Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan

How Do Things Change in Here?

I think I'm not only person who is wondering why Japanese people always make everything so crazy. But, in this few years, I have reached at a conclusion. I guess It's just like a "copy noise".

To test, copy some documents with a copy machine. Repeat to put the copied paper on the machine and copy it again and again. You will see the characters on the copied documents are blurred more and more, and some stains which originally are dust or something grow bigger and bigger. Japanese people tend to pay attention to these stains rather than the contents on their copies. As I have repeatedly mentioned, they are not wanting to make their original things because they know copying is more easy way. But, since they also know that their behaviour has less originality, they desire to append their own cheap (but unique, they think) idea to their copies. These ideas are always one of following or combination of them: showy, unusually small, recklessly expensive (by using gold or diamonds), (pretend to be) cute, related to temporary fad or related to sex. The other people, who don't know the origins, are attracted by those additional idea. (These people cannot even find out why these original things are worth to imitate.) They expand those copy noises when they make another copy. In this way, the original spirit has been lost and incomprehensible things are continuing to be made here.

"Whoa! How groovy is his hair? Who's this?"

"I don't know. Anyway, I wonder what we should do to become groovy like this."

"It's easy, imitate his hairstyle."

"No! Imitations are always worse than origins! Make this groovy portion two times bigger so that we can become two times groovier than him."

"How's this? I think it's nothing but groovy."

"You can say that again. It's totally groovy."

"But we need more bigger groovy portion."

"My neck is tired cause this is a bit heavy. Do I look groovy?"

"Not bad. But you still have needless things to be groovy. You should shave your foolish eyebrows off."

"Don't I look like a sushi?"

"You have nothing to worry about. You look great."

"However, you seem to forget about our groovy portion. Back to the basic and make the portion more huge."

"Isn't this even more than grooviest?"

"Yeah, nothing can be groovable more than this!"

"This grooviness is, I think, so groovy. But we have to give people more bigger shock. How's changing your hair color?"

"Like this?"

"You are the emperor of groovy kingdom."

"If you want to be more groovy, you have to die."

"Oh yeah... What does it mean?"

"Uh, I don't know."

"Look at my new extremely grooveful hair. I can change this groovy direction freely."

"Comparing with you, all the rest of people are almost grooveless living dead."

"It's fun! Let me play with it."

"No way. Don't touch it!"

"I got so old. But look, my hair is still big!"

"Indeed. By the way, Do you remember why we have kept this stupid hair for this long time?"

"It's just I'm wondering!"

Flashy Truck Match : Pakistan vs Japan

I got to know about boldly decorated Pakistani trucks (via Jalopnik). It's so interesting because we have similar flashy trucks in our country. And I feel funny that though the trucks of both countries reflect each of their national character, "too much" seems to mean "totally good" for a certain people in the whole world.

Japanese decorated trucks, which had been called "DEKO-TORA", became a fad in 1970's and even a movie series was made. Recently, they are hardly seen but still alive with their new name "art truck".

One of the Pakistani busses. (I'm not saying "a Pakistani person kisses") Its vivid colors and detailed handiwork catch our eyes. You can see that even its windows are not the exception of their canvas to be painted. I'm not sure that these decorations have any religious meanings, but I feel they have an Islamic atmosphere.

Japanese decorations are more metallic and squarish. (It reminds me of some old sci-fi movie props like this). Their most notable feature is that the many of their parts are lighted up when they cruise at night. So the truckers can satisfy their desire to show off even in the darkness.

This Pakistani truck would make lots of small clattering sounds when it runs. And its driver may not be able to see outside clearly.

The hand-drawn paintings on the bodies are the best things which they pride themselves on. All kinds of things are painted with air brushes, for exapmle: calligraphies, UKIYOE arts, movie stars, Mt. Fuji or other scenery, dragons or tigers.

The front end of the cargo (what should I call it?) which is sticking up to the sky seems to be thought as cool. It can be seen among the Japanese art trucks, too. I guess it comes from the animal's habit of tending to show their body bigger than their actual size. But I wish they never made their bodies wider than usual cars because it must wipe out the roadside trees and oncoming traffic.

There is also an art-truck-themed video game.
See its opening movie with the hyper-real computer animation.

Gravestone Shop

There is a stone shop in my neighborhood which is displaying some stone objects to show their sculptural skill. The shop is  primarily making and selling gravestones, but those demonstration works are hilarious.

This kind of stone turtles can be seen often around ponds in Japanese old shrines.

This Doraemon is strange. He looks like wearing the shades.

Godzilla is hanging a sticker for " Protect Children" campaign on his neck.

Please notice the baby dinosaur breaking through the egg behind the hippo and dogs. It's just like the movie Alien.

I can't even imagine how expensive the total royalty for these characters would be.

If you are a Hello Kitty worshipper, this must make your eternal sleep peacefull.

And these are their proper works.

Bidding for Information

In the last year, Yahoo! Japan added a category called "JOHO" (information) to their Yahoo! Auctions. Currently, around 5,000 items are auctioned in this category. Most of the prices of them are around 1 ~ 10,000yen but sometimes it's up to 200,000yen (1,890USD). So, what kind of auction is it?

To sum up, almost of these "information" are usual spams. Once when I was looking for some liquid crystal TV in the auction, I found a strange titled item. It said, "You can buy an expensive TV set or anything you want!". I read its description.

I am an ordinary company worker. But I'm slightly different from you. I know how to get my additional income much more than my actual salary. Are you satisfied with your earnings? Don't you want more? If you don't, please leave away. About one year ago, I've found an information about a way to be rich in this auction. Although it was not effective to me, after many trial and error, I've completed my own know-how to earn 1,000,000yen (9,500USD) per month. This is that I would like to let you know...

And long, boring, and pointless propaganda followed after this. This seller seemed to be waiting for some greedy idiot trapped by his honeyed words and pays money out. Since this kind of spams had been spread among the entire auctions, Yahoo made that "information" category to isolate them. These information are sometimes about an useless method of winning slot machine jackpots, or some of them lead their bidders to their multi-level marketing scheme. But, their descriptions are all childish and everyone can find out that they are obvious fabrications. The other item says like this:

I happened on an awesome thing. Don't you think it's wonderful if you can get an information from future? For a long time I had searched for valuable information from others but they are all similar and worthless. Most important point for the information business is a freshness. You can get information from future without charge, and without limitation. Can you believe it?

And another alchemist says:

What do you think if you have a PC which automatically earns 10,000 yen every day? What do you think if your PC earns money instead of you even when you are sleeping? I'm sure you need it. Let's change your own PC into like that!

Then, what will be happened if you bid one of them and pay your money for it? Mostly, a simple email will be sent to you. It is very thing that they call "valuable information". Some victims are showing the contents of the emails which they bought and found that they were frauds.

In our internet business, we can hardly see the faces of our customers. But the important business bases are the same whether it is online or offline. We have to always think about "what we should do to make our customers happy".

It continues this kind of "golden rules for business" which has been already said for the past thousand years. And it ends like this.

Are you thinking that this instruction isn't worthy of its high price? I don't think so. Because you can sell this text to others and earn much more than you paid for this!

...This is why the auctions always look crowded. Can you think of something unproductive than this?

Japanese people like a shortcut. They are always thinking about how they can get max profit with minimum action (or without any action).
You can find that every Japanese bookstore is filled with many "how-to" books, which tell us how to be rich, how to be loved by others, how to become a celebrities, or how to be thought as an intelligent person even if we are actually far from it. The good sales of these books show that people believe these books make them to be what they want to be without any experiences.
On the other hand, people prefer to make efforts to find a way to do something with no efforts. Even if their result of thought brings them only small profit, they seem to be satisfied because they (seemingly) have not spent their time and energy.

So, why did they choose the internet auction? The information sellers must be thinking that the internet is still believed as a gold mine by people. But such dreamers are already only themselves. Becoming rich by only sitting in front of PC may be their heartfelt and sad dream.

Let's go back to the auction. This description of an auction item is the most I like:

This is an indictment! I really got angry! The information which *****(someone's yahoo ID) is listing on auction is a complete lie! I bought it and followed its instruction but I've got no effect at all. I emailed him to ask about it but he has not replied. It must be a resale of someone else's information. His seller's rating is also doubtful. Don't be cheated by him!
So, I fixed its insruction to work better. I'm sure that you will be rich with mine. Please bid this item!

Lots of Unchi

You should better to stop reading this post if you are eating, because this is about a human excrement.

You can find this kind of POP displays in almost every drug store in Japan. This says "UNCHI DOSSARI". UNCHI means "feces" (in baby talk) and DOSSARI means "tons of". So people are shocked when they read it at the first time, "Are they selling poop here? Why so much?" This is very funny for us, but not for women.
Many Japanese women are suffering from constipation and most of them believe that it makes them fat. So they strongly hope to cure their constipation even with the help of medicines. They are really expecting to defecate tons of poop as that POP says.

This is a picture of a joke stuff "poop hat". No, I'm not going to introduce this stupid hat. I only want to let you know that feces in Japanese comics are always coiled like a snail shell or soft ice cream. I don't know who started to design feces like that. But every Japanese people recognizes that kind of shape as a human feces. It's strange.

And one more feces topic. There is a huge art object at the main building of a beer company, Asahi Breweries. It was designed by Philippe Starck in motif of flame, but everyone calls it a giant poop.

Railway to Kyoto

I'm writing this in a hotel room in Kyoto. In these few month, I'm taking a trip from Tokyo to Kyoto once a week for work. It takes a little more than two hours by SHINKANSEN, the super express train, per one way trip. Since my home is far from the Tokyo station, the total time required for the round trip is about 7 hours and this is stealing my time to sleep. I really hope SOHO becomes more popular in Japan.
But, crawling around the ground at speeds of over 200km/h is not a bad experience. Due to the complex landform, the weather of Japan changes very often. It shows various sceneries from the train window for the couple of hours. You would not be boring it.

This shining bullet train fascinates not only train enthusiasts.

Leaving crowded Tokyo. It was fine weather for a short trip. (It would be better if this wasn't a work)

Every suburban area is covered with this kind of ready-built houses.

You can view Mt Fuji from various angle in this trip.

Sanyo Solar Ark is a huge solar power generation facility. I missed the best shot.

A creepy cloud started chasing us.

When we reached at Kyoto, it had been snowing heavily.

The next day morning. a deadly cold waited for us.

Other random shots of the trip are here.