Back when I lived in Fukuoka, Japan, a girlfriend showed me a flier for a waxing place that used the  above logo. The concept and execution are so wonderfully bizarre; the ugliness of the monkey, the little red bow, its proud display of its freshly waxed, hairless armpits…

I saved the flier for a while, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. Years later when I started this blog, I wanted to share the logo with my readership, but I couldn’t remember the name of the waxing place, and a google search of “Japanese monkey hair removal logo” unsurprisingly failed to bring up anything meaningful.

Just yesterday I randomly ran into it again as a part of this collection of Japanese trademarked characters. That entry also links to an extensive database of Japanese trademarks; it’s incredibly user-unfriendly, but still pretty interesting. It can be found here.

I spotted this ad in the paper yesterday. Looks like pretty standard “tug-at-the-heartstrings” fare, but this one quote stood out for me:

Maybe it’s the phrase, or maybe it’s the no-nonsense sans-serif typestyle, or maybe it’s the fact that they bolded “WILL MELT YOUR HEART” in all caps, but I just can’t help but read it as a threat.

No, Zac Efron, please noooooo!!!

A little less than a year ago back I posted a YouTube link to a Japanese CG cartoon I love called Popee the Performer, a cartoon series that’s like a cross between the work of Jim Woodring and a Looney Tunes short.

I recently re-watched the whole series, and it made me wonder if the director, Ryuji Masuda, had done anything since. Above is an episode of his more recent series “Funny Pets”. It’s not as good as Popee, but it’s still worth a watch.

I recently returned from a two-year stay in Japan. It’s the longest I’ve ever been outside of the U.S., so I was expecting the reverse culture shock to be pretty severe. But as it turned out, it wasn’t that bad. I’ve lived abroad on four separate occasions now, so I guess I’ve gotten used to the novelty of returning home.

That said, there were a couple small things that surprised me:

1) The large drinks in the U.S. are HUGE. A Japanese “large” soda is about the size of a US small or medium, only with no free refills. Japanese people just don’t drink that much; I usually would’ve finished my drink by the time my Japanese friends had taken a sip. I always thought the Japanese drink portions were too small, but I got used to them over the past two years. So when I ordered my first large soda at O’Hare Airport, I couldn’t believe how big it was. I couldn’t even finish it.

2) The roads in the U.S. seem obscenely wide after two years in Japan. A typical American suburban street is as wide as a four-lane highway. And two of those four lanes are just for parking. Again, this isn’t downtown, this is in the suburbs, where there’s virtually no traffic and everyone has a driveway. I guess I’m not arguing for narrower roads or anything, I’m just saying it sort of surprised me…

 

Product Names: Genghis Khan, Sapporo Beer, and Magic Spice Soup Curry Caramels

One of my favorite stores in Japan is Village Vanguard, which is sort of like a cross between a raunchy mall gift store and an alternative book store. For months I’ve seen these horrible looking caramels on sale there, so for my final Japanese snack review I decided to bite the bullet and try them.

Genghis Khan (Mongolian BBQ) Flavor
These were probably the worst of the bunch. They tasted like a combination of slightly off meat, garlic, and caramel. I couldn’t even finish one piece.

Sapporo Draft Beer Flavor
According to the label, these actually contain alcohol; about 0.1%. They smell like a drunk’s breath, and tasted like really terrible beer with the sweetness of caramel thrown in. You could probably simulate the flavor by taking a Bud Lite and adding a few scoops of sugar to it. Again, I spit it out after a couple of chews.

Magic Spice Soup Curry Flavor
This one tasted the most like what it was supposed to, and I think curry lends itself to the combination of sweetness that the caramel brings. Still pretty terrible though.

Conclusion
I can’t understand how these got made. I mean, it’s not like some crazy guy mixing beer and caramels together in a blender in his basement; a major company developed, manufactured, and distributed these. They don’t sound at all appetizing, and they taste even worse. The only market I can think of for this product is snarky foreign bloggers such as myself.

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Well, that will be the last Japanese snack review for a while, what with me no longer being in Japan. Next week: something different!!

Product Name: Kit Kat Soy Sauce Flavor
Manufacturer: Nestle

Concept
The candy bar Kit Kat is huge in Japan. I’ve heard it’s because “Kit Kat” sounds a bit like “Kitto Katsu”, which is Japanese for “guaranteed victory”, so people would give them as gifts to students before exams as like good luck charms or something. I can’t be bothered to verify that, something about this ho-hum candy bar really seems to appeal to the Japanese. This flickr set shows over a hundred Kit Kat flavors, the vast majority of which were made for the Japanese market.

I guess when the number of flavors reaches triple digits it’s hard to come up with new ones, but I was still surprised to see a soy sauce flavored variety on a recent trip to Tokyo. This product is a Tokyo exclusive, intended to be bought by visiting tourists to give as omiyage (souvenirs) to colleagues when they return home.

Taste
At first I was baffled as to why they’re white, a color that doesn’t exactly evoke ”soy sauce”. A quick taste test resolved the mystery, however: these taste more like white chocolate than anything. Maybe they had just the tiniest hint of saltiness, but even though I was consciously trying to detect that soy sauce flavor, I barely could. If someone handed one of these to me without telling me what flavor it was, I never in a million years would’ve guessed soy sauce.

That’s the secret to making a good soy sauce flavored candy; bury any hint of soy sauce under a mountain of white chocolate.

Product Name: Doritos Gourmet: Wasabi-Mayonnaise Flavor
Manufacturer: Frito Lay

Concept
I’ve previously written about oxymoronic “gourmet” junk food, as well as weird mayonnaise combinations, so it’s nice to see both come together in this product. The text in the red circle promises that the chips have been double dipped for an extra concentrated flavor, which is reassuring.

Packaging
Nothing better expresses “gourmet” than repeating it over and over in all caps in a stencil font.
GOURMET!!! GOURMET!!! GOURMET!!!

Taste
The chips definitely have been dipped twice, giving them a gross, chalky texture. But for all that, the flavor was surprisingly weak. Back to the drawing board, guys!

A collection of some marvelously horrible video game voice acting. I “L.O.L.”ed.

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On an unrelated note, I get a ton of spam comments that I have to moderate. Most are just a bunch of links to elicit sites, but sometimes they make an effort to disguise them as legitimate comments. Here’s one that came in recently for some loan site:

I had a dream to start my own company, but I did not have got enough amount of cash to do this. Thank goodness my close dude suggested to use the loan. Therefore I took the auto loan and realized my dream.

None of my close dudes ever offer me financial advice. Damn jerks.

Sometimes I run across things that most people understand instantly & intuitively that I just can’t keep straight.

You know those faucets that just have one big handle in the middle? The left half is red to indicate hot, and the right half is blue to indicate cold. I’m guessing most people intuitively “get” which way to turn the handle to get the desired temperature. But not me. I always just turn it at random, and if I get the wrong temperature, turn it the other way.

If I took a second I could figure it out without resorting to trial and error. I get the design theory behind single handle faucets. Since the left side is red/hot, turning towards the left side means you’ll get hot water.

I think the reason it doesn’t click for me on an intuitive level is because by turning the handle towards the left, you move the red side out of your line of vision, and the blue side in. So to get hot water, you need to position the faucet so all you see is blue. It just doesn’t feel right to me, dammit!

Another simple concept I can’t intuitively get relates to blogs. Most blogs show the newest 10-20 entries on the front page, and you can click a link to see older ones. When you get to the bottom of the second page, you can either continue on and read even older entries, or return to the front page.

Now: when the links say “newer entries” and “older entries” or something like that, I’m fine. But oftentimes, it just says “Next” and “Previous”, and I can never keep them straight. “Next” takes you to a new page (which has older entries), and the “Previous” takes you to the page you were on before (which has newer entries). So if you want to see previously written stuff, you don’t click “Previous”, you click “Next”. I always click the wrong one, and end up on the wrong page. I’m dumb.

Whenever we meet someone from, say, Thailand, we do our best to simulate the native pronunciation of their name. The Thai way of saying it is considered to be “correct”, and when our English-speaking tongues are unable to faithfully recreate the sounds, we sheepishly apologize for our substandard approximation.

I was surprised to learn recently that this idea, that people’s names have an absolute “correct” pronunciation, isn’t universal. I was talking to a Japanese grad student named Ms. Kawai, who had recently returned from a year abroad in China. During the course of our conversation, she mentioned that her Chinese friends and colleagues called her Chuan-He. When I asked why, she told me that Chuan-He is the way the characters that make up her name are pronounced in Chinese.

Apparently, “translating” Japanese names into the Chinese pronunciation is not at all uncommon. This speaks to underlying differences between English and Chinese.

The English written language is tied to sounds. The letter “M” doesn’t mean anything, it simply represents an “mmm” sound. Only by stringing letters together do we get words that have meaning.

The Chinese written language, on the other hand, is tied to meaning. Each Chinese character intrinsically represents a concept.

Pronunciation in Chinese can vary wildly depending on what dialect you’re speaking. Someone who grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese wouldn’t understand a word of Cantonese Chinese. In fact Mandarin and Cantonese are different enough that they would probably be called different languages (rather than just dialects of the same language) if it weren’t for the common writing system. Pronunciation isn’t absolute in written Chinese, meaning is. So rather than struggle with the Japanese pronunciation of a Japanese name, they just say it the Chinese way.

Isn’t that interesting?

Didn’t have time to write a proper blog entry this week, so instead I’ll just link to an article about irritating film clichés.

They’re all pretty good examples, but the last one particularly drives me nuts when I see it in movies. That being the cliché of “children being avatars for insight into the human condition”.

Years ago I saw the movie S1m0ne during its theatrical release (don’t ask). It’s a terrible movie, and probably one I would have completely forgotten except for one quote that bothered me so much that I still remember it to this day. The junior high school aged daughter of the main character is concerned about her father, and says to him “I want the old Viktor Taransky back.”

What kind of kid talks like that? Can you imagine when you were in junior high saying to your dad “I want the old [your father's full name] back.”?? I know it’s totally nothing, but for whatever reason that quote still drives me nuts.

Via The Onion’s A.V. Club

Milk, vinegar and grapefruit? It’s like they read my mind!