{"id":13544,"date":"2010-09-10T17:04:49","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T21:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=13544"},"modified":"2010-09-11T17:18:32","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T21:18:32","slug":"wit-life-124-%e8%87%aa%e6%ae%ba%e9%98%b2%e6%ad%a2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/10\/wit-life-124-%e8%87%aa%e6%ae%ba%e9%98%b2%e6%ad%a2\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #124: \u81ea\u6bba\u9632\u6b62"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/p>\n

I just finished an interpreting assignment where our last destination was New York.\u00a0 One day we were returning to the hotel from an appointment and the subway suddenly stopped due to a sick passenger.\u00a0 My client asked what was going on and I explained, feeling like the conductor after saying “We should be moving shortly.”\u00a0 She made the comment that this kind of delay happens in Japan as well, but is often due to suicides.\u00a0 I thought she was referring to Tokyo as she is from Hokkaido, but she said that even back home it is an issue.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of our exchange this morning when the news showed politicians promoting a spring suicide prevention (\u81ea\u6bba\u9632\u6b62 or jisatsu boushi<\/em>) campaign called, \u300c\u304a\u7236\u3055\u3093\u3001\u7720\u308c\u3066\u308b\uff1f<\/a>\u300d (otousan, nemureteru?<\/em> or Dad, are you sleeping ok?).\u00a0 Not to make light of a heavy topic, but I like the design of the web page where the father and his school-age daughter are surrounded by sheep with distinctive personalities (Ms. Kawaii, Mr. Cool, etc.), as well as one peacefully at rest.<\/p>\n

Below the tagline on the right it reads “Cabinet Sleep Campaign,” indicating that the central government has gotten involved with its citizens’ sleeping habits in an attempt to reduce the suicide rate.\u00a0 Some of the various attachments on this top page are a suicide countermeasure white paper<\/a>, suicide statistics<\/a> and consultation services<\/a> from various government agencies.\u00a0 This last one is a list of links that provide resources for assorted mental health issues.\u00a0 Delving further<\/a> into the site you can find things like more statistics and information, an explanation of the connection between lack of sleep and depression, and 16 questions regarding sleep answered by the Japanese Society of Sleep Research (i.e. how does Japan’s sleep amount compare to the rest of the world, what are sleeping pills’ side effects).<\/p>\n

The webpage also showcases a tv spot<\/a> which I found interesting for the way it tries to pull at fathers’ heartstrings.\u00a0 It depicts a father yawning as he looks at his daughter and says, “Come to think of it, I don’t know her keitai mail address.\u00a0 I don’t know her friends.\u00a0 I don’t know her boyfriend.”\u00a0 The daughter breaks in with, “I know!\u00a0 Dad, you haven’t been sleeping lately, have you?”\u00a0 As the music starts, a voiceover and a line on the bottom read, “If you haven’t slept well for two weeks, it might be a sign of depression.\u00a0 Please consult with your personal physician or a specialist.”\u00a0 At the end the daughter says to her dad, “It’s not good if you don’t know about your body or about me,” and otousan<\/em> smiles in recognition.<\/p>\n

Upon first glance, this seems like a really comprehensive educational and public health campaign that hopefully will help remedy a grave problem.\u00a0 I am curious as to how much awareness there is of it in the general population, as well as what effect (if any) it has had on the country’s suicide rate (which evidently peaks in March at the end of the fiscal year, hence the timing of the campaign).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. I just finished an interpreting assignment where our last destination was New York.\u00a0 One day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,30,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-3ws","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13544"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13562,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544\/revisions\/13562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}