If I had time to watch a Zato, it might be this one. My tube time is currently divided between Baby Signing Time, Your Baby Can Sign, The Wiggles, Mickey Mouse (Motherfrakkin’) Clubhouse, Yo Gabba Gabba, and specially selected Sesame Street Episodes. I’ve found that many children’s shows/series get progressively worse with each season they are continued. Yo Gabba is the best example of this, but not the only one. Sesame Street followed this pattern for decades, until they started doing genius musical episodes again.
Category: Zatoichi
Zato #9 – Adventures of Zatoichi
In a sense, I’ve been employing a Zatoichi of my own here. The baby in Nam’s belly is a week bigger than normal, and Nam feels very heavy, so she goes to get massages 2 or 3 times a week now. I also went last week after my fever, because my shoulders were all bunched up and I couldn’t sleep.
The masseuse is a blind man named Moh Ken (“Moh” is an honorific for doctors and other health practitioners). Moh Ken is a funny sorta guy; he doesn’t carry a cane sword, but he’s strong as hell from massaging people all day. When he massaged my shoulders, I was very aware that he could have snapped my collarbone like a twig any time he felt like it (and yes, this is a funny thing to be thinking during a relaxing massage if you’re not at least a little bit strange yourself). Moh Ken carries around this talking pocket watch that tells him time at the press of a button. His senses are fine-tuned enough to tell when people are moving around huim in the confined space of the massage shop.
I watched him change the sheets on the massage table this last time, and it was just fascinating. On one hand, I wanted to offer help (I mean, he was double-sheeting the table with fitted sheets so that he only had to change them after every two customers – pretty cool!), but on the other hand, I knew he would just swat me away with his rough blind samurai hands…
All previous Zatoichi posts
Zatoichi #6
I don’t even have time to watch Zato anymore, but I love these graphics and wanted to continue from where I left off a couple years ago in Japan.
All my previous Zatoichi posts.
Zatoichi #1
I suddenly realize that in my quest to post all of the Zatoichi jackets, I have been negligent: I left out #1!
Bust a move, Katsu!
Zatoichi #4
Real men wear haramaki (to literally hold their guts in if they get slashed).
Random Zatoichi Pic
Just something I found on my hard drive. Zatoichi pics make me immensely happy.
Bust out the cane sword
For those of you coming to our wedding in Thailand, we will be hiring a couple of masseuses to stay at the hotel and treat all of our guests to muscle-kneading nirvana. Why masseuses as opposed to male masseurs?
Well, obviously, first this is because I’m a guy and I have a sausage-snatching-by-other-men phobia, but this is kind of beside the point, because the masseuses I intend to employ are old women. In fact, the one who we have already confirmed is an old, blind woman – so I know she rocks without even having met her. You see, I have had a variety of massages here and there over the years. They have been performed by males and females, young and old. The best massages I have ever had were all done by old women. Add to that fact the heightened physical awareness presumably caused by blindness, and you have the recipe for really being made an old woman’s bitch on the massage table – I can’t wait! How about you?
Coincidentally, I’m currently in the process of downloading all 25 of the original Zatoichi movies.
Katsu Shintaro was the fucking man!