Yamatonokuni

(NSFW) Shopping Paradise

2011-10-06T21:51:00.002+09:00

One thing I really love about Japan is how the advertising has no boundaries whatsoever. For example, you can be walking down a busy shopping arcade, bustling with gradads, kids, nuns etc., and suddenly find yourself gazing at a MUSCULAR TATTOOED ASS. As you can guess from the URL if not the pic, on the poster, this is an advertisement for a tattoo parlor. This particular parlor, located as it is in downtown Sendai, is offering a free commemorative tattoo to anyone who lost a loved one during the 3.11 earthquake/tsunami.

On a related note, tattoos have long carried a stigma in Japan, as they are generally associated with organized crime. In fact, my gym has a no-ink policy (though I see tattooed foreigners in there all the time).

Revenge of the importance of one word

2011-09-26T19:28:00.004+09:00

Once again, some proofreading work that wandered into my crosshairs serves to remind me how exceptionally awesome my job can be. I swear I did not tamper with this text in anyway, other than adding the highlight to alert the client that she needed to clarify her sentence a bit.

I know it's cliche to say this, but you cannot make this shit up.

PSA: Incoming exchange students, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, don't try to have your medical marijuana mailed to you in Japan

2011-08-09T12:01:00.006+09:00

At the university where I am currently working, one of the exchange students was recently arrested on suspicion of trying to import drugs after customs intercepted a package containing marijuana addressed to the student (for which this person apparently had a prescription in the US). I am not in a position to judge anyone's judgment, but if he is indeed guilty (which has by no means been established) that's a bad move bro.
To be clear, I have nothing against Buddha or Buddha-smokers in general. I think it’s silly that alcohol and tobacco are tolerated while old Mary Jane gets the snub in most countries. That said, if you live in Japan, trying to get hold of da chronic is just a bad idea. Japan is a hysterically anti-drug country (though how they define “drug” is interesting). What is more, Japanese law makes no distinction between “hard” and “soft” drugs. Pot, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, ecstasy and acid are all equivalent in the eyes of the authorities, relative societal/health risks be damned. If you are caught, or merely suspected of, importing drugs (even in microscopic amounts), and if your case gets to court, your goose is well and truly cooked. The conviction rate in Japan is 99.7%.
Again, it does not matter if you have a prescription from your doctor in your home country (like the above-mentioned student of indeterminate gender). The Japanese authorities will not accept that as a valid reason for attempting to import it, even it’s just for your glaucoma. Japan is not on board with the whole medical marijuana thing. If you absolutely have to take the green herb for medical reasons, don’t come to Japan (seriously, this is not the country for you... it is naahhhht). If you want to smoke recreationally, I suggest saving your money for a trip to the Netherlands, Thailand etc. But for fuck’s sake, don’t try to bring any back with you (or even any paraphernalia, such as pipes, which might contain traces for customs agents to find). And make damn sure you don’t give out any urine samples after your return.
All said, it might be easier to just buy the 100% legal over-the-counter Japanese cough syrup, which contains a hefty dose of codeine, and get your purple drank on. The sizzurp works pretty good, will not get you arrested, and will provide you something to listen to your chopped and skrewed Phish remixes to.*

*May destroy your kidneys.

This Could/Will Happen to You

2011-07-25T11:53:00.001+09:00

Here is a list of experiences you will almost certainly have if you live in Japan for longer than a couple of minutes:

Being lavishly praised on your Japanese speaking abilities for stammering out an awkward “good afternoon” in Japanese.

Realizing after being lavishly praised on your Japanese speaking abilities for saying “good afternoon” in Japanese that it is in fact 6:00-fucking-AM.

Being lavishly praised on your chopstick skills. Then being shown how to grip them so that you don’t put your remaining eye out.

Being told the following joke by an older Japanese person: “What did the Germans say to the Japanese after WWII? Next time, without the Italians!”

Realizing that your years of studying Japanese have given you no knowledge of basic words like “faucet” and “rutabaga.”

Stepping out of the toilet into a formal dinner party still wearing the special toilet-only toxic waste slippers to the horror of your hosts. (Alternatively, forgetting to change into the special toilet slippers when going into the bathroom to the horror of your hosts.)

Scouring the area you are in for the one restroom with a non-squat toilet. Seriously... you are supposed to squat facing the hood?! How the hell does that work? How do squat without putting your socks/underwear in the line of fire? Are you supposed to totally disrobe or what? Should I just wear a kilt at all times?

Pressing an innocuous button on the side of the toilet and experiencing a moment of blinding terror when a jet of lukewarm water shoots up your bum.

Growing to welcome your new bum-cleansing toilet overlords more and more the longer you are here.

Snack Name Fail

2011-06-24T23:54:00.003+09:00

Not appetizing for some reason. I swear to god there must be a foreign copy editor who is just fucking with all these Japanese companies.

Tied Up

2010-06-02T11:02:00.005+09:00

Yesterday, an announcement was mass-emailed to our office notifying us that we no longer were required to wear ties and jackets to work. This is in keeping with the policies many Japanese companies adopt for the hot summer weather. I guess the reasoning is that if the guys dress down, they don't have to keep the air-conditioners cranked up, and can save a little money on their electric bills.

So, yesterday all the guys in our office took off their neckties and jackets as soon as they saw the announcement. One of the managers even posted up signs informing everyone of the new policy. He went out of his way to tell me, "From today, you don't have to wear a tie."

Today, all the men in the office are wearing ties again.
I am the only one who came in without a tie.

A big bowl of cold PAIN!!!

2009-09-26T07:20:00.010+09:00

A lot has happened since my last post. The laughably named "Liberal Democratic Party" has lost power for the first time since the Ordovician period, Patrick Swayze died, and my soul got just a little bit blacker and more evil as a result of one or both of these. Most importantly, my regular comment correspondent Bob has informed me that cafeterias across Japan have started selling bowls of icy cold PAIN for a mere 80 yen each. This is good news as it takes regular doses of pain to remind my tiny shriveled bitter heart to keep beating. Fortunately a bowl of pain is only 43 calories, so I can eat the stuff all day and still keep my girlish figure.

OK, seriously, what is the story? Well, in Japan the word for "pineapple" is more or less "pineapple". This is usually abbreviated to "pine" though, and phonetically spelled パイン. Reverse engineering these characters back into English using standard romanization spelling yields "pain". Pineapple=Pain. I leave the details to your imagination.

(Photo credit: Bob, a.k.a. Dr. K, a.k.a. The Pilao!!!)

The importance of one word

2009-08-04T21:57:00.002+09:00

Sometimes I hate doing proofreading work.

On the other hand, sometimes it's an absolute joy.

A haiku

2009-07-14T13:50:00.003+09:00

A construction site
Vibrant signage... I feel wood
But not in my pants.

DigiBummed out

2009-05-05T20:01:00.003+09:00

I always knew that one day our posteriors would be replaced by implanted waste-recyclers, forever eliminating the need to poop. Thank God! That day has arrived far earlier than I imagained! The Kairen DigiBum is a fully functional ass in the palm of your hand. It's dual-sphincter technology lets you...oh... wait. The fine print explains that "Digital Image" + "Album" = DigiBum. It seems that this is just yet another digital photo frame, and not the cybernetic bottom I was praying for.

When gummy bears crave vengeance, they turn to gummy ninjas

2009-04-30T15:58:00.006+09:00

When I am not obsessing over ninjas and zombies, I am usually eating handfuls of gummy bears as the intensive chewing they require helps rid my body of all the nervous energy and loosened teeth that a meth addiction brings. Now, Japanese sweets maker Uha-Mikakuto has created a gummy snack worthy of your warrior soul: the Ninja Meal (忍者めし) gummy. Their marketing slogan is: "Satisfies the munchies of the modern Ninja".

These are harder than your average (gummy) bear, and are promoted as a way to reduce snacking by quite literally giving you something to chew on. They come in two flavors: Miyazaki (prefecture) Mango and Ume Katsuo. The former is a pretty average mango-flavored gummy with a sort of M&Ms-like crust surrounding it. The Ume Katsuo is another beast altogether, being plum and fish --yes, I said fish-- flavored. Once again, Japan never fails to disappoint with the wierd-ass snack flavors.

In which I record my failed attempt to ingest meat

2009-03-28T21:33:00.005+09:00

Today was to be an epic day in the world of fast food in my city. A certain popular hamburger chain was, for the first time ever, to bring its girthier sandwich to Japan. This sandwich contains an all-beef patty weighing one fourth of a pound, a "quarter-pounder" if you will. In dire need of protein, iron and carcinogens I rushed to the nearest outlet, only to be told that they had none of the burgers I sought. "Nay!" said the clerk, "if large beefy patties you crave, go to yonder Chuodori Tenpo must you."

So, I girded up my soon to be cholesterol clogged loins and struck out for the covered shopping arcade. Once there though, I found that they were not content to just sell you the sandwich. Oh no. You had to go through this whole weird marketing process in which they made you fill out a survey and gave you a T-shirt to turn you into a walking billboard for their vittles. I just wanted a damn burger, so I gave the finger to the whole process and went to a bakery for my lunch instead. It really makes no sense, because the Japanese enjoy being horribly inconvenienced when trying to buy lunch just as much as Americans do.

So why is the above photo so blurry? Art my friend, art.

The return of the chocolate hot-shot!

2009-03-09T11:38:00.004+09:00

First there was the Game Chocolate Ahiiii! Now there is Boukun Habanero Choco Kizoku (Despotic Habanero Chocoloate Aristocracy). This Tohato product is the latest in a long line of Japanese sweets that incorporate some element of capsicum.

What can I say about the Despotic Habanero Chocoloate Aristocracy? It is basically a crunchy, potato-based ring-shaped snack liberally spiced with chili pepper and coated in chocolate. If that doesn't convince you as to its savory-sweet goodness, the package reads "Sweet? Spicy? An alluring rendezvous!"

By the power of JAHEEEEEEEZZUS!!!

2009-02-01T08:23:00.008+09:00

I have mentioned strange Japanese health and beauty goods in the past. The most memorable was perhaps a line of placenta-based skin-care products. On purely theological grounds, I think this one is my favorite though. As is often the case, I really can't think of anything to write about this, because nothing I write will be funnier than the product itself. Jesus Body? JESUS BODY??! Do not be alarmed. They are not selling the literal body of Christ. Jesus Body! is some sort of diet pill. The promotional Web-site promises that Jesus Body! will help you burn fat, detoxify your body, and alleviate the constipation associated with hard dieting. Well, I guess those minor feats should all be well within the Son of God's powers. The catch-copy loosely translates as "This divine diet supplement has been handed down from God in heaven."

I Googled and Googled, but could find no explanation of why the product is named "Jesus Body". I can only assumed the marketing team's meeting went something like this:

"We need a name that says "thin". I mean, really really skinny."
"Hmmm. How about 'Instant Anorexia'?"
"Nah. Too technical."
"Auschwitz Survivor?"
"That's the right direction, but too hard for our Japanese consumers to pronounce."
"I got it! How about Jesus Body? I mean, those crosses they put up in the fake wedding chapels usually have that skinny Jesus guy nailed to them, right?"
"Brilliant! Nothing says 'tit-less and unhealthily emaciated' like the wasted, tortured body of Jesus Christ! That is exactly the look that today's women want!"

Wall of Shame

2009-01-25T21:48:00.008+09:00

There is a long tradition of Western stars sneaking over to Japan to whore out for an ad or two. Since the ads never run overseas, they get a free trip to Japan and a dump-truck full of money all while preserving their credibility back home. Today we look at three Hollywood stars who are making filthy lucre off of Japanese companies.

N-n-n-n-number THREEEEE!!!! Above we see Tommy Lee Jones shilling Suntory's line of BOSS coffees. I really can't begrudge the guy his ad spots because I really don't remember what he was last in. And he just saw his role as Two-Face brilliantly reinterpreted in Dark Knight. That had to sting.

Number TWO!!! George Clooney hawking Honda Odysseys. The tag-line is vaguely sexist, reading: "I like good cars. Because I'm a MAN!"

In at number one for most egregious pimping of a foreign talent to a Japanese advertising agency is Darth Vader. Not satisfied with turning him into a whiny, emo kid, Lucas has licensed Vader for use in a Star Wars themed pachinko game produced by Sankyo. Pachinko is basically a form of legalized gambling, so this is kind of the equivalent to Darth Vader being featured in a slot machine. You can see a promotional video and pictures of the pachinko machine here. Darth's tagline reads "The time to fight is now!" And by "fight" he means "gamble away your hopes and dreams on a form of rigged government-sanctioned gambling."

Japan: land of weird-ass keychain toys

2009-01-11T19:53:00.011+09:00

I think over half of Japan's industry is devoted to designing and producing keychain and cell-phone lanyard toys. About a landfill's worth probably ship out every day, often as freebies attached to bottled beverages, but these are some of the odder premium ones I've seen. The three at top in the photo at left are meant to imitate the sound and feel of popping bubble-wrap. At bottom left is a toy that recreates the sensation of squeezing green soybeans (a popular bar snack) out of their pods. The device at bottom right is supposed to simulate the sound and feel of pulling the perforated cardboard tab off a box of sweets (Pocky, for instance).

None of these is as cool as the "Flower Vibe Key Holder" though. I love the retailer's Web site, complete with "how-to" pictures demonstrating proper usage on a fake vagina. Also, the idea that the user could just dangle it from her handbag as a fashion accessory is both hilarious and vaguely empowering. The description says it's for women who "want a vibrator they can take along on unexpected sleep-overs or trips. There is also no need to worry if you get stopped for a spot bag search when boarding an airplane" (no need to worry about embarrassment I assume, since last time I checked carrying sex toys on planes was not an offense).

No more unwanted pee-baths for your ass

2008-12-01T09:33:00.004+09:00

One of the more civilized things about modern Japan is the public toilet. In particular, the crappers of the newer department stores boast all kinds of automatic soap dispensers and water-jets to eliminate any "not so fresh" feelings you may have. A lot of restrooms also have motion activated flushers on both the urinals and stalls, meaning you will never walk into a booth to take a dump only to find that the previous user has left a nice corpus delicti for your viewing pleasure. My favorite addition so far are these neat seat-sanitizers (hilarious English explanation optional -seriously, who says "WC" in this century?). They dispense a disinfectant, and used in conjunction with a few sheets of bog roll allow one to avoid the horror of sitting down in a puddle of cold piss (or worse, depending on the restroom). These should come standard in men's rooms everywhere.

Tofu Inferno

2008-11-09T14:24:00.005+09:00

The tofu factory in our neighborhood caught fire last night, so we were kept up for a couple of hours by sirens, shouting firemen, and the news helicopters that were circling the scene. We live on the 6th floor of an apartment building, and the fire was only about 60-70m away, so we had a pretty terrifying view of it. Although, as the above photo, stolen from the Kahoku Shimpo shows, it was a big fire, somehow nobody was killed or injured. However, it was a very visceral reminder to shut off our kerosene heater before going to bed.

Respect mah ISO certification!

2008-10-22T23:09:00.003+09:00

Something about this construction company mascot just reminded me a helluva lot of Southpark's Eric Cartman.

(Not really) Tropic Thunder

2008-10-15T22:44:00.006+09:00

I photographed this for one reason and one reason only. When I was perhaps 17 or 18, and still with a sliver of goodness in my rapidly blackening soul, there was this cartoon called Eek! The Cat on Saturday mornings. In one episode, Eek is hornswaggled into drinking a bottle of "Big Thunder Prune Juice" precipitating a hilarious potty gag. To this day, the memory of BTPJ makes me snicker out loud in public places causing all manner of angry muttering and glaring in my general direction. You can imagine my delight upon finding the surprisingly tasty Big Thunder chocolate bar. It consists of a thin, crispy chocolate biscuit covered in the cheapest milk chocolate money can import. The label reads: "Deliciousness! Hugeness! A double bolt of lightning! Even a glutton will be satisfied!"

Advertising

2008-09-27T08:45:00.007+09:00

I wanted to post this before September completely passed over us. A buddy and I found it dangling in the entrance to a little bar. We could only presume that it was some indication of the type of food served therein. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the afternoon so the place wasn't open, otherwise we would have gone in and requested an order of Fanged Abomination in Chianti Sauce. Mad props to anyone who can identify it. We have no clue.

Get em off downtown

2008-08-23T18:35:00.006+09:00

So, I was walking through my city's red light district. It was a shortcut. Really. I was just going from, um... the hospital where I volunteer to play Scrabble with the elderly to, uh...church. I was just taking an innocent shortcut. DON'T JUDGE ME! Anyway, I love the signage down in the seedier parts of town. In addition to a club named "Vajiina" (I wonder what that means?), I found the below sign politely refusing service to foreigners. Apparently the proprietors do not want any filthy disease-carrying Americans (i.e. me) to avail themselves of their "form". And by form, I believe they mean den of prostitution.

Make my spunk the P-spunk

2008-08-13T22:55:00.005+09:00

God DAMN...just when I thought I'd run out of Japanese products with weird-ass names. Not just the name, but even the color of this Spunky Heads chewing gum is gross. After mastication, it goes from an already unappetizing gray to a tarry black. Not even very minty fresh either.

XXXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM SNACKING

2008-07-20T21:26:00.008+09:00

Since it has been a while since we reviewed any snack food abominations, today we will look at three EXTREME FOODS from the shelves of Japan's grocery stores.

First up is COFFEE MANIA!!!! These little one-cup coffee pouches are actually a cool (albeit environmentally unsound) idea. You just remove the the filter with built-in cardboard holder from its pouch, strap it to the top of your coffee cup, and pour hot water over it for a fresh cup of joe. Since the filter contains real, ground coffee, the end product is way better than instant. Perfect for those times when you want just one cup, and not a whole pot. I think what makes this particular product "maniacal" is that it contains roughly twice the amount of coffee grounds as the regular model, allowing you to make one very strong or two very weak cups of coffee.

Our next snack travesty is the ORIGINAL BIONIC LIFEGUARD CHOCO SNACK. Lifeguard is a popular (or at least common) energy drink in Japan. The drink offers consumers a massive caffeine dose, undefinable fruity/acidic flavor, and a neon green color that makes it look like something you'd find in a spray bottle with a poison-control hotline sticker on it. Now, imagine all these qualities transferred to a solid corn puff coated in white chocolate and sprinkled with Pop Rocks. Brain-meltingly bad.

Last but not least is Fruity Paradise flavored Natchan. Anyone who has spent any time in Japan knows Natchan. The innocently smiling bottles contain a relatively drinkable mixture of high fructose corn syrup and a tiny amount of real juice. Usually, Natchan sticks to conservatively descriptive names like "Orange" and "Grape", but it looks like someone at their marketing department got a bit carried away this season.

Fraud is fun!

2008-06-30T14:05:00.009+09:00

First, I gotta say, I love the Internet. Last night and this morning I got a couple of very strange messages on my cell. They seemed to be from a man in his 40s or 50s, talking very quickly. I really couldn't make out what he was saying... something about 回収 ("collection") and 早い段階 ("at an early stage"). Fortunately my phone showed me his number, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to Google it. If the guy was from a legit business and was calling from a business number, I reasoned, I should get a hit and be able to figure out what it was about.

I certainly got a hit... to this cached page from a disgruntled blogger warning people that someone with the same number had been trying to get him to pay a fictitious bill.

Unfortunately, this is not at all uncommon in Japan. Cases of phone fraud, in which fraudsters call unsuspecting people and demand that they wire money to a savings account are rampant. Fortunately, you'd have to be pretty thick to fall for most of their ploys, which include:

Pretending to be the victim's son/daughter and in need of money.

Demanding payment in connection with their cellular phone/Internet usage.

My favorite, claiming to be the police and telling the victim that their son/husband was caught groping a woman on a train, but that charges will be dropped if the victim wires them cash.

Anyway, I blocked the fraudulent phone number, so I probably won't be hearing from that guy again. And to my Japan buddies, if you get a suspicious call from XXX-XXXX-6671, I suggest you ignore it and block the caller too. Or answer and harangue him in your native language.

Fun with spaces

2008-06-16T14:49:00.003+09:00

Man, when I go out drinking with my guy buddies, there is nothing I like better than sitting around with them holding my COCK tail. And following a tough day at work it's nice to just sit back in my favorite chair and unwind by putting my lips on a tall, smooth COCK tail. I could slurp up COCK tails all day, I tell ya. I just feel more relaxed with a nice, firm COCK tail in my hand... Ok. I think this joke has run its course.

The drug-induced world of Japanese children's television

2008-05-15T09:17:00.007+09:00

Being a parent in Japan is great due to the sheer number of bizarre children's shows you get to watch with your kid. Really, I do not know how Japanese society stays so orderly when most of the population is weened on shows that were designed to scar them for life. Forget that pseudo-weird hipster Spongebob, this shit is on a whole other level. Here are a few of our favorites, courtesy of YouTube.

I got started on this line of thinking when my Welsh buddy inquired about the Kure Kure Takora DVD box set. Kure Kure Takora is a kid's show from the 70's featuring a greedy red octopus. In this infamous episode (censored by NHK according to Wikipedia!), the titular main character pretends to be insane in order to extract gifts from the other characters. When his ruse is unmasked, his victims beat him until he actually is a tad crazy.

Someone actually subtitled this, so you can follow the action! The "Algorithm Koushin" or sometimes "Algorithm Taisou" series has been on NHK's popular children's show Pythagoras Switch for years. I don't know how to describe it. It's a kind of comical line dance I guess. In each episode, the hosts get a group of poor schmucks to perform it with them. Usually they get office guys, probably there at the behest of their companies, but this one features Ninjas!

Now we enter the even stranger world of kiddie cartoons. In Japan, they get away with a lot more than you could in the US. Take Zenmai Zamurai, a series of shorts about a dead samurai resurrected as a human/clockwork hybrid who can sooth people by shooting possibly barbiturate-laced rice cakes into their mouths. This episode, in which Zenmai and his ninja pal Mamemaru go in search of buried treasure, features my favorite scene ever from a kid's cartoon --the main characters being chased down a tunnel by a giant ass.

Oden-kun is a cartoon with characters designed by popular author/illustrator Masaya Nakagawa (aka Lily Franky). All the characters live in a stew pot and are ingredients in a boiled dish called oden. As such, occasionally a giant pair of chop-sticks descends from the sky to take them away to be eaten. Oden-kun, the main character is a mochi kinchaku, which is an edible sack made of bean curd filled with mochi (pounded glutinous rice). He can scoop the sticky mochi out of his own head and use it for a variety of purposes. Although it is shown as part of what is ostensibly a kids show, Oden-kun often deals with the problems of adults in modern society. This episode, for example, deals with the tender love that blossoms between a block of tofu and a boiled octopus tentacle.

This series, titled Pants Pankurou, just freaks me out. I guess it is meant to encourage children during their toilet training phase, but the idea of a fully sentient, talkative toilet gives me the jim-jams. In this episode, after singing about the wonders of taking a nice morning dump, Pankurou discusses the ultimate fate of his excrement with the toilet. He decides that it probably goes to the "Unchi no Kuni" (nation of poop) where it will become the king of poop.

Yoko's car?

2008-05-05T06:53:00.005+09:00

This was parked in the lobby of one the buildings where I work. It seems to be part of some sort of roving VW promotional campaign. I am not sure how they got the car through those doors. Maybe it disassembles like a giant lego kit, or perhaps the movers just tilted it on its side and slid it through.

Blond ambition

2008-04-16T21:06:00.007+09:00

For a long time I have lead a double life. After quitting a job with a software company, I've worked variously covering game news for a magazine, passing out promotional packets of kleenex for NTT, and working in my university's computer lab. Since graduating, I've made ends meet by translating at home and (I am not proud of this) working at an eikaiwa --English conversation-- school a few days a week. Just to be clear, the eikaiwa scene is not about education here. It is a service industry, with a structure and pay scale similar to that of Japan's network of blow-job delivery places. Like the blow-job dispatchers, the main requirements are that you look ok, have good personal hygiene, and pay your own health insurance. Also while the pay isn't too bad, it is not really a job that breeds self-respect.

Anyway, one of the perks of the eikaiwa job is the weird fucking questions you get asked. I have been variously asked,in all seriousness, whether or not all Americans carry guns, whether or not America has seasonal weather variation, whether or not America has actual trees, and whether or not America has any insects. Of course I answered no to all questions, because, as is well-known, America is located on the surface of Mars. But this evening I had probably the best question ever. I was meeting some new students for the first time. After I mentioned I was from America and talked about my hometown in Washington state for a few minutes, one student asked me, "You're not American, right?"
"Err, yes. I am American," I said.
"Uso!" (you're lying!) she blurted out. "So, your parents came from somewhere else, right?"
"Uh, no. My family has lived in America for at least 200 years." I said.
After several more questions along this line, she finally admitted she was shocked because I didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. Somehow, she had made it to her 38th birthday believing that every single fucking American has blond hair and blue eyes. It took another 5-10 minutes to convince her that quite a few Americans in fact do not have blond hair and blue eyes. It took far less time to convince her that Americans have cloven hooves and peel their skin from their body at night to facilitate the ingestion of dryer lint.

I honestly do not know whether to laugh or jump in front of a train.

Escalation

2008-03-27T09:41:00.004+09:00

The Japanese have a reputation for being quiet and polite to absurd extremes. This, like all stereotypes, never applies all, or even most, of the time, but I saw something yesterday that reinforced it pretty strongly for me. Twice a week, I teach English in a nearby town, to which I commute by Shinkansen (aka bullet train). I had just gone through the ticket gate when I saw this guy lying on his back at the bottom of the escalator that leads to the train platform. It looked he was having a fit at first because he was kicking and flailing around like crazy.

I ran over and asked him if he was ok. He stuck his hand out and grunted "Hipatte kudasai!" ("Pull!"). I tried to help him up, but he wouldn't budge. Then there was a tearing sound, and it finally filters through my thick skull that he had somehow gotten his suit jacket caught in the escalator.

An elderly guy who had noticed by now and I helped him out of his jacket so he could stand up. A station attendant also appeared and shut off the escalator as we were getting him out of his jacket. What was really impressive to me was that when I first saw him he was trying his damnedest to get up without calling for help or otherwise inconveniencing his fellow commuters. In his place, I would have been screaming my freaking head off.

Anyway, by the time the poor dude was on his feet, I realized I only had about a minute before my train left, so I took off. I am pretty sure the guy also sprinted off to make his next connection too.

Un-American Bicycles

2008-03-10T19:45:00.004+09:00

Damn...it has been a good long while since a blog post. I just have not been finding a lot of cool/funny stuff to photo lately. Probably need to get out more. But spring is on us like a drunk oyaji at an izakaya, and with temperatures finally soaring into the double digits (centigrade) I have been able to venture out on my bicycle more. To my great confusion, the below sign has been posted on every single telephone pole along a street in my neighborhood.

My bicycle is left? I don't really get it since my bicycle has never expressed any particular political affiliation. Oh well. Maybe they know something I don't about bicycles and secret meetings at docks.

In other news, electronic music gods Mercer Friendly, incorporated the monja pic from my previous post into an illustration for one of their tunes. They tell me: "I wanted you to know that we appropriated your monjayaki picture for the six demon 1 render -- the monjayaki is texture mapped on the globules under the hair." I feel so honored I don't know what to say! Check out the globules, and the great tune here...OR DIE!!!!!

Breakfast of champions

2008-01-14T22:52:00.000+09:00

No, this is not a patch of pavement outside a Roppongi bar on a Saturday morning. It is a Japanese dish called monjayaki. I am introducing it as part of my effort to disabuse Westerners of their stereotype of Japan as a culinary utopia where every dish is low calorie and aesthetically perfect. Some of Japan's foods rival those of the UK both health and appearance-wise. Monjayaki is one such dish. It is basically a lot of chopped cabbage and other filler swimming in a slurry of watery batter. It is fried on a griddle, but never quite solidifies. One scrapes it up with tiny metal spatulas and eats it (or caulks windows with it -works either way). Its flavor is hard to describe. Kind of like sludgy, half-cooked, savory pancake batter with chunks. For those of you with no access to a monja restaurant, you could easily recreate it at home with, well, sludgy, half-cooked, savory, chunky pancake batter.

A Hard Sell

2007-12-29T21:06:00.000+09:00

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?

The Mystery of Santa's Balls Solved!

2007-11-05T21:42:00.000+09:00

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.

The other white meat

2007-09-01T23:45:00.001+09:00

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.

C'est bon!

2007-08-21T13:38:00.001+09:00

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.

Obon? Bon!!!

2007-08-15T15:22:00.000+09:00

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.

A tasty nosehair sandwich

2007-08-10T07:17:00.000+09:00

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.

Money Shot

2007-07-18T15:01:00.000+09:00

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.

Spend some quality time with your socks

2007-05-08T13:42:00.000+09:00

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.

News Flash!

2007-04-27T07:21:00.000+09:00

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.

What could possibly go wrong?

2007-04-20T13:28:00.000+09:00

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?

Enjoying That Retirement?

2007-04-16T08:20:00.000+09:00

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.

Your Job Does Not Suck Compared to this Guy's

2007-03-17T16:35:00.000+09:00

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.

Flaming Chocolate Goodness

2007-03-02T12:49:00.000+09:00

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.

Sweet Hooha

2007-02-21T17:29:00.000+09:00

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.

Randy Ransels

2007-02-06T13:42:00.000+09:00

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.

A brief cultural moment

2006-11-04T07:58:00.000+09:00

Yamatonokuni takes a break from the normal fare of toilet humor to bring you this cultural moment.
It was a gorgeous fall day, so I was at the river bank instructing my daughter on the finer points of playing your GameBoy while shutting out the intrusive sounds of nature. Suddenly this elderly guy cruised in on his bicycle. He pulled out an actual Mongolian horse-head fiddle (see detail) and started playing it. After awhile he began to do some honest-to-god Mongolian throat singing. It was interesting...I believe one of my college roommates explained to me that in throat-singing the performer actually sings entire chords, albeit with a limited range (somewhere between dirge and funeral march). Very cool stuff to hear live.

The gentleman in question is from Mongolia and is studying here in Japan. He's been studying Japanese for only a few years, but speaks more fluently than I do after 10.
It's funny...panhandling...er...sorry..."busquing" is not really practiced here. While in the US, this guy would probably have been buried under a hail of nickels and quarters, here he gets only the odd question. Fortunately he seems to be actually doing it for practice, not money. Playing outside is probably his only option (many apartments here ban the use of any kind of instrument inside).

Anyway, just thought it was a share-worthy scene. The drone of the fiddle and throat singing drifting across the river in the hazy autumn air, happy kids playing in the grass, and a creepy middle-aged guy wandering around clutching and talking to his cat. It was a random collision of cultures, age groups, and weirdoes that kind of nicely sums up urban Japan. Equal parts tranquility, tradition (both native and imported) and strange lonely people who may or may not be psychopaths.

Three-pack of deliciousness

2006-10-20T13:54:00.000+09:00

It's been awhile, so today's update will have 35% more real juice.
Today is cell phone memory card cleaning day. Looking over scene after horrifying scene cataloging my mind-numbing, anonymous life recorded for posterity by my phone-camera, I found a couple of images that had a common thread: food marketing catastrophes. The four or so of you who frequent this site already know that horrible Japanese snack food is something of a hobby for me. Those of you new to the site can check out the pineapple lozenges of death, a nice pepper flavored pudd, and this cheerfully racist bread snack to get up to speed.

Specimen A (NesCafe Sparkling Cafe): Sweetened, carbonated coffee is exactly what you'd get when a well-meaning, earnest young marketing guy sits down in Starbucks on a hot summer day and thinks "boy, why hasn't anyone integrated the richness of coffee with the refreshment of a carbonated beverage?" Because it would be a complete fucking catastrophe, that's why.

Specimen B (Macadamia Big Nuts): Would you like to try my Big Salty...oh never mind.

Specimen C (High Cacao chocolate bar): The punchy catchphrase on this chocolate bar reads "There is no accounting for taste, so choose your own. Experiencing deliciousness made me a slave to taste." Experiencing this virtually unsweetened slab of cocoa mass made me a slave to wanting to swill out my mouth with heavy cream and raw sugar. It also made me a slave to wanting my 103 yen back. It reminded me of when I was six and tried to eat a brick of that incredibly bitter baking chocolate that looks deceptively like a candy bar. Come to think of it, I did the same thing again last week.

Beast your meat!

2006-09-27T14:02:00.000+09:00

This image is dedicated to all you MBM fans out there. I'm still looking for the probably one tiny shop in Japan that carries this shirt.

I'd like to think Jack Dangers would love this.

Why is Bambi adjacent to Emmanuelle VI?

2006-09-11T10:00:00.000+09:00

If you need any further proof that "common sense" is a totally arbitrary, culturally-specific construct, look no further than this arrangement of vids at a major Japanese rental chain in my city. Not only are the family/children's movies adjacent to the "erotic" titles, but the skin flicks are actually on a lower shelf, making them accessible to even the tiniest of tots. I bet parents have way more trouble prying their 11 year-old sons away from the kiddie vid section here than in my country. "Just a second mom…I wanna check out the backs of a few more of these...uh…'Dora the Explorer' films…"

Fall Fashions

2006-09-10T09:04:00.000+09:00

Today we introduce you to the latest creation from Chanel's Japan Fall Lineup. This ravishing headpiece was designed by Reiko "Ikakusai" Kubokawa, and embodies her simple work ethic :" I don't need any particular process or action. I need to be in a situation where there are no obligations or restraints." The hat consist of carefully selected 2kg octopi. They are arranged on the customers head, and held in place by affixing the animal's natural suckers to the scalp.

It was pointed out by a member of the press at the hat's unveiling that if the wearer gets a little peckish, she can just nibble on a dangling tentacle. This idea was dismissed by Ms. Kubokawa, who claimed that any interruptions in the "graceful natural taper of the octopus tentacles" would "ruin the aesthetic flow of the hat."

These hats are recommended for cool, or even sub-zero weather.

For the ladies (er...and some of you guys too)

2006-08-23T16:30:00.000+09:00

Feast your eyes on this supple, young flesh:

I guess there are just two things I want to emphasize here. First, despite the abundance of healthy young lads in sailor suits on the cover, this is not a gay porn magazine. It is the Japanese version of TV Guide. This is the main reason I never know what's going to be on TV. Second, what the hell do you call this kind of photography? Shots of hot chicks in swimwear are collectively labeled cheesecake, and photos of muscular dudes posing seminude are beefcake. But these guys are neither chicks nor beefy. Uh... twigcake? Chickencake?

For those interested, these guys are from a boy idol band called Kat-tun and their combined talent might be enough to fill the reservoir tip on a "snug fit" condom. They are managed by confirmed pedophile Johnny Kitagawa. If you require more information, they have an extensive Wikipedia page. Knock yourself out. The Wiki entry on Kitagawa is pretty funny too. What does it cover? His molestation charges. Anything else? Nope, just molestation.

Japanese women can outrun a speeding locomotive...leap tall buildings in a single bound...

2006-08-12T10:49:00.000+09:00

Speaking of stereotypes, I saw this funny book at our local foreign book seller.

Now, I can understand where some people would get that impression. You come to Japan, and suddenly you're surrounded by skinny young chicks. Actually, it's just that the old fat women are too intimidated by the young skinny ones to ever leave their homes, giving the false impression that the better half of the Japanese race is immune to the ravages of time and ice cream eaten in bed at two in the morning while watching Cracker...er...not that the author knows of such debauchery.

As counter-evidence to this book's title, I submit this photo of Japanese "psychic" Hosoki Kazuko. As you will note, she is both old and fat. She does, however, offer lots of great advice to young skinny chicks. For example, "shut up and get back in the kitchen, bitch." She is 23 in the photo -she is now around 40 and looks a lot like Emperor Palpatine, with huge folds of wrinkly skin sagging from her jowls. It's kind of hard to tell from this face shot, but she weighs upward of 900 pounds and has to be wheeled around on a special motorized platform. She regularly crushes defenseless puppy-dogs and small children under its merciless treads. I don't care for her TV show.

This almost made Mr. K cry

2006-06-24T18:27:00.000+09:00

Holy Jim Crow era stereotypes Batman! Shoei Bread's "Southern Country Black Bread" is yet another example of Japanese snack-food marketing gone horribly wrong. (BTW, in Japan 'black bread' refers to bread made with molasses, not that dense German stuff that facilitates pooping.) My pal Mr. Kura took one look at the picaninny caricature on the package and said "dude, that is so mean" before devouring the bread because he was pretty hungry.

No gay burgers!

2006-06-11T07:58:00.000+09:00

Activist liberal fast food shops are intent on destroying the institution of hamburgers as being between one beef patty and one bun, with optional lettuce, tomato, onions, processed American cheese and pickle. Some restaurants are fruiting up our burgers with condiments such as aged cheddar, ginger sauce, green chili, chutney and avocado. The most egregious of the radical liberals even replace the patty with soy products. I was therefore relieved to see Japanese fast food chain Lotteria fighting back against these activists with its "Straight Burger" campaign. This is a clarion call to action! I hope that those of you who cherish family values will urge your local fast food outlets to emulate Lotteria in taking a stand for traditional hamburgers.

A return to cultural sophistication

2006-06-05T08:58:00.000+09:00

I know it has been a quantifiable assload of time since the last post, but I was doing some deep reflective soul searching. Is this blog really about all that is lewd and unseemly in Japan -blowjob jokes and food sodomy? As a self-proclaimed "Japanoblog" do I not owe my millions (by which I mean 4) readers cultural insights, comparative analysis and hard-hitting critiques of the white imperial colonialism that is the yoke around modern Asia's neck? Is it not time to lay aside the childish sexual innuendo for something more lofty and universal? By thunder, YES! Hence, starting today we turn over a new leaf of sophistication and cultural sensitivity at Yamatonokuni.

But first let me show you this picture of a humorously named Vietnamese coffee I found at our local import store.

It consists of 100% pure Robusta, which is to coffee what a kick in the face is to not having a nosebleed, or what happoshu is to beer. If you are actually foolish enough to use it to make coffee, it tastes kind of like pencil shavings boiled in motor oil with a hint of Febreeze. OK, it's not that bad, but if you let it sit too long it starts to smell like burning tire.

A Titilating Development

2006-04-10T13:20:00.000+09:00

As a TIT alum, this headline from the English edition of Japan’s prestigious Daily Yomiuri reminded me how much I admire the TIT faculty. They’re firm, yet perky and accessible teachers who command their pupils’ interest. How I miss my college days, when I could give my undivided attention to TIT and could spend days and days contemplating TIT’s magnificent facilities. Sadly, TIT has been squeezed and pulled by numerous administrative issues leading to sagging performance and drooping enrollment numbers. However, I’m sure students will be lining up for this new TIT Examination and TIT will once again bulge with intellectual endeavors and gush torrents of piping-hot new ideas.

Wanna make $5?

2006-04-09T19:43:00.000+09:00

Happy B-Day to the Love Doctor! OK, he’s not technically a doctor yet, but that is basically a done deal as his dissertation is going to be so tight and sexy that ivy-league dons will regularly attempt to mate with it. In addition to his academic prowess, the Love Doctor’s mere presence has tripled or possibly quadrupled the number of female students applying to our department. Don't bother asking me to forward your propositions to him though...he's already hitched up.

Dr. Dre would be proud

2006-03-29T15:34:00.000+09:00

Vandalism in this country cracks me up. I love the fact that whoever defaced this official police phone box was too polite to actually write directly on the box, choosing to write his views on a sticker instead. Seriously though, what did the constabulary do to cheese this rogue sticker-affixer off? In my ten years of living here I think I’ve seen a cop actually on patrol maybe once. How can the man oppress the masses when he’s playing mah-jongg on his GameBoy in his police box?

Loose firey bowels

2006-02-22T11:20:00.000+09:00

Ah Japan, ye land of weird ass snack foods. No sooner was the ink dry on the pudding blurb then I remembered this piece of work. These Karamucho sugarless candies are flavored with zesty artificial pineapple and .03 mg of RAW CAPSAICIN. The package warns that ingesting too many may cause “loose bowels".

Creme de la horreur

2006-02-20T15:40:00.000+09:00

Meito’s creamy Kuro Koshou no Kaori pudding begs the question: wtf? Essentially, a crème caramel pudding, but with a horrible, horrible twist. Yes, that is a fucking pepper grinder on the peel-away top. What they thought a hint of black pepper would add to this dessert is anyone’s guess. I suppose if you can’t decide between a nice pudd and a thick, peppery steak, you’re in luck.

The trees will save you!

2006-02-15T01:49:00.000+09:00

In the city where I live, a suicidal maniac plowed his truck into a pedestrian-only shopping arcade killing several people last April. The city was shocked and outraged. The local government’s solution was to stick a couple of potted trees in front of the arcade entrances because, obviously, no-one would drive their vehicle into a planter that may or may not weigh more than 50 lbs. Then, in December it happened again. A different psycho decided to take a spin down the pedestrian arcade. Amazingly no one was killed. This time, the government sprang to attention like the steely cock of Johnny Kitagawa upon spying a 13 year-old boy and proceeded to…ADD　MORE　FUCKING　PLANTERS! I finally got around to checking out their handiwork last week. Here is a picture of the impenetrable barrier that was erected to protect us all from crazy assholes. I’m so glad I pay my taxes.

Asadachi!

2006-02-01T22:39:00.001+09:00

Ahh...sunrise over the hood. Today's Japanese lesson: asadachi. Comprised of "asa" (morning) and "tachi" (to 'stand up'). The same condition is commonly referred to as "morning wood" in my native country.

loliconomics

2006-01-27T12:17:00.000+09:00

I may as well just change this blog’s name to “lolicontracker” or something like that, because approx. 90% of the material is going to be me ranting about the pervasiveness of the loliphenomenon in mainstream Japan. “You’re overreacting. We all know that loliculture is relegated to a few middle-aged otaku huddling in their parents’ houses jerking off to reverse import La Blue Girl DVDs, right?” I wish. Those guys, at least, have the decency to stay the fuck out of sight. The larger issue is that you literally cannot walk through a bookstore without being visually sodomized by loliriffic imagery. If you don’t believe me look at this.

Hmm…anime drawing of 9 year-old girl proffering glimpse of immaculate white panties? I must have wandered into the curtained-off manga section again. What? I’m in the econ/finance section?! I know it’s hard to market books on economic theory, especially when you’re specifically targeting the pedophile demographic, but did they really have to go there? Maybe I’m turning into a western-morality Nazi, but come on. A modicum of decorum, if you please.

Free market

2006-01-15T21:39:00.000+09:00

Unbridled capitalism, it’s argued, will eventually lead to everything being commoditized and assigned a monetary value. Japan perhaps makes the strongest case for this theory. There is a niche retail market here for just about everything including spit, feces and teddy bears modeled on Korean soap opera heartthrobs. I just hope this store isn't selling what I think it is.

Worrying and Start

2006-01-08T22:50:00.000+09:00

In Japan pretty much all books, be they Japanese or foreign, are fitted with a little paper wrap tucked around the dust jacket. These generally bear large, eye-catching marketing phrases, like “10 MILLION COPIES SOLD” or “CONTAINS GRAPHIC QUADRUPLE FISTING ACTION” (as in the case of the book partially visible on the far left). However, the positioning of these marketing wrappers can lead to comical results, as I found in our local Maruzen. The Japanese slogan printed on the wrap reads “OPENS PATHS”…

Abeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebah!!!!

2006-01-08T01:21:00.000+09:00

You see some odd advertisements in Japanese train stations. This one purports to be advertising a sort of night-school for computer illiterates who want to learn how to write in kusachu or whatever. However, I think it’s obvious from the picture that all three of the models are getting blowjobs. This probably also explains why it’s shot from the waist up. Needless to say, the guy on left is furiously shooting his wad even as the woman (?) in center nears the peak of her climax. The woman on right is clearly the most uptight of the group, and therefore just smiles politely and fiddles with her scarf thing while her partner earnestly, but somewhat clumsily, attends to her clitoris. The blue letters at the bottom of the ad are a direct translation of Robbie Williams’ immortal lyrics: “Get your rocks off Get your rocks off, honey Shake it now now Get’em off downtown.”

Splashguard not included

2006-01-07T18:15:00.000+09:00

There’s a Japanese verb, gaman suru, which roughly means “to put up with all kinds of outrageous crap because to do so is considered a virtue by your culture”. I think this row of urinals perfectly exemplifies the Japanese spirit of gaman. At some point, a handicapped-accessible stall was installed directly in front of the last urinal, leaving approximately 10 inches of room for the user. Nothing says gaman like cramming yourself into a tiny crevice and urinating on yourself due to splash damage from a rediculously positioned commode. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to wedge myself in for a piss.

Ho ho ho!

2005-12-25T13:52:00.000+09:00

I and Santa's enormous pale scrotum wish you all a very merry Christmas!
(Full body shot can be seen here)

Bypass

2005-11-15T18:24:00.000+09:00

Eh. No sarcastic commentary today. Just a shot of this bypass that I thought was kind of cool. The Japanese love of nature may be greatly exaggerated in the West, but they do know how to make scenic highways.

Drought

2005-11-10T22:16:00.000+09:00

Today's post has nothing to do with Japan. I just wanted to post this picture of the desolate, barren, lifeless surface of mars...

...to give y'all an idea of what my sex life is like (^o^)

Bad Santa, Bad!

2005-11-07T16:48:00.000+09:00

Man, please tell me those aren't Santa's big, bouncy white balls dangling out there in the open air. I was with my daughter when we espied this inflated Santy in a shopping arcade. I didn't know whether to say "Ooooh, look! It's Santa-san!" or "COVER YOUR EYES! LOOK AWAY!"

Hair Dryer Poised to Make Housewives Wetter

2005-10-29T09:43:00.000+09:00

Gentlemen, behold! The Matsushita “Nanoe Minus Ion” dryer! For those who have been living in the outer reaches of the Hindu Kush, minus (aka negative) ions are a snake oil cure-all for everything from stinky rooms to grumpiness here in Japan. Having not lived in the West for about 9 years, I’m not sure if this trend is big elsewhere or not, but here one can buy exorbitantly priced home negative-ion generators, negative-ion producing jewelry, and negative ion computer peripherals for the health-conscious geek. But what are these Nonoe Ions? According to the description of the Matsushita “Nanoe Minus Ion” hairdryer:

“Low acidity ‘Nanoe Ions’ are carried in the electric currents contained in water and are produced through cutting edge technology. Compared to regular ‘minus ions’ they contain 1000 times more moisture. This dryer produces ‘Nanoe Ions’ from its built-in 4cc water tank and injects them into the center of your damaged hair…”

Wow…so this dryer actually makes your hair wetter than it was before? I guess that justifies the JPY 14,000 (about US $120) price tag. What other items need Minus Nanoe Ion technology to inject more moisture into dry, neglected body parts? Post your ideas in the comments section (or not).

B-day Shoutout!!!

2005-10-23T11:07:00.000+09:00

A HUGE b-day shoutout to our MAIN FUCKING MAN Mr. Kura! An even bigger Japan geek than yours truly, this guy knows more kanji than your average kokugo professor, but is so humble about it you'd never notice until you realized he was calmly sitting next to you on the subway reading something written in the 1750s without a dictionary!
Otanjobi Omedeto! Try not to hack anyone's head off this year (you will NOT get the Quickening that way, despite what you've seen on Highlander...I know, I've tried!)

PS. If you want a B-day greeting, tell me when your freakin' birthday is!!

Phat Photo Phiesta

2005-10-21T22:07:00.000+09:00

Ok, I'm not trying to muscle in on turf so thoroughly tread by Engrish.com, but this week had me diving for my phone. Again, we are reminded that the true value of phone cameras is that they allow us to photograph other cultures for the purpose of ridiculing them.

First up, when was the last time your beverage promised to make you both a hero AND a leader? At only JPY 105 (a mere 2.03971 Brazilian Reais), this seemed like a steal. A strong 'nose' of glass-cleaner, a vaguely antifreeze-like 'attack', and an 'aftertaste' of oaky kidney trauma characterize this year's vintage of Osotspa M-150.

Ahh... now this little shop made me nostalgic for the days when you could ride into a sleepy rural Japanese village, pick up a few dozen strapping peasant girls, take them to Saitama, and pay them $2.75 a month to live in prison-like dormitories alternately wringing silk threads out of worm asses and tossing salad for the pervy managers.

Unerfahren Parken ist Verboten

2005-10-15T08:01:00.000+09:00

I ducked into a mall to grab a bottle of iced coffee and came out to discover the bicycle Gestapo screwing with my ride. Apparently these guys get paid to hang around in front of the store, straightening the rows of parked bicycles, motorbikes, and scooters. I’d locked my aging Giant to a bike-rack in the designated area, assuming everything was kosher. Not so. They explained that my trusty steed (not pictured here) was facing the wrong direction, so they had no choice but to wrestle it around, chained as it was to the rack, lest the world implode. I unchained my bicycle for them, flipped it around to face the ‘right’ way, and they were happy. Only in Japan.

In all seriousness, there is a need for guys like this here. The average bicyclist/scooterist in this country has parking habits that can only be described as barbaric. You find bicycles and even motorcycles parked in the middle of sidewalks, in front of fire-exits, and on top of the elderly. Worse still, a lot of people seem fond of abandoning their unwanted velocipedes pretty much wherever suits their fancy. I wish the major train stations in this city would employ a couple of guys like this to keep the entrances a bit clearer. But those hats have got to go man.

The twofold nature of this biscuit…

2005-10-07T09:26:00.000+09:00

Granted this is only amusing if you a) read katakana, b) know the cultural context, but it kind of ties in with the previous post, so I’ll attempt to explain it.

The name of this snack can be transliterated as either ‘white rollita’, in reference to the shape of the snack (which is a sort of a twisted, white-chocolate covered biscuit), or ‘white Lolita’, in reference to the literary classic by Vladimir Nabokov. This pun is fully appreciable in Japanese and is probably intentional. The expression ‘Lolita Complex’, or ‘Lolicon’ as it’s known in the lingua vulgaris was imported long ago, although the Japanese pronunciation is rendered as “roreetah konpurekusu” (or rohreekon, if you prefer).

Lolicon is the commonly used euphemism for adult males who display a bit too much enthusiasm for young girls. Rather than being frowned upon, as in the West, the ‘Lolicon’ is treated as a huge marketing opportunity, with prepubescent pop-stars like Morning Musume (whose members are periodically replaced to keep the average age of the group somewhere around 12 and whose concerts attract droves of middle-aged men) to glossy ‘gravure’ photo-albums that depict girls from ages 10 and up, posing in bikinis (books that would probably get you pulled aside and flogged if you tried to bring them through customs in most Western countries). I guess I could inject a little self-righteous Western moralizing here, but there’s far too much of that out there already. Suffice it to say I plan to get my daughter out of this country as soon as I finish grad school.

More Than Meets the Eye

2005-10-03T18:30:00.000+09:00

There go all my sweet childhood memories shot to Hell. Until recently I pined for the days when my biggest problem was completing my Constructicon collection so I could form them into that big motherf**ker, but this was cured, instantly, upon viewing the above. According to the info card that came with this incredibly disturbing figurine (which my wife brought home for some unfathomable reason), the Lolita in the Autobot hat is named ‘Ai-chan’ and she’s a virtual hologram that administers Cybertron. So we have a naked, underage hologram bathing with, inexplicably, a Sharkticon between her thighs. What really hammers home the creepiness though is the peeking-tom Optimus Prime in the background.

Anyone who’s spent any time at all in Japan knows this country has serious pedophilia issues to work through, but damn! I’d hoped those issues would keep their slimy, schoolgirl-violating tentacles away from childhood nostalgia. I gotta shower. I feel soiled.

I SAID, HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY 8 LITTLE BALLS, MR. GARRISON?

2005-10-02T09:11:00.000+09:00

I saw a young mum, kids in tow, wearing this t-shirt the other day. Disconcertingly, one of her toddlers had a matching shirt.

Yo! Bum rush the show!

2005-10-01T01:34:00.000+09:00

Ah, Japan! Land of frank advertising. One of my favorite advertisements ever, this huge, illuminated sign, located in a major subway station, is the epitome of taste. The soothing green leaves serve as an elegant frame for the text, which reads:

KIKUTA PROCTOLOGICAL CLINIC

Now that's class, that is.

The Sausage of My Despondency

2005-09-22T09:53:00.000+09:00

Japan has some screwed up convenience store food. The most starkly horrifying of these are the strange snack-breads, which despite containing corn, mayo, and/or meat products, require no refrigeration whatsoever. Suspiciously cheap, and apparently impervious to spoiling, these things scare the crap out of me. Let's look at two case studies.

1. The Pork Sausage Roll
A lengthy pork wiener slathered in mustard and ketchup on a white bread bun. It can kick around inside your backpack for several of July's hottest days, and still remain edible. Yoiks!

2. The Pork Dumpling Roll
Looks like an innocent sesame roll, but open it up and whoa! There's some kind of greasy, meaty patty in there. Like the Pork Sausage Roll, it requires no refrigeration.

Are these things irradiated, or simply loaded with more preservatives than Lenin’s corpse? Either way, they are a sin against God and all that’s holy and natural.

10/15/2005: I forgot the punchline, which should have read "...but I still can't seem to stop eating the fuckers."

Coffee with that?

2005-09-17T00:11:00.000+09:00

Man, urban Japan is awash in SEX, and odd little semi-seedy, semi-respectable streets litter this fine nation. Adjacent to a building housing a fetish underwear shop on the first floor and strip clubs on the second, you find a definitely non-fetish shoe shop run by a saintly white haired granny. In the dead center of a residential area, crammed with immaculate vinyl-sided homes and stucco apartments, a hard-core porn shop might open, right between the neighborhood 7-11 and the barber where mom gets her hair permed.

It was in a neighborhood such as this that I found the Starbox Image Club. It appears to be some sort of cosplay strip-joint, though I was not willing to risk my marriage by going in and confirming this. I’m not sure which aspect of the logo I liked best -the brazen co-optation of one of America’s flagship brands of hegemony, the double meaning of the word ‘box’, or the likelihood that the proprietor was oblivious to this double meaning.

Smack my konnyaku up

2005-09-13T15:36:00.000+09:00

Greetings, and welcome to the first installment of Yamatonokuni. This blog shall attempt to thrust a small, unwelcome flashlight into the inadequately lubricated orifices of a major Japanese population center for the enlightenment, amusement, and hopefully unmasked terror, of any audience it accrues. Today we turn our attentions to an area of Japanese culture sadly neglected by many Western scholars: food sex.

Konnyaku (above photo shows a typical example) is a rubbery Japanese staple made from the starch of an exceptionally unaesthetic potato called devil’s tongue or sometimes Konjac. This almost entirely flavorless food has a history of over 2000 years, contains zero carbs, few calories, and has the highest molecular weight of any fiber known to science. But what is the point of developing a highly refined starch-based food product if you can’t screw it?

Case study:
According to my informant, ‘Mr. A’, any block of konnyaku jelly of sufficient size can be swiftly adapted for nefarious purposes. Mr. A kindly divulged the preferred technique of konnyaku-based gratification.

WARNING: (as of yet) UNTESTED BY AUTHOR. AUTHOR TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR BURNS, DEATH, GENITAL INJURY OR RIDICULE RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

Ingredients:
1 block konnyaku*
1 small dried sardine**
hot water

Directions:
1. Use a paring knife or other suitable instrument to make a hole of appropriate size in center of konnyaku block. Do not to pierce konnyaku all the way through.
2. Drop konnyaku block into hot water.
3. Heat 1~2 minutes, until konnyaku is precisely human body temperature (98.6 F or 37.0 C –use a candy or meat thermometer to ascertain temperature).
DO NOT OVERHEAT KONNYAKU. RISK OF INJURY, INFERTILITY, HILARITY.
4. Use disposable chopstick, etc. to insert sardine into the bottom of hole made in step 1.
5. Lubricate to taste and utilize.***

*Prior measurement to assure block is of adequate size and thickness strongly recommended.

**Interestingly, according to Mr. A the dried sardine is for the purpose of adding a realistic “barrier”, and not for, ah... olfactory stimulation (as one might initially assume).

***Post-coital disposal is another matter altogether. We may note here that konnykau is a popular filler for many kinds of soups, stewed vegetable dishes and stir-fry in Japan.

09/28/05 Clarification: Man, I completely forgot to specify...this particular means of recreation is meant solely for MALE users. Sorry to all those confused lady readers who wrote in ("...OK, I've made a hole and stuffed the sardine down there. Now what? The thing seems too squarish to be of any use..." etc.) I do apologize and shall do more research into whatever the female equivalent of "Konnyakubation" may entail.