Today at the conbini I stumbled across a new benchmark in Japanese Soda Pop: “Menthol Shock,” released nationwide in June. Continue reading
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On Not Walking While Drinking Soda in Japan
Why doesn’t anyone in Japan drink soda while walking?
Google results are unsatisfactory. Is it considered rude? Dangerous? Had it never occurred to anyone that they could drink while walking?
Japanese friends answer with a shrug. “We just don’t, I don’t know why.”
Posted in Culture Shock, Food, Uncategorized, Weird
10 Comments
J-Cin Sundays: Suicide Club
Title: Suicide Club (自殺サークル, literally, “Suicide Circle”)
Director: Sion Sono
Year: 2002
Notes: This review contains spoilers. And it’s a cult cinema comedy-horror film by an avant-garde street poet, so assume all videos are disturbing – except for the Rebecca Black video. Or, maybe that one too.
TLDR: A J-Pop band made of 12-year-old girls deliberately inspire a secret suicide cult through their lyrics and album art.
Posted in Movies
2 Comments
On Kappa
It takes time for new places to seep into my dreams. When I’ve left a place, my dreams take me back instead of forward.
Places go first – the familiar coffee shops, restaurants and bookstores stop serving as backdrops. People from the past populate new places, meet new people and occasionally trade faces or bodies.
Dreams about places in Japan have taken about 8 months to catch up. First was the shrine near my house, dreamlike even in life and never the setting of anything in either world.
And this is where I met my first kappa.
Posted in Tradition, Uncategorized, Video, Weird
5 Comments
On Walking On Fire in Japan
The most difficult part of walking on burning coals during a typhoon was finding the right train.
Posted in Shinto, Shrines, Thinking, Tradition, Uncategorized, Video, Zen
Tagged dazaifu, fire walking, shinto, shrines
2 Comments
On Watching a Baseball Game in Japan
American baseball spills beyond pastime and into national ritual, with more performances of the national anthem than the most fervent political race. But baseball in Japan strips the bleachers of their red, white and blue flare and keeps it firmly in the realm of the rising sun.
Here, the game is literally called “fielding ball,” and the twists on the game reveal as much to observers of Japanese culture as any sumo match.
Posted in Fun, Uncategorized
9 Comments
