(Japanese TV rant) Dance club DJ + tattoo = drug user

I like Japan. It's a great place to live, and it's fairly safe. The food is fabulous. So you won't hear me say too many bad things about Japan... unless it's about Japanese television.

I'm beginning to despise Japanese TV. Yes, there are some good shows, and terebi is partly responsible for my growing Japanese vocabulary. But there is a lot of ridiculous stuff, too.

Take, for example, the news about pop star Sakai Noriko being arrested for drug possession this week. (This BBC article writes her name the Western way, i.e. family name last. I'll write it Japanese style.) Sakai was a popular singer back in the late 1980s, in her teens, and then later added acting to her repertoire.

I tried to think who from the U.S. I could compare her to, but that would be impossible. Sakai was one of the many "idols" (aidoru) that were popular in the 1980s. "Idols" were female singers around 16 or 17 years old. They had carefully-manufactured girl-next-door images, meaning "cute". Everything about them was cute: their costumes (bows in their hair, fluffy lace dresses on stage), what they ate (no matter the idol, they always ate strawberry shortcake), even the way they held microphones in press conferences (with both hands).

Apparently, Sakai Noriko is more famous than most aidoru. She seems to be some kind of superstar not only in Japan, but in other Asian countries like China, Taiwan, and Malaysia. I never heard of her before this week, but my wife knew exactly who she was when she saw her on the news. You can imagine the shock around Japan when Sakai turned herself into the police. The story has been big for the media here.

Anyway, back to my rant. I was watching the news yesterday, and they were talking about Sakai. They showed some video footage of Sakai as a DJ at a night club. They also showed shots of the small tattoo on her ankle.

The message was loud and clear: "No wonder Sakai Noriko was doing drugs! She has a tattoo, and she DJed at a club!"

I burst out laughing when I saw that.

People in Japan, watch out. If you have two turntables, headphones and some vinyl records, you may be labeled a drug user. If you have a tattoo, they might think you're doing cocaine.