Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan

Child's Play

After reading your comments to my last post, I was surprised to hear that many of you have played the "do-not-touch-the-ground" type games. Children are always seeking their primitive pleasure, no matter where they live. So it may be no wonder that they can happen to discover the same way to play.
We used to play many types of games in our childhood. Some of them have descended through the generations and some were created by ourselves. Although the rules of each game would be slightly different, many people in various countries may have played similar types of games.
The following are the games I played again and again (over 30 years ago). (Note that those explanations are based on the local rules which I used to play. There may be many other different rules than them.)

Janken (Stone, scissors, paper)

You won't need my explanation about this because the stone-scissors-paper seems to be played all over the world. (This page describes its history and variations among the countries) Most of our games start from the JANKEN. Also, we adults sometimes do JANKEN when we have to choose one person from group or decide an order of priority.

ONI-GOKKO

This is a very similar game as "tag". We call "it" in tag as "ONI" which means devil. The first ONI is choosed with JANKEN. The ONI have to count ten (or other certain number) just like "hide-and-seek" and other kids run as far as they can while the ONI counts. After counting, the ONI chases the other kids until touching one of them. The kid who was touched becomes the next ONI. Many of our games are variations of this simple one.

KEI-DORO

Maybe it's the short name for "KEISATSU TO DOROBOU" (police and thieves). In this version, ONI is a policeman and others are thieves. At first, a small circle which means a jail is drawn on the ground. When you are touched by the police, you have to stay in the jail. But if a free thief comes and touches you, you can run again. The police wins when all the thieves are arrested.

IRO-TSUKI-ONI

First, the ONI yells a name of a color. You have to find and touch the part of something which has the color the ONI specified, or you can be touched by the ONI.

TAKA-ONI

The ONI can't touch you when you are on higher place than the ground, like on doorsteps, stairways, rocks or trees. But you can stay the same place only during you count ten.

DARUMA-SAN-GA-KORONDA

This also requires an ONI. The ONI stands face to the wall and yells the spell "DARUMA-SAN-GA-KORONDA" (a DARUMA doll fell over). While the ONI casts  the spell, you can approach to the ONI from the specified position. But when the ONI finishes the spell and turns against the wall, you have to freeze and stay in the same pose. If the ONI finds you are moving, you have to keep staying by the ONI's side. But if any other kid can approach and touch the ONI, you can run until the ONI yells "stop". Then you have to freeze again. The ONI can walk a certain numbers of steps to touch and make someone as the new ONI. The spell has many local variations. In Kansai area, it used to be said like "BONSAN-GA-HE-WO-KOITA" (a monk farted).

YANE-SHOGATSU

This requires a ball (ranges in size from super bouncing ball to beach ball). The winner of the JANKEN throw the ball onto a sloped roof or shade structure and yell the name of one of other members. If your name is called, you have to catch the ball. If the ball touches the ground, you have to leave. If you can catch it, throw it to the roof and call another name. The last player wins. Do not use a bowling ball for this game! It killed two of my friends. I lied.

JIN-TORI

This was my favorite because it is a very strategic game. So I'd like to describe in detail with some terrible figures I drew.

When you play this with two other kids, you have to draw a regular triangle which has sides of length of 30~50cm on the ground. Four members need a square and five members need a pentagon. This is a shared area.

Each of the members can specify his/her initial territory by extending the each side of the shared area. The expanding length was specified as five times of length of your foot (in our local rules).

Then, all the member stand face to face placing their toe on the edge of the shared area and do the JANKEN.

The lowest one of the JANKEN becomes an ONI and chases the others. But both the ONI and others can't step out from their own territory.

When you are the ONI, you can win if you touch any other members. But if your hands can not reach to anyone's body and you have nothing to do but surrender, or if you step out from your territory, you lose.

When you are not the ONI, you lose if you are touched by the ONI or step out from your territory. But you can win if you are not touched by the ONI until he/she surrenders.

If you win, you can add one more length of your foot to your territory. You can extend your territory any direction as far as you don't invade the others' territories. You can also bend or add branches to your territory by adding new fields.

When your territory grows big enough to catch all other members wherever they escape, you win the whole game. Stretch your territory so that it surrounds the others' territories.

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.

Silly but Elaborate

It's still busy... Sadly, my only pleasure is looking around some websites in a short break.
NIPPON STYLE is the project which commercializes ideas collected from the people. Although all of its products are quite silly, they have taken lots of time and energy to create.
(The following linked pages are written in Japanese. I hope you enjoy the images in them)

World's Smallest Die
The length of one side of this die made from brass is only 0.3mm (300micron). This is an example of wasteful using high-precision processing technology of Japan. This image shows that its size is about the same as a space of two fingerprint lines.
99,750yen (969USD)

This company also made "The Fastest Die in the World". It was named like this because of having been made from the same elaborate technology as an engine of Formula-One. The central point and the center of gravity of this cube are almost the same with 99.99999999% of accuracy.
49,875yen (484USD)

Wooden Keyboard
Each key and the cover of this keyboard are made from wood. It was made manually, and is more expensive than my PC itself. We have to take care not to bring coffee close to it.
262,500yen (2,550USD)

Condom Glass
This glass is originally a mold for manufacturing a condom. Once you fill this glass with a drink, you cannot put the glass on a table until you drink up (see the bottom shape of the glass). This page says that the smaller one is the Japanese specification and larger one is the European specification (especially French). What's the hell!
European Spec: 14,100yen (137USD) / Japanese Spec: 12,600yes (123USD)

Wrist Watch for Safe Sex
You can hide your condom into this wrist watch for an unexpected chance of sex. This animation shows how it works. This wrist watch will start to be made actually if the total orders come up to 120, but there are still only 8 orders. I think it's because of its bad design.
16,800yen (163USD)

Unfortunately, they are all too expensive for me (perhaps for many other people, too). If these were more cheap and sold on TV shopping channels, many people would buy them.

BUJUTSU

YOSHINORI KONO is a researcher and instructor of Japanese traditional martial arts, and his writings are filled with various interesting stories. Today, we recognize about martial arts as several independent sports, for example, judo, kendo or aikido, etc. But, samurais in Edo period did not classify them like that, but had mastered all of them as a synthetic art of self-defense. KONO calls it "BUJUTSU".

Imagine a boxer who is trying to punch his opponent. He will twist the upper part of his body, and will store up his energy for pushing out his fist rapidly. But, this movement helps his opponent to guess which arm he is going to use to attack. KONO says that the samurais did not twist their body when they fight. They could move quickly by moving all of their joints flexibly, without twisting their bodies. It was quite unpredictable movement for their opponents, just like a tuna cannot follow the thousands of small fish when they quickly change their swimming direction all at once. However, it is hard for us to move without twisting our body. KONO says that the samurai moved in a completely different way from the present theory of human motion.

A samurai was aimed a sword, and the tip of the sword was only a few inches from his nose. Since he even had not extracted his own sword yet, he seemed to have no chance to escape. Suddenly, he raised both of his legs and made his body to fall on his bottom. Momentarily, his body floated in the air, and it made every parts of his body to be able to move freely. He extracted his sword in a backhand grip, and struck the opponents sword away. The opponent who had pointed the sword to him was surprised that his face disappeared suddenly, and lost the sword before grasping the situation.

KONO has introduced various unbelievable episodes of "TATSUJIN", the experts of BUJUTSU. SAMANOSUKE MATSUDAIRA was also one of the samurai who was called as TATSUJIN. One day, he was ordered to arrest a fugitive who was taking a hostage at a hotel. He approached the fugitive, hiding a lump of lead in his sleeve, and without having a sword. When the fugitive swung down his sword to SAMANOSUKE's head, SAMANOSUKE threw the lead and stepped back quickly. Since his sword hit the lead, the fugitive mistook it for hitting SAMANOSUKE. In a very short time that the fugitive lost his attention, SAMANOSUKE swung his leg and the fugitive tripped and fell on the floor. Soon the fugitive was tied up and caught easily. KONO indicates that we become very weak when our expectations proved wrong.

He also introduces the episodes like this.
When we walk, we move our right leg and left arm forward together. When we step our left leg forward, we twist the upper part of our body and swing our right arm forward. Until this method of walking was imported from the West in about 130 years ago, the Japanese people had walked in the other way. They may have not been able to twist their waist at all. While they walking, they did not swing their arm or moved their arm and leg of the same side forward together. Therefore, almost all of Japanese people in Edo period could not run. In the old picture that depicted an earthquake in those days, the people who could not run are walking to escape, holding up their hand like dancing. In the other hand, it is said that the several samurais and ninjas had amazing running skill. KONO introduces about a samurai who ran the whole distance of 600km in three days. The samurai must have adopted some different kind of methods of running from ours.

The KONO's books explain not only the moral theory of martial arts, but many concrete examples of skills of samurai. His book should be translated in other languages.

If you want to know more about KONO's theory of martial arts, this page will help you.

RAKUGO

RAKUGO is a kind of comic storytelling which has 300 years or more history. Each performance is performed by one storyteller, HANASHIKA. A HANASHIKA sits down on the stage and plays all the roles in his story by himself. Many of the stories have handed down from mouth to mouth through the generations.
Today, RAKUGO is rarely heard among Japanese young people. But I want to introduce some of jokes from RAKUGO, because I think they help to tell the styles of our humor. Sadly, the Japanese humor has recently became more simplistically and poor, though.

A storekeeper asked his employee.
"Could you borrow a hammer to nail from the next-door neighbor?"
"No, sir." The employee answered.
"When I asked him that, he asked me what our nails were made from. I said they would be steel. Then he said that he would not lend it because the head of hammer might wear down from hitting such a hard thing."
"What a stingy man!" The storekeeper said. "Okay, I'll use mine."

There was a father and his son, both were drunkards.
One day, the father came home drunk as usual but the son was still out. He said to his daughter-in-law.
"He must be drinking this late at night. Damn drunk! I'll lecture him not to drink anymore. And I'll find a nondrinker for your new husband."
He started sleeping while saying so.
Then the son came home drunk and found his father sleeping. He said to his wife.
"He must have drunk and slept. Damn drunk! I'll lecture him not to drink anymore. And I'll find a nondrinker for your new father-in-law."
After hearing the voice, the father woke up and said to his son.
"I can see your head increasing to three or four. I'll never hand over my house to such a creepy monster!"
The son said.
"I don't need a house that is turning around like this!"

Several young fellows were talking about what they were afraid of. They gave various things like ghost or snake.
But, one guy said.
"I'm not scared of nothing but MANJU."
MANJU is a kind of cake. The other guys thought strange and agreed to play a trick on him.
They locked him up in a room with a lot of MANJUs. Though they expected he would scream and run out the room, nothing could be heard from there.
When they peeped in the room wondering what was going on, he almost ate up all the MANJUs. They were surprised and one of them asked him.
"Actually what are you afraid of?"
He answered.
"I can't eat anymore. This time, I'm afraid of a cup of tea."

BAKA-TONO

Don't you want to see some completely silly movie clips?
Click images below. (Windows Media Player required)

Another Rip-off?

His name is Broadband. He is in "Kids Zone" at the website of an US government agency, FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

And he is Doraemon. Perhaps he is the most beloved Japanese manga/anime character. Its manga series was started in 1969 and is one of the most succeeded series in the Japanese character merchandising market.

It's hard to think that the concept of "broadband" had existed before 1969. In short...

I got this information from here (in Japanese). Thank you!

And this page gives you a detailed info about Doraemon.

Copycat

I heard that Hello Kitty is now beloved in more than 30 countries, and this is the 30th anniversary year of the birth of Kitty. Great! ...Sorry, I'm not so much interested in it. But I've been wanting to say only one thing about Hello Kitty for these 30 years.



Kitty's design was just a crib from this!!!
This is "Musti" created by the Belgian animator/director Ray Goossens (1924-1998). Musti was started as an animation series on TV in 1968, and its picture books were also published. I read some of that books and loved it in my childhood.
Although it is evident to everybody that Kitty was an imitation of Musti, Sanrio, the publisher of Hello Kitty have not touched on it.

It is said that the total copyright fee for Hello Kitty reaches around 15 billion yen (13.7 million USD) per year, and Sanrio got 23.7 billion yen (21.6 million USD) gross sales in second quarter of 2004. I wonder why they don't feel shady about hiding the fact.
I can say boldly that I stole these images from their official websites!! (Did I say something wrong?)

Craze in '90

If you are planning to put something on the Japanese market and expect big sales, there is one easy way for it. You have only to shout "Everybody has already bought it!" on TV or magazine again and again. Many Japanese cannot decide on what their money should be used just because they dislike using their brain. They are the idlest people in the world in that they depend on others' opinions to know what they like or dislike themselves. They open their wallet without wavering when they heard that something is in fashion, however stale or stupid it is.
I try to go back to the 1990s and list some strange crazes among Japanese people year by year.

CHIBI-MARUKO-CHAN

Comic book series about a little girl and her family and friends of the 1970s when the author MOMOKO SAKURA spent her elementary school days. The TV animation that's based on the comic was started in 1990 and it was adored not only by children but adults who felt nostalgia for it. It recorded the highest viewership ratings (39.9%) of any Japanese TV animations. The CD of its theme song "ODORU PONPOKORIN" with incomprehensible lyrics sold no less than 1.9 million copies. 15 volumes of the comic books have been published until now, and their sales amount to a total of 30 million copies.

IKA-TEN

In a midnight TV program, the bands-competition-style part named "IKA-TEN" won popularity. The amature band, which got high evaluation from the judge and remained undefeated, could receive backup from the program in order to make its major debut. A lot of people who are crazed by the program began to make their own band. Since the music companies wanted to take advantage of the fad and made too many low-quality bands come out easily, people's interest fade and almost all bands were forgotten away.

JINMEN-GYO (Human Faced Fish)

In the end of the '80s, the rumor of a dog with human face had spread among Japanese people as one of the city legends. The dog was said to be able to run fast like a car, and if it was talked to, it was said to say "Leave me alone". Influenced by this rumor, a human faced rock, a human faced spider, a human faced crab or other weird human faced stuffs were also in the center of attention of the people.
A human faced fish, the carp with head unevenness which looked like a human face, also found at a temple in YAMAGATA prefecture, and people thronged to see it. The fish got seriously overweight and sick because people feed it too much. Fortunately, it had narrowly escaped from death.

OYAJI-Gal

OYAJI-Gal, the women in their twenties who act like Japanese middle-aged men, increased in number. They amused themselves with things which had been thought to be amusements for men, such as playing golf, gambling, reading tabloid newspapers in the train, and drinking SHOCHU (distilled liquor) in shabby bars.

NATRITA-RIKON (Divorce at NARITA)

Young people came to take marriage lightly, and many couples got married impulsively before knowing each other well. Between their honeymoon trip, they got to know their true character and opted for divorce as soon as they arrived at NARITA Airport from disappointment.

ASSIE-KUN

Japanese men had became to throw their pride and do anything to be loved by women. In spite of not being invited to go out by the women they love, they were glad to be called only when she went home and drive their car only to take her home. The women had only took advantage of the men without sympathizing with them. The word "ASSIE-KUN" has meaning of "a substitute of my feet (transporter)".