Author: Justin

They are known as lawsuit guitars because they are of such good quality (often matching or even surpassing the original Fenders and Gibsons they replicate), that:

Around 1981, though, Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker and a few other US guitar manufacturers got their hands on some “lawsuit” guitars made in Japan and quickly threatened to sue when they saw how exact the Japanese replicas really were. The Japanese replica-making guitar manufacturers were forced to stop making these “copy” guitars around 1983.

There are still tons of these guitars around if you search the used guitar shops and pawn shops, although some of the more famous models outprice the American equivalents they were originally based on!
Read more about the lawsuit guitars on this site.

Did someone forgot to take their meds?

In the essay titled “Killing Kittens” in the newspaper’s Aug. 18 evening edition, Bando, 48, wrote that she owns three pet cats and throws their kittens off the cliff near her house on the South Pacific island of Tahiti whenever they give birth to any.
“I am fully aware what severe criticism I may face if I write this,” she says at the outset of the essay. “I will probably be condemned as a savage by animal lovers around the world, and people may say I am violating the animal protection law. Knowing this, I confess I am killing kittens.”
Bando writes that although she had considered having her cats sterilized she has not done so, because she thinks that having sex when they are on heat and giving birth to offspring is what “life” is all about for a female cat.
“I have doubts about simply depriving them of their essential life for simply for the convenience of humans,” she says.

(link to full article)
She has doubts about depriving her cats of “life” for her own convenience, but has no qualms about doing the same to kittens? It takes a special kind of crazy to see the logic here, I’m guessing.
So the real question is: Is this just a stunt to revitalize book sales, or is this banzai cliff bitch really that crazy? I vote for the former, because the statement “knowing this, I confess I am killing kittens” is just too perfect – it’s designed to provoke a response. Like a book burning.

I came across this fascinating article over at the website of the Japan Policy Research Institute: A Wild Start: Okinawa in the 1970s
Excerpts:

“Gate Two Street and BC Street in Koza City was where the best wide-open bar district action was, except for the majority of Afro-American servicemen. Some of those guys did party with us Euro-American and Latino-American servicemen and go bar hopping with us, but most GI Soul Brothers stuck to “The Bush.”
The Bush was an all black environment. The Soul Brothers had nearly completely segregated themselves out of all the other bar districts on The Rock a long time before I got there.
Oh, that probably isn’t correct. I bet that they had been segregated out of the light-skinned GI’s bar districts way back in the beginning of American troop occupation of the island. Then the black guys had liked what they were left with, because they had made themselves a place of their own that fit their lifestyles and cultural tastes, so they kept it.”

and:

“Only Okinawans worked in the civilian bars on The Rock. In a Gate Two/BC Street type of A-Sign bar, there were bartenders, bar bouncers and doormen who were all good at fighting Karate style. When a fight started in an A-Sign bar, between a GI, or GIs, and one of the Okinawans working there, if the GI, or GIs, didn’t give up, back off and get the hell out of there real quick, or get knocked unconscious right away, the unfortunate GIs got the crap Karate kicked out of them by some, or all, of the Okinawan men working in that bar. If any of the fighting occurred outside a bar, then the bouncers and doormen from the other bars in the immediate area came over and jumped into the action and backed up their brethren Okinawans; that way any other GIs in the immediate area would be discouraged from jumping in on the side of the unfortunate GIs. If any GI got knocked on the ground by the bouncers, then the Okinawans all took turns kicking the poor guy.”

and:

“When the bar, brothel, massage parlor girls were eighteen years old, after studying hard during twelve years of going to school, six days a week, for eleven months a year, life as they had known it was over. If any girl ran away from the mamasan/papasan, who held her in bonded servitude, the Okinawan cops went and fetched her back. It’s a small island, after all: where was she going to hide for long?”

Go read the whole thing.
………………
Actually the thing that drew me into the article to begin with was the mention of the Asapen Spotmatic camera. I borrowed one off of Nam’s dad for a while (he left it at her place when he came to visit her at Tenri U) when I first started working in Osaka and wasted many rolls of film with it, but I still love that camera. Old guys would stop me on the street all the time with comments like, natsukashi, na! (“that sure brings back memories!”) And when I took it to a camera shop for repair, the guy did it for free and complimented me for being so old school! I kinda felt like shit because I barely knew how to use it at the time, but his praise sure sure put a smile on my face…