I live far enough in the future, a little less in the future than say, New Zealand, but I know that it's not quite New Years day in the Eastern Standard timezone yet--- Here in the future mind you, in Rand McNally, where people wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people, today is supposed to be spent eating osechi, (mochi--- a sort of sweet sticky confectionery made of rice that happens to kill off a lot of old people in Japan this time of year, soba, miso etc etc), and visiting shrines---

I think I have some mochi covered ice cream, so there's one down--- The shrine at Narita is quite popular this time of year, but the shrine down the street (around the way shrine---), is that even blasphemous, I don't know? That one will have to do.

They say that what you dream of on New Years eve foretells your new year, I dreamed I had given myself a bad haircut (quite a likelihood actually), and was wearing some nice new clothes... I'll pass on the former, but I'll be happy to live out the second half of that dream with good nature and aplomb. In actuality, the osechi we are eating happens to be home made chicken soup that I "slaved" over last night... It's not miso or soba, but meh.

Coincidentally, it's the year of the dog, apparently it's also the 55th anniversary of snoopy. It's a pretty sweet deal for the Peanuts franchise, but I always sort of think of Peanuts as representing elemental human charactaristics like sadness, love, friendship, rather than whoring rapacious greed--- still, this diamond encrusted snoopy is fetching in a 'could feed millions' sort of way.

A platinum Snoopy figurine encrusted with black, white and pink diamonds is displayed at a Tokyo department store December 15, 2005. The 50 mm-tall Snoopy, with a production limit of 10, carries a price tag of 5.5 million yen. (REUTERS)

I'm not against wealth but, if you have the money, why spend it on a diamond encrusted dog, or a $400 dollar BAPE hoodie that looks like a box of crayons vomited on it--- do something useful, like buy a slave or go classic and simply use the money to make more money. That Snoopy thing is just an eyesore. Doye.

Cooking tater tots in a Japanese gas stove isn't too difficult--- You can't leave them in too long, but if you watch them, flip them once, and then leave them in for a few minutes each side--- there you go, perfect reminder of an American school lunch staple.

If you're drinking cheap faux-Japanese beer like me, and you forget that you put them in the range in the first place, not long later they will turn into what someone I know (in describing this picture), referred to as an exposed lava vent... Seriously, I think had I left them in any longer the carbon might have fused into some sort of gem or diamond.

Seriously, what the?

Today I was trying to figure out the connection between America's maladroit manga reading shut-ins & the Japanese "Lolita Complex", or quite simply and again needlessly simple, lolicon (much like the clipped phrasing of sexual harassment into simply, seku-hara)...

I'm not "researching" the matter say, like Pete Townsend (seriously--- Pete Townsend has a blog!?? That's another article entirely, but how UN-ROCK & ROLL is that???)

So, I'm wondering why, just why, so many American j-pop, manga, anime, self-proclaimed "Japanese culture" nerds seem to rely on Japanese purported endorsement of perversion to excuse their obsessive behavior as simply, "Well, when NOT in Rome...".

I ran into this site, simply googling the words "Japan America lolita condition". Within the first paragraph, it has this specious logic to offer:

The newest category of manga to hit the U.S. is Gothic Lolita, an aesthetic sensibility that has roots in Japanese punk style.

Okay... First off, wrong. I'm sorry to break your Gwen Stefani bubble, but although there are undoubtedly a segment of Japanese "punks"--- you can pick them out by the fact that they look as unkempt as their stateside brethren, the girls who dress up (on weekends mind you), down in Harajuku are not one of them. Secondly, gothic-lolita, and the rest of the cookie-cutter fashion styles of Harajuku-etc etc, don't have the same sexual connotations that people laud them with--- Basically, the scene is a group of highschoolers hell bent on waylaying the hell that is professional life in Japan (in a way, can you blame them)...

I'm not going to discuss the whole idea of of style over substance, Marxy over at Neomarxisme has a great blog that often covers just that--- It is in fact, the biggest threat I have to learning to read CyZo on my own. However, starting a sentence with a preposition, a lot of what people use as their excuse to write long lecherous diatribes about the goings on of the 11-18 year old Hello Project pervert magnet bands like Berryz, & to a much greater extent, Morning Musume (simply momusu to its fanbase), are simply their own preconceived ideas, fantasies, & unhealthy desires.

Try to tell people that older men chasing after uniformed school-girls isn't some sort of hallowed Japanese tradition (at least not an encouraged one), and they'll fire back at you stateside that you simply "don't understand Japan's culture of kawaii"... As if in one fell stroke, Hello Kitty, Panda Z & Jagainu-Kun tacitly endorsed pedophilia. It's the same logic idiotic people use against rape victims.

To give you some idea of the bullshit logic the work-a-day "Anime Fags" are operating on, for starters, being an "Adult" Morning Musume fan in Japan is equivalent to admitting that you still wet the bed & comfort yourself by sleeping with a lifesized Sailor Moon doll (anyone who saw the recent otaku-mentary on Akihabara on television lately won't find this statement far-fetched). Case in point, that maybe as an adult you shouldn't be collecting Kaws or Kubricks figures, maybe you shouldn't be listening to music that was made for 13-16 year old Japanese girls, maybe you shouldn't be watching shoujo anime, or scratch that--- ANY serialized anime... Do adults do these sorts of things? Apparently, kawaii-culture trumps all, and it's a green light to act like the type of people who show up later in the pages of MSN Mainichi [ed: Updated 01/02/2006] as the bizarre manga-collecting obsessed shut-ins who happened to have also been accused of murder.

But then, nobody ever makes THAT connection. Kuo-Yu Liang, v-p, sales and marketing at Diamond Book Distributors (a business operating in the United States), has this pithy quote to surmise the popularity of the gothic-lolitas state-side,

In the U.S we just don't have a sanctioned national obsession with young girls.

Orly? What a fucking nonce.

This is the obligatory first post, I've put off this blog for a good while, I meant to start it about 4-5 months ago, as a document of my moving ot Japan--- But I never really wanted to write ABOUT Japan--- it just happens to be where I live--- who am I talking to anyways?