Just thought we would warn all your Japundits and Japundettes that Sanrio, creator of Hello Kitty, is launching more characters that are so cloyingly cute, they are guaranteed to set your teeth on edge in no time at all.
First are the two ballerina bunny sisters named Sugarminuet.
The older of the two is Ballet Usa (usa is short of usagi, or “rabbit” in Japanese), a make-up loving ballerina with a swan’s grace and pink fur. The younger is Prima Usa, a dreamy and romantic white bunny; both sport sparkly tiaras.
Debuting on August 8th, the pair have already established a line of goods that includes plush toys, stationary, and bags—all in a ballerina-esque blend of white and sugar pink and trimmed with ruffles, ribbons, and roses.
Still not gagging yet? Well how about Sanrio’s Cherinacherine, two little bears who live in a cherry forest?
Makes me want to go out and find something cute. . . so I can stomp on it.
Humor is a very cultural thing, and it’s fun to analyze the things people from different countries consider amusing — jokes about the lack of education or hygiene among people in a certain region, visual or slapstick forms of humor, orifice-related jokes and so on.
Often, we can’t comprehend the things that people in one culture find funny — Canadian stand-up comedians telling jokes about Nova Scotians go way over my head, for example. Then again, there are times when the cultural difference can make something all that much more hilarious, which I believe is why Monty Python and the Holy Grail is such a cult favorite in the U.S. — the gap between the two countries magnifies all the jokes, and our unfamiliarity with British understatement (”There are some who call me…Tim?”) make it a ridiculously funny film.
Humor in Japan often seems to be situationally-based, putting a character in an impossibly bizarre position and drawing laughter from his embarrassment, for example.
One important category of humor in Japan comes from manzai, two-person stand-up comedy that involves a dumb comedian (boke) who makes erroneous observations and his sharp-tongued partner (tsukkomi), who berates him at every turn. The interplay of R2-D2 and C-3P0 in the Star Wars films is largely a reflection of this comic tradition, of course filtered through the films of Akira Kurosawa.
The old adage that if you have to explain it, it isn’t funny holds up pretty well in my experience, and back when I was a teacher I tried using American humor as teaching tool, bringing in Far Side comics or funny song lyrics for my students to discuss. I remember once trying to explain the concepts of irony, sarcasm and cynicism, all three of which are represented by the exact same word in Japanese (hiniku). It was, ahem, not my most inspired of lessons, and I think my students were more confused when I was finished.
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.
Nippon Television Network Corp. (NTV) has gotten into hot water for inflating the number of plates of food downed by “a celebrity known for her enormous appetite” during an NTV program.
According to NTV, the woman devoured “only” 39 plates of food, though it was reported on the program that she had eaten 48.
“We failed to accurately count the number of plates, and partially used an inappropriate method to make the segment,” the TV station said in an apology during the program on Friday.
NTV’s general public relations department explained, “We were vague about how we counted the plates and dishes, for instance, counting one plate with four pieces of the same dish as four dishes.”
On Monday, NTV gave severe warnings to Hisao Adachi, head of the news bureau, and other program staff, and terminated a contract with a production company in charge of shooting and making the problem segment.
Celebrity gluttons are really popular in Japan, which is why I guess something like this is being treated so seriously.
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.
If you are planning to visit Japan during the summer season, something I actually do not recommend, I advise you to visit some of the many matsuri (祭). These festivals are celebrated with drinking, a lot of different foods, sometimes games and many of these Japanese festivals have a big fireworks show.
One of these festivals is Osaka’s ‘Yodogawa festival’. Yodogawa is Osaka’s biggest river, and as the name of the matsuri already gives away, the festival takes place on the Yodogawa riverbanks. Especially with this summerheat a splendid location. The Yodogawa fireworks show is probably one of the most popular fireworks show in Japan and definitely draws one of the largest crowds. I’m talking thousands of people, the place gets really packed. If you are not into large crowds I suggest you watch the fireworks from the Umeda Skyline building, but you’ll really miss the great atmosphere.
Since the fireworks are on the river, you’ll have a good chance to view the spectacle from both sides of the river, I do advise you to come in early for a good spot.
The result:
Just some small advice from me if you intend to visit the next Yodogawa matsuri:
- Come in early, I don’t mean 10 minutes before the start, but at least 5 hours. This will guarantee you a great spot for the show. (If you decide to watch the show from the riverbank that is).
- Bring a large plastic or cloth sheet to sit on.
- Bring food and drinks. Even though you can buy lots of oishii food and drinks at the festival, be prepared to wait in line for 10 to 20 minutes before getting served.
- Bring umbrella’s in case of rain. (This unfortunately can happen and has happened last night. We shared 1 umbrella with 4 people, didn’t ruin the show though)
- Go to the toilet beforehand. (Same as the foodstands, the waiting line for a toilet is around 10 minutes, if you have to do the big one expect to wait in line for over 20 minutes.
Of course, even without these preparations you can still enjoy though.
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.
The following is a look at a mostly foreign rock band, the Sushi Cabaret Club, based in Nagoya, Japan.
The members hail from Scotland, England, Australia, and Japan. They talk about their music, what brought them to Japan, what it’s like for bands in Japan, and what it’s like playing for Japanese audiences. They dispel a few myths like how easy it is for Western musicians to make it big in Japan as well. Also, few of their fans talk about their interest in the band’s music.
Japan has been undergoing a “Miyazaki Prefecture Boom,” lately, thanks to its governor, former TV comedian Sonomanma Higashi, a discovery of director/comedian Takeshi Kitano, who appeared on Takeshi’s Castle for years.
The TV comic gave up his career as a “talent” to run for governor of this rural prefecture last year, winning despite having no backing from any political party.
Since taking office, he’s shaken things up quite a bit, using his celebrity status to shed light on the wasteful construction projects that plague rural Japan and trading in his official governor’s vehicle for a hybrid. Now, his face adorns dozens of products that contain ingredients from the prefecture, and it seems you can’t go into a shop without seeing his face smiling up at you.
Miyazaki is located in the southeast corner of the southernmost island of Kyushu, one of the early centers of Japanese civilization due to its proximity to China and the Korean Peninsula, and it’s famous for mangoes, the off-season training camp for the Tokyo Giants, and a sprawling resort called SEAGAIA, which recreated a tropical beach under an 85 acre dome, although it was closed last year due to the inability of the operators to make a profit.
Like most countries, the keitai (mobile phone) has become a huge part of life in Japan, and for the younger generation, cell phones seem to be supplanting the personal computer as the primary Internet device of choice.
The newest trend is young people using their phones to access sites called purofu ( “prof,” from the English word profile, which looks very similar to “blog” when rendered in katakana), centralized services that allow people to create profiles for themselves showing their pictures, specifying their age and location, and listing their favorite music, movies or food.
These purofu services are sort of like guestbooks optimized to display on cell phones, where people can search for keywords then leave comments or links and have random, meandering discussions, creating a way for lonely Japanese young people to make friends.
No one knows exactly how many users of these services there are in Japan, but conservative estimates start at 1 million or more.
The new Internet services aren’t without problems, however, some of which came to light last week when a 17-year-old student attacked a 14-year-old in Chiba Prefecture with a metal baseball bat for writing insults on his profile page.
Well, the International Day of the iPhone is here, when Apple’s new 3G iPhone launches around the world.
In Japan, the line outside Softbank’s flagship store in Omotesando, Tokyo reached 1500 people and over a kilometer in length, as Japanese fans lined up to get their hands on the device for the first time. Masayoshi Son, the enigmatic president of Softbank and the mind behind the success of Google-trouncing Yahoo Japan, was beaming as he watched the lines of iPhone buyers, most of whom were switching from competing cellphone companies au/KDDI and NTT Docomo.
Being a maverick has helped make the UC Berkeley-educated Son, a third-generation Japanese of Korean descent, the richest man in Japan, and his ability to “think different” probably helped him win the contract for the iPhone from Steve Jobs.
While I’m still not sure if the iPhone will bowl over Japanese keitai users, who are extremely hidebound and love their flip-fones with the fancy styling and easy-to-type (for them) numeric keypads, I do love the coming havoc the iPhone will wreak in the Japanese cellphone marketplace as users realize they don’t have to give cellular providers power to dictate everything about their phone, from what music formats they can listen to to what applications they can run — they can just stick anything in iTunes and sync it over.
Today I updated my (first-gen) iPhone to the updated 2.0 firmware and downloaded the app I’ve always wanted, a light saber sound simulator (iTunes link). Any phone platform that can bring that kind of awesomeness to its users will certainly find a niche in Japan.
I guess not *all* Japanese are eating healthfully. ESPN is reporting that 6-time Nathan’s hot dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi lost for the second year in a row to his rival Joey Chestnut; this time in an unprecedented overtime period. Kobayashi is 30 years old and from Nagano. Do you think he trains for these contests? The amazing thing is that he is thin as a rail.
Joey Chestnut reclaimed the top spot at the annual hot dog eating contest on Coney Island on Friday after first tying with archrival Takeru Kobayashi in a 10-minute chow-down, then beating him in a five-dog eat-off.
The men tied at 59 frankfurters in 10 minutes, before being made to gobble another five dogs in a last-minute tiebreaker. They consumed 64 hot dogs total and were looking quite peaked after the competition.
Kobayashi had hoped to reclaim the throne after a disappointing three-dog loss last year shattered his six-year winning streak.
As usual, Kobayashi’s strategy was to eat all the dogs first, then dunk the buns and eat them. A pause while swallowing the soggy buns meant defeat.
The two will face off again Sept. 28 at the Krystal Square Off World Hamburger Eating Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn.
These stealthy assassins of yore…what lurks deep in their hearts?
Their whole lives are dedicated to their craft…to stealth, to sabotage, to espionage, to theft, and to assassination.
But what do they dream of when they allow themselves to succumb to sleep’s gentle embrace?
What is it that they secretly yearn to do?
Watch this short documentary or “ninjumentary” and learn “The Secret Desire of the Ninja.”
It’s also up for votes on Current TV but some pretentious little snots have voted negative on it because they’ve got no love for the Ninja. Go over there and show your support for the Ninja and vote green.
It is their popularity with some Western readers that has especially incensed Japanese bloggers. Many feel their country’s reputation has been “debauched” around the world. “Foreigners who don’t know the truth will believe these stories are true,” wrote one. Another railed: “Ryann Connell is a degenerate scatologist - a typical Australian.” And a third wondered: “Why doesn’t someone drop a hydrogen atom bomb on Australia?”
In an interview with the Herald late last year Connell admitted his transcriptions might have contributed in part to a lazy notion that if Japanese are not totally inhibited by their strict social codes, they are hopelessly debased by their bizarre fetishes.
“It does concern me that we resort to these stereotypes all the time,” he said. “Downtrodden salarymen, slutty schoolgirls, crazy housewives, corrupt old bosses and so on. And there have been times when I picked stories of questionable accuracy to write up. But by and large I’m presenting to the English-speaking world things that the Japanese are writing about themselves.”
The Tokyo Design Festa is a semi-annual event where artists, craftsmen, performers, musicians, film-makers, and what-not gather from all over the world to exhibit their creations.
