Ogre You Asshole

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

Scary Sushi Ad

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….