Archive for May, 2005
Still There
Monday, May 16th, 2005
I missed the exact date by a week, but I’ve been updating this journal for a year now. This is probably my 4th or 5th online journal, but none have lasted for more than a month or two. I guess this one is different though since its my “in Japan” journal, and contains the legend of Purple Potamus. I’m just not one of those people who can write a daily journal about “today was ___. I feel ___. Current Mood: my black soul” or something. In fact until recently I couldn’t really stand my own writing. I would look at my old journals and decide they were full of crap and stop updating them. Recently though I have a lot of alone time in Japan, so I can formulate bigger things (see too long Battle Royale 2 review). It makes me wonder about being some sort of critic. No doubt the critic is pretty far down the food/karma chain, but even if people don’t actually CARE about reviews they are at least to some degree aware of them.
Another problem is that game reviews at this point are all completely bought if they are in any major magazine/website. I hesitate to mention Tim Rogers since he at one point had to sleep in a public park because he had no job, but I will say his “New Game Journalism” is certainly more worthwhile than any review you will find on any major video game website. It rambles and it’s long, but I actually enjoyed reading this, which may be a first for a video game review. Straight reviews are pretty much finished at this point. I can’t get any information from the old standard template:
“This game is of genre ___. It was made by ___. The graphics are good, the story is bad. 3.5 out of 5″
What is a 3.5 out of 5 anyway? The fact that they call what Tim does “journalism” is part of what makes it interesting I think. It’s not just a review, there is something more in depth there, if you’re interested. There has been no such change in movie reviews, and I’m not exactly interested in starting one, as that probably would not keep a roof over my head. However I will say that writing it starting to bring me a lot more joy than it did before, and would almost seem like a viable job if it would actually pay anything. What can I say, I’m a bad Buddhist, I love to buy things.
If it weren’t so full of junk everything2 would be really interesting, with all the inter-linking. That’s why I like writing on the internet, I can reference something totally obscure and just put a link to explain it. I can’t do that in a newspaper or magazine. I’ve always been interested in the references people make in media, and what they add to the audience’s appreciation. Family Guy is a great example of TV for people who like TV, and Wario Ware Inc. is a game for people who like games. There are too many references in them that would be meaningless to people who weren’t already big fans of the genre. They can be appreciated on their own, but an entire layer of meaning would be lost without prior knowledge of the references. Shows or movies or games that make me interested in other games shows or movies interest me more than completely stand alone works most of the time. I think reviews and articles about them should do the same thing. Encourage exploration.
In a way that’s why I came to Japan. To explore a culture that has basically become a weird parody of itself and foreign customs. You can find references to a lot in Japan, both to traditional beliefs and modern western trends. Japan is where all those “non sellout” celebrities go to pimp energy drinks and traditional folk songs are set as the background for commercials about old women taking computer certification classes. There’s currently a “Retro-con” trend going on where the original Super Mario Bros. game is getting pimped out by Pepsi and some toy companies. I love it. My desk is covered in crap I’ve bought from drinking Pepsi Twist, and is flanked by my growing Pepsiman collection. I don’t know exactly to what end, but the whole country seems to be referencing itself or something else. Is Japan trying to make you think? I’m not sure. It might just know what people want to buy, and people might just like Mario. I like to inject meaning though sometimes, since it is also my understanding that people love a conspiracy.
It sounds strange that I was motivated to make long rambling posts like this by a bizarre rehash of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and a Turkish super hero “movie” but that’s actually what happened. Thinking about movies and music and games is nothing new for me, but the desire to write and have people read about them is new and frankly a lot of fun right now.
Explore. Explain. Enlighten.
Teaching
Sunday, May 15th, 2005
Denver has some bold new teaching tactics that I think we all can learn from. I seem to remember things like this happening on a smaller scale (tape on people’s mouthes) but it was all in good fun and back then we didn’t know we could get rich by suing the school. How naive we were.
Happy!
Sunday, May 15th, 2005
In an effort to convince Kevay that they are in fact called Happy Sets not Happy Meals in Japan I went to the Japanese McDonald’s website. What I found was a treasure trove of mad cow induced insanity. It is perhaps also worth noting that his name is Donald, not Ronald in Japan. these may not make sense to you if you can’t speak Japanese, but basically they are “rumors about Donald”. They’re worth watching just for the rampant madness. The crown jewel is in the “Mama Station” though.
Fight Mama, for everlasting peace!
Cultural Accuracy
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005
I will write more about this later. Suffice to say you can find out exactly why Japan is “soooo cool and so kawaiii” from that link.
Addition: I still don’t think I’ve saved up enough strength to properly tackle this beast but let me just say its nice to see some quality racism coming out of the UK for once. I’d also like to point out that their definitions of shoujo (少女) and shounen (少年) are backwards, but no one would normally know that. That’s the best part about Japan really. The culture is so far removed from the West that you can literally say anything and people will accept it. If I tell you that monjayaki (もんじゃ焼) is actually fried vomit you would have no choice but to believe me. In reality it only LOOKS like vomit, but it made from entirely edible materials. The point is you can get away with basically anything if you sound convincing when it comes to telling whitey about Japan. Bear this in mind when I come home and tell you about what I learned here.
Crapple Royale 2
Thursday, May 5th, 2005
Having just finished watching Battle Royale 2 I can confirm what you have already heard. It is a horrible movie. The first thing that should be known is the fact that the director died during filming. I’m not sure what percent of the movie was actually finished, but Kinji Fukasaku kicked off and his apparently incompetent son Kenta took over. That’s not to say that had Kinji lived to the end that this would be a fantastic movie. Basically Battle Royale is a movie that can’t have a sequel. It was a fantastic idea for a standalone movie: Have every Japanese teen idol stranded on an island and kill each other. Fantastic! Throw in Beat Takeshi as the teacher and you’ve got a classic movie. I have no doubt that there is some deeper meaning to the film, about both the idol obsessed culture and the oppressive social environment teenagers grow up in, but I don’t honestly know what that message is. I’m not here to talk about that, I’m here to bust on the shitty sequel.
Shut up and eat
Wednesday, May 4th, 2005
This originally was born as an away message but I thought it was a little too elaborate to just toss out like that. I will say though that the main page of all this may be a little too much for dialup users. Click with caution.
Some explanation as the site provides none:
In-N-Out Burger lets you order things that are not on the normal menu if you know what to ask for. Here is the list. Note the X by Y. You can get any number of beef patties and slices of cheese you want. Clearly there is no rational limit. I present to you what happens when someone orders a 20 by 20.
And now some closing thoughts. This is some really insane stuff, but by no means unique. In fact he’s been beaten by a 100 pound girl and a 130 pound Japanese man. Still, the fact remains that people love to eat things they know they shouldn’t. Even I do, if you look in the food pictures section of this very website you can see the various trials I have put my stomach through, and that’s only what I’ve managed to take pictures of. I used to love Bad-Candy.com when it updated, and I would often engage the most bizarre looking candy on random store shelves to a round of intestinal distress. But shouldn’t there be some kind of stomach self-preservation instinct that says “Hey, if you put that in me I will be very sad”? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go finish this bag of potato sticks with the old woman vomiting fire on the package.
