The accurate title should be “Japan’s rent-a-friend business coverage by foreign journalists are booming”

http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/more-journo-snickering-at-japan-4625/#comment-20175

But such existence does speak to cultural mores in Japan and can give some insight on that. The fact it exists at all is blogworthy from a Japanese observation perspective.Me think.

McCurry can’t be held responsible for the USAToday bit,hence he wasn’t the first to write the story on rent-a-friend in English.He was the third.
(HT to Ajapa)

2)”When Ampontan brought no facts to the table”.
Ampontan questioned the article since there aren’t many facts to the table brought in by the original.Not his fault,I guess.

3)”he hates the foreign press and jumps all over them any time they produce anything other than “serious” news about Japan”

Well,I also hate foreign press whom to my eyes seemlessly tweeding rudiculous news about Japan.McCurry seems to concern more about dolphines.but you cut trees to make papers and papers are used to print The Guardian.Why waste trees for this nonsense when they could suck up some CO2s had they still standing instead?

For one, if the couple gets married in Tokyo and the groom is from let’s say Hokkaido, it’s really no small task to have his friends back home to come to Tokyo considering the Yen involved. I mean go-shugi,the rountrip air fare, and an overnight stay could easily top a grand per person so if I was a groom, I’d be very hesitant to ask them to the wedding under those circumstances. But as tradition, the groom’s guest number has to at least equal that of the bride and the bride could easily muster 100 guests out of 200 booked because she is born and raised and works in Tokyo,I can see why this service is useful.

Many people complain about the attitude of writers who often focuses on the bizarre aspect of Japan without clearly declaring it as a only minor portion of Japan.
They sometimes mislead their audiences with obscure words as if there were some tendency that bizarre or perverted things are getting more accepted by the vast majority of Japanese people. Those writers are suspected: They are selling “Bizarre Japan” image to earn money easily and they are merely an unskilled writer who can never write an insightful article without relying on the oddity.

And unfortunately, anti-Japanese people often employ those bizarre or perverted Japan articles as a proof of Japanese degeneracy, backwardness, illness, and others.

You can enjoy those bizarre Japanese stories as long as you are very sure that most Japanese are just an ordinary person like you or your neighbours.

Good for calling McCurry out on it.

But the normal level of nonsense that appears on Japanese television masquerading as “human interest” stories and celebrity “news.”

You seem confused.

Will Justin McCurry of The Guardian become another legend like
Richard Lloyd Parry of The Times?

Well said. But the problem is not just that unusual occurrences are presented as the norm. It’s also that these unusual occurrences are often perverse and ridiculous. By highlighting the strange aspects of Japanese society and presenting them as representative, foreign media creates a distorted view of Japan. The audience’s view of Japan and the Japanese becomes distorted as a result.

The problem is both the presentation AND the substance of these dispatches. The emphasis on perversion and the bizarre is significant.

I would add that a root of the problem may be generally ineffective PR efforts from within Japan at many levels. I have no specific idea how to address that, except minimally through better initiatives and strategy from Japanese media and perhaps gov’t. IMO Japan often has difficulty developing its messages and getting them out to RoW (in english) effectively.

The Porno for Pensioners story even made CNN International as a headline-bar item fer cryin out loud!

The foreign pundits often seem unaware of what actual out-there stories are really being discussed in Japan, what oddities the Japanese themselves are talking about these days (and it is usually these that make it onto the Japanese TV shows). And of course the Japanese themselves will usually be aware of how widespread (or not) this behaviour actually is.

Anyway, taking something that is pretty much unknown even here in Japan and pretending that it is something of an accepted norm, or treating it as somehow socially/culturally representative, is the real issue.

Spot on! Well said.

Doesn’t change the fact it’s still a valid piece, imho.

Social changes fuel boom in professional stand-ins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/japan-relatives-professional-stand-ins

Japan’s rent-a-friend business is booming

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/09/japans-rentafriend-business-is-booming.html

Firstly… don’t we all?

Secondly… welcome to the world of the internet and blogging.

Given the amount of sheer, goofy insanity that the Japanese put on their own network television, the idea that a more sensitive hand should be used by foreign correspondents is absurd.

What’s more, your summary is disingenuous. I didn’t read “booming” anywhere in the original article… “growing,” yes… Booming would seem to imply very popular/everybody’s doing it as a opposed to growing – a niche market with a recently increased demand.

Look, paying strangers to show at your wedding to save face, from my limited cultural perspective, is really very odd. But it does speak to cultural mores in Japan and can give some insight on that. The fact it exists at all is newsworthy from a foreign observation perspective.

Hypocrite.