Saturday, December 29, 2007

A Hard Sell


Hmm...I guess the last part of this used electronics shop's name makes sense. I mean, everything has to have an opposite, right? But what produces a "super" one of these?

Monday, November 05, 2007

The Mystery of Santa's Balls Solved!


I finally managed to rip myself out of my laudanum-induced stupor long enough to actually recall my blogspot password. After my jones for cough syrup subsided I ventured out to our covered shopping arcade only to find the Christmas decor had already gone up, like the ugly green and red cock of American cultural colonialism. This year too, Santa's pale balls, upon which I first remarked a couple of years ago, are making an appearance. This year, I finally learned what that is all about.

To explain it, I first have to explain that our city's mascot is a dead, noodle-shop owner named Sendai Shiro (1860-1902). He is quite literally venerated as a god of commerce and prosperity by the locals. The one surviving photo of Shiro has been reproduced endlessly and adorns shop walls all over the city. In the photo, Shiro is sitting, arms crossed, bare knees poking out from under his robes. He looks remarkably like Buddha, so I can sort of see why people worship him.

I am informed by reliable sources that the Santa which appears in our arcade each year is a poorly executed "Sendai Shiro Santa". It is meant to look like Shiro dressed as Santa with arms crossed in his signature pose. What I mistook for a rather generous genital endowment are in fact meant to be Santa/Shiro's knees. Below is the famous photo of Shiro. I find it wonderful that this random collision of local folk belief and Christianity has produced a big red balloon of Santa with his wedding tackle dangling in the breeze.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

The other white meat

I guess I will never have a shortage of blog fodder as long as Japanese products continue to be fucking weird. Thank God no other Japan bloggers have ever thought of pointing this out. None. EVER.

Anyway, the other day I saw this in a drugstore:

Surely not, I thought. Surely no one would ever go there in a thousand years, I thought. I had underestimated the cosmetics industry. They have not only gone there, they have purchased land there, and erected an outlet mall with an attached waterslide park there. As the name implies, the product contains placenta (of what creature I know not), which is believed to be good for the skin and "improving your constitution". In fact, a quick googling revealed a horrorcopia of placental skin care and health products. You can get creams, pills and apparently even injections containing "placental extract" to make your skin nice and soft and your constitution more improved. A steal at roughly $90 a box.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

C'est bon!

Aside from sweet views of sweaty man-ass, the other big attraction of the Obon season is the hakamairi (grave visitations). Each summer, most Japanese return to their hometowns to visit the family tomb and leave offerings of incense, flowers, booze, smokes, and sweets. My family is no exception to this rule, so last week we trundled off to the sticks for a day of reconnecting with the family spirits and, in my case, wishing for hard drugs. It's not that I dislike my in-laws, it's just that their home is located here:
Or from different angle:
You will not find a Starbucks within 12 miles of this town. Nor will your cellular phone's reception ever creep beyond one half a bar. Now, I am definitely not averse to getting away from the information sphere once in awhile and basking in a few hours of ignorance of what the rest of the world is doing. The real problem can be summed up in three words: unintelligible local dialect. If my spouse is not by my side constantly to translate from local Japanese to standard Japanese, I have no clue what my in-laws are saying to me. Often my spouse doesn't understand either. Honestly, I think they confer beforehand and switch up the dialect for each of our visits to keep us from ever figuring it out. It's worse than those parts in Trainspotting where the Scottish accents get so out of control they added subtitles in deference to non-Scottish audiences.

So, I took a longer-than-necessary stroll after fulfilling my grave-visiting duties. Ostensibly to enjoy the fresh air, of which we in sooth get plenty being from a fairly rural city ourselves. It was actually rather enjoyable. I found some pretty flowers which I had no hope of identifying:

and a scene that I believe is a good, spontaneous example of the Japanese idea of "mono no aware," or an object that evokes a kind of aesthetic empathy:
So I guess the moral of this pointless post is, if you ever find yourself married to a Japanese native and getting dragged off three times a year (obon + vernal and autumnal equinoxes) to their remote rural hometown where the local dialect is completely impenetrable to visit the family tomb, I strongly recommend you take a book.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Obon? Bon!!!


My wife, daughter, and some other members of our enormous family + me visited a summer festival this week. It was held on the premises of a retirement home where one of our many cousins works. Such festivals are held all over Japan during the Obon period at temples, shrines, schools, community centers, or anywhere else with enough space to set up. Although there may be regional variations, I think the basic layout is pretty much the same no matter where you go. There will be a raised stage or platform in the middle where an announcer sits with a mic, playing canned music. Sometimes there will be actual musicians, or some combination of taped/live. Local residents "dance" around the stage. I use scare quotes here because it's not so much a dance as a procession. There are apparently traditional steps and arm movements, but nobody actually knows them. They just sort of imitate the person in front of them (who is imitating the person in front of them and so on), so it's kind of a self-organizing thing. Off to one side vendors set up tents selling yakisoba (sauce-drenched fried noodles), kakigori (shaved ice with syrup), yakitori (skewered, grilled chicken) and beer. There are also usually some games for the kids, such as popgun shooting galleries and "kingyo sukui," in which kids try to fish live goldfish out of an inflatable wading pool with a flimsy tissue net. Oddly that "sukui" bit means "rescue" or "save" and also shows up in the word "sukuinushi" meaning savior, i.e. Jesus. So whenever I see kids playing this game, it gives me a mental image of Christ bending down from heaven with a huge paper net, trying to fish out human souls before they soak through the tissue and fall back into Hell. Whoa...gotta lay off those morning glory seeds.

Everything was going pretty normally. We were all standing around outside the ring of dancers drinking beer (except for the kids and drivers), wolfing down noodles and chatting. The dancers were trotting around the stage with varying degrees of enthusiasm. A lot of them looked like they had been dragged from their beds at the retirement home, some literally being wheeled around by the staff. I honestly can't say if that was a kindness or a cruelty. Some of the old dears, like one very elderly wheelchair-bound woman who was compulsively chewing on her yukata collar, didn't actually appear to understand what was going on. I kind of wondered for whose benefit this was being done -for the retirees enjoyment, or to give a photo-op to their next of kin? However, this depressing thought was driven from my head by a sight that made me spray beer out of both nostrils. A pair of pale cheeks had ascended the stage and commenced jiggling up and down. They had a taiko drummer, wearing only a loincloth, headband and grin, get up and reel off a couple of numbers on the big drum. After all, this is the land of public, fully-nude, occasionally mixed bathing, but it was still kind of a jolt. Even after 10+ years of living here, I'm still sometimes reminded I'm not in Kansas. Kansass maybe, but not Kansas.

Friday, August 10, 2007

A tasty nosehair sandwich


As those who know me can attest, when I'm not cleansing my nasal passages or inhaling boulder-sized rocks of crack, I can generally be found clutching a greasy mouse playing through the first level of Doom...over and over...obsessively. That was until I discovered "Hanage 2." The game is sold through Japan's sprawling network of 100 yen shops, meaning it cost roughly 80 cents US. Don't be fooled by the price though. This game is a brilliant indictment of modern, consumerist society.

Premise Your guy swims relentlessly forward through the air, attacked by a variety of monsters that fly at him in sine-wave formations. Where do they come from? Perhaps from the depths of his cold, empty soul.

Gameplay This game uses only the space bar. When you press it, your guy swims toward the right side of the screen. Stop pressing it, and he drifts back toward the left. The mind-numbing simplicity, reducing the player to a cog carrying out simple, repetitive motions, is a perfect metaphor for our post-post culture in which humans are mere extensions of the machine/phallus that rules the universe.

Power ups The player can collect a number of power-ups, but these just uselessly change the character graphic's clothing with no discernable effect on the gameplay, or even more cruely, render him naked except for his briefs. Again, this aspect is highly informed by our modern culture, in which we, magpie-like, snatch up every glittering trinket dangled before us, accumulating mountains of designer clothing, automobiles and consumer electronics that are as useless and destined for the landfill as our own broken bodies.

Graphics Crudely rendered and garishly colored, they are obviously a reference to the grotesque carnival of human sexuality.

Sound The heroic music and humorous sound effects, contrast starkly with the game's darker themes, creating a keen psychological tension.

Concluding remarks Casting aside clumsy narrative and exposition, this game drives home the horror of modern existence as few others do. Even the title, "Hanage," meaning nosehair, is a reference to all we consider unsightly, undesirable and filthy within ourselves. It will hold up a cold flawless mirror, and you will shrink in terror from what you see.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Money Shot


Canned coffee is as all-Japanese as sushi and creepy fan art of preteen homocidal maniacs. It has been offering a quick pick-me-up to millions of salarypeople every day since 1969. It also uses some of the more, um, creative naming conventions. OK, my mind is probably more pervy than most, but even so... I just don't feel comfortable imbibing beverages with names like "Morning Shot" and "After Shot." Am I the only one who thinks these sound more like names you'd find in the curtained off part of your video store than in Starbucks? For reference, both of these are products in Asahi's lineup of Wonda coffees, for which Tiger Woods used to do ads.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Spend some quality time with your socks


You know, it's easy to get caught up in life's little worries. Taxes. Work. Family obligations. Where you put the murder weapon because if they find it your defense is shot to hell and you'll be spending the rest of your life perfecting counter gang-rape techniques. But I think I'm going to take the advice of this shop sign, and just enjoy my socks. I like my socks.

Friday, April 27, 2007

News Flash!


In New York? Then head on over to the Galapagos in Williamsburg Brooklyn on Friday (Apr. 27) and check out the musical prowess of my Remarkable Redheaded Friend. He will be appearing in the band Six Demon, in which he serves as general chick magnet/technogod. Says my friend of the event: "The night starts with the super-group Death Wake at 10pm (combining members of Tall Firs, La Lus, Ministry, and Pink Sock) and we get on around 12:30-ish if we’re lucky." If approximately 5,800 nautical miles did not seperate me from the Eastern Seaboard, I would definitely be there throwing up the horns with the rest of the moshers.

Friday, April 20, 2007

What could possibly go wrong?


I found this poster in a subway station. It is advertising a product called "Mamoru," which means "to protect." It is a combination flashlight, pepper spray and siren. Looking at the image on the poster, I am guessing that its main use is for deterring creepy vampire chicks. The caption loosely translates as "when push comes to shove, I'll take care of myself." Oddly, the cartoon on the product's Web site seems to indicate that it dispenses only a comforting, pink glow at assailants.

I dunno...actual guns are illegal here for a reason -the population is chronically sleep-deprived and high-strung. This combined with the notoriously crowded train systems does not bode well. Even if you don't intentionally gas half the passengers in your subway car due to faulty anger management, suppose you're just reaching for your phone or chapstick in your purse and accidentally trip the "anti-crime" siren, causing the three people nestled against your left armpit to pepper spray each other out of confusion over who is the frotteur?

Monday, April 16, 2007

Enjoying That Retirement?

Japan faces a severe senior citizen crisis. In an interview with NPR, Shutting Out the Sun author Michael Zielenziger pointed out that by 2020 one in nine Japanese will be over 80. However, with social services inadequately equipped for the rising tide of retirees, the private sector is stepping in. Their strategy seems to be to make the nation so depressed about retiring, they kill themselves before reaching 65. A case in point comes from this commercial sent in by Mr.K. It is an advertisement, obviously targeted at the elderly, for a drug that treats stiff joints. Before you view it, imagine how an ad for a similar product in your country would play out. I envision a shot of an elderly couple strolling along a beach, holding hands during a beautiful sunset. Then a distinguished grey haired gentleman executes a perfect drive and nonchalantly tosses his club into his bag while his buddy slaps him on the back. In the last shot, a toddler rushes up to his grandmother, who effortlessly lifts him up in the air, to his delight. Then a soothing voiceover would say something like: "Life has so much more to offer. Don't let joint pain stand in your way. Ask your doctor about [Prescription Drug] today."
Now consider some scenes of this Japanese ad:


  • Woman kneeling down painfully to scrub her bathtub.
  • Woman slowly walking up a flight of stone steps with her groceries.
  • Guy hauling a big, heavy cart in a marketplace (caption reads: "That grunt [you make when cleaning your bathtub etc.] is probably your joints screaming [in pain]").
So the main message is, take our drugs so you can spend your retirement doing tedious chores and manual labor. Great. I can hardly wait to be old.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Your Job Does Not Suck Compared to this Guy's


Any comment on this seems like it'd be overkill. Mime in 3 meter tall paper hat showing his mad ballet chops. What more is there to say? I guess by way of explanation, I could mention that the drugstores in my city seem to be locked in some kind of weird turf war over the covered shopping arcade that runs through the downtown. Most of the shops just have a guy standing out front with a megaphone screaming the daily specials. This store's method approaches performance art. It's kinda hard to see due to my blurry photo, but the dude was holding a fist full of leaflets for his employer's store in his right hand.
As a special bonus, in the background you can see a couple of the planters placed in the arcade by our benevolent city administrators to keep us from getting run over by crazy motorists.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Flaming Chocolate Goodness

It has been awhile since a blogworthy snack food travesty caught my eye, so I was happy to find Game Chocolate Ahiiiii. The caption at the top of the bag ominously reads "someone will be sacrificed." It's a simple but sadistically brilliant premise. Each bag contains 12 chocolates, 9 of which are relatively delicious. However, 3 chocolates contain a healthy dose of finely ground chili pepper. Thus each package constitutes a sort of culinary version of Russian Roulette, only with fewer showers of skull and brain fragments.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Sweet Hooha



Updated! This is the awning over the door to the "Sweet Pole." It appears to be some kind of restaurant attached to a hotel. Very classy. Wonder who gave them the ace name idea.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Randy Ransels


Foooookin-a. Our daughter starts first grade this spring (the Japanese school year is coordinated with the business year). Although they tell you public education is free in Japan, this isn't quite true. You have to buy certain school-designated supplies, including a Ransel. A Ransel is basically an evil Dutch mailbox that straps to your hapless kid's back. Why did they import a dutch mailbox-backpack to go with their Prussian scholastic model? Eh. The point is, you have no choice but to buy your kid one. If you don't he/she will be burned at the stake like a witch on the first day of school. Because it's tradition, damnit. The manufacturers, knowing they have a captive audience, set the prices however they damn well please, meaning these things start at around $100 US and just go up from there. You can get Ransel that literally cost thousands of dollars were you so inclined. We got a "modestly" priced one for about US$180. Ransel are also a fixture of Japanese cosplay porn, but you really don't want to go there....well, maybe you do. I won't stop you. Go ahead. Google "Randoseru porn." See if I care when your IMMORTAL SOUL IS SUCKED INTO HELL.