Dispatches from the Wild Wild East
Here's a commercial from a monopoly - staring a sausage-loving penguin - to encourage use of the electronic ticket system, Suica. Mass-cooperation and efficiently-run public transportation is awesome:
Recently Gawker Media videogame columnist Tim Rogers wrote an unenlightening screed for Kotaku about the elements of Japanese culture he finds distasteful, prompting accusations of Orientalist racism from Freddie deBoer. The internet has been aflutter with amateur anthropologists (including myself) throwing in their two cents in the form of comments.
Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rot in Hell.BBC News reports that residents of Taiji are not happy that The Cove won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, and obviously neither am I. The film beat out less frivolous documentaries about Burma, food safety, Daniel Ellsberg, and Central American children who seek better lives in the United States respectively. Not to sound callous, but who gives two shits about dolphins? Not that the Best Documentary Academy Award is or should be about engineering social change or inspiring political action, but the fact that the Cove won shows just how full-of-shit and self-indulgent the environmental movement has become. Avatar going down in flames in no way makes up for this.
Here in Japan, it's impossible to escape the latest stupid figure skating rivalry, or lack thereof, between Japanese clear and obvious silver medalist Mao Asada and South Korean clear and obvious gold medalist Kim Yuna. And I say that inclusive of huge margins for error, because I mostly consider figure skating to be a popularity contest, or perhaps more accurately, Asian Tots and Tiaras on ice.
I recently posted a summary and link to my extremely negative Avatar review on a fanboy site; this elicited no fewer than twelve err, umm, avatars to insult me and accuse me of being a troll. A routine link bomb had turned into solid entertainment. Some highlights:
Vanessa791 says, "It never fails to amaze me that trolls love to get on a FAN site just to be able to trash a movie that the other members love. You actually think the garbage you are spewing is going to open our eyes??? You sir, are a fool then. Go spew your crap on a board where it is wanted, it isn't wanted here."
Although Avatar definitely sucked, I must admit that I watched the movie in Japanese because I wanted to see the 3-D. There was an English version available in my city, but it was the 2-D version, and, really, let's face it, the only reason to go see Avatar is to witness stereoscopic film-making. As a result, I may have been frustrated - not because I don't understand Japanese - but because I find dubbing to be in poor taste and distractingly ridiculous. I might understand the rationale behind dubbing - as opposed to subtitling - a special effects movie: people want to focus on visuals and not on reading subtitles. Nevertheless, dubbing is the norm in Japan for all foreign media. There are probably only five or six voice actors, and they all sound like Don LaFontaine, even the woman who regularly plays Miley Cyrus. I attribute this to either widespread hidden illiteracy or widespread poor taste. Either way, it may have affected my mood as I watched the film.
JPop is infamous for it's lameness. But this video takes the cake:
Recently, 29-year old Sumo phenom Asashouryuu was forced to retire for bad behavior. He allegedly assaulted a man outside of a nightclub in Tokyo, then tried to cover it up. While to Americans accustomed to bad behavior from athletes ranging from Mike Tyson abusing then wife, Robin Givens, to Mike Tyson complaining that the count on Buster Douglas was too slow, to Mike Tyson allegedly fixing matches, to Mike Tyson claiming that Evander Holyfield cheated, to Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear, to Mike Tyson trying to break Francois Botha's arms, to Mike Tyson going to jail again for assaulting two motorists after an accident, to Mike Tyson almost getting banned from the U.K., to Mike Tyson testing positive for marijuana, to Mike Tyson facing sexual assault charges for a second time, to Mike Tyson saying he wanted to "eat Lennox Lewis's children", to Mike Tyson getting banned from Japan, to Mike Tyson retiring mid-match because he didn't have "the fighting guts or the heart anymore", to Tiger Woods banging out pancake waitresses, Asashouryuu's behavior may seem relatively minor, the Japanese sport of Sumo holds its practitioners to higher standards. It is both sport and cultural institution, or perhaps neither at this point.
Christopher Carr
