Due-East.org » Japan http://www.due-east.org Musings on Things Asian Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:12:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Japan has either huge closets or tiny homeless people http://www.due-east.org/2008/06/02/japan-has-either-huge-closets-or-tiny-homeless-people/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/06/02/japan-has-either-huge-closets-or-tiny-homeless-people/#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:59:14 +0000 孙智谦 http://www.due-east.org/2008/06/02/japan-has-either-huge-closets-or-tiny-homeless-people/   Japanese Closet
I wouldn’t mind living in there…   From the ‘only in Japan’ file……If I were a 58-year-old homeless Japanese woman, where would I take up residence? I have no idea, but one lady in Japan moved into someone’s closet. According to the article, she slipped inside a man’s house and took up residence in his closet’s top cubby area one day when he left the house unlocked. Apparently the guy never uses that part of his closet because he didn’t notice anything suspicious until food began mysteriously disappearing. Eventually, he set up cameras in his house and had the images transmitted to his cell phone. The lady showed up on camera, the police were called, and she was nabbed and charged with trespassing, which is a lot lighter a charge than she would probably get in America. The article also says that she “moved a small mattress into the closet space.” How gigantic must the closet be to fit a mattress inside it?! Or how small is the mattress (and thus the lady)?! Either way, that’s crazy. Another cool ‘only in Japan’ note on the article: She took showers at the guy’s house and was described by a police spokesman as “neat and clean.” Hmmm…that sounds familiar.   Link to article   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/06/02/japan-has-either-huge-closets-or-tiny-homeless-people/feed/ 0 Magibon has made it to Japan http://www.due-east.org/2008/04/18/magibon-made-it-to-japan/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/04/18/magibon-made-it-to-japan/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:02:59 +0000 孙智谦 http://www.due-east.org/2008/04/18/magibon-made-it-to-japan/ Magibon phenomenon and how her videos are both infuriatingly pointless and incredibly mesmerizing. I didn’t expect it, but that post for some reason put the site right near the top of Google’s search results when you search for her name. Apparently a lot of [...]]]>   A couple of months ago, I commented on the Magibon phenomenon and how her videos are both infuriatingly pointless and incredibly mesmerizing. I didn’t expect it, but that post for some reason put the site right near the top of Google’s search results when you search for her name. Apparently a lot of people are finding the site looking for info about her, so when someone in the comments section on that post mentioned the video below, I had to check it out and post it here so that people could find it. I’m not going to turn this into a Magibon news site; I have neither the time nor the desire to cyber-stalk anybody. But the video is pretty great because it shows how far intense interest (some might call it obsession) and the internet can take a person. Here’s the video:   [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]   Congratulations, Magibon! You’ve managed to find just the right mix of pointlessness, cuteness, and interestingness (? – needed another ‘ness’) to get the whole world talking, and it’s paid off with what seems like a pretty incredible experience. You’re either one very smart or very fortunate girl; probably a good combination of both. In any case, you rock. No telling where things could go from here…   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/04/18/magibon-made-it-to-japan/feed/ 0 Japan is the weirdest place on earth, and that (mostly) rocks! http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/20/japan-is-the-weirdest-place-on-earth-and-that-mostly-rocks/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/20/japan-is-the-weirdest-place-on-earth-and-that-mostly-rocks/#comments Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:56:47 +0000 孙智谦 http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/20/japan-is-the-weirdest-place-on-earth-and-that-mostly-rocks/ whacking each other in the [...]]]>   Japan is totally weird   What the heck is up with Japan? How did it get to be so incredibly weird and hilariously amusing? What’s in the water there that makes Japanese people so concerned with showing just the right amount of deference to each other while at the same time whacking each other in the crotch with sticks on national TV? What is it that makes them the world leader in coming up with useless inventions (it’s an actual art)? What is it that makes them advertise using bizarre, pointless commercials? What makes them want to combine firearms and cartoons? Appointing cartoon ambassadors? Sexualizing noodles?! Ok, that one freaks me out, and it only scratches the surface of all the weird stuff going on in Japan in that area…no comment there.   I have no idea what the point of this post is (or anything I throw up on this site, really), other than to say that bizarre Japanese stuff is really cool (just not the weird sexual stuff – I’ll pass on that). If I hadn’t already invested so much time in learning Chinese, I’d probably have my face buried in a Japanese grammar book right now. Here’s a cool Japanese commercial:   [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/03/20/japan-is-the-weirdest-place-on-earth-and-that-mostly-rocks/feed/ 2 Another cooler-than-American-stuff Japanese product http://www.due-east.org/2008/02/22/another-cooler-than-american-stuff-japanese-product/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/02/22/another-cooler-than-american-stuff-japanese-product/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:03:16 +0000 孙智谦 http://www.due-east.org/2008/02/22/another-cooler-than-american-stuff-japanese-product/ company’s website doesn’t give any English specs, so I have no idea [...]]]>   Check out this beast of a motorcycle available in Japan. It looks like it was taken straight out of a Japanese manga, which is cool enough in itself. But even cooler is that it’s street-legal (Japan only). The company’s website doesn’t give any English specs, so I have no idea how fast it goes or anything like that. But they DO give the price in American dollars: $21,500. Even if it were legal, at that price I wouldn’t buy it. Still, it’s another example of how cool stuff in Asia is compared to stuff in America.   sweet motorcycle   ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/02/22/another-cooler-than-american-stuff-japanese-product/feed/ 0 Magibon’s evil cuteness http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/20/magibon-youtubes-bastion-of-pointlessness/ http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/20/magibon-youtubes-bastion-of-pointlessness/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:22:12 +0000 孙智谦 http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/20/magibon-youtubes-bastion-of-pointlessness/   Would somebody explain to me what in the world this girl “Magibon” is all about? I was on Youtube the other day and clicked on a few of the “Videos being watched right now” and came across her videos. It was absolutely pointless, just 40-or-so seconds of her staring into the camera and saying a few things in Japanese before “making the V” (the universal pose every Asian girl makes in every photo) and turning off the camera. So I checked out several other videos of hers thinking I’d eventually find something with some sort of substance to it…the only thing I could find that could be confused for something interesting was one video where she was complaining in Japanese about how she doesn’t like America and wants to move to Japan. And that was the exception…Pretty much all of her dozens of videos are equally pointless. She just kind of stares at herself on her computer monitor, moves her head, makes a pouty/smirky face, says something seemingly pointless in Japanese, and makes a pouty/smirky face again. Here’s just one example, sans any actual talking:   [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]   Was that not thirty-four seconds of the most pointless video ever recorded? I can forgive a lot of the pointless videos on Youtube because a lot of videos have that “you just had to be there or know the people involved” quality. But hers don’t qualify; they’re just dumb. She says in her profile that she’s 21 years old, but I’ve seen some speculation on the web that she’s actually around 14, which I tend to believe based on my hope that an adult would be able to come up with something a little more productive/interesting/relevant/useful. Or maybe she is 21 and just bored.   But as obnoxiously pointless as her videos are, she’s incredibly cute, which makes her videos like train wrecks…It’s really hard to look away. Her big cartoon eyes have some kind of evil power over people. I LOL’ed at what one guy on Youtube said about her:
What is SHE SAYING?!?!?! Translation? I don’t get or understand any of her videos, some of them she doesn’t even talk, she just stares into your soul, and you leave thinking something inside of you is gone…=(

Well put. Her videos get tons of “You’re retarded. Do something worth watching in your videos” comments, so apparently lots of other people also hate but can’t stop watching her videos. Hmmm…maybe I’ve got her all wrong. She does get people talking about her, and the more people talk about her, the more people will want to see her videos. And the more people see her videos, the greater her chances are of catching the attention of someone in the entertainment business in Japan, which could lead to her fulfilling her dream of going to live there. So, yes, she could just be a really strange person. Or she could be an extremely smart individual using free tools to market herself in a way that will give her a good chance of actually realizing her dream of living in Japan. Either way, I’m hooked, and I’m sure you are too, so here’s the link to her Youtube profile so you can get your fix. And here’s her blog where, if you’re lucky enough to be able to read Japanese, you can read her “deepest thoughts.” If you can’t read Japanese, you can still see pictures of her doing more of what she does best, stare into a lens with an “I know something you don’t know” stare.   ***Update*** – Frank (in the comments on this post) has the distinction of being her first seriously demented but incredibly talented stalker. Congratulations, Frank! You need therapy!   ***Update #2*** – There are 2 newer posts about Magibon that shed a lot more light on her here and here. ]]> http://www.due-east.org/2008/01/20/magibon-youtubes-bastion-of-pointlessness/feed/ 103