Geisha, Interrupted

The Japantsu Quiz

Which type of Japanese boxers/briefs are you???

To find out which popular male undergarment you most resemble, please choose letter corresponding to your personality type, then scroll down...

A) You are sentimental, yet driven.  You are solid and self-supporting, still you start to cry whenever a certain Hallmark commercial comes on.  Your favorite direction is up.

B) You enjoy the finer things in life, especially anything frivolous, flamboyant, or florescent.  You glow in the dark.  Unfortunately however, you got a D- in freshman English composition.

C) Not afraid to show off a little skin, you can be a bit of an exhibitionist.  It's too bad you are so given to inappropriate racial stereotyping. 

D) You love animals, activity and attention.  As a rule, you are far more special than other people.

AND

    NOW

           FOR

                THE RESULTS

             WE'VE

      ALL

BEEN

      WAITING

              FOR!

Choice A:

You are SAPPY!

Choice B:

You are FOPPERY!

Choice C:

You are BLACK MAN!

        

Choice D:

You are on the SPECIALTY RACK!

(FiNe pRiNt: Geisha, Interrupted takes no responsibility for faulty results, or for anything whatsoever. Not an actual quiz.)

Sort of Like Christmas

"So Valentines Day in America," the mother of one of my students asks me after her lesson, "is it anything like Valentines day in Japan?"

"Not really," I replied honestly.

"So your tradition is not for women to give men chocolate?" she asked.

"Well you could give a man chocolate in America if you want to, but it is more of a day for couples to exchange presents and go out on romantic dates."

"Like Christmas!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, sort of like Christmas."

Rather than Valentines day, the big dating holiday in Japan is Christmas.  Valentines day is when Japanese women buy chocolates for the men in their lives (such as husbands, employers, colleagues, and English teachers). 

The term "giri-choco" gets thrown around a lot this time of year.  "Giri" means duty or obligation while "choco" is short for chocolate, so "giri-choco" is what women present to men on Valentines Day, largely because they are socially obligated to do so.

Then, in order to maximize consumerism, the Japanese have taken the liberty to designate March 14 as "White Day," an occasion when the men who received chocolates on Valentines day have to buy gifts for the women who bought them chocolate a month earlier.

While I am hardly the sentimental type, all the 'giri' involved in these two holidays feels incredibly unromantic to me.  But after all, romance is for Christmas.   

Goodnight Train: An Illustrated Bedtime Poem

Goodnight train

Goodnight mundane

 

Goodnight sumo, pondering pain.

Goodnight schoolboy

Goodnight schoolgirl

Goodnight poor platform, where all the drunks hurl.

Goodnight Mr. Slick

Goodnight nude chick

Goodnight dude who's wearing a mask cuz he's sick.

Goodnight beer can

Goodnight porno fan

Goodnight everybody

Goodnight Japan!

                       

Another Lame Gig

Oh, and while we are making fun of white men (or critiquing their representation in Japanese advertising, whichever you prefer) check out this ad that is posted inside many Tokyo subway cars:

It is for a plastic surgery clinic!!

Big(boned) In Japan

I recently snapped the below frames from a commercial that's getting pretty high rotation on Japanese Television lately.  It is a telling portrait of how Westerners are viewed in this society:

I've expressed my share of complaints here about being cast as a "scientist who doesn't care about how she looks," and a "person running away from a monstrous beast" on Japanese TV, but at the same time, at least I didn't get that guy's job...

Dog Yoga?

Over the weekend, Tokyo hosted a "New Years Dog Party" of sorts, where one of the main events was something called "doggu yoga."  It makes sense that "dog yoga" would become trendy in a country where more and more women are choosing dog ownership over parenthood (the social obligations placed on mothers in Japan are quite harsh).  I thought I'd do some further research into the doggu yoga phenomenon, and wound up with a bunch of digital images that seemed naked without captions, made by using paintbrush...

The Imperial Palace: Cuz Why Not...

So yesterday, Emperor Akihito/Heisei/Tenno-sama whatever you want to call him, celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday.  To witness his annual birthday address, commoners were allowed to cross the moat and enter the palace grounds.  This only happens a couple of times a year, so T and I woke up early yesterday morning to check it out.

The excursion was something I'd planned to do- over and over again- almost every December since I arrived in this country.  And yet, no matter how enthusiastic I felt about entering the forbidden palace grounds, I'd always been too hungover on the morning of the 23rd to actually get out of bed.

But not this year.

Basically, after you enter the imperial ground, you stand and wait for the royal birthday boy to come out and acknowledge his adoring public through the bullet-proof glass.

Then, when the emperor and his royal family come into sight, you are supposed to wave your rising sun flags madly and shout "banzai!" repeatedly, so that nobody can actually see the royals appear amidst all the fervor.

Oh wait, there they are...sort of.

Luckily, when the emperor began to speak the crowd calmed down enough so that we could actually see him.  At that, his highness embarked on a short speech that involved what is possibly the most uncontroversial topic ever: the weather that day.

In Japan the royals hardly speak about their true feelings, while precious little information is ever leaked about the controversies within the imperial household. 

This leaves quite a bit to the imagination.  As mine is especially active today, here is what I'd guess the royal family was thinking just then.  From left to right, they are: Crown Princess Masako, Crown Prince Naruhito, Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, and Prince Akishino. (Click on the picture to view a larger image.)   

Wait. . .What?

I came by this yesterday.  It's the "lucky poop" charm key chain:

Bad Manners Make The Baby Tomatoes Cry

As googlism informed me the other day, Tokyo is the city that never slows down.  That in mind, any attempts at persuading the Japanese not to rush into commuter trains after the doors have already started to close, are basically futile.  You may as well be telling the British not to drink tea or the French to give up wine.

Still, the Japan Railways company is tireless in their efforts to stop commuters from throwing themselves into the closing doors.  This time, their desperation has led them to a unique campaign involving corny puns and anthropomorphous vegetables.

This poster managed to awkwardly fit the word for "tomato" into a typical warning not to rush into the train.

And the above sign highlights the phonetic appearance of the word "potato," in a phrase that would otherwise mean "lining up is the fastest way."

Not a vegetable but amusing all the same, this is kakekomanmosu-san, whose name is formed by combining the phrase "don't rush in" with the word "mammoth".

Although quite funny, I seriously doubt the effectiveness of this campaign.  The crying tomato babies just don't measure up to the the potential wrath of a Japanese boss, should an employee arrive late for work.

I Am Shut Up !!

So Will Smith came to Tokyo last week, where it's said that he inadvertently gave away part of the ending of his new film "I am Legend" during a press conference.  This prompted his people to shout at Smith not to disclose any further information, in what was surely a loud display of typically American discord and cacophony.  Interestingly, said ending is no where to be found on the Internets, so perhaps nobody in Tokyo understood what Smith was saying after all.

I actually don't care about any of that.  What bothers me is this: Why did Will Smith allow a lower-intermediate Japanese student of English to create the title for his newest movie??! (yeah, I know it's based on a book, but still...)

"I am Legend" typifies the general wrongness that is Japanese English.  Did the Fresh Prince even consider what problems this would cause here in Japan?  I mean, what if my students begin to challenge the red markings on their English essays which originally stated: I am Japan, I am enjoy, I am happy life, I am summertime, I am race car, or I am golf??

I am stress about this.