to distribute the world's wealth more equally among the people and abolish racism, class systems and discrimination. So goals very similar to those of Ryouma and he has become my inspiration and hope for taking the right paths at crossroads. To always take a path that does not lead to war and bloodshed and seek a path that does not give advantage to someone. But also to keep yourself humble and away from power, always smiling and happy and a good friend everybody can trust on. Thus is my road the same as his, let's see where it leads, and hope he will be a guiding star...

おーい龍馬 Oi! Ryouma

The Manga covers Ryouma really well and tells his entire life, starting from his childhood, where he was known to have been a coward, a cry baby and bedwetter unable to do anything properly, to his final days where his independent position enabled him to forge alliances and compromised between Japan's greatest leaders allowing his country to a bright future.

Sakamoto Ryouma with Takasugi Shinsaku and Kido Takayoshi
compare with the originals above

The drawing style is simple, as is common for Manga, but shows a good variety of emotions in the characters faces. The characters are well worked out and quickly come to live in the readers mind. But they are also not ficitional and so close to the real persons, that you will notice them immediately when you see their real photographs. The Manga has a very good humor, that it probably shared with the historic Ryouma, and often made me laugh heartily. But it also did not fail to show the dramatic events that lead to Ryouma seeking a new world and a revolution strong enough to make me cry and grief myself.

reading example, click to enlarge

Finally the biggest merit to the author is the amazing research he has done on Sakamoto Ryouma. The Manga can as well be called an excellent biography, as well as an excellent history book on the Bakumatsu Period. But in contrast to history books and biographies, it can do one more thing, it can bring Sakamoto Ryouma and his dreams, as well as the time he lived in back to life, which is so much more important that knowing some facts about history...

You don't learn from history by knowing times and events, you learn from history by living through it.

mika

レビュー:ゼルダ夢幻の砂時計 Review: Zelda The Phantom Hourglass

It is time for another review, yay!
This time I will review a game, I bought: Zelda the Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS.

I love Zelda Games since the NES (Famikon) and I also enjoyed this one a lot, but the reason I write about it in my Blog, is because the game is very suitable for learning Japanese.

ゼルダ 夢幻の砂時計 Zelda The Phantom Hourglass

Gameplay

The Nintendo DS brings a lot of innovations (or rediscovered features) as for example the touch screen and touch pen. Zelda The Phantom Hourglass makes heavy use of this feature and the entire control is made by using the pen on the touch screen. This gives the Zelda game a new touch and the player a new gaming sensation.

While the sword fighting is mostly simply "tapping with the pen on the enemy" some other weapons like the Boomerang or the Bombchu make more use of the new control. For both you can paint a line on the screen which the weapon will follow if possible (if the line is not blocked by a wall). Also at several points you will be required to draw certain patterns you got explained before or saw before on the screen. But one of the coolest features is, that you can make notes right on you maps. You can mark important areas or connect certain way points to form patterns (the X marks the treasure). This gives the game a cool new sensation, that lets you immerse more with Link.

Another new feature is the ship. You will use it to navigate from island to island and to fight sea monsters in between, especially fights against other ships are fun. You can also find certain parts for your ship an upgrade them. If you collect an entire set, you get an even higher life boost. Alas the fun ist mostly in the collecting itself, as the sets have all the same benefits, expect the last one, the golden set, which gives you one additional life boost than the others.

Finally no Zelda Game would be complete without Mini Games. And Zelda The Phantom Hourglass is no exception. The Game is full of interesting and challenging, but also fair Mini Games which improve the fun during Gaming a lot. If you are stuck somewhere in the plot, you can always solve some Mini Games first and cool your head down, before you try it again.


Story

The story is nothing special, but it comes with nice animations (paper cut style) and it is fun to gradually learn more about the world you ended up in. At the beginning Link seems to be a pirate on a ship. The ships runs into a storm and Link and his friend Detorah are taken away from the ship. When he awakes he has been spilled to a shore... (sounds a bit familiar ^_^).

The further story involves a lot of monsters in temples, a Ghost Ship, three rare metals that form a special sword blade and one special temple of time. Whenever you challenge this temple, you have a certain amount of time corresponding to the sand in your hourglass. Throughout the game you will be able to find more sand and therefore be able to proceed further into the temple, where the final boss deep inside this temple is waiting for you.


Learning Japanese

As I said in the introduction, I decided to mention the game, because it is very suitable to learn / improve your Japanese. First the game targets younger audience and older audience a like. Therefore the dialog use Kanji, but the programmers thought of something to make them readable also for younger people. Whenever you read a word written in Kanji on the touchscreen, you can touch the word with your pen and you will get the reading. That helps a lot following the dialog for foreigners and makes it easy and fun to learn new words. The game uses simple language, and it is usually worth learning the words you don't understand.

Also the game contains a lot of riddles. Now the riddles are in theory quite easy to solve and shouldn't take you longer than five minutes, but with the language barrier they get really challenging. You don't know how to proceed if you don't understand the riddle, but in order to understand the riddle you need to understand what is written on the screen. This proved for me to be a very enjoyable challenge, as I slowly tried to translate the texts and then think of the meaning and the solution of the riddle. Again it is not so difficult, so be sure to give it a try!


Final Remark

So if you like Zelda or Zelda like RPGs, try to get your hands on a Japanese version of Zelda The Phantom Hourglass (夢幻の砂時計 Mugen No Sunadokei). Luckily the Nintendo DS has no country codes and works with any kind of games.

happy riddle solving

mika

レビュー: 暴走族 Review: Speed Tribes

Today I want to introduce to you another wonderful book, which allows you detailed, interesting and fascinating insights into Japanese culture. But not the culture you hear about in the news and commercials, no this book talks about Japan's crime scene, Japan's porn industry and all the grey areas in between.

Speed Tribes
by Karl Taro Greenfeld

Karl Taro Greenfeld, born in Kobe, has a Japanese mother and an American father. Therefore the book can be enjoyed both in English and Japanese, both written by him. One day he realized how boring normal corporate life is and decided to delve into Japan's underground. He had stories about this underground, stories about やくざ Yakuza or 暴走族 Bousouzoku (Motorcycle Gangs) but he knew as good as nothing about them.

In his book he will take a closer look at most of such scenes and modern phenomenon by following the footsteps of one of its representative members for a while. This makes the reading even more enjoyable, since every chapter introduces a new actually living character, who's story is henceforth told in vivid and living stories as well as shared feelings and anxieties. Also since the scenes are not all without interrelations it is interesting to learn about a scene mentioned earlier in the story of another character. Like that the reader's knowledge and mental image about Japan's underground is gradually built up puzzle piece by puzzle piece.

International Oppinions

In place of the kimonoed ladies and the men in grey flannel suits who form so much of our sense of Japan, Greenfeld pulls back the curtain on a much more colorful and disaffected group: gangsters, good-time girls, gold-toothed bikers and punks... As young, hip and plugged in as his subjects, Greenfeld provides a racy, knowing portrait of the people who are usually cropped out of the country's official portrait of itself.

Pico Iyer - Time

Greenfeld accesses contemporary Japanese culture at levels of resolution unavailable elsewhere. I know of no better or more enjoyable work in the subject. Writers of diction will be ripping Greenfeld off for decades to come.

William Gibson

I added the second one, not only because I like Gibson and his Cyberpunk novels very much, but also because by reading Speed Tribes, Gibson's images of a computer/machine human coexistence world, where not everything is pretty came alive. And not as a dark future depiction, but as the Tokyo and Japan of now.

Contents

Greenfeld talks about 12 different scenes down at the Japanese underground, all of which are interesting and fascinating to read. Here are some examples:

Tats: The Speed Tribes

Follow Tats who has his own chapter of a Bosouzoku Motorcycle Gang and waits for second chance of a big run, he experienced when he was still fresh on his saddle. A big run where lots of motorcycle gangs confronted the police at a beach and gave them a hell of a trouble and many injuries.

Choco Bon-Bon And Emi: The Perfect Tuna

Choco Bon-Bon refers to male testicles and is the nick name of a famous porn star of the 90s and perfect tuna is porn industry slang for a new 18, 19 year old girl, who is completely new to the porn industry and literally cached from the street with the promise of much money. In this chapter you follow both of these characters and by their eyes and dreams explore the porn industry of Japan, one of the biggest in the world...

Kazu And Hiroko: The Map Maker

The laws concerning drugs are very strict on Japan, but strangely enough they focus in equal parts on consumer and dealer, meaning the dealer's sentence will be about the same of the one time consumer. This makes the Japanese Drug Market very attractive for dealers.
However the drug market is pretty knew and the Yakuza know not how to get the stuff yet, so what they need is Map Makers, someone to organize the deals with foreigners who bring in the stuff.

Ozaki: The True Believer

右翼 Uyoku or in English the Right Wing. Nationalists, anti-foreigner groups and deniers of the World War 2 massacres. Sounds just like the Nazi scene in Germany and indeed it is quite similar. With one difference: the ideology might be really important for the 右翼 Uyoku, but most are in for the money to make. Interrelated with the similar minded Yakuza, the Uyoku with their black vans and speakers, figured out where to get money from. But yes of course the utopic goal is to give Japan back his World War II power and conquer Asia once more.

Snix: The Otaku

In an education system where all that counts is information procession and storage, it is not surprisingly for someone like the お宅 Otaku to show up. A person who is focused on a specific field, person, manga, weapon category, vehicle, etc. and henceforth wants to know everything about it. Every little fact there is to know, like which childhood diseases his idol had or the velocity of the armor-piercing ammunition of the German Pzk Mark IV.
However all Snix learned because of his interest in idols was where to get information from by hacking into corporate networks and accessing information not meant for the masses. Know that he has grown old, he found himself in need of money to make a living. With this incentive he found out that the information he accesses with his deck in this networks are worth quite a lot to certain companies focused on advertising and looking for target customers.

Others

This should be enough to arouse your interested. The other chapters are not less interesting or fascinating and talk about: protection money, motorcycle thieves, clubbing and sex, the infamous Tokyo Toudai 東大 University (the Harvard of Japan), the idol music industry, hostesses, and problem kids (homestay).

The book is a must read for everyone interested in Japanese culture, to get a wider more in depth look at parts of the society usually behind a curtain for foreigners. For others it will be a fascinating exciting journey through the underground of a society who boasts of being the safest in the world.

mika

レビュー: NHKにようこそ Review: Welcome To NHK

NHKようこそ Welcome To The NHK

image from Wikipedia

I decided to start a new category and review some interesting media coming from Japan. I will start with a novel that has been adapted to an Anime series. It's name is NHKにようこそ Welcome To NHK.

Now NHK is Japan's public broadcasting company 日本放送協会 Nippon Housou Kyoukai, but in the series the main character believes it to be a conspiracy resolving the name to 日本引き篭り協会 Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai, already alluding that the NHK as representative for media is to blame for phenomena like Hikikomori (I will explain what a Hikikomori is shortly).

Plot

The plot is quite simple, the main character finishes school still living in a small apartment payed by his parents, still receiving a small amount of allowance from them to live. Having finished school he is confronted with a world he was not prepared for and finds himself helpless and not knowing what to do with his life. So he simply stays at home.

His solitude is broken, when he finds his neighbor to be a friend from school and when a strange girl starts coming to him, telling him she has a project to help Hikikomori to reenter society.

Alone or together he thus enters a world of modern Japanese subcultures. Apart from the fact that the series and plot is entertaining in itself, this is the most interesting part about it. Episode by episode the series will explore issues of the modern Japanese society and the phenomena that come along with it.

Modern Society Issues (Japan)

引き篭り Hikikomori

The series starts with introducing the main character Sato to be a Hikikomori himself. Hikikomori are people who missed the transition from school to work and stay at their parents (or sometimes in an apartment payed by them) and start secluding themselves from the world. They are often not capable of human interaction and will almost never leave their homes. Even the parents will have a hard time talking to them and frequently only provide food and often even start to fear their own children.

お宅 Otaku

The series continues with introducing the Sato's neighbor Yamazaki as Otaku. This term refers to people with extensive hobbies. An Otaku usually has one or a few areas she/he lives for. At the beginning many Otaku were obsessed with trains and started gathering every information, picture and merchandising about them and often sneaked into stations to look and touch them.
Nowadays most Otaku focus on Manga, Anime, Games or Idols and all the merchandising that comes with them. They will know everything about them, which you can learn. Their rooms will be plastered with merchandising, Manga, Anime DVD and so on.
Because of their obsession they also become real experts on the matter they are obsessed with and often attain quite powerful research skills. Also not rarely they will start a forum about their obsession or even start creating things about them. Therefore they often acquire quite powerful skills they can/could use to make a living, when they choose to.

ニート Neet

Apart from being a Hikikomori, Sato also refers to himself as Neet. Neet stands for "Not currently engaged in Emplyment, Education or Training". While introduced in the U.K. the term is now far spread used in Japan and South Korea, where the number of Neets increases every year.

ロリコン Lolicon


image from Wikipedia

Lolicon describes obsessive with young girls, from "Lolita Complex". Japan might be the number one country with people under this complex. Japan was earlier renown for its legal child pornography industry, which was only made illegal because of international pressure, not because of internal moral qualms. Also with almost half of Anime and Manga being centered in the Hentai area (Porn) and almost all Anime and Manga featuring at least some sexual content, it is not surprisingly for many people to get attracted to younger people as featured in this media.
In the series Sato after receiving Yamazaki's porn collection starts becoming obsessed with young girls and starts following school grils, taking pictures of them. Eventually he manages to overcome the Lolita Complex thanks to Yamazaki and the girl Misaki, who tries to help Sato overcoming his Hikikomori-ness.
This reminded me of my own experiences at the Tokyo Game Show, in Akihabra and the Tokyo Anime Fair, in all of these locations I saw many many older men quite apparently "suffering" under Lolicon. Yes I am talking about the men in brown and grey suits with big flashy cameras making the girls do sexual poses and taking an enormous amount of pictures from them, having no interest in the convention itself whatsoever.

自殺系サイと Internet Suicide

In a later episode Sato meets his high school senpai Hitomi, who has made a lot of bad experiences in life. After learning about Sato's bad situation, she decides to take him along with a romantic suicide meeting organized over an internet forum. Sato misses the point and is happy to go with his senpai to a romantic island. On the island the people spend one last day together and then decide to jump from the cliffs all at once.
Sato eventually realizes what is happening and barely succeeds in convincing the other people to give life another chance.
Internet suicides are also not uncommon in other parts of the world, but in Japan they are especially popular, being a romantic social alternative to the standard jump in front of a driving train.

無限連鎖講 Pyramid Scheme


image from Wikipedia

Later he meets another person from his high school, who suffers to make enough money for her and her brother (they parents died in an accident). Because of that she was talked into a Pyramid Scheme selling company and also talks Sato into entering it. He has a lot of trouble getting out again and shows on the way, why Pyramid Schemes are so successful in Japan.
In Japan you cannot say "no" directly, so it is very hard to refuse the offer of someone coming with this scheme. In addition, while it is legally possible to get out of it, you have to file in a complaint, which is also rare in Japan. Finally when you want to get out, someone for the company will talk to you and try once more to keep you, again using mean tricks exploiting the Japanese rules of social interaction.

MMORPG Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game


image from Wikipedia

Like in most high economy countries MMORPGs are getting really popular in Japan. And like in any other country they produce a lot of people never leaving their home, forgetting to sleep or eat, only playing the game 24h a day.
Same happens to Sato, when he is introduced to his first MMORPG and he has a really tough time getting out of it again.
My own brother was also addicted to MMORPG for one year, in which he didn't do much else. As fascinating and wonderful those games are (because of social interaction, you play with other humans over the internet), they are really addicting and easily take your whole time/life away.

Synopsis

While the show is highly enjoyable in itself, as you can see, you can learn an awful lot about the issues of modern day Japan. Thus I recommend it not only to people, who can enjoy Anime or reading a novel, but also to people interested in modern Japan or the issues of modern societies.

mika