妻源病 or WID

It was bound to happen.
No sooner does Japanese psychology come up with an explanation for some of the illnesses of women by blaming it on their husbands (see earlier post here), than a similar cause for the disabilities of men is found in their wives, Wife-Induced Disease.
One thing is different; however, in the case of women their spousal "allergies" affect them at any age, while men seem to fall prey to this disorder in middle age.
What are the symptoms?
One man reported a rapid heartbeat and "pains in the area of his temples" on his train ride home from work. Another claimed cold sweats and dizziness so bad he had to be saved from falling onto the train tracks from the platform. All this from merely imagining the "frosty expression" on his wife's face.
What is the cause of this disorder?
One company doctor suggests that a devotion to work is common among middle-aged men and this gives them a great deal of pride. When a wife does not appreciate this effort – perhaps wearying of cleaning up after his drunken returns from company carousing – he feels stress.
Another psychiatrist, Dr. Yonekura, who works at the improbably named "Joy Total Clinic" (sounds like a "massage parlor") which is staffed entirely by young female physicians (only in Japan) suggests that men go through a menopause-like experience in their middle years too. This can cause palpitations and vertigo. These symptoms combined with spending more time with their wives in their "empty nest" houses can cause stress and an exacerbation of the disorder, according to Dr. Yonekura.
How do you know if you are susceptible to this disorder?
Well... first of all you need to be a middle-aged man – between the ages of 40 and 50 is perfect.
Then have a look at this checklist (conveniently provided by the Taishu Weekly which first reported this medical condition) and see if you are vulnerable.

• I’m something of a perfectionist
• I have trouble falling asleep
• I suffer from unexplained episodes of sweating, vertigo or palpitations
• I help as much as possible with household chores
• Our children are financially independent and married
• I’m often at home since I have already retired
• I exhibit more fatigue than does my wife
• We never engage in marital spats
• As a married couple we seem to understand each other without the need to speak
• My wife suffers from menopause-related problems

If you checked 1 ~ 4 of these points, you need to be "on your guard". If you ticked 5 ~7 of them, your chances of falling ill are very good, and if you exhibit 8 or more a "complete medical and psychological checkup is recommended", perhaps at the Joy Total Clinic.
Interestingly, some of these items such as being a perfectionist and thinking one is helping as much as possible with the household chores are themselves causes for the women's ailment, HSD – Husband-Sourced Disease.
There are other suggestions as well, such as "trying to get along with your wife's parents better", but these seem like they would be more stressful to the middle-aged, Japanese salary man, so it's hard to recommend them here.
The divorce rate among middle-aged couples and those of retirement age has increased 300% from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. Moreover among those who have been married for 20 years (middle-aged couples, since Japanese marry late), the divorce rate has soared, in many cases because the wife is sick and tired of her husband spending so much time at work, and "being treated like a servant".
What can you – the middle-aged man – do if you are faced with these difficult symptoms? Divorce is not listed as one of the options for either of these conditions; far it be from me to suggest such draconian measures here. Instead, you should  learn to develop a "playful mind". This is described in terms of finding some hobby (not having an affair) such as "playing with remotely controlled models"; in other words, entertain the notion of a second childhood.
The burgeoning divorce rate clearly shows that for many couples the cure for these two debilitating disorders has taken its own course, but you – the worried middle-aged guy – don't want to go the "nuclear route", so take my advice and have a second childhood! Go out and get that radio-controlled airplane you always wanted, or take up wind-surfing. Take to heart the common expression "boys and their toys"! When you clutter the house with your models and other toys, keeping a childlike absorption in your hobby, your wife will see you in a new light and the symptoms of your malady will disappear. Of course, your wife might too, but because you are in your second childhood, you might not notice — not until no dinner is served and the laundry piles up, at any rate.

夫源病 or HSD

As if it hasn't been enough that women are thinking that maybe men are not necessary any more; I wrote about this way back in 2011. Now it seems that research in Japan (in Japanese) conducted at Osaka University of Graduate Medical Research shows that husbands can actually make their wives sick.
It's called 夫源病 which translates out to "Husband-Sourced Disease or – to put it into the popular psycho-labeling format – HSD. I checked the DSM-V (THE manual of psychiatric disorders and "issues") and could not find any reference to this problem. Obviously the American Psychiatric Association has not faced patients with symptoms that they can clearly associate with this disorder.
In Japan, on the other hand, it has even made it to the evening news and the media is abuzz with discussion about identifying the problem, its immediate precipitating causes and what steps can be taken to treat it.
Marriage is a two-way street of course and not all wives are vulnerable. It's important to identify what sort of wife is at risk of falling prey to this affliction? By Japanese standards the most susceptible are what the article describes as "a good wife and wise mother". What are the characteristics of such a spouse?
A convenient checklist is provided*.
She is:
1. uncomplaining, persevering
2. methodical with a strong sense of responsibility
3. unlikely to cry or get angry in public
4. not good at expressing her opinion to others, and even if confronted with outrageous comments, finds it difficult to contradict them.
5. strongly identifying with being a "good wife" and a "good mother"
6. worried about what others think
7. troubled deeply by details
If you are not this type of wife, you probably have very little to worry about.

What symptoms might a patient experience? (in order of most common)
1. dizziness or vertigo
2. headaches
3. a ringing in the ears
4. hot flashes
5. stiff shoulders
6. body aches and pains
7. palpitations
8. shortness of breath or labored breathing
9. sleeplessness
10. washed out feeling
The article says that while these symptoms are typical of menopause which normally occurs in women in the ages between 40 and 50, the HSD symptoms appear in a range wider even than 20 to 60.
And what kind of men are responsible for causing these awful symptoms in their wives, even at the early age of 20?
I am afraid to look, but here goes.
These men, these PIGS:
1. are nice around other people but crabby at home
2. check up on their wives' every move and appointment
3. always talk down to their wives
4. have no friends or interests outside of work
5. never help with housework but talk about it a lot
6. hate to go out alone with their wives
7. brag about how they are supporting their wives and children
8. think highly of how they help around the house and with the children
9. never say "thank you" or "I'm sorry"
10. have a personality change behind the wheel of their car
The results?
If your husband manifests four of these traits or less, you are OK and probably not going to get HSD. If, however, he shows 5 to 7 of them, HSD could be waiting in the wings. 8 or more and you probably will get HSD.

What steps can you as an HSD sufferer take to relieve these symptoms? (Don't wait too long and exhibit psychopathic symptoms that you cannot control.)
1. Have a good cry. See a movie or a TV drama or listen to evocative music and just "let it all out". You will feel cleansed afterwards.
2. Shout. Go to a karaoke box or other private place and just scream and shout.
(crying and shouting moves your diaphragm which is very good for your autonomic nervous system)
3. Get some exercise. Hit a boxing sandbag or strike at a ball. The aggressive, hitting nature of the activity is effective.
4. Keep some secrets. Buy something expensive or have a lavish dinner, but don't tell your husband about it. Doing something "naughty" is important.
5. Have a little fight with your spouse. Try to get your thick-headed spouse to understand you.
6. Pretend to run away from home (last resort). Don't make any advance preparations, but just up and leave. This will make your husband appreciate you more.

As I review the checklist of spousal qualities that will precipitate this disability in wives, I guess that maybe I don't fit most of them. Of course, "thick headed" husbands everywhere probably do not feel that they fit the list. Maybe you wives should leave this article lying around with the list ticked off, so that we men can find it and recognize our failings better.
But then, that will only make us crabbier: a vicious cycle. No wonder the divorce rate in Japan is going up and women don't want to get married.

- - - - - - - - - -
* All of these points are simply a translation of the article about this research. I am most assuredly not making anything up.

OMG! Awwwww! Sooo Cute!

Is there anyone on the planet who can look at this picture and not have an instant "Awwww!!!" response? I frankly doubt it. Thinking, "That's CUTE!!" seems to be hard-wired into our psyches, bringing out feelings that probably have played important roles in the evolution of the species.
Research is only just now starting to delve into this theme of why we think certain things are cute, and also what effects cuteness has on the human brain.
A recent study by a Japanese team, for example, has shown that exposing subjects to cuteness increases their ability to function and focus on their work. Imagine the significance of this important research! It might mean, for example, that  painting the whole airplane with "Hello Kitty" and other cute pictures could help the pilots concentrate on their flying and also aid the ground staff in their efforts as well!

Ground Staff Person #1: Omg!! Look at that airplane! That is SOOOO cute!!! I just LOVE Hello Kitty.... awwww... she's gone to Italy as a tourist! Awww!!
GSP#2 (focusing on the task at hand): You attached the toilet pump-out nozzle to the fuel tank...
GSP#1: Oops... here... let me get that... er... is it OK to have so much jet fuel all over the ground like this?

But focusing on work is not the only effect of seeing a cute thing. Additional research shows that cuteness stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain that are excited by such compelling things as sex, good food, and cocaine.
In other words, we humans really like to look at "cute"!
Duh.
But might there be more important implications in our reactions to cute things?
It is a well-known fact that pet ownership has direct and measurable health benefits. Naturally the nurturing and mutually beneficial relationship we have with our pets – they barf on the floor and we clean it up, etc. – is an important factor in the health advantages for pet owners. It's not a stretch to say, however, that our pets' cuteness is one of the main reasons we are attracted to them and develop the meaningful connections we do. If cats were covered with scales, for example, we would hunt them down for the vermin that they clearly are! That they are furry, soft and adorable means that we jump to their beck and call and go "awww!" as they upchuck their crunchy food into our slippers.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that the Awww Factor (AF) may well be the most powerful influence in the health benefits of pets.
Consider:
What country has the highest AF on the planet? No question; Japan wins hands down.
And which nation has one of the highest life expectancies? Yes... good guess! You ARE paying attention after all!
Japan.
But that is not all.
Which portion of the population of the country with the longest life expectancy is Number One in the world?
Japanese women.
Why?
From an early age, every Japanese girl and young woman is exposed to a barely sub-lethal dose of cuteness. While young boys are vulnerable to some of this as small children too, they soon "grow out" of it and move on to more adult things, like becoming an "otaku" nerd or a withdrawn recluse.
Little girls, however, get dosed early and long – everything from "Hello Kitty" children's in-flight meals, McDonalds characters on happy meals, school buses, cars filled with stuffed animals (who has not seen THIS?), even on the garbage truck, and cute box lunches in cute lunch boxes to take to school, to cute pencil cases and cute fashions. Never mind "Little Poopy".  All of these provide a strong health boost throughout a woman's formative years which they carry on into later life in the form of better health and greater longevity.
All of us can learn a lesson from this AF influence. If you want to live a long and healthy life you need to expose yourself to as much cuteness as possible. As we have seen above, getting a pet is an important first step, but why not supplement that with some stuffed animals in your car or living room. Go ahead; don't be shy about it, put Hello Kitty stickers on your windows or maybe even get some Hello Kitty tableware. When you hire that maid to live up to Biblical values, why not go for a cute one? Make your meals adorable as well, by forming the meatloaf into a Winnie the Pooh or the birthday cake into a likeness of Snoopy.
These are simple, inexpensive, and non-invasive steps you can take right NOW to improve your health and vitality. As for me, having just looked at about 30 pages of cuteness, I think I have been exposed to much more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of cuteness and might need an insulin shot.

The iPotty

I know what you are thinking.
You are rolling your eyes and imagining that I am going to fill this space with juvenile potty humor.
This just goes to show how narrow minded YOU are.
Actually I am going to fill this space with sophisticated, adult potty humor.
In many countries when you go to the toilet, you can expect to find one basic model everywhere. In the US, for example, the "American Standard" is common – both in private dwellings and in public restrooms.
As I have written before, Japan has started a revolution in toilets. Despite this, however, when you go to a public restroom, you never know just what point on the toilet evolutionary scale you will encounter. It could be an old fashioned "squat pot", a simple Western-style toilet, or a fancy washing toilet with all the "bells and whistles". It's better than the old days when public facilities often did not have any toilet paper, but you still go through emotional ups and downs, walking to the restroom, anticipating one thing but finding another.
Although the range of toilets is greater in public restrooms, you can still be surprised at private homes. A visit to a friend's house provided just that sort of experience. A fairly wealthy family, they had recently installed a top-of-the-line appliance in their downstairs restroom.
I walked into the small room (only a toilet and a tiny sink) and was surprised by the top lid springing open – a gaping mouth ready to take a bite out of me! The toilet left the seat part of the toilet down, however, not being smart enough to determine that I was a guy and why I was in there. I had to raise the seat by hand, but it didn't seem to like me doing that (I found out later that there is a button for that function) and fought with me over raising the seat. Perhaps it was questioning my gender.
I finished what I came into the restroom to do and politely closed the seat and the lid. The toilet automatically flushed itself. I turned to the sink to wash my hands, and I must have moved my arms too much, because the toilet lid sprang open again, staring malevolently at me with its built-in LED light. I quickly closed it, and the appliance fastidiously flushed again.
The next morning, I needed to use the toilet for a more "significant" purpose. The lid jumped open as I entered the room, but I didn't need to fight with the toilet to raise the seat.
I sat down, completed my mission, and glanced at the control panel on the wall next to me. This is called a "stick remote control". Please have a look at the link above, so you can see how confounding a control it is. The large round buttons on the vertical portion of the controller are from left to right:
               Butt             Bidet
OFF                                                      Water Pressure     Washing Position         Clean
               Soft        Wide Bidet                                                                                Nozzle

The row of nine smaller buttons on the top of the controller are from left to right:
Big   Small   Eco Small    Move     Massage     Power Smell Removal     Dry  

and

Open Lid    Open Lid & Seat

Where do I start?
First of all, if you live in Japan, very quickly you learn that BIG and SMALL on the toilet flush-lever does not mean you need to gauge the size of your deposit and flush accordingly.
"Well, I DID have three burritos for dinner last night .... so.... big?"
No.
In Japanese "small" is "number 1" and "big" is "number 2", so that function on the remote was fairly clear. Eco Small probably means you would use less water. What I was worried about was "Move" and "Massage". The positioning of the washing nozzle is set by the large buttons on the front of the panel, so what would I be moving if I pressed the MOVE button? Might the whole toilet take me into another room? Or perhaps it was some sort of enema function that would "move" me in a different way. In any case, I wasn't going to experiment.
Also the button with BUTT on the top and SOFT on the bottom left me anxious. Controls with ranges of function usually have contrasting labels: High and Low, Strong and Weak, Front and Back. The contrast of BUTT and SOFT didn't seem to have anything to do with the human body.
And what about the MASSAGE button? I really wanted to know exactly what part of my anatomy the toilet was going to massage before I pushed it.
The toilets I am accustomed to have only basic wash functions, so I restricted my cleaning efforts to those. I stood up, closed the lid, and the toilet dutifully flushed for me.
Once again, while I was washing my hands, the lid snapped open as if to say, "Did you finish your business? Are you SURE?!"
I closed it and as I left the room, I could hear it fussily flushing itself again.
The technology has gotten increasingly complex. Early washing toilets had only a wash and a bidet function (I have NO idea why you would need both, but I have a very limited imagination). These have evolved into toilets which do things for you that you didn't know you needed done. The future obviously will bring even better facilities, perhaps with richer interactive functions that we can program like cars to "read" us as individuals and do unto us as we would do unto ourselves in many different ways, while treating other people completely differently.
Talk about a brave new world.....

Sweeping the Nation

Being basically an over-grown village, the Japanese nation is swept by fads like nowhere else. Something will be reported in the media (the fact of reporting makes it believable) and the next thing you know 127 million people will be jumping on the band wagon.
Consider:
Some 10 years ago Fuji Television reported on Super Time (news program) that putting empty soft-drink bottles (clear ones with water in them) around in your yard would keep cats away. Imagine the convenience of this technique! Only the other night we were awakened by the yowls and howls of a couple of cats outside; if we could have made recourse to putting a few strategic plastic bottles here and there, we would have gotten a good night's sleep. Anyway, the fad swept the nation and people were putting empty plastic soft-drink bottles around their gardens and houses to keep the pesky varmints away. Even as recently as 5 minutes ago (yes, I did go out and check) about ten 1.5 liter, soft-drink bottles can be seen keeping sentry around a neighbor's house.
The Experiment Design: In the interest of scientific inquiry, I decided to conduct experiments on the two members of the feline species that keep us on as staff here. Their names are Pickle (a Japanese stray) and Tweedle (a farmed Himalayan). I wanted to find out if soft-drink bottles filled with water would affect their normal behavior in any way.
As I have limited time to conduct a lengthy experiment (I want to finish this article before I drip too much sweat into the keyboard), I decided to cut right to the chase.
Experiment #1:
1. Fill soft-drink bottle with water.
2. Place soft-drink bottle next to sleeping Tweedle.
The Reaction:
none
The Reaction Upon Awakening:
1. Outstretched nose sniffs soft-drink bottle.
2. Cat goes back to sleep.
OK. But Tweedle is a fancy, designer cat. Who KNOWS where her genes came from. Plus, she is old and not heavily into youthful things – like actually moving.
Experiment #2:
1. Find Pickle
2. Can't find Pickle, so I will report on her at a later date.
Anyway, these fads sweep the nation like no other.
Consider:
In the early 1990s in the city of Sendai (there is some debate about the origin, but Sendai seems to be the front runner), high school girls somehow got the idea that wearing floppy socks around the lower part of their legs would make their legs look nicer. This was coupled with rolling up the waist of the school uniform's skirt to make it shorter, exposing more of the upper part of the leg. Instantly, the fashion swept the nation and high school girls across the country were rushing to flatter their appearances with these new floppy socks. By the early 21st century the fashion had faded among main-stream high school girls and been co-opted by a subcultural group. They can be still seen here and there today (I looked out my window, but as school is in session, I was unable to confirm or deny that they are still visible on the streets here. I can't actually see the road so well from this vantage point either.).
Consider:
The banana panic of 2008 struck without warning! Japanese women (let's brazenly make a huge generalization here) tend to be faddy. And nothing screams fad more than the latest diet craze!
Some Background:
Japanese women (continuing the brazen generalization) also tend not to be fat. We saw a woman who went through an entire pregnancy and birth without us ever being aware of the whole thing, so little did she change her physique. Wait... that is not fat, but anyway... Japanese women tend to be petite and thin. By and large, among those women who THINK they need to lose weight and who would jump at any diet that promised easy and spectacular weight losses, only a tiny fraction really needs it. Nonetheless, a fad is a fad and (see first generalization) there are those who pay less attention to the details of it before taking the plunge.
The Diet:
Popular TV shows at first, and then later picked up by fashionable magazines and other venues, reported that a person (person = woman) could lose a lot of weight by eating bananas in the morning. You needed to eat one banana or more for breakfast with water, eat a regular lunch and dinner and go to bed before midnight (Time's report here). So basically, instead of the usual Japanese breakfast which consists of a small bowl of rice, some miso soup, a softboiled egg and maybe a tiny piece of fish, you would eat bananas. The key of course is the later eating of the "regular lunch and dinner". Japanese "regular lunches and dinners" fall into the petite category by American standards (omg... I need to write about this one restaurant in California...), so we are not talking a huge intake of calories at the later end of the day. Only one mid-afternoon snack, no desserts.
The Results:
Bananas were literally swept from grocery store shelves within a day. There were no bananas to be found ANYWHERE in the country, so fast did the fad take hold. Criticism by nutritionists and health experts notwithstanding, the fad stayed for several months (probably because the lack of bananas kept a lot of dieters from starting their new-found regimen), and then disappeared as quickly as it materialized. On TV and in magazines, of course, people (people = mostly women) reported dramatic weight losses, but amongst the general population there did not seem to be any significant change. Bananas remained hard to find for several months until the banana importers (all the bananas are imported) managed to bring in enough to restock the shelves. The fad had dissipated by then, but so many bananas were "in the pipeline" to feed the fad (pardon the pun), that the stores could not find place for them. Tables were piled high with the yellow fruit and checking out the supermarket yesterday, I found that even now there seems to be an oversupply of bananas.
Japanese supermarkets invariably have a special table for fruit and vegetables that are approaching their shelf life limitations. Everything is way cheaper there. The overlarge pile of bananas on that table looked pretty good too!
Return to Experiment #2:
3. Found Pickle lying around on the deck (not sleeping).
4. Place soft-drink bottle 10 cm from her nose.
The Reaction:
1. Cat gives lavish display of affection by rubbing on deck chair and deck railing near the soft-drink bottle (but does not rub on soft-drink bottle).
2. Cat lies back down in same position 10 cm from soft-drink bottle.
Pickle is a pure Japanese cat – replete with all the DNA and genetic predispositions of several thousand years of Japanese catdom. If she was not bothered by the soft-drink bottle, no cat would be.
Conclusions:
The results of my scientific experiment pretty much speak for themselves; the fad (as has also been subsequently reported in many places in Japanese) is based on bogus information. Nonetheless, this being Japan, traditions die hard.