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–Introduction–

“Wasabi Stories” is a quotation and summary of a column which touches ones heart or not found on the internet.

It is a Japanese famous person’s story extracted from the NIKKEI news paper.

The purpose in posting the column in JAPAN Style is to cheer you up and to make you feel “it’ was worth reading!”

Wasabi (Japanese horseradish or mustard) is spicy and stimulate your nose and make you teary.

The columns in “Wasabi Stories” hopefully spice your heart and sometimes make you teary!

The stories were originally sent as E-mail Newsletter in Japanese. Some are a little old but we’ll eventually catch up with new ones.

“Nothing Happen If You Withdraw into Your Shell-Let’s Go Out More!”

Today’s article was written by one of the Nikkei editors.

It is an interesting story about “the unemployment problem and the theater”.

There is a small theater called Komaba Agora Theater in Komaba-Todaimae, Tokyo.

It was named after the Agora, an open “place of assembly” in ancient Greek city-states, where the citizens got together to discuss about politics and philosophy.

Since April 2009, they started to give discount to those who get unemployment benefit.

“Student discounts” or “senior discounts” are common, but this theater may be the first which gives “unemployment discount” in Japan.

The owner of the theater and a dramatist, Oriza Hirata says “It’s a common system in European theaters. In Japan, if you watch play while being  unemployment, you’ll be told ‘if you have such time, go find job!’ but when there is no job outside, the unemployed stay home and don’t go out. It’s important to go town more actively and connect to society. ”

The writer of this article concludes that Japan seldom connect the unemployment problem and a theater, although a theater is a place to meet new people and communicate, therefore; it would be effective in the unemployment problem.

Hirata’s idea is very fresh yet made us wonder why the autonomous public facilities that run by public expenses don’t come up with such idea.

The NIKKEI Apr/18/2009 by an editor Yoichi Uchida

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