////////////////////////////////////// NOTE FROM SITE OWNER: It has come to my attention that the link to this page has recently been included in several blog spams. I am in no way related to the spammer and have no idea why he is including my link in his spam. I do apologize for any inconvenience it has caused you. For background info on this situation, please see the comments to this post, below. ////////////////////////////////////// Before I took my current job, my girlfriend and I were living in the slums of Osaka (Nishinari-ku), one of the few places in Japan where it’s genuinely dangerous to walk alone at night, and often remembered for…

1. People who test ringtones in public. 2. People who cut you off because you decided to drive “nice” today. 3. The phantom butt itch (in public – in private it’s scratchable). 4. Cheerful people on Monday mornings. 5. Cheerful people in general. 6. People. 7. The absence of napkins at many (most?) restaurants in Japan. 8. High society types from Tochigi who pronounce “Tochigi” differently than everyone else. 9. Computer-retarded Powerbook snobs. 10. Gossipy office harpies that spend lunchbreaks painting their faces like whores and have a cow over me “tapping” the copier when it gets jammed and won’t reset.

I am in the middle of researching the most important subject I will ever post on – that’s right! – even more important than Japanese fish sausage, although if you are the astute type, you already suspect that Japanese fish sausage is somehow involved. You are correct. Hint: No, I am not covering the 500-foot tall Hello Kitty statue made of squid rings and rapeseed flowers to be erected in Sumoto this weekend. Also, I am NOT writing about the prime minister of Japan getting a handjob from the US ambassador to the chrysanthemum court in spite of beef imports continuing to be banned (the real reason for this is…

No matter how much amusement it would have provided in the years to come, I could not, in good conscience, allow an acquaintance to name his new children’s English conversation school “Neverland.” Update: I’m already too late to save this place.

An interview with Aeon CEO Motoya Okada: Japan’s Answer to Wal-Mart? Excerpt: Q: So what can you do to resolve this? A: Well, we will continue to enhance our supply chain and reduce costs, [so savings] can be passed back to our customers. We can also enhance our private brand. Well, they’ve certainly got the corporate rhetoric down… I personally think that most of the products marketed under Aeon’s TopValu brand is noticeably inferior to competing brands. They can’t even make decent green tea or dishsoap, which, as you might imagine, are fairly important items for the average Japanese consumer.

I have quite a few relatives in Japan, and have met many of them over the course of my stay here. They are all from my father’s side of the family, because the wealthy snobs on my mother’s side cut off contact with their American relatives years ago. I have not tried to get in touch, either – although I’ve made plans to several times, it’s not really that important to me, I guess. I get busy and forget about it, you know how it goes. I’m quite close with a few of my second cousins (on my father’s side). I go visit them in Nara sometimes, and we hang…

… where people often get shanked. I never used to be fazed by shit like this in the news because over the years I just became numb to it. When you first start living in Japan, it is hard to understand why the people can be selflessly polite and compassionate on one hand, and yet were feared as such ruthless self-disembowling baby killer rape-happy sadists not so long ago. One hint that perhaps not all is well in modern times, either, is the frequency of shockingly violent/sadistic/twisted incidents reported in the Japanese media. It seems like we hear about classroom slashings, group suicides, and heart-wrenching abuse cases on an almost…