Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

If you enjoyed the British original then you will love this…

Shouts to GJR for the link

Update: The video seems to have disappeared from youtube. A pity as it was good fun!

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Why is it that when you put a coat hanger on your head, you are able to turn your head around further than normal?

And, how do people discover such things?

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Upstairs for thinking has a post linking to the Japan Land and Transport Ministry’s “Japan Tourism Policy” website which makes for an interesting read, answering such puzzling questions as:

Q: Is all the Japanese land urbanized like Tokyo? Is there no natural landscape left anywhere in Japan?
Q: Please tell me where Japan is located. Can I go from Tokyo to Hong Kong by Shinkansen bullet train?

or my personal favourite,

Q: Are there samurai in today’s Japan?

The answers to those questions and more can be found here. Is it just me, or are they taking the piss? Of course there are samurai. Here is a picture of one taken in Nagoya:

(credit: Rumpleteaser )

And you have to be very careful and stop and bow when they pass by or they will chop your head off. Actually I was late for work yesterday because this happened!

Some other interesting posts about Japan around the net recently include: Things About America I Didn’t Know While I Lived There from Life Nomadic’s blog. They have been doing a bit of travelling recently and one their travels came to Japan. Their post compares life in Japan, the United States and Panama and makes for a good read. You can check it out here. And, Hacking Japan: Inside Tokyo for Less than New York from Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week reminisces about his time in Japan. His unusual top four is a good little list of places to visit in Japan (although listing Akihabara is perhaps not the most timely):

The Most Unusual Top 4

Ghibli Museum: This is the real-life Alice in Wonderland. The most incredible museum I have ever visited, hidden in a park and designed by animation powerhouse Ghibli Studios, this gem is a home run. Get tickets at a Lawson convenience store well in advance.

Tsukiji Fish Market: Get up EARLY (around 5am) and see the largest fish market in the world. A single tuna for $40,000 USD? That’s low-end. Wrap up eating the best sushi in the world for breakfast in the outer market. Unforgettable.

Takeshita Doori: The kids and fashion here must be seen to be believed. Indescribable, especially sitting right next one of the most beautiful shrines in Tokyo. Red contacts and outfits that make Marilyn Manson look like Pokemon? Prepare to be amused.

Akihabara: From “maid cafes” (you can sit in a mock living room and have maids at your beck-and-call for food, newspaper, coffee, etc.) to electronics years ahead of the US, this “computer city” is the mecca of geekdom. Otaku central. Moe moe kyuuuuu!

You can check out his post here - along with a beautiful photo from Kyushu!

Finally I found a new blog about Japan that has a nice magazine style layout: check out the sevententotokyo.com blog!

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I love this sign! It says “Don’t give the pigeons food!” and then the pigeon says “Stop it! I don’t need food!”

Is this just a case of anthropomorphism or do Japanese pigeons have much more refined tastes than their human counterparts?

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This sign says “Here is not a toilet! Bad!”

If you relieve yourself here a giant hand will appear out of the sky and poke you in the back. This is a new variation of the time-honoured Japanese art of kancho (here is a Korean flash game you can play if you want to practice (NSFW)). Amazing really the technology advances available to the powers that be in Japan.

I remember when we were driving in Akita, one snowy wintry day, when an old man in a little truck stopped in the middle of the road, got out and began to draw in the snow. The traffic backed up quite a way (Japanese roads are narrower than a narrow thing so no-one had the, uh, balls to pass), but he was oblivious to it all. Nonchalantly he wandered back to his truck and drove off. It was less shocking than seeing a taxi driver in Kyoto masturbating at the taxi stand while waiting for customers, but still it was a little surprising.

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Some great photos of maki-sushi from toxel.com. Yummy!

Rolling sushi so that the ingredients make a pretty picture is quite an art form. You can see more pictures of scrummy sushi here.

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I have heard of couch surfing, where people stay on various people’s couches as they travel around, but this story that is doing the rounds takes that to the next level. It appears that a homeless Japanese woman, aged 58, lived for a year undetected in the closet of a Japanese guy in Kasuya, Fukuoka.

Japanese woman caught living in man’s closet

(story source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080530/ap_on_re_as/japan_closet_woman )

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man’s closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.

[Read more]

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Before we left Japan for China, we visited the Boso Peninsula, which is part of Chiba prefecture and forms one side of the entrance to Tokyo Bay. We took the train down from Tokyo through to the Miura Peninsula. Miura Peninsula is the site of the American military base at Yokosuka. From Kurihama on the Miura Peninsula, we took the ferry across the bay (Japanese only site) to the port at Kaneya in Chiba. We visited the Giant Buddha at Nihondera, took the cable car and enjoyed a nice walk around there. We stayed at a little ryokan in Tateyama City. The next day we went around the tip of the peninsula.

It is a nice trip / weekend away from Tokyo. Being vegetarian we didn’t take advantage of the areas bountious seafoods which the peninsula is famous for. We went just after I bought the camera, so some of the photos have a strangely bluish hue to them.

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We went to Sendai a few years ago, and these photos were snapped around the city center. Sendai is the largest city in Tohoku, and is sometimes refered to as the capital of Northern Japan. When I was living in Akita, it seemed like a big city, but after living in Tokyo it seems pretty small. For all that it has a great atmosphere, some wonderful shops and restaurants as well as a highly recommended castle.

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Sometimes we see products in Japan or other parts of Asia with strange names that are obviously the product of very bad translation attempts, but here we have the Bush Cutter George Jr. which I think is the product more of a cutting (excuse the pun) sense of humour.

Produced by Japanese Agricultural machinery manufacturer Canycom, the Bush Cutter George Jr. is part of a line-up which also includes the wonderfully named Hillary - a wheelbarrow with tank tracks.

What will they do if Obama wins the presidency?

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