10 Reasons why Japan Rocks
Japan. The land of the rising sun. Home of centuries of culture, dignity and technology. A place rarely understood by the foreign Gaijin who visit to experience its splendor and majesty.
Luckily, DOV has managed to suss the place out in three short months, and it
is his privelage to share this knowledge with you!
WhiteRussianOnline presents: 10 reasons why Japan rocks!
10: Monster Attacks
Look at any map of the world and you will notice that Japans closest
geographical neighbour is Monster Island, so it's not unsurprising that
mainland Japan often feels the ravages of the likes of Moth-ra and the
mighty Mecha-godzilla.
(Just another ordinary day above down-town Tokyo)
What I wasn't expecting was just how complacent the Japanese people had
become to monsterism. Check out this picture I snapped of a dude and his kid in
the Sunshine City aquarium in Ikubukuru - most people would be terrified at the
monster spider crab scrabbling desperately at the tank glass, hungry for the
blood of their child. But not Chin:
("Just ignore it, Chin junior, lest the smell of your fear drive it into a
murderous rampage")
Even the goddamn weasels in Japan are more evil than their already
impressively heinous western cousins. As if weasels weren't enough of a threat
to humanity, Japanese ones can actually fly!
In a land where monster attack is more common than snowfall, and weasels can
swoop out of trees to savage your eyeballs, it is only right that appropriate
precautions are taken by the general public.
Imagine my surprise, however, when I discovered that my 7th floor hotel room was
equipped with - wait for it - an emergency ladder!! Now I'm sorry, but if
in the unlikely event that Moth-ra was rampaging outside my hotel, I am
sure as fuck not going to clamber out of my window on the seventh floor and down
the side of the building.
(DOV: "Fuck that!")
9: Insane "Japlish" T-shirts
"Japlish" is a term used by ex-pats to describe what happens when
the Japanese try and translate something literally into English.
Just goes to show - if you ever get one of those Kanji tattoos just
because it looks nice, it may end up saying something like this guys t-shirt:
("In the little box it's choked with the various colours" -
possibly not one of Socrates better philosophies).
8: Insane "Japlish" advertisements
Similarly, place names don't always work out the best when the Japs try and
write them in English!
(Free fungal cream with every pair of shoes?)
("I'll take two")
(Finally, the Kolonel finds somewhere he can sit and operate a computer without
glitch-induced rage)
7: Ludicrous Japanese buildings
The Japs certainly know how to build things bigger and better than anyone
else. Remember the Sunshine City aquarium I mentioned earlier? Now, where do you
think would be the best place for a large scale, international aquarium to be
sited?
Near the sea, to make it easy to pump the millions of gallons of sea water it
requires every day? On nice, level ground to support the tens of millions of
tons of tank water? I would have thought so.
And where is the Sunshine City aquarium actually sited?
The 15th floor of a shopping mall, bang in the centre of Tokyo. Utter, utter
madness.
Similarly, when the Japanese build a roller coaster, they want one that is really
going to scare the living piss out of you:
("Yep, yep, I want it to run right through that building, and make sure it
loops right down across the street at head height so it scares the shit out of
innocent passers-by as well").
(I can almost hear the telephone conversation now: "Hello? Hello. This is
the owner of the Tokyo National Museum. We want something to make us stand out.
Here's what I want you to do. Get me a life-sized model of a blue whale, and
nail it to the side of the building. Yep. Blue whale. Nononono I don't want an
argument about this, I just want a whale. A fucking blue one. Now make it happen
- I want to see it nailed to the side of my museum by 8.00pm tommorow!")
6: Vending machines
According to the "Lonely Planet guide to Japan", the country has
1.5 million vending machines. That's a lot of vending machines - more than one
for every person living in Northern Ireland!
Not that they would last long over here, though, especially if they sold the
goodies that this one in my hotel did:
(And on the seventh day, God rested. But that afternoon he made the
Whiskey Vending Machine).
This is the second most awesome vending machine I have ever seen. But more about
that later...
5: Disneyland!!
Now I know this may seem strange, but Disney Japan is awesome: Just like America, but because it's Japanese there are no queues! In fact, it was the highlight of JR's trip to Japan. Not terribly impressed by the temples, the historic buildings, the culture or the food, once she hit the spinning tea-cups in Disneyland with a pair of novelty Tigger-ears; JR was the happiest woman in the world!
(JR: looking pleased after pushing a kid off the horsie ride).
(DOV: Regularly out-smarted by five-year-olds).
4, 3, 2 and 1: Japanese Porn.
The Japanese do many things well, and porn better than anything else. For
example, all this is porn...
...and all this too:
But back to the wonderful world of vending machines - remember them from
earlier?
That's right - I managed to find a vending machine that actually stocks porn.
(The Holy Grail of Porn).
So, that's it folks - that's sums up while Japan Rocks.
It's 3am on a Sunday morning, and you have no Internet access. The shops are all
shut and you don't have Sky. But, in Japan, you could still pop outside
with a handful of change and come back with a fresh copy of "The Oily Girls
Supreme Collection".
That's why Japan Rocks.
