Toy Story 3 is coming out soon I hear (I'm not clear on these things, they just pop up in my iMac's previews).
Somebody made one of the characters from the movie seem real with a fake commercial allegedly from 1983. They've even gone as far as to make a Japanese version, but the ruse becomes evident for me when I see their cartoon shot in this video. 1980s anime didn't look like that at all. Still, interesting promotion campaign.
Sweet Sally in the alley! The longer you go without posting, the harder it gets to return. The Job has taken over my life, but at least it's a fun job and it is good exercise--my love handles may be gone soon, but I will never get a love with this schedule. Anyways, I constantly snap pics for potential posts. Let's make some happen.
I discovered the artist Feebee via some prints at a store I tweeted about. I guess you could buy them via Rakuten, but it's cheaper at the store by a bit. The following is Feebee's interpretation of Raijin.
EDIT: Reader info in the comments negates my theories coming up on the next item... Also next to that store that sells the print, I found an image that ties into my last post, which was made three eternities ago. It is not nearly as profound as the coins from that post, but I think it may be making the 天+口+む thing I think I see vertically into 呑む (nomu, drink).
Up next is an awesomely stupid smoking ad that I've seen recently. Nice shorts, bud.
どーよ、get a load of this!
この味！This taste
日本上陸 has arrived in Japan.
The taste of manflesh. I doubt this guy really smokes.
During a wiki-surfing session, I ran across a pic of this hand purifying basin, or tsukubai, and learned that the characters meet up with the middle hole, which is shaped like the kanji/radical for mouth (口), to make new kanji. Then those kanji make a sentence. Brilliant!
put them all together as a 4 character idiom and you get:
吾唯足知 or 吾唯足るを知る ware tada taru wo shiru which means I am content with just what I have.
I found a page with a couple of follow up idioms that one may have learned back in the day if they hung around the temple with this profound basin. They are:
知足の者は賤しとも雖も富めり Those that live within their means are rich even when destitute.
and
不知足の者は富めりと雖も賤し Those that live beyond their means, even when blessed with riches, are bereft.
Notice the liberties I took with 賤しい iyashii (greedy, vulgar, shabby, humble, base, mean, vile). You can probably think of a better way to put it, but I am 不知 fuchi (an ignoramus.) By the way, there seems to be a connection of some sort between these two idioms and what Lao Tzu said in the 33rd chapter of his book, How to Make a Blog Post Long, Erudite, and Boring: 足るを知る者は富む To be satisfied with one's lot in life is to be rich.
Okay, are you still with me? Because I wanted to discuss one more thing. You see, I thought I had seen a coin with the same characters as the basin at the top of this post. Turns out that such coins are not currency, but novelty items for sale in some areas, and that I was thinking of the Zenigata's 寛永通宝 kan'eitsūhō (Kan'ei era coins). Their names match the characters on them as you can see in the following pic.
Now the word just said, zenigata, may ring a bell with you. The word was even payed some homage by a Lupin character. Zenigata (coin shape) is part of the title to a series of books, plays, and dramas about an Edo period detective named Heiji that throws coins at bad guys. Somehow that works. Thus the series is called 銭形平次 Zenigata Heiji.
I will leave you with a video from the Zenigata series. Watch for coin throwing and use this vid to practice karaoke. After people get so wowed by you knowing this song that they start throwing money and kisses, you can pull out all the awesome knowledge you got from this post and really impress the crowd. But don't get cocky; know your limit.
Aya Ueto is the super cute daughter in the Softbank family. I didn't even know she was a singer too (of course she is, Clay, every talento must be everything), but here she is singing a nice song that I've previously featured for karaoke posts: Ii Hi Tabidachi. Also, the guy that usually sings it, Shinji Tanimura is right by her, playing along. Perhaps this is the evolution of the enka songform.
I've been too busy to blog, and it's a shame, because I see cool things every day. Take this poster for instance:
This is detective Yabe from the TRICK series, which is making a comeback (even though a freshly-hatched chick told us all the last movie was really the end of it all). Yabe adjusts his wig in this pic, while the phrase 犯人はオマエや (YOU are the criminal!), in his characteristic Kansai-dialect, floats in the corner.
I'm really excited for the return of TRICK. Maybe someday I'll return to a regular blogging schedual.
Lately the animators of Eggs have been trying their hands at various famous characters. For instance, there is Heiji (Heidi) selling cars and appearing on bags.
Recently, I ran across a post about the phrase 刎頚の友 (funkei no tomo, or decapitation friend), which seems to translate as "a friendship that could survive mutual beheadings." Be sure to check out the comments on the post for the origin of this phrase and how it may relate to seppuku.
I got interested in the kanji 刎, which seemed to be supplying the cutting meaning of the compound (頚 means neck) at that point. It's made from 勿 (absence) and 刀 (sword). It appears in the word 刎ねる (haneru) which means many things including flip, spatter, hit with a vehicle, and of course chop off a head.
Here are some other goodies WWWJDIC supplied for me:
刎 words: 刎 [はね] (suf,ctr) (arch) counter for helmets, etc. 刎死 [ふんし] (n,vs) decapitating oneself 自刎 [じふん] (n,vs) committing suicide by slitting one's throat 刎ね上がる [はねあがる] (v5r,vi) to jump up, to spring up
Intriguingly, a word with the same pronunciation as funkei, 焚刑, means burning at the stake. That may have led to some confusion at the courthouse, eh? Ha, ha, I kill me.
-- Bonus morbid knowledge: Ladies don't do seppuku, they commit jigai.
What's going on with the mouse in the video? I read a description at the shrine, but it didn't seem too clear as I have a loose grasp of ancient Japanese mythology. Luckily this site has some info about why the gods Susano-O and O-Kuni-Nushi were being mentioned so much and what was up with the arrow the mouse found. Read on:
Traditions have O-Kuni-Nushi being sent straight to the underworld after his brothers tried to kill him in order to avoid their revenge. In the underworld O-Kuni-Nushi met Suseri-Hime, the daughter of the god of the underworld. They were married, but first Susano-O made O-Kuni-Nushi pass three tests. The first test was to put him to sleep in a room of snakes. O-Kuni-Nushi saves himself with the scarf that Suseri-Hime gave him. The next night he had to sleep in a room full of centipedes and wasps, but he again used another scarf that Suseri-Hime had given him to protect himself. The final test that Susano-O gives him is to find an arrow, which Susano-O had sent into the middle of a huge meadow. When O-Kuni-Nushi is in the middle of the field, Susano-O set fire to the grass, luckily however; a mouse saves him by showing him an underground room. The mouse then brings the arrow to O-Kuni-Nushi. O-Kuni-Nushi's success helps Susano-O to feel more at ease with him, so he has O-Kuni-Nushi wash his hair and finally goes to sleep. O-Kuni-Nushi then ties Susano-O's hair to the rafters of the house and with his wife on his back fled. He also took with him Susano-O's sword, bow, arrows, and his Koto (harp). Susano-O is awakened when the Koto brushes against a tree. In the time it took for Susano-O to free his hair, the two were far away. From the slopes of the underworld, Susano-O advises O-Kuni-Nushi, whom he sees in the distance, to use the weapons to fight his brothers, foretelling that O-Kuni-Nushi would conquer them and reign over the world. He also asked O-Kuni-Nushi to make Suseri-Hime his main wife and to build a palace at the foot of Mount Uka.
But heck if I know why those mice are holding hammers at the shrine. I also don't know if mention of a main wife alludes to Heian polygamy practices (it's good to be the kizoku !), when I imagine these stories may have been collected. Any ideas, Dear Reader?
Greetings! I've been pretty busy lately, but I noticed something cool the other day. There is a lot of construction in Yokohama, which means walls must go up. One has an art contest of sorts adorning it. These two pics comprise one entry: Photo one (the 80s?)
Photo two (all grown up):
EDIT: Took a closer look at the wall. Turns out that the artist is 西尾美也 (Yoshinari Nishio) and the the work is named Costume Play. -- This has been a mobile post; click the pics to zoom/visit their album
どーよ、get a load of this! 
