And so it shall be. Tomorrow, July 1st, is the beginning of my end. Yes, tomorrow I will be wearing light bluish-gray trousers with elastic waistband, and a short-sleeve pink button down shirt w/red accents. It is, in a phrase, unfathomably gay.

Yet I know you are all with me in spirit, yes?

Apparently so, for I have heard requests for pictures of the new duds from around the world! You are all bad people, and will burn in hell for teasing me. And yet, it somehow seems fitting (the hell part).

The thing is, I have never actually revealed my company on this blog - you may find it interesting that I made writing about my work experiences permissible part of my contract, back when I started the job 5+ years ago (although I only started blogging a couple years ago, I started writing the Salaryman Adventures in late 2000.) They basically told me to use discretion and not sell any blueprints to the Soviets, and I have honored those conditions. Posting a uniform is a gray area in my mind, insofar as that if you don't know what major electronics company has a manufacturing base on Awajishima, neither should you be able to guess by our new metrosexual uniforms.

Plus, what am I? Your puppet? A dancing bear? Your biiiiiooooooootch? Must I heed your every whim and post humiliating photos of myself for your pleasure?

As a Japanese Yoda would say, "pondering, I must."

This is a pretty amusing video someone sent me. You should look at the tiny on-screen details the second time around in order to appreciate it fully.

And now, in the immortal words of Hiro Protagonist, we present: REDNECK KATANA!

Some snapshots from this past weekend, taken with my keitai:

Kinda funny about the cage thing, because the Japanese simply states, "no pets allowed." Found @ Bic Camera in Namba.

BUBBLE MAN! New competition for the grape Fanta market, with a retro cartoon design that just screams, "designed by someone's 14-year old nephew in MS Paint." Seen here in a vending machine near Sankaku Koen.

Now we get to the creepy stuff. CUT FACE!?! If you are stupid enough to go to this barber shop, don't some crying to us - remember, they still shave you with straight razors in Japan. Taken at a crosswalk on Nagahori-dori.

FAMILY LOVER! Another nomination for Engrish of the Year award. Yes, that is a painted rock. On sale at Tokyu Hands for 580 yen.

Personally, if I were promoting a racing team I wouldn't use the name "Samurai" (the guys just don't fit the part), and I wouldn't drive around in a minivan with portraits of a bunch of pretty boys smeared on the windows and panels.

I have to mention something that I have found very ironic. In Asian American Studies classes, the professor always lectures about the feminization of Asians in Hollywood, and I agreed completely with them. It's complete bullshit that Asians haven't gotten many roles where they have balls or where women find them attractive.

But over here, as well as other Asian countries from what I have read, the younger generation plucks their eyebrows, dye their hair whimpy colors and get haircuts that should have stayed in the 80's, wear berets and hair clips, and sometimes even use cosmetics. It's not subtly effeminate, it's straight up flamin'.

And no, I don't think that all men can pull off a pink shirt (or most for that matter). It's OK to wear, but it should also be fair game for those around to poke fun.

I wonder if the effeminate proto-Asian character appeals to the testosterone-challenged generation over here.

This one is for our Tenri University classmate, now First Secretary at the Kenyan Embassy in Tokyo:

Peasant farmer Daniel M'Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M'Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard's mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal's tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

I, myself, would have tried appealing to the leopard's sensitive side and pleaded for my life, and that having failed, wept pitifully. He ripped out a leopard's tongue with his bare hands. That's a REAL man.

Read the full story here: LINK

Following along the culinary lines of yesterday's show-and-tell where I revealed the amazing blowfish hand axe, here's an interesting link about common kitchen myths.

Some of the myths themselves are amusing: Are there really so many people that believe cold water (or previously boiled water) boils faster than warm water?

On the other hand, nobody will ever convince me that electric ranges are better than gas, even with the 240 volt models overseas... I mean really, is "simmering" even a worthy point of contention? It's not exactly something that people who like cooking even think about, in my mind. In fact, I would theoretically worry more about simmering on an electric range because of the heat retention of the heating elements/surface for the first few moments.

As far as an electric range being faster for boiling a large pot of water, wow. I concede the honor.

And as for escaping heat and energy efficiency, I consider this to be the tradeoff for being able to cook better-tasting food, which is the standard by which nearly all cooking comparisons should be based on anyway; I have never seen BTU ratings specified in a recipe.

One other nit I must pick for Queen (and not my) Country:
You can heat a cup of water in the microwave. You can put a teabag in it. However, the average Joe would be surprised to find out that the result is actually not a cup of tea. "Why," you ask: It's an Oreo "biscuit" thing, baby.

Oh my, does that ass look fat!

This is my new fugu knife... which may sound confusing because I have zero intention of ever preparing puffers at home and never had an "old" one, but as you can see, is an apt description nonetheless. I did not need to sharpen it before use because it was more than razor sharp out of the box - very impressive!. The curved blade has a long sweet spot and makes both chopping vegetables and deboning fowl very easy.

The balance is just about right for chopping, but I may upgrade the handle with moulded Pachmayr grips and uranium counterweights for proper dicing action. Also, after I add a golden chrysanthemum seal and a long tang that supports my finger-forward fighting style, this should prove to be an excellent weapon of mass destruction.

Yes, this is my idea of a political blog post.

/out

Oh, man. I think I just stumbled onto the Big Hominid's second home: DISGUSTING, DEPRAVED, TOILET-RELATED LINK

Put down that drink and shield your monitor: Triumph takes on fans outside the Michael Jackson trial

This is a good story about thinking outside the box: TO MEASURE THE HEIGHT OF A BUILDING WITH BAROMETER

Just remembered this from Sunday: Four of us got in a cab and headed toward the Hankyu department store to grab a bite on one of the upper floors, before the whole thing gets redone later this year. The cab driver was female. This was only the second time I've ever seen a female driver, and we all had fun asking her about the taxi business from her perspective, etc. We had one of those "friendly repoire with the cabbie" things going pretty well; in all, a very cool experience. I guess I got a bit too into the whole thing, though.

The question of why all cabbies, independents and company employees alike, have to wear black (or dark blue) was posed; our driver did not know. Then, as we passed a line of people dressed in black standing at a bus stop, someone from the back seat wondered out loud why they were all dressed that way (they were dressed a bit strange, kind of an Elderly Kansai Goth type of look). Someone offered the obvious, saying "funeral," but I tried my luck with "because they're all cabbies."

The car became instantly silent, and the driver's eyes visibly bulged out of her head as she bit her tongue.

In retrospect, I may have been lucky that she didn't slam on the brakes, punch me in the mouth, and throw us out of the car right there. She was that pissed.

//

Been in this country more than a decade; still haven't lost the touch, I guess.

A while back, somebody explaining my family ancestry told me that I'm part Ainu. Which is funny, because when I first met my fiance's dad, he said I looked part Ainu, and I thought he was crazy (I may have Russian sailor blood in me, as evidenced by the occasional rogue bright orange hair on my face, but Ainu?). It turns out that he was right (actually no real surprise since he taught anthropology at Mahasarakham University for a few decades - as usual, I turned out to be the dumbass).

//

I like how the Wikipedia entry states that men eat with chopsticks, and women eat with wooden spoons. Do Ainu women usually choose the "soup" entree instead of the "salad" (as opposed to their counterparts in most other areas of the world)? And how the hell do any of them dig into, say, roasted wolf shanks, or a boiled badger steak?

//

I'm not religious, but I find animism to be really cool sometimes, especially among the all the current day bullshit caused by religious intolerance. Give me a fire-worshipping, wine-sipping, animal-head-sacrificing pagan any goddamn day.

//

Can the person who orginally told me I'm Ainu please stand up? I can't remember who it was, but it was almost definitely my mom.

What could even hope to match the Goonies 20th Anniversary Celebration? (my sister actually attended it!)

Only one thing: The Napoleon Dynamite Festival

Dammit, they really should be marketing this stuff as the perfect Father's Day gift: High Performance Duct Tape, Nuclear Grade

Through a fiendish twist of events involving Air France stewardesses and fresh squeezed lemon chu-hi, I found myself at a club in Umeda on Saturday night, actually their opening weekend. Basically, the whole experience made me remember why I stopped going to clubs:

- I'm too old for that shit

- Shitty music played by the wannabe rockstar Djs; from the sound of it, you would never guess that house music has actually progressed in the last ten years

- The "fog of war," cigarette smoke so thick you have to light your own to make it bearable

- Insufferable wannabe yakuza penislickers who insist on staring down everyone that has the gall to walk by their group; strategically positioned next to the restrooms, of course

- New laser/LED lightshows with New! Improved! Dazzle! guaranteed to cause at least a few seizures in the pit every night

- Old women showing sagging tit

- Antibeer: Beer that is the antithesis of cheap, cold, and very un-urinish in taste and appearance

I just have to repeat how truly awful the music was: It was shit, shit, shit. If you were the DJ working CLUB SAZAE this past Saturday, please know that even a retarded chimpanzee could have mixed your Best of Ibiza CD collection better (and yes, I know you were mixing CDs on a shit setup because I heard the track flutter during your fagalicious "fade 'n cues").

Over at the NY Times: Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out

The first "Star Wars" movie 28 years ago was distinguished by healthy interplay between veg and geek scenes. In the climactic sequence, where rebel fighters attacked the Death Star, we repeatedly cut away from the dogfights and strafing runs - the purest kind of vegging-out material - to hushed command bunkers where people stood around pondering computer displays, geeking out on the strategic progress of the battle.

All such content - as well as the long, beautiful, uncluttered shots of desert, sky, jungle and mountain that filled the early episodes - was banished in the first of the prequels ("Episode I: The Phantom Menace," 1999). In the 16 years that separated it from the initial trilogy, a new universe of ancillary media had come into existence. These had made it possible to take the geek material offline so that the movies could consist of pure, uncut veg-out content, steeped in day-care-center ambience. These newer films don't even pretend to tell the whole story; they are akin to PowerPoint presentations that summarize the main bullet points from a much more comprehensive body of work developed by and for a geek subculture.

There's something about this article that got me thinking about the Metaverse from Stephenson's classic, Snow Crash. About how Julia became more famous than the rest of the programming team because she worked on the faces of the avatars inhabiting the Metaverse, to which peopled turned out paying most attention.

Or the way the barons of bandwidth and media controlled the seething masses... It's happening right before your eyes, at this very moment! Run away!

If you drive a car like this, you should really be sporting a mullet to complete the look.

No.

Impressive presentation.

This is your brain on karaoke.

Rule #1: Never leave your cell in unfriendly hands.

Threesomes only?

Lift the seat!

I mean, is the guy hard up for cash, or what? I sure as hell couldn't forgive him back in 1994 for whoring Nikita out to Hollywood for an effortlessly crapalicious remake starring Bridget Fonda, and titled, most appropriately, "Point of No Return" (presumably referring to the instant a person bought a ticket to see this shitfest at the theater). But now he's really gone and done it with the US remake of his car-action masterpiece, Taxi.

For fuck's sake, this is the movie that inspired me to request a white Peugeot 406 at Charles De Gaulle airport (and do multiple doughnuts in the parking lot in protest when all they had was a turbocharged Opel Vectra)! This is the movie that prompted me to drive from Mimizan to San Sebastian at the speed of holy shit! and make people in the backseat gasp quite audibly! In exhilaration, no doubt! And pass several cops on the way! After having a nice breakfast of wine and sangria!

...OK, maybe you should not see this movie if you like driving.

...And you definitely do not want to see the Hollywood remake of it. Unless your idea of a fast car is a Ford Crown Victoria, that is. I shit you not, in Taxi:NYC (its title overseas), the white 406 is replaced by a yellow Crown Vic. With blowers and a bunch of other shit copied from the original movie which can apparently enable a Crown Vic to outrun a custom BMW 760. Um, no. This movie, this premise, is just wrong. WRONG I SAY! DAMN YOU LUC BESSON! A POX ON YOU AND THE MERDE THAT FILLS YOUR VERY BEING! MAY A THOUSAND UNSHAVED FEMALE ARMPITS BEAR AUSPICIOUS LICE TO FILL YOUR LYING MOUTH!

Also:
FREEDOM FRIES, MOTHERFUCKER!

Rainbow wrasses 30% off!

In a way, hearing these breakbeats over the Imperial March was better than the entire second trilogy.

This is most interesting when there are people who can draw on the same page as you: The Scratchpad

I chose pad #2 because there are hordes of 13 year olds drawing penii on pad #1, and there were only a few people on pad #3.

I suck at drawing, but it's still fun anyway. ;)

The Suhama bridge at Takenokuchi beach.

Moving dirt at Sumoto port.

Nam sent this cause she was bored on the bus.

Found this really cute site featuring onomatopoeia performed by children in different countries: ***bzzpeek*****

(hint: click one of the symbols around the main window there to start things off)

My fiane is currently finishing her doctorate at Osaka University in the field of linguistics, which we both studied at Tenri University. She is writing her dissertation about Molam (alternatively spelled, "Morlum," or, "Mawlum") which is a traditional form of Northeast Thai singing, originally from Laos. I've been translating excerpts and summaries into English (from Japanese) for her along the way, and have really gotten interested in the actual music while looking for what's available online for her.

I discovered that most interesting aspect of this music for me is that it sounds a lot like rap! It's hard to explain? But there are definitely some similarities in the verse and song structure there. And while turning on some of the Molam grooves today to get in the mood for another translation Nam asked me to do, I decided to learn a freestyle verse that sounds particularly hip-hop?

I've been working on Nam's translation for four hours now, and I've only done two lines, mainly because I've been trying to memorize this one particular Molam verse and it's driving me crazy:

Soi Soi / lao phi nong fang Soi /
Phen bo khao baan phen / go tang khao baan to /
So baan to / go tang to baan phen /
Jang bo khao baan phen / go tang khao baan to /
Pro waa roa yuu khon la baan

I'm doing some serious tongue-twisting here. Knowing quite well that I sound like a retarded campuchean goat while practicing this out loud, I pretend not to hear Nam yelling at me to stop in the background. I WILL get this down. Because I am destined to be the King of Thai Country Groove.

More later, if Nam doesn't kill me.

Gatson came by the house last night to install the English version of MS Project, and he told me about our new work uniforms, which we will be issued around the end of the month and have to wear from July 1st. I came into work today and confirmed the new design with the other guys in the office:
- Pink shirts with red collars
- Light green pants

An alternative title for this post is, "The REAL Reason I'm Leaving This Job and Country."

Apparently there is a leak at our company at a higher level, because they are ripping this decision to threads over at 2ch. Pretty funny shit, but it would be a lot funnier if it were happening to someone else...

BTW, there's still no news about which board member's gay fashion school dropout nephew designed this abortion of a color scheme.

Did I say something about doing away with mandatory fingerprinting of gaijin yesterday? Sorry about that, what I actually meant to say is that they are doubling it: Japan plans to expand fingerprinting requirement for foreigners

Another reason I'm definitely leaving Japan next year: Japan to have all foreigners carry IC cards for crime control

The LDP and the government claim the new policy is aimed at keeping track of foreigners as part of measures to prevent terrorism and crimes.

Well, it might be especially effective if they decide to embed RFID chips to enable remote scanning. I can just imagine all Japanese police cruisers equipped with gaijin detectors on the dashboard. Perhaps they can include a dye packet and/or taser function to help out, as well.

I imagine this also has to do with the recent spate of counterfeiting and identity thefts - I'm told that stolen gaijin cards can be sold for 20,000 yen in minami, no questions asked, and that a fake one can be purchased from around 70,000.

The most intrusive part of the new plan that they are admitting to lies here:

Holders will be required to report any change of address and obtain permission to change jobs.

As if it's not tough enough to get a job as it is now, in a couple of years you'll have to obtain permission from the government first.

Hey look, in the opening paragraph of the article, they used the words "Japanese government" and "intelligence center" in the same sentence! Why does the government have to be such a pain in the ass and go so far out of their way to be oppressive? Is this payback for doing away with the mandatory fingerprinting of gaijin or something? All I have to say is, sayonara suckers.

Ugh. This van is just plain cruisin' for a bruisin'.

I decided to check around on some of my favorite "dead" sites - ones that people quit updating some time ago due to job issues, necrophilia rehab, deep vein thrombosis, etc. - and was most pleasantly surprised, inspired even, in fact, let me ask you this:

If a retarded kid falls in the forest, does it make a slapping sound?

SHE'S BACK.

An awesome optical illusion: Rapid coloured afterimage

(via kottke)

Pronounced as the answer to, "What do you call a Japanese woman with no arms and no legs, propped against a wall?"

The following quotes are from the unbelievably retarded Yomiuri article located here: LINK

Cheap hotels in Osaka day laborer district lure foreign tourists

Kahori Sakane / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Five budget hotels in the Airin district of Nishinari Ward, Osaka, which have typically catered to day laborers, are seeing an unexpected increase in foreign and Japanese tourists looking for inexpensive lodging.

Okay so far; it's no surprise that tourists are attracted to rooms cheaper than $80 a night (a fairly average hotel room price). But this article is just getting started, as you will see...

The trend has encouraged some of about 100 other hotels in and around the district to target foreign tourists rather than laborers. A local association of the hotel operators and a nonprofit organization supporting day laborers have also launched a project to make the area a backpackers' town, such as Khaosan Street in Bangkok.

Well, it sounds like some new Osaka politician is going to start lobbying for prostitution visas (oh wait, they already did that with the "massage" visa earlier this year) or attempt to make Kinryu ramen available for 50 yen a bowl on the street, that's great. One question, though: What do the urban planning visonaries propose as the prefectural backpacking destinations of choice? The container stacks at Nanko (slogan: "Visit the drug-sniffing dog petting zoo!")? The romantic banks of the Yodogawa "Industrial" River ("Home of the Lucky Osaka Two-headed Carp")? Or maybe there are plans to establish the 1990 Nishinari Riot Memorial... Let's move on:

"Is there any place around here to go dancing?" a blond Finnish woman asked a clerk at Hotel Raizan South, a budget hotel in the Airin district, last Monday night. The clerk smiled and said there were some clubs in Nanba, two stops away on the Midosuji subway line.

Notice the key words, "blonde," and "Finnish." Aside from the inference that Hotel Raizan South clerk hiring guidelines stipulate at least one Scandinavian and one Romantic language (Aramaic is a plus), perhaps we can also assume that a brunette duchess from Luxembourg would have been referred to Kitashinchi on the JR Tozai line. More:

The question would not seem odd at most hotels. But according to Hidenori Yamada, 28, executive director of Chuo Group, "A foreign tourist leaving a Nishinari Ward hotel at 9 p.m. was unimaginable five years ago."

Let me fill in the missing sentences here: "They used to just smoke the methamphetamine this area is most famous for and stay up all night watching the traffic cams on NHK; it would be very difficult to persuade them to leave even well after check-out time the next morning. I guess the new wave of tourists is more into Ecstasy and clubbing."

Another attraction of Raizan Hotel is its convenient location, which is 15 minutes by train to Universal Studios Japan (USJ), one hour by train to Kyoto and 50 minutes to Kobe.

...As is the rest of Osaka, you hacks. Or Namba, at least, since that's the comparison. Next:

Known as one of the largest day laborer districts in the nation, the Airin district has a population of about 30,000 in a 0.62-square-kilometer triangle south of JR Shin-Imamiya Station...

...In Sankaku Park, about 500 meters southwest of the hotels, many homeless people live in blue tents or spend the night in a city-run shelter, which offers hardtack in the evening. On weekends, they line up for meals at a soup kitchen.

Repeat after me: TOURIST'S! PARADISE!

The hotels began attracting a few South Korean tourists shortly after launching a Web site in the same year, although they originally hoped to attract more Japanese tourists and businesspeople.

Fishing for sea bream, the damn fugu kept stealing my bait. - Japanese proverb

In order to meet the demands of foreign tourists, mainly from China, South Korea and Taiwan, the hotels began listing their information in English, Chinese and Korean a few years ago.

...Because we all know that English is secretly the official language of all three of these countries, right? Jesus Christ. In all fairness, the discriminatory overtones I'm sensing here might be imagined - perhaps the author is just that bad.

Minerva Jormola, 22, and her friend, Ho Yueching, both from Finland, told The Daily Yomiuri they found Hotel Raizan on the Internet and decided to stay there because of the low price of 4,200 yen per night for a twin room.

Of course, what we really want to know is: Which one is the blond? For Amaterasu's sake, could you bastards please maybe use more than a single source in your hotel guest interviews (and a random Ho doesn't count).

Much later:

A local nonprofit organization, Kamagasaki Community Regeneration Forum, which supports the district's homeless and day laborers, is also interested in involving laborers with the project...

...The forum hopes out-of-work laborers and local welfare recipients will engage in tourism-related jobs or volunteer work created by the project.

Wow. Somewhere in Kamagasaki, a dutchie is being passed, presumably on the left-hand side. We all know how being on the dole tends to spur the volunteerin' spirit, right?

The forum believes a bicycle rental business could be an option since some of the workers learned to repair bicycles in an Osaka municipal government vocational seminar.

Is that what they call "jail" these days?

Under the plan, when a tourist rents a bicycle, a laborer will deliver it to their hotels. If they want to leave the rented bicycle at a sightseeing spot in Osaka, the bicycle will be retrieved and brought back to the district base.

And doesn't that just scream VIABLE BUSINESS PLAN. The sad thing is that while one might assume that this entails paying honest, hard-working people to ride bicycles back to homebase - providing both employment and a healthy lifestyle with the added benefit of preserving the environment - I somehow suspect a flatbed truck driven by a gang of bicyle thieves is closer to reality.

Arimura said it was important to make use of people and resources in the local community.

As opposed to outsourcing it to professional tour guides and bike shops in Hokkaido, I presume. Pearls of wisdom, people. Pearls.

Lastly:

"If group tours increase through our efforts and the Airin district brings in more individual tourists, it may not be so difficult to attract 2 million foreign tourists to the prefecture," Yano said.

Well, he did say "if."

//

Alas, I don't know why this article, among all those churned out over the weekend, caught my eye. I also don't know why I felt I had to fisk it. I just did.

as Dave Barry would say.

You are the king of smooth -- enough said. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Hey, I just realized that George Takei's face really reminds me of my uncle Tosh... But in a way I can't really put my finger on. Maybe it's the bone structure or something, but I'm telling you, if George put on that "Kimchee Power" t-shirt that my uncle used to wear on our trips to Lake Powell, it just might fool you.

It seems my uncle and Mr. Takei shared similar experiences growing up, as well.

(article via)

When I visit home I always make it a point to hit the swap meet, if not for actual shopping, then for the cultural appeal. Swap meets and flea markets have always held a special charm for me, in every country I've ever visited. I've made some of my most prized acquisitions at these venues, as well.

Has anybody else noticed that indoor swap meets usually suck? There's definitely more allure to an outdoor market, in my mind.

Via monkeyfilter: Photos of an Unknown Family Who PROBABLY Owned a Liquor Store

There's an interesting conspiracy theory about Nazis, the mormon church, and ghostwriting for Orson Scott Card up at kuro5hin: LINK

I poke your eye out!

So this is it. Right about now, the sweet memories of my vacation to Thailand are almost completely pushed out of my day-to-day consciousness, so I decided to post my best photo in an effort to fight off the effects of the grind.

I got to close to this silly bird at an ostrich farm located only 15 minutes from Nam's house, adjacent to a riverside restaurant where we were invited to lunch. I leaned over a rail while looking through my camera's viewfinder and got a bit too close, and realized I had entered within striking distance just before I hit the shutter release... I hastily stepped backwards and accidentally took this shot as I raised my arm in self defense.

Of course, the ostrich never actually took a nip at me, he just psyched me out and then did this weird victory dance... I still have to look over the video we took to see if that came out or not, and if it did, I'll post it later.

There's nothing like an overgrown bird mocking you with a victory dance.

Well, it's been a really busy week friends, but this link is just too good to let by: Even Better Than The Real Thing

On a similar note, the video they emulated is one of the most memorable ever made, in my opinion.