It’s been a while since our last humorous entry, and we haven’t talked about Japan much since our post about Junky Healthy Taco Rice and other fun Engrish stuff, so we thought a good way to kill two birds with one stone would be to show you guys some of the funny Engrish-style T-shirts those crazy Japanese have cooked up.

Dental hygiene is of extremely great in portance in Japan. Whilst I was perusing the various and sundry clothing shops scattered throughout Harajuku, I came upon this incredible shirt. It’s awfully rare to find a T-shirt that so unilaterally implores others to follow societal mores, really. Come to think of it, I think teeth are often undervalued in our society…well, or maybe that’s just England?

Nevertheless, it serves as a good reminder. Also, check out that bad tooth - do all cavities have such a huge bite taken out of them? Thankfully, they provided three standard teeth to allow for comparison. Gosh, I love this shirt so much. Read the rest of this entry »

This year I decided to forego the usual western customs in favor of following a more Japanese approach to celebrating the New Year. Fortunately for me, the Japanese community in Los Angeles puts on quite a celebration on the first few days of the year, with traditional food, music, and dancing.

After enjoying the first sunrise of the year (hatsuhinode), I headed down to Little Tokyo to catch the festivities (and buy some manga, of course). They had stages set up for various performances at both Weller Court in front of the Kinokuniya bookstore, as well in the Japanese Village Plaza, pictured below. Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another case of a young child trying to murder a sleeping parent. This time it was a 13 year old boy in Osaka who clubbed his father over the head with a bat while he was sleeping.

From the Mainichi news article:

“My dad is always telling me off and he bashes me about once a month. Dad’s always playing pachinko and I thought it was unfair that it’s always me who’s getting told off,” the boy told the police.

Police said that on early Monday the boy belted his sleeping father to the head with a metal baseball bat, bruising his head and breaking his fingers. The boy ran off but was found at a nearby convenience store about 30 minutes later. When he admitted to attacking his father, mistakenly believing he had killed him, officers took him into custody. Read the rest of this entry »

Amidst all the furor over Japan’s newly implemented policy of fingerprinting every foreigner entering or leaving the country, as I was reading through the various comments on different blogs and news sites there was one particular type of reaction that stood out to me.

Many people were making comments like “That’s too bad, I was thinking of taking a vacation to Japan, but now with all these things I’m hearing, maybe I should stay away.”

Now certainly, Japan is not the magical land of rainbows and ponies and gumdrop smiles that your average weeaboo imagines it to be. In fact, sometimes it looks pretty bad. But at the same time, it’s also not all doom and gloom, racism and xenophobia, which is the impression that many people seem to be getting from all of the recent negative press.

So let me just reiterate a very important point:

Japan is still a wonderful place to visit.

Japan is a beautiful country with a rich culture and heritage and some of the kindest, most hospitable people I have ever met. It has some of the most breathtaking sights, most delicious cuisine, and best entertainment anywhere. It is also arguably the safest countries in the world to travel in.

Matsumoto Castle

Yes, if you are not Japanese you will generally be treated differently. This doesn’t necessarily mean in a derogatory way, however. On the contrary, the Japanese generally go to extraordinary lengths to be accommodating to guests in their country. Read the rest of this entry »

Minami-ke’s Kana-chan apparently thinks that she is boss.

And certainly, in addition to frequently bending Chiaki to her will, she seems to have the show’s male cast pretty well under her thumb.

What she does not realize, however, is that someone else has already laid claim to that title:

NO ME

As a matter of fact, SUNTORY BOSS is actually the real boss. And not just the usual garden variety “hit their weak point three times” kind of boss, either. He’s the boss of them all, and apparently has been since 1992.

Sorry Kana, looks like you lose this one. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, after seeing Danny Choo’s latest dance performance I couldn’t resist blogging about this.

Not only is the song great, the dance moves are hilarious. It even comes complete with free background dancers!

Speaking of all the guys who jump in to dance along with Danny…many people have this mental image of Japanese as being quiet and reserved, trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves, but as this video clearly demonstrates, even they can’t resist the lure of going crazy in the front of the cameras.

It’s also ironic that he’s doing this in Shibuya, of all places, which is where all the “too-cool-for-school” yuppie teens and 20-somethings come to hang out. This kind of funky, off-the-wall behavior would fit right in in Harajuku, where people regularly parade up and down the streets in every fashion on Earth, as well as a few that I’m convinced originated on some other planet.

Shibuya, however, is a completely different story. The kids who hang out in Shibuya are often trying so hard to appear cool that they look like they’re in pain. Danny’s performance must have just blown their minds. It was such a departure from the normal image the Shibuya-kei (Shibuya style) guys try to put on, they probably just had no idea what to make of him.

In Shibuya your collective attire should have the roughly the same retail value as the downpayment on an automobile…so en vogue it’s almost embarassing. Whereas in Akihabara it’s almost expected to see some form of street performers; in fact you’d feel a little cheated if you crossed the street without seeing some kind of crazy cosplay or idol performance.

And you can think of Harajuku as the crazy art student cousin of the yuppie metropolitian professional known as Shibuya.

As a gaijin in Japan, fitting in is not an easy thing to do. Standing out, on the other hand, is both easy and fun! People are gonna stare anyway, might as well give ‘em a good show, right?

Props, Danny. It was megas funny.

Original at www.dannychoo.com

That’s right, Ghetto Happy Dining…and
of course it’s a really posh restaurant.

As a nation, Japan is absolutely fascinated with the English language. They give their products English names to make them sound foreign and exotic, they brand them using Roman letters to give them that distinctive trendy look, and they wear T-shirts with phrases that look as though they were produced by having a blindfolded person point to a series random words in a dictionary.

It wasn’t that long ago that learning a foreign language was looked upon with a great deal of suspicion. During Japan’s more isolationist days, anyone who spoke English too well was viewed as un-Japanese, something of a renegade. Now that the Japanese have really opened up to the west, however, they seem determined to make up for lost time by using and abusing the language in every way conceivably possible.

If you’ve ever traveled in Japan, you have no doubt seen the way English is plastered all over signs, advertisements, and T-shirts. The free-spirited brazenness with which it is used, unhindered by such petty things as “grammar”, makes linguists and English teachers around the world cringe in dismay, but it also provides plenty of entertainment for gaijin like myself.

Below is a sampling of a few of the things I ran into during my time in Japan that made me laugh. Read the rest of this entry »

Stories about the recent series of ax murders have certainly dominated Japanese news over the last few days, and in particular the aniblogosphere has been in a frenzy over these events and their connection to the cancellation of School Days 12 and the postponement of Higurashi.

There have a number of other developments on the political scene that have also been rather interesting, however.

Lots of boring politics after the jump (and also some Rozen Maiden)… Read the rest of this entry »

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who’s been under the gun ever since his party (the LDP) was royally whupped in the July 29 elections, has finally announced that he’s stepping down.

Considering all the troubles he’s had with his Agricultural ministers lately, as well as his push to extend the increasingly unpopular “support-the-US-war-on-terror” mission, it certainly comes as no surprise. It was a bit of a shock how suddenly he announced his resignation, however.

OK, time to put on my rant hat. Read the rest of this entry »

Slow day here at Epic Win, so I thought I’d share with you all a couple of Japan related videos that have been making the rounds recently and which I’ve enjoyed a lot.

First off, from the great guys over at Japan Probe, this video featuring the most awesome mochi making technique you’ve ever seen.

Mochi is traditionally prepared during New Years in Japan, when families break out the giant mallets and make it the old fashioned way. Half the time, however, the guys are totally smashed when they do this, so it’s generally not an especially speedy process. These guys, on the other hand, have taken it to a whole new level.

This one’s been much more widely circulated, but is still a favorite of mine. Crowdy day indeed! Brings back fond memories of how packed Tokyo can be, from trying to squeeze onto a Shinjuku-bound Chuo line train during rush hour, to trying to escape from the one million person strong ocean of madness that descends on Asakusa during the Sanja Matsuri.