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Ladies for ladies, Bears for men

On toilet doors you sometimes see fancy graphics, stylized versions of the little dude and chick that tell us which little room to go in to do our business. I’ve seen Picasso-esque renderings, melting-egg Dali versions, manga characters, the oft-confusing-to-illiterate-gaijin kanji versions, but never before one where the dude is not a dude but a bear. Only in Hokkaido.

This sticker was omiyage (souvenir gift) from a friend who went there for a holiday. Kuma means bear.

The Naked Doctor

The Japanese health system caters to each and every sub-section of society; Akihabara maids, cos-players, otakus, and the naked. When the naked first arrived at the Doctor’s office it was quite uncomfortable, contributing to the ever-present Japanese angst about station and rank- factors which play into every strata of social behaviour, determining how to talk, how to stand, how deep to bow, etc… From this discomfort sprung a wide range of etiquette questions:

Did disrobement lower or raise the status? Was it gender specific, did naked women around naked men go up a few degrees, necessitating deeper bows and more teinei (polite form) speak, while men naked around women went down in stature, especially if it was a cold day? What about women around women, or men around men?

To solve these question once and for all, the doctors started getting naked when ‘the naked’ arrived. This led to a return to the standard levels of anxiety over rank and station, which came as a great relief. It also led to hugely increased sales of velcro quick-release Doctor’s gowns, to allow for quick changes.

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Superior Japanese Knives

Sometimes you just have to know where the knives be at. Sometimes you’ll be cooking a goose, and need to trim that darn bird. Othertimes you need to sew your pants up and you need a darn knife to cut a thread. Other times you just need to stick a knife in a darn tomato and carve it like a jack-o-lantern.

So when I saw this crazy ad in the Shimbashi Caretta mall tourist zone, alongside ads and directions for 100-yen stores, limousine buses, and foreign exchange spots, I knew that something had gone very right in the world.

A man on his way to a stabbing knows that preparedness is everything.

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Please do it at the beach

Recently this ad has been cropping up in train stations all round Tokyo:

I’m glad as it’s about time- the number of people I’ve seen hemi-sliced like bacon rashers by those executioner-style train doors is more than I care to think about.

Shlump!

His upper body rolls around messily inside the carriage. Everybody politely ignores it, as they do if a drunk person has a food escape or a homeless person comes on and emanates.

So, it’s certainly about time.

Of course they could just de-sharpen and de-fang the train doors so people weren’t forever getting hemi-sliced, but then what kind of deterrent to dive-bombing Tokyo metro trains would that be?

I’ve gotten myself caught in the guillotine maw doors before, sometimes embarrassingly so- with my new pony-tail pinning me fast until the next stop rolls by. Solution- lean casually against the doors acting like it’s all part of the master-plan.

That aside- there really is nothing like bidding for this dive into the train and making it. I imagine it’s the exact same feeling Maradona had when he scored the ‘Hand of God’ goal. He shouldn’t have made it, it wasn’t supposed to be possible, it was ilicit, everyone knows he cheated fate- but still it worked!

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Coppertone Bikini Girls

Coppertone have gone nuts recently in Shibuya station, plastering at least the Yamanote line north-bound platform with pictures of bikini-clad women (and little girls) with a dog biting their butts. When I first saw this I did a double-take, turned the other way, saw a similar ad where a little girl was getting her butt bit, and started to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t just a bit too weird for its own good.

Odd.

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The ‘other’ Colonel Sanders

His name is Koichi Sanders. He and the Colonel were divided at birth, despite not sharing a common mother nor being born in the same country or year. After that tragic separation, they never saw each other again, but for in the distant redness of Red land. They live in Red land, which is why the space behind them is always red. Their uniquely black and white faces cause them endless shame, as everywhere they go they are mistaken for each other. This is a big problem, since they do not even speak the same language!

Koichi Sanders considers the Colonel ‘the other’ Sanders, and vice versa.

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