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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A brief cultural moment

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

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!

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?

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

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)

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...

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

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!

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

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

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.