TORIBIA! HOW TO GROPE A JAPANESE VOWEL

I don’t often use this space to report on news from Japan. Aside from a column I wrote five years ago on my lemon of a Japanese used car, I haven’t mentioned the Land of the Rising Sun, unless I was referring to snow in New Hampshire on a rainy day (an inside joke for Granite Staters).

This is not because I’m not fond of Japan or the Japanese people, nor do I still hold a grudge over my Subaru Hatchback, known in this house as: “The Stop, Skip And Jumpstartmobile”. Not Nippon’s fault. My rattletrap’s status came from its previous owner, who apparently used it as a combination log skidder and bumper car. And, because my idea of preventative maintenance is duct tape and parking on an incline, I may have contributed to its low performance.

But, I do like words that are laced with and end in vowels. Take “Sumo,” e.g. Any sport where the athletes are expected to fatten up, drink beer with lunch, then nap every afternoon to prepare for the competition, just seems more honest.

Here’s a sentence that would make sense in Japan: “When the maegashira beat the yokozuna, he got a kinboshi.” Makes your mouth feel important just to say it. In America, that would translate as: “When the rookie beat the old pro, he got the Nike contract.” Just doesn’t have the same snap to it.

Even “toribia,” the Japanese word for “trivia,” out-vowels its American counterpart by four to three, and sounds like something we all need a dose of if we’re going to get through the day.

The Japanese also seem to always come up with the coolest inventions first, even when there are no practical applications for them. I like this in my gadgets. I have a multi-voweled, Nipponese power tool that’s supposed to blow leaves or seal driveway cracks, but has never done either. It does, however, make a dandy crowbar.

Or, consider Idaku Ishii, the handsomely-voweled inventor of the baseball-batting robot that can hit a 190 mph pitch. The last we knew, he was hard-at-work developing one that can THROW a baseball 190 mph, and a robotic umpire who will always call it a ball in Fenway Park.

But, an “anti-groping cell phone?” Are we really ready for this? This news came to me via Associated Press writer Hiroko Tabuchi, another name easy on the vocal tract, and one with a built-in automotive flair: “The all-wheel drive Tabuchi Hatchback.” I’d buy one, quicker than I’d buy a “Sherman Sedan.” The latter has an Edsel-ian ring to it, like something always in need of a gravity ignition and a duct-taped choke.

The “Anti-Groping Appli” is a program designed to fend off gropers, and is becoming popular with the ladies on the Tokyo subway, where arrests for invasive caresses are on the rise. Installed on their cell phones, it will then (I’m not kidding) do the following:

“ … When activated, the application flashes increasingly threatening messages in bold print on the phone's screen to show to the offender: ‘Excuse me, did you just grope me?’ ‘Groping is a crime,’ and ‘Shall we head to the police?’”

If you haven’t fallen over in disbelief, here’s what the manufacturer adds: “ … This application is for women who want to scare away perverts with minimum hassle and without attracting attention.”

This would never fly on the New York subway. Maybe it’s me, but any Big Apple commuterette being accosted in public would care less about the hassle it took or the ruckus it created to discourage her attacker, up to and including her rescue by a rappelling SWAT team.

Now, you’d think that someone with the handyman prowess of your host, who routinely applies a screwdriver as a hammer and a Japanese cracked asphalt blower as a crowbar, would welcome such techno-pop innovations as using a cell phone as a camera, or, in this case, an unbelievably polite can of textual mace.

Perhaps it’s the cultural nuances. In Japan, where red-inking corporations send letters of apology to their investors, and where losing baseball players bow and beg forgiveness from the fans, I suppose its natural for crime victims to “invite” their assailants to visit the authorities.

Not by yelling. Not by making a scene. Not by clubbing them with their cell phones, but by text-messaging them with a social nicety, up close and personal.

Well, Mr. Takahashi, (maker of this silent, self-defensive telephony) I admire your innovation, your entrepreneurship, and your high-voweled moniker, but I don’t think America will receive this well. Perhaps you haven’t paid attention to how reverse victimization works over here.

Some equally consonant-light lawyer would no doubt take up the case for the violated civil rights of his groping, illiterate client, claiming that the latter thought his advances were an invitation to read between the lines of his phone-wielding gropee.

A toribial pursuit, at best, but thanks for the thought.

Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.

B. Elwin Sherman does not have a cell phone, and gropes his humor column silently in New Hampshire. He will read e-mail via his website, however, at: elwinshumor.com. His column appears with permission. Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.