Magibon is an internet personality on the video-sharing website YouTube.
As of August 8, 2008, Magibon leads YouTube Japan’s All time top list. Magibon is also a member of the Youtube Partner Program.
Magibon has been invited and flown to Japan by a Japanese Internet TV Station GYAO for a media appearance. She has been interviewed twice by the Japanese Weekly Playboy magazine.
Nature-lovers, you might have caught a story in last week’s Asahi Shimbun about a rare and unusual kind of bee to be found buzzing around Japan, and in particular at the Aso Highland Museum Park, in Kumamoto prefecture.
Though the article seemed to downplay the chances of finding any, we decided to make the trip up into the highlands to the museum anyway, as it lies at the foot of Mount Aso, which is always worth trip, bees or no bees.
Dotted around the museum’s garden, there were patches of flowering basil, and busily buzzing around these bushes were hundreds of insects - including some blue and black striped bees.
As I crouched next to the plant, waiting for an opportune moment to take a snap, with the bees buzzing around my head, it struck how quiet they were. In fact they were barely buzzing at all. Occasionally one would stop and hover in front of my face, as if it were checking me out. This made them seem very friendly, though I may just have been caught up in the moment.
More photos of the unmistakeable blueness can be seen here.
And are all of these offensive?
Here is a pizza flavored pretzel commercial from Japanese TV, which uses the Italian word bongiorno, so I guess it insults the honor of two nations with one stone.
Mrs Overoften uncovered this KitKat in a local shop, and knowing I have a passing interest in these matters, brought it home.
This KitKat gives you a vocabulary lesson in various ben (dialects) around Kyushu.
For example, starting in the north, you can see that those folks in Fukuoka say すいとう for 好きだ (suki da), which will translate as anything from “I like it” to “I love you”.
Going west to Saga-ken you see that locals say がばい (gabai) for とても or 非常に, meaning ‘very’.
In Nagasaki-ken やぐらしか (yagurashika) means うっとうしい (too much). Over in Oita-ken, they say どおくる (dookuru) for おちょくる (ochokuru), which is to make fun of someone.
Round these parts, Kumamoto-ken, もっこす means 頑固者 or わがまま (stubborn, obstinate).
Over in Miyazaki-ken, よだきい means 面倒くさい (too much trouble, can’t be bothered). Meanwhile people in Kagoshima-ken are said to say ぼっけもん for こわいもの知らず (brave, but closer to reckless).
And now with this vocabulary lesson firmly implanted in your memory you can sit back and reward yourself with a cup of coffee, and a KitKat. (I am not affiliated to Nestlé but will accept gifts from them should anyone from HQ be reading this.)
Here’s a trilogy of videos on Japanese beer - one on beer vending machines in Kyoto, another one on a draft beer vending machine in Tokyo, and a final one on historical beers - beers with labels of famous people in Japanese history with short bios.
This first video is from BusanKevin in Kyoto talking about the wonders of outdoor beer vending machines in Kyoto on a hot day:
In response, I did a video on a draft beer vending machine I discovered in a pool hall in Tokyo a few nights ago.
Taste was not too bad but it gave me a huge head of foam which is quite common anyway even with live servers:
Background music by Super Girl Juice.
Later that same night I came across some “Historalicious” Japanese beer which were beer bottles with labels depicting famous people from Japanese history. Get your drink on while learning some Japanese history with Historalicious Japanese Beer - if you can read the bloody small cursive writing on the label:
Crack open a cold one and enjoy the Japanese Beer Trilogy!
When is a graveyard likely to be filled with tourists snapping pictures?
When it’s a gaijin bochi, or “foreigners’ graveyard,” which you can see in several old Japanese cities that have had Westerners living there for a long time, like Yokohama, Kobe and Hakodate.
Japanese burial rites involve cremation and placing the bones and ashes of the deceased inside a family grave, customs which are very different from the West, and these special foreigners’ graveyards are places where Europeans and Americans can be interred according to their own traditions.
The oldest can be found in Nagasaki, the only city where trade was allowed during the Edo Period, and you can see the gravestone of a Dutch trader that dates from 1778.
By far the most famous gaijin bochi in Japan is the Foreign General Cemetery in Yokohama, in the Naka Ward region that’s been popular with foreign residents for more than 150 years, and it’s up there with Chinatown and the Marine Tower on my list of attractions to hit when I’m visiting the city. The cemetery was commissioned by Admiral Perry himself, who requested a place for Westerners to be buried when one of his sailors died during his second visit to the country in his fleet of “Black Ships” in 1854.
Whenever I’m there I like to walk through the headstones and wonder what these early sojourners to Japan experienced here, and how things compare to today.
Take a dip into the surreal and the avant-garde with the Taiwanese performance group - the Eyeball Love Globe group.
The Eyeball Love Globe performed at the Tokyo Design Festa this past May and have done so a few other times before being one of the popular re-occuring performances at the exhibition.
the music for two of the segements is from Seven Cycle Theory:
It’s also up for votes on Current TV:
Eyeball on Current TV - Register and Vote please!
Here’s a small slice of the music scene in Tokyo.
This vid is brief snippets of three bands I caught at Tokyo Design Festa.
Crazy Angel Company
Here’s a bit of a big band I caught at Tokyo Design Festa called Crazy Angel Company.
They have a lot of energy and it shows in their performance.
Crazy Angel Company
Do you know the Japanese Pinky Promise?
It’s a similar to the “Make a promise/Hope to die/Stick a needle in your eye” song I learned while growing up. Hook your pinky with someone else’s and chant the song, which goes, “Pinky Promise, if you lie, I will make you swallow 1000 needles.” (If you want it in Japanese, it’s Yubikiri genman, uso tsuitara hari senbon nomasu.) You then say Yubi kitta! (I break the pinky connection!) as you pull your fingers apart, and you’ve made the most excellent promise you can make in Japan, at least if you’re in elementary school.
The Pinky Promise shows up quite a lot in anime, often to show a promise made between characters while they were younger, although the origin of the custom is somewhat less innocent.
Supposedly, the Pinky Promise began back in the Edo Period as a gesture of devotion that prostitutes would make with their favorite customers. The “cutting” of the pinky signified the women severing her own finger as a sign of eternal affection for her partner, essentially saying that she loves him enough to commit shinju, or ritual lovers’ suicide with him.
Kind of adds a new dimension to watching your favorite cute anime series, doesn’t it?
Though I never have run across this myself, I definitely would be willing to give it a try and find out exactly what a chocolate covered salty dog tastes like. . .
Via Noodles and Rice
What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? A quick poll I took of Japanese kids revealed banira (vanilla) to be the undisputed champion. Which surprised me. In English slang, after all, vanilla-flavoured has come to mean boring. Anyway, what do kids know. Chocolate is obviously the best flavour.
I didn’t find out about it until it was already over, so alas could not attend, but July and August saw the Ice Cream Expo in Yokohama.
And while all the ordinary fare was on offer, there wouldn’t be much point in an expo if all that was on offer was what you could find down at the supermarket.
But in terms of innovative (weird) flavours, it went far beyond the passé basashi (raw horse meat) and wasabi .
Otaku International has a report with a focus on the more outlandish - octopus, squid, caviar, chicken wings, the foul and dreadful natto, mamushi (the deadly pit viper) (I’ll just repeat that - the deadly pit viper), and the star of the show, ox tongue.
‘Chuwy’ visited the expo and tried a good number of the ice creams on offer, and wrote up his thoughts at the entertaining Chuwy Thoughts.
There are some more photos available in a Mainichi gallery.
Heard this on an oldies program this evening, and it reminded me just how great Ozaki Kiyohiko’s music sounds, even though this super hit (Mata Au Hi Made) is already 30 years old.
A restaurant located at the Naokata City, Fukuoka prefecture government office building has added a new Oppai Lunch (Breast Lunch) to their menu to mark the release of the movie Oppai Volley (Breast Volleyball), which was shot in the city.
The Oppai Lunch consists of two cups of breast-shaped chicken rice with strategically placed green peas, and includes vegetables, a bowl of soup, and flag for 500 yen (milk separate).
Last night my girlfriend and I had some friends over and we made okonomiyaki. I had never had it before, but had heard about it from various Japanese friends, and was excited to try it for the first time. It’s sort of like a Japanese pancake, but mixed with various goodies and topped with sauces and other ingredients.
Osaka and Hiroshima are two places where okonomiyaki is particularly famous. We made Osaka style last night, where ingredients are mixed in with the pan-fried batter. We used cabbage, nagaimo (Japanese potato), and moyashi (bean sprouts) in the batter, and topped it with bacon, delicious Kewpie Mayonaise, and okonomiyaki sauce!
With Hiroshima style, the ingredients are typically layered and to spice things up sometimes noodles (udon or yakisoba) are involved! I made my girlfriend promise me that we could make this style next time.
Yaki means “grilled” and okonomi means “what you want,” so you do the math! I expect there are probably some pretty strange versions of this dish in various regions of Japan!
If you are interested in making okonomiyaki, here’s an instructional video featuring a man with a strange accent guiding you along as a Japanese woman and her small dog prepare this delicious dish!
Tokyo also has what is known as monjayaki that is a runnier, liquidy variant of okonomiyaki.
Micheal ‘Gaijin’ Pacheco
Michael plays guitar and keyboards in an Asian American themed band named The Slants.
From the Essential Skills Department. . .
Via Ramen Students
Check out this great video of an American guy and his Chinese girlfriend interviewing each other.
Via Danwei
Sent in by Colin Fletcher, who says:
Eight Year old Japanese guitar playing phenom Yuto Miyazawa was on Conan O’Brien last night and brought the house down with Crossroads by Eric Clapton. He completely butchered the lyrics, which are in some strange English Japanese gibberish, but his shredding is impressive nevertheless.
