Remember those stories about marooned Japanese airmen who never found out that WWII ended, so they continued to prepare for an American invasion of some remote rock in the Pacific?
OK, maybe that was just a particularly offensive episode of Gilligan's Island.
Still, you have to wonder about the speed of news after peeping this magazine I spotted in Japantown today:
And a sweet Engrish cover line to boot.
Okay, last batch from Rangelife in Japan:
1. This is the single greatest horror show of a menu I've ever seen. If you order all of them and mix them in a cauldron, you get a mean impotence curse potion.
My favorite product sold in Japan, the Jumbo Mimi Ball:
Yes, it's a squishy rubber boobie. But the best part is the detail of the display box:
For age 5 and up.
Do not taunt Jumbo Mimi Ball.
[Rangelife in Japan: third in a series.]
The Japanese don't just love blacks, they love English. They love it so much, they spray it randomly all over everything. This wonderful phenomenon has developed into a rich and subtle dialect known as "Engrish." (See Engrish.com for an indispensible documentation.)
Here are some more contributions to the compilation of the neo-language. As always, click on a pic to make it big.
Click below for more...
Continue reading "Engrish: The Most Elegant Language in the World" »
Note: This is the first of several posts of my favorite pictures from Japan. I've now added a "Japan" category. Yippee.
Although a deeply homogenous society that seems simultaneously fascinated and distrustful of gaijin, the Japanese love black people! Here's the photographic evidence:
1. I hope they mean R&B and not black metal.
Click below to see more...
Ten observations in ten days from an alien in Japan. All may be written off as highly ignorant, if you're the type of sod who thought Lost in Translation was "lost in racism" because it pointed out that Japanese and American cultures are different.
1. The streets and sidewalks are marvelously clean, but you can smoke and throw your butt anywhere.
2. All television shows seem to take place in a live studio with 10-60 people on camera. They also feature lots of close-ups of food and words all over the screen.
3. Just try to find a way to dry your hands in the bathroom. Paper towels are not a thing here.
4. Fruit is packaged and sold as a luxury good. You want a pear? It will be the size of a softball, wrapped in lacy paper, and cost about $6. You want rice balls? You got 'em.
5. The mainstream boy culture is the same as that of the American nerd fringe. A local 20-something who spent a few years in elementary school in New Jersey explained it to me in a bar in Urawa: "In New Jersey, my mom was always making me play outside. In Japan, there's no place to go play outside. So we play video games."
6. The subway and train systems are marvels of efficiency and effectiveness, but moving around a station requires a bewildering negotiation of hundreds of stairs going in all directions. I would hate to be in a wheelchair here. That said, the trains are sooooo on-time here. 3:02 means freaking 3:02. And, just like they don't in the US, Japanese don't wait for people to exit before entering.
7. I am 6 foot, 2 inches, 190 pounds. That makes me monstrously large.
8. I can't detect any significant element of criminality. While local and national media is all abuzz about a random freeway shooting earlier the week, not a single situation has seemed even mildly menacing yet. Few people bother to lock their bikes or even their cars. And even the homeless people in the park look clean and self-respecting.
9. Japan TV news has been reporting heavily on the American hurricanes and the human disasters that followed. Everybody wants to talk to me about it. It's the biggest American PR disaster since Abu Ghraib.
10. The most popular sport in Japan is the combined at-bats and pitching appearances by Hideki Matsui, Ichiro Suzuki, and three other players in America.
Back next weekend.
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