Japanese Society/Culture
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You say Dokdo, I say Takeshima (or the Liancourt Rocks)
The Big Picture captures the Dokdo/Takeshima (Takeshima/Dokdo) debate through big news shots: Dokdo or Takeshima They should just take one island a piece and turn them into penal colonies, or breeding grounds for the next generation of Godzilla. Actually, the best way to handle this situation is probably for the UN to evacuate the islands and then nuke them into oblivion. That way, neither side loses face, and that’s really what this is all about, right? A 500 year old Japanese-Korean pissing match about some rocks in the middle of nowhere… And yet, this issue even springs up in articles covering race relations at Little Tokyo senior care facilities. When…
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Osaka Bang is back
You might remember the video I posted about Osaka culture last month – it got taken down once by the Yomiuri TV goonsquad and I couldn’t find another instance… Well someone has put it back up, with subtitles this time! If you didn’t see it the first time, it’s definitely worth a watch.
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The most fucked up article you’ll read this year
WARNING: The article linked to below is graphic and nauseating, especially if you’re digging into a chicken sandwich like I was this morning. WHO’S HUNGRY? – PART 1 An Interview With Issei Sagawa, Cannibal This was a hugely famous case in Japan (and all over the world I imagine – I was only 7 when it happened). An insane Japanese exchange student killed and partially ate a female student at the Sorbonne and not only got off scot-free in France, but also in Japan because the French authorities protected him. I was aware he was writing books during my long stay in Japan, but it never occurred to me that…
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Escolar aka Butterfish aka Hawaiian Walu aka the Ex-Lax Fish…
…aka Oilfish aka the “It” Fish aka Shiro Maguro aka Abura Bozu aka Abura Sokumutsu aka Mutzu. I have finally found a fish that Japanese won’t eat (raw, at least), and is in fact prohibited to be used for that purpose in Japan, and it turns out it’s all because eating it may make orange jets of oil (specifically, indigestible wax esters) shoot out of your ass. And yes, I speak of that as a bug, not a feature.
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Missing Osaka
The idea being tested: Even strangers in Osaka will play along when you pretend to shoot or cut them down. Some of these seem staged; I’ve seen crazier stuff though, and if nothing else, the fact that it seems possible is why Osaka is so fucking cool. For the record, I’ve never seen this done to a stranger in Japan, but you see it all the time among friends. Come to think of it, among friends at least, everybody overacts like they’re being shot. An alternative to the standard ban! (bang!) is firing an imaginary revolver dry. That sounds something like this: ban! ban! ban! ban! ban! ban! kacha.. kacha..…
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Foreign tw@ts at Tsukiji
Earlier this year I wrote about how foreign tourists are no longer really welcome at Tsukiji fish market. To better understand why this situation came about, I present this video sent by KTY: At first I was going to title this post French and English tw@ts at Tsukiji, but really it’s just dumb luck that the video happened not to feature douchebag Americans. I would have paid money to have the old man slap the shit out of Pierre at the end, though, right after he claimed to not speak Japanese: WELL THEN DO YOU SPEAK FOOTINYOASS, BIIIIOTCH?
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Exercising Atrophied Illustrator Muscles
Well it took a whole day, but I finished our nengajo (traditional Japanese New Years cards) design! Yay! Max helped out by drooling on my keyboard and now all we have to do is get them printed, handwrite addresses and short greetings (mommy’s job), and send them out in the post! Since we changed addresses from last year we want to get the drop on everybody before they send cards to our old address… But to be quite honest, we have been bad analog correspondents – we haven’t sent cards since we left Japan (didn’t send very consistently then either, although we did the very last year we were there).…
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Shin Sekai Redux Repeat Rehash
There used to be a blue traffic sign if you drove into Shin Sekai from Namba welcoming you to SIN SEKAI. It might even still be there. When we were in university there was still an indoor “fishing park,” archery range, and competing all-night dirty film theaters in the immediate vicinity of Tsutenkaku tower. Our first trip there was most notable because on the way to eat kushiyaki we walked right by a big Yak loudly berating and repeatedly slamming a woman against his S-class stopped in the middle of the street. People stopped to watch, but nobody said (much less did) shit – even the security guard standing in…
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Taro Aso is the man with the gauge
…and a gauge is what you would need to shake up Japanese politics. The Japanese are justifiably apathetic about their leaders… Take a 12 gauge to the world stage, that’s what PM Taro needs to do! (via)
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Don’t forget the J-Pop segment…
more music charts LOLZR!!
