watashi to tokyo

10 crazy things about Japan

Last Friday and Thursday I took Franklin Covey's leadership workshop. It was really interesting and I was impressed that they showed methods and solutions for issues that I wanted to know. What is leadership is the same in the world maybe, or I wonder if they changed something to fit the Japanese.

 Here is a post "10 Crazy Things About Japan". It's fun. I wonder if it is strange to take a bath at night? I guess the sheets would be dirty easier without taking a shower or bath before going to bed. Do you change the sheets every day? I will add this post too, my loving post "Japanese is insane."

 Japan Probe picked this "Japanese anime: slant-eyed Chinaman fights Nazi". Ha ha, Kinniku man (means Muscleman) is a professional wrestling manga and he has fights with wrestlers from other countries like Ramen man from China, Brocken Jr from German. An American wrestler is Terryman. He is a nice guy.

short post on rainy Monday

Just a short post on this rainy Monday, we been having a strange summer this year. We’ve hardly seen any sunshine and it's humid but not so hot. I am afraid the price of fruits and vegetables will get high sooner or later.

Some Japanese entertainment news: "Jasmine You," the guitarist of the Visual Kei band Versailles, has died. They didn't release the cause of death yet. These are pictures of Versailles.

Masaharu Fukuyama, the second most popular actor in Japan, confessed that he is the child of atomic-bomb victims. I sense that a new era has come, people won't hide the past anymore and will become more active against nuclear programs.

Japanese pop star Noriko Sakai was arrested for drugs. Actor Manabu Oshio was arrested too, he was with a woman who was found dead in an apartment in Tokyo's Roppongi.

Do Japanese people have an image as being hard workers? If so, that image might be false, you might be much harder workers than we are. Japan didn't even rank in this article. But why do we feel we’re always overworked and don't have enough vacation? Maybe our work style is inefficient?

It's scary

This was a broadcasting accident. At the end of a program, the scene froze and shook and a strange sound played. Then the red part grew wider and looked like the character for "death." This occult TV occurrence is very hot today.

This post is about the worst criminals in Japan. At any rate, the worst must be Shoko Asahara, I agree with that. There are mass murderers but not so many serial killers.
Worst 5: Shoko Asahara: founder of the controversial Japanese religious group Aum Shinrikyo
Tsuyama massacre: a 21-year-old man killed 30 people, including his grandmother, using a shotgun, a Japanese sword, and an axe
Seito Sakakibara: the alias of a then-14-year-old student from Kobe, Japan who murdered an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl
Concrete encased high school girl: I feel bad after reading this wiki article...
Kiyoshi Okubo: He was a famous Japanese serial killer

I picked this before: "Japanese couple charged nearly 700 Euros for a seafood lunch become an unwitting symbol of tourist rip-offs in the Italian capital." The Italian government offered them a free holiday in Italy but the Japanese couple turned it down. Hmm… I would take the offer :-P

20th Ceuntury boy trailer.

Brian sent me this link, American TV hosts tried to be voice actor of "Ghost in the Shell". Ha ha It's funny. In original Japanese animation, Atsuko Tanaka plays Motoko. (here she is ). When Innocence was made, the producer Toshio Suzuki would like to use Tomoko Yamaguchi (actress and she is a wife of Toshiaki Karasawa : 21th century boy) but director Oshii opposed it and push Tanaka.

 

A former director aplogized for Haruhi

At Otakon2009, the former director of Haruhi apologized for the "endless story" in the new series "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". He said he was aware of this problem and he left to stop it. Hmm it will be framing, actually Kyo-ani made a comment that he is not related to the project anymore.
Animation creator Yoshinori Kaneda died today, he was known for breaking down the directorial system in animation, which allowed individual key animators to use their own style in a particular work. It is called the Kaneda perspective in Japan. For example, you can see it in the Voltes V opening. He has worked for Studio Ghibli since Nausicaä and move to Square Enix to make Final Fantasy.

Makoto Yabuki is a Japanese art director, we saw his work in TV ads. Today, I found his official site and saw his other artwork. I like this white style. It's beautiful, check it out.

Another video is this making of TOYOTA IQ font: when driving becomes writing. Very cute idea. You can download the IQ font. :-)

iQ font - When driving becomes writing / Full making of video from wireless on Vimeo.

Tokyo Toy Show 2009

The 2009 Tokyo Toy Show is being held now. You can see both very high-tech and low-tech designs there. For example, this is "poop san." Hmm…that is why it is said we have a poop obsession

Yaranaika is a meme on 2ch, originally it came from a gay manga. I read that a Yaranaika body pillow was released and it has big things… well, it’d be hard to sleep on it… Sorry, I don't have anything interesting today...

By the way, guys who love cute stuff a lot (but are not gay) are called "otomen" (girly men) in Japan. The term came from a manga called Otomen, which will be made into a live-action drama in August. In Japan, it’s acceptable for some guys to love cute thing even if they are not gay, but it this okay in your country? For a guy to like pink, collect lovely items and eat sweets?

Okuchi Naoshi

I had a three day weekend after a terrible Friday night :-). Since it's too hot go around Tokyo, I watched a lot of movies. One of them was Tekkon Kinkreet by Taiyo Matsumoto. I wasn’t as good as I expected and it was not for me. But interestingly, I found his son's private site today. Here is "the idiot" by Shoei.

So I am reading the manga PLUTO on this site as a palate cleanser, we say kuchi naoshi (mouth freshener) in Japanese.
You English-speakers laugh at our Engrish and sometimes my Engrish (he he he) but we laugh at funny-looking Japanese from around the world. Today Nifty Portal Z has this post: strange Japanese words that he found in Chinese supermarkets. First, both a bean snack and a blueberry snack had the same ad copy on their packages: "two packets of natural taste soup attached." I guess they had a food containing free soup packets that sold well, so they thought the ad copy was good and catchy for Japanese speakers... A bean snack in yellow packaging named HEALTH has some Japanese-like new language on it and they added the instructions: "soak in hot water and drain after three minutes," but apparently, you don’t need to do this to eat the snack. On the next page, English-speaking people will understand the joke because they put the words “rainbow-colored” on a blue cutlery set. Ha ha, funny.

videos

Animation studio STUDIO4 ℃'S "First Squad" wins award at the Moscow International Film Festival. It looks pretty good.

The world’s fastest records from around the world. Some are Japanese TV films, one of them is the same as this quick morning routine. 

Tokyo Magunitude8.0

A new anime called Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 started airing. They depict Tokyo very well; you can see the Statue of Liberty in the Odaiba scene. Yes! It is there. You can find an English subtitled versions on YouTube, please enjoy

Thriller dance

He uses his fingers to do the dance from Michael Jackson's Thriller. It's pretty good and we can feel Michael’s presence.

This is beautiful: a paper craft Castle on the Ocean by Wataru Ito, an art school student.

This is interesting: "Rome restaurant in hot soup for 700-euro lunch tab." We don't know the truth, but the funny part is that the Japanese couple didn't get angry when they were at the restaurant. Ha ha… that's the Japanese for you. By the way, I had a similar experience in France. I paid a lot for a sandwich, but I only realized it when I got to the hotel at night because I couldn't calculate the conversion so quickly.