Unico=Nightmare Fuel

In my the dim recesses of my memory as an 80s child, I can recall the awesome horror that was Unico and the Island of Magic. I especially remember the people being turned into brick-dolls and enduring a fate worse than death as living walls.

Unico is a creation of the grandfather of manga, Osamu Tezuka. Enjoy this playlist, if you dare!

[vid]

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Karaoke: What Not to Sing in Front of Other Foreigners

Don't worry Susan Boyle, Kimutaku will protect you from the abstract jokes!

So during my first (and so far only!) trip back to America, I convinced my friend that we needed to go to a karaoke bar. We were in the north of Denver on a snowy night and Google maps directed us to a nearby one in a strip mall. The decor and customers were rather country, but heedless of this I chose to sing Sukiyaki. It was a song I was well familiar with, but the lyrics on the display came out in romaji, which really threw me off. I gave a horrid performance and half expected a cowboy to punch me.

Later in the night I did Mr. Roboto which went over a lot better. Someone even shook my hand after that one. The moral of the story is: Know Thy Audience. Wait, saying it all in King James English makes "know" sound a little biblical. I cannot vouch for the effectiveness of knowing your audience in the biblical way. What? Oh, I'm getting the wave from my producer to move on with the rest of the post.

Here we have a French version of Ameribrittania's Got Idolatrous Talent. The singer has daringly decided to go with the theme song to an anime. Let's see how it goes.


Now here's the original, which you can practice and sing freely if you live in Japan. You can see how environment makes all the difference when Franco-America Wants to Marry an Millionare man is mashed up with it:

Okay... it still sucks. But I felt the power.

Bonus torture:
A Spanomerican Idol gets the same treatment from the philistines.
Also, bonus Susan Boyle.

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Japanese Slang: The Deer that Turned Away

Okay that title is horrible, because it's fish that get away, but let's ignore that and carry on.



See the deer in this image? This is from a Japanese card game called hanafuda. The deer (shika) shows up on the card for the tenth (tou) month, and from the we got shikatou (鹿十） which went through a phonetic change to shikato (シカト) over the years.

Now, you already know this if you can also read the description on the image, but shikato means to ignore something, because the deer looks like it is turning it's head away. More accurately, it seems to be used like snub in English.

You may have also caught that this was a "chivalrous" word. Yeah, in Japan, chivalry is something a romantic yakuza would use, so this was once underworld slang. Gogen says it was gamblers' cant. That's not really surprising, as hanafuda have a long history of being used in yakuza gambling dens. The zokugojiten says it spread throughout the delinquent world, until everyone was using it.

Finally, it seems to be a good word to use for being turned down when you are out nampaing, as this YouTube video shows:


So it is neither deer nor fish, but the birds that get away. Unless you are a dog. Wanna 'nother animal in this post? Get this, since the crane (tsuru) on the first (ichi) month's card is also turning away, sometimes tsuruichi is substituted for shikato, but only by someone that is probably making a mistake as a joke.

Usage examples I found and took a stab at glossing:

しかとうとぼける [old example] gloss: turn one's head, whistle a little tune, and play dumb.
しかとしよう gloss: Forget about that creep.
しかとかよ gloss: Hey, who do you think you are ignoring?!
しかとすんなよ gloss: Don't you walk away from me!
ツルイチされた! gloss: I had an endearing conversation with the hand.

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Karaoke Mission: Localized Dancing Queen

Think you are hot stuff in the karaoke box? Try singing custom lyrics to a favorite tune then. This youtuber is constantly localizing lyrics into his native nipponese. I can't wait for him to take on Rock Me Amadeus. Anyways, even if you don't plan to sing, this Dancing Queen cover is a nice little way to study the language.

[vid]

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Karaoke: All the Granny-Panties You Could Ever Want

Before Jero made all the old ladies' cheeks wet, Kiyoshi Hikawa was doing the job with panache, but let's face it: Enka is a dying art form. We need you, brave men and women of THR Karaoke posts, to pick up the slack! Practice this song, and soon you will have all the old ladies shouting out your name just like in this video (seriously, listen for "KI-YO-SHI!" from the crowd in this thing).

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Kumagaya Posters

Thought I would dust off a few pics from my old town that I found bizarre or amusing. One or two of these are not region-specific though.

What happens when comic characters get real and less blonde.


合格エナジー Energy to pass. エネルギ is the usual word for energy though, as the Japanese took in the German word for energy long ago. Curious, is there a shift going on?

熊谷はどうなる？ What will happen to Kumagaya? 熊谷の破綻を食い止めろ Put Kumagaya's bankruptcy into check! 熊谷発　日本沈没 Starting with Kumagaya, Japan with be sunk.
Hmmm, Kumagaya sounds pretty important. What's that you say? Just a gimmick? Oh.

おいしい穴新発売 The debut of the delicious hole.
A donut burger? Where's the beef?!

The only 1000￥ (about 10 dollars) store I've seen so far.
Ahhh, nostalgia, thy name be... overpriced hipster clothes? Well, I do have a bit of a bigger budget these days as my family died of dysentery...

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Japanese Lots-o-Huggin Bear Commercial

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.

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J Products That Have Caught My Eye

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.

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Let's Yoji: What I Know About Coins Makes Me Rich

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!

Totally Profound Yoji Breakdown Go!
五 (five)+口= 吾 ware (I)
止 (stop)+口= 足 taru (sufficient)
隹 (bird)+口= 唯 tada (just/only)
矢 (arrow)+口= 知 shiru (know)

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.

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Sad Bunny is Waiting for You at the Conbini

Today as I rushed into Lawson's convenience store for an early meal, my eyes caught sight of this sad bunny. His caption reads:

寂しくて empty inside...
死んじゃいそう feeling like I'm gonna die
お腹が my stomach

I'm sorry, sad bunny, but I don't think the 87 calories is going to fill you up. Perhaps you'd like to eat an egg? 'Tis the season after all.

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Karaoke: Aya Does the Good Day for a Trip Song

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.

[vid]


Via Aramatheydidn't, who also shows Aya quoting E.T.

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Japan is Gay for God

I can think of no better way to come back to regular blogging than this.

Got this in my mailbox the other day. Brilliant yaoi marketing plan from a Christian church.



The text over the sun glosses as:

Today, one of the days left for you to live, is a precious gift. God loves you.

And apparently you should spend this precious day with Joseph whispering about his technicolor dream coat into your ear.

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