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Found this Flickr page while randomly trawling the Internets: Eric Lafforgue. He's obviously a professional, because these are magazine-quality photos. Lots from Japan plus other places like Burma.
I have to say, I'm a little burnt out on all the Harajuku girls photos. It's getting kinda boring. However, there are lots of non-goth pics too, like that of the lovely sleeping lady to the right.
I don't care what you say. I love Puffy. Apparently their new album Honeycreeper came out in Japan on Wednesday, and they're now on tour to support it. They're playing in San Francisco at the Fillmore on November 15. You know I'll be there. Even if I have to go by myself, get drunk, climb onstage, kiss Yumi, get thrown out, and wake up on the drunk tank, I'm going.
So if someone wants to go with me and keep an eye on me, I'd appreciate it.
This makes me so happy:
Stay tuned pass the first robot, which is pretty impressive in its own right, for the Landwalker. Controlled with the feet, leaving hands free for the guns (which unfortunately just shoot plastic balls).
I swear, the Japanese have their priorities straight when it comes to technology.
As spotted on Japan Sugoi.
The Christian Science Monitor has a great little article about gaijin who speak like women in Japan. This is hilarious, because I was just having a conversation with a Japanese girl the other night about this. "Americans speak like women!" she said in my response to wanting to find a male to practice Japanese with.
The Japanese spoken by men and women is pretty different. Everything from words used to rhythms, pronunciation styles, pitch of voice—all very different. Women tend to raise their voices in pitch, use more polite words, refer to themselves in the third person, and end sentences with the particle "wa." (This is an oversimplification, but it works for the purposes of this story.) Men tend to speak much more lower, clipped, use less polite words, and end sentences with "sa" or "zo."
The problem for the writer of the piece, who suffers from speaking like a girl, is that his only model for Japanese comes from his girlfriend. If you work all day with other English speakers at an English school and then go home to the wife or girlfriend, you're only going to hear her style of Japanese. Unless you've grown up in Japan and have hung around with the guys, you're going to miss out on their speaking style.
For us learning Japanese in America, we only hear Japanese from our teachers, who are overwhelmingly female. Of course, most of us men want Japanese girlfriends, so the language exchange partners we tend to seek out are women as well. If we're unaware of the disparity between male and female Japanese, like the author of the article, we may never even know that we're speaking a highly femininzed form of the language. (Although he really should have known better. All you have to do is read a book to find out the differences.)
So, any male Japanese out there want to do a language exchange?
The first time I saw Vermillion Pleasure Night, a late-night Japanese sketch comedy show, I thought, this is custom made for YouTube. And what do you know?
Here they parody David Lynch:
There are lots more sketches at YouTube. Happy hunting.
As spotted on Mari Diary, here's a mascot-making site. Enter the name of your mascot in the blank space, click the text below it, and it'll generate a creature, and list its likes and dislikes. Here's mine, which I've named (surprisingly enough) yakihito.
Let's see, so it's female, likes meat, dislikes kim chee, and its dream is to have a lot of money.
You know, this looks a lot like Mari's mascot, maridiary, which also likes meat and wants to have a lot of money. (Although in its favor, it dislikes locusts. So that's different.)
OK, let's try one for my other site, Slash and Burn. Here we go: meet Slashy. Likes fish, dislikes alcohol(!), and wants to be rich. I don't know, Slashy, with a face like that you might want to reconsider the alcohol thing.
This piece on giant food on Japan Sugoi reminded me of the giant gyoza I'd seen in a window in Tokyo a few years back. Although the food in the Japan Sugoi piece is realtively inexpensive, this is not. That's almost $100 for that giant gyoza. How much ground pork is that? The alternative is a big plate of normal-sized gyoza, also $100. Still seems expensive. (The fried rice on the side is about $50.)
The other thing I love about that giant gyoza is that that's a fake giant gyoza in the window. The restaurant must have had that plastic model made custom, at great expense. (In think I just figured out why it costs $100.)
A while back I posted about fun with web-controlled security cams. There are a few I check semi-regularly (like the giraffe one) but the one I really love is this restaurant one.
Watch the people eat. Watch the staff hang around the cashier and gossip. Wonder why the camera controls are in German.
My best guess this is a Chinese restaurant, judging by the round (read: family style) tables. But who knows. It's definietly in Japan though. The original Google link had Japanese characters in it.
Right now there's some mirth going on behind the counter. I hope the boss isn't watching...
Does this look at all familiar to anyone?
One of my favorite bands is Can, a German krautrock powerhouse from the late-'60s and '70s. Their second vocalist was Japanese, and his name was Damo Suzuki. He fronted the band for their finest albums, and brought a mystical, feminine energy to the band that, in my opinion, was the perfect capper to their psychdelic muscle.
Damo was spotted (as the legend goes) by bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit in Munich, busking outside a cafe. The wandering singer was promptly recruited into the recently vocal-less Can, their previous singer, American GI Malcolm Mooney, having left for seemingly greener pastures.
The Can were a largely improvisational group, with roots in jazz and experimental electronics (Czukay studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen). The story goes that they would jam all day long in their castle/studio, Inner Ear, and record everything. Czukay would then edit the jams down into songs (much like Teo Macero did with Bitches Brew). Damo's improvisational singing style fit perfectly with the band, his light voice floating above the lockstep rhythms and psych guitars.
"Mother Sky" is an early indicator of the strength of Can's Suzuki years, and Tago Mago cements it. But it's Ege Bamyasi that will forever be remebered as the band's finest hour. Funky (it took hip-hop crate diggers long enough to discover it), psychedelic and beautiful, it's Damo and the band at their most accesible and yet still cosmic. This was followed with Future Days, seeing the band skirting prog without being succombed by it.
Apparently Damo converted to the Jehovah's Witness faith after getting married in 1974 and left the band. He still plays and records, now as Damo Suzuki's Network. Judging by the weirdness at his website, the man has not slowed down.
Can: "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea"
Can: "Vitamin C"
And just cause it's so unexpected, B-boys popping to "Vitamin C" in the NYC
It's no secret around these parts that I love me some Crunchyroll. I've seen more cool movies and TV shows there than I can count. The latest to suck up my time? Yama Onna Kabe Onna, or "Mountain Woman Wall Woman."
Japan is apparently experiencing a "boob boom," with fattier foods increasing the busts of the average woman. Big bust = mountain. Of course, not everyone is filling out up top, left with just a "wall." In the show, Kyoko Fukada (Kamikaze Girls) is the yama onna, and Misaki Itou is the kabe onna. Can't really go wrong with either, and therein lies the beauty of the show.
Misaki is the manager of the handbag section at a posh Ginza department store, Kyoko the new transfer who's a bit of a ditz but manages to sell lots of handbags thanks to her refreshing attitude and, erm, watermelons (as they're referrred to by the shamelessly ogling male store staff). Also on the staff is Eiko Koike, no slouch in the bustular region herself, and another girl whose name I forget but who was also on Attention Please.
The show's pretty funny, giving Misaki lots of opportunity to display her not-terrible comedic timing, but really it's all about those yama. I'm no boob man, but when the camera can't stop pulling close-ups on button-bursting busts, well, how can a man not enjoy himself?
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