Visa-Mandated Funny Pictures of Japan, pt. 2

That's right, kids, it's time yet again for another cavalcade of kooky, poorly-spelled hilarious pictures taken around the mean streets of Osaka. Super-Mecha-Cyber-Dream-Rainbow Jokes...ENGAGE!

Definitely the cheapest doinks I've found in Osaka. And they do an all-you-can-doink special on Saturdays.

If you don't read katakana, you might lose something from this joke: his name is "afuroinu," loosely translated as "Afro Dog." Actually, not much is lost in translation after all.

Japan is big on Free Gifts, especially cell phone charms: I once got a cell phone charm with a bottle of Lipton tea. This one lights up, I believe.

I don't know where this guy was going -- I'm guessing that he was on the way to do battle with Sailor Moon -- but wherever it was, I wish I could have gone with him.

Any questions?

The menu at a typical kushiage place, a.k.a. Fried Food on Sticks. Tasty, though the meat selection is a little intimidating for those not used to Ass Meat.

The most beautiful T-shirt in the world. Too bad it only came in size Tiny and Extra Tiny.

An Osaka landmark in the hip district of Dotonbori. Why is it all the great Osaka landmarks involve huge terrifying invertebrates?

I would pay so much money for a bag like this. Finally, a two-word phrase that perfectly describes Engrish culture.

Gaijin Book Review: Jackson/Kimura's "Potato Pals" Series

In a highly competitive field where authors and publishers compete for the whims and needs of fickle 5-year-olds, Patrick Jackson and Rie Kimura have stumbled on something special. Their "Potato Pals" series hits all the important points as most ESL book series, going to destinations that have already been visited by superstars like Spot and Thomas the Tank Engine -- ___ Goes to the Farm, ____'s Morning Routine, ____ Goes to School -- and yet, as familiar and tired as the genreic tropes may seem, the kids get a kick out of them. They laugh when presented with the simple pictures and simpler sentences, ones they've seen dozens of times before; ordinarily, the kids respond to a picture with the caption "brush your teeth," they respond very much as though they were being told to brush their teeth (that is, unimpressed), but with the Potato Pals, the most ahumorous sentence becomes funny times!

To learn the secret of Potato Pals, we have to go no further than the basic premise of the series. In short, the series is an examination of the daily adventures and trivialities that make up the lives of six close friends, Daisy, Buddy, Nina, Dean, Joy, and Chip. They are all potatoes. They go to Potato School, are woken up in the morning by their Potato Mothers, drive Potato Cars, play Potato Soccer, have Potato Birthday Parties, and carry Potato Umbrellas when it rains in Potato Land. Most of them wear shoes and only one article of clothing, such as glasses or a hat. Some of the other Potato Citizens of their Potato World have moustaches.

This gave me nightmares for weeks.

No attention is paid to the fact that these creatures are living in a grotesque fantasy land that mocks our own world in its ghoulishness. Perhaps that's what the kids find funny: young as they are, children can instinctively pick up on the abject absurdity of a potato brushing its single Potato Hair when it wakes up in the morning. To illustrate using in the traditional Japanese conventions of Internet pictures:

Left hauntingly unanswered are the myriad questions raised by this series. For instance, consider this picture:

Just off the top of this reviewer's head: are we to assume that the larger potato looking on approvingly is the protagonist's (Buddy's) mother? Is this then a universe in which potatoes give live birth like the mammals of our world? Or was Buddy named from the way he budded from his mother's own flesh? Do potatoes need to eat, and are they omnivorous, as the breakfast spread suggests? Is that hair or long, dyed potato eyes? Um, eww? Also, I would ask where the butter came from, but that question was addressed quite satisfactorily in the tome "Potato Pals Go to the Farm," where potatoes are shown milking cows and, in a shocking display of pseudo-cannibalism, feeding corn and carrots to pigs that are being raised for the slaughter.

Astute readers might recognize that similar book series, such as the aforementioned Thomas the Tank Engine, also feature parahuman oddities imbued with human emotions who engage in interpersonal drama. To that I would only say that Thomas the Tank Engine, for all his shenanigans and goofy smiles, is still a damn train. He rides on tracks and has concerns like keeping schedules and not falling off the tracks.

The darkest questions raised by the Potato Pals, ones that reach deep into the psyche of the reader, concern of the role of humans in this twisted allegory. As far as this reviewer is concerned, there are two options for the cosmology of Potato World: either this is a horrible parallel universe, one where readers can only assume that humans are killed and eaten with ketchup just out of sight...

Google Image result for Wendy's french fries. Thank you, I'm outta here!

...or else Buddy and friends exist in an unseen world within our own reality a la Toy Story, and the ultimate fate of the Potato Pals lies in the stomachs of the children who cruelly delight in their hash browns' fantastic origins. Who knows, maybe the Potato Pals are fully aware of their status as a food. Maybe good Potato Pals go to Potato Heaven or are reincarnated as Fry Kids. In any case, Jackson and Kimura keep us guessing in a delightfully perverse series that drills verb tenses admirably.

A-

Visa-Mandated Funny Pictures of Japan, pt. 1

As a requirement of their visa, every foreigner living in Japan must fulfill two requirements within the first 12 months of their residency in this country:

1. They must keep a blog to document their amazing adventure.
1a. They must refer to their time in Japan as an "amazing adventure" at least once.

2. They must post funny pictures of stuff they see in Japan (i.e., signs, products, fashions) to illustrate how "crazy" Japanese culture is.
2a. These pictures may, at the expatriate's discretion, be referred to as "a hoot."

In keeping with our required hilarity, here is a smattering of snapshots that capture the weirdness we encounter in our daily lives over here. Yuks ahoy!



Finally, the great taste of those Grand Canyon french fries that we all know and love...in a can!


That's what it looks like, yep. Strawberry sandwich, for sale at one of the finer 7-11s over here. I'm not sure what the white creamy stuff, but knowing Japan, it's either mayonnaise or squid brains.


Can nothing stop the TERROR OF DEN-DEN TOWN?


Wink wink, nudge nudge.


Yes, let's pick our teeth!


Crunky is one of the more popular candy bars over here. It's basically a crunch bar, but...well, crunkier. I have no idea why they haven't started marketing this in the States yet, it could be the next PBR.


They really, really love Obama over here. My high school students had absolutely no idea what the word "can" meant or how to use it in a simple sentence, but they could effortlessly repeat "Yeswecan" for hours on end. Anyway, I'm told this is some of the most delicious, idealistic chicken you ever will eat.

Yeah, they're not too good with the whole R/L thing over here. I really thought someone would catch this before it made it all the way through the sign-making process.

More pictures coming soon (we have quite a hoard of them)!

Elegy for a Stranger

I know this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I've been having a hell of a time finishing another, more conventional (i.e., predictable) post about Pocky or somesuch nonsense. So, here's a poem I wrote after a suicide on the Nankai Semboku line made everyone late for work a few weeks back. If poems aren't your thing, may I direct you to stop reading and go play some Scrabulous.

Elegy for a Stranger

We crowd into antlike furrows, scurrying through steel metropolitan veins,
Close our eyes and jostle into silver wombs that slide,
Timed to perfection, are jettisoned, creaking, to Sun or Sea,
We unhappy many.
Today contractions are interrupted, the wa disturbed
(All but obliterated, though propriety remains)
By the specter of untimely death--
Rumors ripple through the unspeaking gray bullet.
Most of us pour onto a sun-soaked concrete island three stops early.
More delays in Sakaihigashi, hundreds of Plans B dashed,
Hundreds more appointments late, though excuse slips are distributed by conductors.
No one dares speak, yet it is generally understood
That someone has, well, you know, on the tracks.
It happened at Sumiyoshi Higashi, right where the line splits,
Where an uncelebrated dotted blue snake diverges,
Anaconda becomes hydra.
Somewhere here amid the familiar trees,
One of our fellow weekday warriors came to a different conclusion
And gave up fighting the good fight, lay down arms,
Painting some anonymous meter of steel that we will grind over this afternoon.
Though surely none of our silent, truant crowd
Knows our fallen comrade, we are the worse for losing him:
This ill-timed dagger has rent the great curtain of our shadow-play
And revealed a nearly empty house.
"How could he?" we all ask, "and on such a nice day?"
Trains are never late in Japan.

We feel guilty about enjoying the unexpected moment of sunshine, seconds stolen from our next air-conditioned cave by a tortured soul who would now disperse or else hang from the power lines and chill our bones other mornings,
mornings where we arrive at work without interruption.

Osaka, 5/17/10