Here’s a little tabletop ad I saw at a sushi place. What I like about it is the horrifying fish head in the upper right-hand corner:

Doesn’t that look like it belongs on a poster for a horror movie? To me, this is not the image you want in your head before you eat. But that is, apparently, a Western attitude. When I pointed it out to the Japanese friend I was with, he said when he looks at that, he just thinks “Yummy!”

Diiiiinnneerrr ttttiiiiimmmeee….

Here’s another weird pencil case from Japan.

It has a bit of weird English, of course.

But what really makes it is the look of terror on the duck’s face. “The amount of funny bubbles has gotten too crazy!!!” he seems to be saying.

Here’s a little samurai, all ready to unsheath his blade. The pink background was the right choice.

And here’s a kid in a kimono, next to a dead-eyed Mickybot.

Images from a display for a photography studio at the mall near my apartment.

T-shirt spotted at a trendy store in Tokyo by my dear friend, C.W. Kelly.

I was having lunch with my friend C.W. Kelly when he spotted this on a jumbotron screen near Tokushima station.

What does it mean? The answer came, needless to say, from OgreYouAsshole.com. It’s the name of a Japanese indie rock band.

If my translation skills are worth anything*, they got the name thanks to the American indie band Modest Mouse. It was during a Japanese tour, and the members of the yet-unnamed Ogre You Asshole asked Modest Mouse bass player Eric Judy, who was drunk at the time, to name their band. He wrote down “Ogre You Asshole”, said “how about this?” and the rest is history.

Never trust drunk bass players.

*The original Japanese explanation can be found here