By Nina Kahori Fallenbaum

If you’ve ever been trampled by a bag-toting obaachan in Shinjuku station as she runs for the last train (why she’s out shopping at 12:30 a.m., I have never understood), the concept of “slow life” in frenetic Tokyo probably is borderline comical. But LOHAS (“Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability”) has taken hold of Japan like the plague, and its now teetering between a serious subculture and just another boomu, or trend.

The term was first introduced to Japan in 2002 when sociologist Paul Ray, Ph.D. was invited to introduced his concept of “the Cultural Creatives” at a Tokyo symposium. In his book of the same title, he describes a growing sector of society that is interested in health, the environment, and spirituality, against wanton consumerism and waste, but willing to spend top dollar (or yen) on products that are high-quality and not harmful to the Earth. Co-written with his wife Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., the book was the first to explain why natural-food and cosmetics companies were posting record profits all over the U.S. and Europe, and how companies could better court these “green consumers.”

Enter Japan and the kawaii marketing army. Before you could crack open a pair of rainforest-killing waribashi, Natural Lawson convenience stores and Eco-Mansion concrete condos have sprouted all around. The LOHAS acronym is splashed across cosmetics billboards and a drugstore where I recently bought toilet paper. “Help! Will LOHAS require me to sign up for a new credit card?” many are wondering.

Another interesting aspect of Japanese LOHAS is that many believe it means buying a lot of expensive foreign products, many of which smell weird, like housecleaners made from olive oil and recycled penciles from Christmas-tree woodchips. The list goes on. Luckily for us, LOHAS is much simpler, and can be achieved without buying barely anything. LOHAS is for skimpy budgets! Here are some of my favorite LOHAS activities in Japan.

1. Gardening
When I taught English seven years ago in industrial Hamamatsu City, I found cute seed-and-tin sets from the local 100-yen store, and started gardening on my 9th floor balcony. Soon half my balcony was filled with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, various flowers, and a tiered herb garden with sage, rosemary, fennel, and lavender. I seriously considered filling in the rest of the balcony with a few centimeters of soil and an irrigation system. Luckily for my landlord, I got lazy. But the experience taught me that gardening is pretty fun. Plants make good friends because they’re usually in a good mood and like to dance to music. They also freshen the air and give a nice tropical feeling even in the most cramped Tokyo cellblock. Try it!

2. Eat vegetarian one day a week
Besides being good for your skin and fighting cancer, vegetarianism uses less of earth’s resources and tastes delicious. Café Slow in Kokubunji and Kushi Garden Café near Tokyo Station are two of my favorites.

3. Bring more drinks in thermoses and food in bento box
Nothing more “health” or “sustainable” than bringing your own weird beansprout experiment to work and happily unwrapping it at lunchtime. As for drinks, 360,000 tons of PET bottles are discarded in Japan yearly － if we all brought thermoses or reused plastic bottle even half the time we would save incredible landfill space and use less petroleum and timber. Japan makes it easy with their large variety of cute bento boxes and furoshiki; portable hashi sets easily fit in a purse or back pocket. Unfortunately, the thermos selection I recently checked out at Shibuya Loft was still rather utilitarian － Yohji Yamamoto, how ‘bout a branded thermos for next winter, hmmm?

4. Use less lights
Am I the only one who gets headaches in Japanese shopping malls? Tokyo’s Candle Night Project began in 2003 to address the problem of wasted electricity and over-lighting. They’re also trying to get people to re-appreciate Japanese traditional lighting techniques, including darkness. Remember how fun it is when a storm knocks out all the lights? When the Candle Night Project coordinates a worldwide lights-off every summer and winter solstice (www.candle-night.org), we can bring back that feeling anytime.

5. Improve at yoga (or any physical activity)
If you spend as much time as I do behind a computer screen, you know how important exercise is. Paradoxically, by moving the body faster (or at least MORE), the mind can slow down and everything works better. I am still searching for a really good and low-cost yoga center in Japan that doesn’t include the words “Power-UP!” or “Sulim-DOWN!” In short, a relaxing and slow yoga studio. Please submit any studios I’ve missed to the editor. If you’d like to get out of Tokyo, really out of Tokyo, try the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Vacations in the Bahamas － its fairly cheap and they take all levels of students, anytime (www.sivananda.org/nassau).

6. Eat organic
A fun diet fact: organic food tastes better and richer (due to its higher vitamin content), so you eat less. A win-win situation! Dai-ichi Organic Co-op was one of the first (and is still considered one of the best) Japanese home-delivery services of organic produce (www.daichi.or.jp). For the best selection of foreign foods available through mail-order anywhere in Japan, try Tengu in Saitama (www.alishan-organic-center.com).

7. Go to sento or onsen!
This is a no-brainer. Japan has the best and cheapest hot springs of anywhere in the world. For a country that can work really hard, it can also reeeeeeeelax － and sento is how. It’s a shame that many old traditional sento are closing, so visit your local sento and help keep this tradition alive! Watch the grandpas and grandmas if you’re not sure what to do once inside.

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To keep the LOHAS concept meaningful, there are certain principles that we should hold companies accountable for. Here is my highly subjective list of LOHAS points, for you to test against your friendly local retailer (or multinational corporation) and see how they stack up:

a. LOHAS means green business practices
Does the company constantly challenge its internal policies to protect the environment and consumers? Do they go beyond the law, possible losing a measure of profits in order to avoid polluting the earth or using unnecessary resources?

b. LOHAS means social justice
Are workers paid fairly? Are women respected and families supported? Are measures in place to reward employees for their environmental commitment (for example, employer donation matching to respected NGOs)?

c. LOHAS is local
Is the product produced relatively locally? Was it transported a million miles, wasting transportation fuel just to make a brief appearance on your dining table or medicine cabinet?

d. LOHAS is fun
If something labeled “LOHAS” feels like being flogged with a stick, eating cardboard, or sitting atop a bed of nails, it’s not sustainable. Nor healthy. Please stop doing it. The point of LOHAS (I believe) is to enjoy life by being conscious of all our decisions and infusing them with more love, respect, and sympathy for others. That’s it!

Good books for your LOHAS life:
Nature in Tokyo by Kevin Short (Kodansha International)
The Japan We Never Knew by Keibo Oiwa & David Suzuki (Stoddart)
In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore (HarperSanFrancisco)
Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappe & Bryant Terry (Tarcher)
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (Harper Perennial)
The Cultural Creatives by Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. and Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D. (Three Rivers Press)
Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill (HarperSanFrancisco)

About The Writer

Nina Kahori Fallenbaum is a Monbusho graduate student at Meiji Gakuin University in Kanagawa-ken. She previously co-translated the as-yet unpublished English version of Slow is Beautiful (Heibonsha), sometimes called “Japan’s Slow Life Bible.”

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Related articles:

1. Expecting in Tokyo Part 1
2. Hold the Dashi! Going Veggie in Japan
3. Expecting in Tokyo Part 2
4. The Most Delicious City in the World?!
5. Tokyo Day Trips

Tags: bento, health, japan, LOHOAS, obento, onsen, slow life, Tokyo

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 13:17 and is filed under You Should Know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.