Let's join a cult!

During golden week I had a small BBQ party over at the Salaryman house with a bunch of old Japanese friends I don't see that often anymore since most of has have started families and everyone getting together is difficult to puzzle in. It was a "family fun" type of event with plenty of small kids running around the place and making a general mess and nuisance.

But one of my friends, a lady who was a former colleague a few years back and with whom I have maintained a friendship turned out to have found a new interest in "spirituality". She knows that I'm quite uninterested in that type of stuff and kept it quite limited to me directly apart from showing me the great amulet she had bought that would adsorb and protect her from radiation but I think that my reply of "Wow... that's really amazing... but I'm fine thanks, now I'm just gonna go get me another beer, I've heard that that protects me against radiation too" signaled that I wasn't too interested in hearing about it.

But every time she was left alone with another of my friends around the BBQ grill she launched into explanations on how you could learn to see people's aura and stuff like that, to much confusion of my friends with limited interest in things spiritual. She also mentioned that she had started to take "spiritual development" classes to the modest sum of over 1 million JPY (~$10,000). I can tell for sure that someone is experiencing a lot of development for that sum of money, but more likely the scammers holding the course than the person taking the lessons... But hey, to each their own, she's still a nice person and a good friend and it seemed to be quite benevolent in nature at least.

On a related note, the other day I talked to a colleague of mine, "The Doctor" who has a quite long academic career behind him before he went into business. As he showed me an article that he had co-written related to a therapy we were looking into. He seemed to get a little nostalgic and drifted off a bit as he explained "And I wrote this with this guy... really nice guy and very dedicated to the research... but then he got caught up in some form of cult and just up and left... Hmmm... this was about the same time as the whole Aum deal... I wonder what he's doing now... (changing to a sad frown)".

At this point, I have no real inclination to join any form of cult, but if I did change my mind the Romasophie movement would be my cult of choice!

A War of Cultures - Bakabon vs. Hitler

I have a beard (if you look in the upper left corner and in the logo, you get the image) and has had it basically since I was 18 or 20 something. I just really don't feel comfortable without it since it's part of my face by now, I do keep it pretty trimmed though since I'm a Salaryman and can't go around looking too shabby. However, once in a while, usually around the time I have a week of vacation, giving it just enough time to grow out again by the time I go back to work, I do shave it off for the benefit of Mrs. Sunshine.

As I was shaving it at the beginning of golden week, just for fun I left me a mightly handsome toothbrush moustache in place and sought out Mrs. Sunshine for her opinion on this change of image. Obviously the image I thought I would evoke was that of a certain failed Austrian painter but as she saw me and had finished laughing she said "shave it off, now, you look like Bakabon's dad!" (educational segment; Tensai Bakabon is a pretty famous Japanese comic manga and anime).

So what she saw was something like this...
...while I thought I would evoke an image like this...That's a difference in frame of references for you! Technically though, I think that Bakabon's dad actually doesn't have a fine toothbrush moustasche, I think it's actually his nosehair that is extending out his nose but can't say I'm too sure about that. But in hindsight, I guess it's better that she saw a beloved comic character and not one of the most horrible people this century.

I won't be doing that again, I guess the toothbrush moustache has been ruined in the West by Hitler and by Bakabon's dad here in Japan.

Two Men working closely together! (Golden Week interlude)

Ok, you can see this as a short interlude before I charge up for the next real post. It's now again the "Golden Week" here in Japan but after having this blog for 4 years now, I'm running out of entertaining puns on that week, so instead I'll go for something completely different.

This commercial in many forms (but always with the basic concept of two guys, one in blue and one in red doing physical activities together and helping each other out with the magnificent catchcopy "FIGHT!" or "Faito!" as it becomes in Japanese. The commercial is for energy drink "Lipovitan D", one of the strongest and most long lived brands of energy drinks here in Japan.

Everytime I see this commercial I get into a minor argument with Mrs. Sunshine (a jokingly argument mind you) as I claim that the concept and commercials are explicitly gay and that the pair in the commercials must be meant to be gay (not the actors, they very well could be for all I know though) while she doesn't really see things as I see them.

I think it's obvious, you agree with me, right? I bet that energy drink gives them the energy to go at it all night long after a hard climb!

Yep, time for another one of those golden weeks!

So, now again Japan is in the famous "Golden Week" mode and with three years of blogging behind me, I feel that this is one of those repeat subjects that I tend to mention once every year (check here for past mentions).

This year, the string of holidays has come pretty nicely, giving most regular salarymen and office ladies a possible 11 days off in a row by just taking three paid holidays, pretty good deal, huh? Never mind that actually going anywhere, especially overseas, is a complete nightmare considering the crowds and the unreasonable price raises that the travel agencies take the chance of charging now that basically all of Japan is on vacation.

These somewhat pointless and odd holidays that the Golden Week is made up of is basically remains of past Emperor's birthdays here in Japan. The birthday of the Emperor becomes a holiday (current Emperor Heisei is born on December 23, something that is good for us Christmas celebraters!) but when an Emperor passes, and a new one is crowned, they do not remove the previous holiday since it would be a sign of disrespect; instead they have been "re branding" it like this, resulting in these odd holidays.

That is all good and well, but I am not sure that the Japanese people realize that this will result in, after a couple of thousand years, that the whole year will be only holidays! I wonder how that will be managed or if Japan will just exist in an eternal state of "Golden Time"?

Oh? It's that time of year again?

After almost 10 years now of living here in Japan, salaryman-ing things up I am again reminded that I am now so used to life in Japan and have started to forget about how things are in the old country.

I am very much looking forward to Golden Week (c'mon, that picture is a work of art!) drawing closer now by the end of April which will give about a week's respite from the corporate drudgery. However, today I realized how disconnected I have become with the holidays back home. It was only after sending a few e-mails to some people in Europe and getting auto-replies saying "the office is closed due to the Easter holidays" that I realized that it's actually Easter now...

Not even dear mother remembered to send me an candy filled egg shaped box this year either, something that she has done on a few occassions which has sparked my memory. Well, nothing particularly exciting I guess, just a minor observation on how much more important such fantastic holidays such as "Greenery Day", "Ocean Day" and "Rever the Salarymen Day" has become to me compared to such staples as the Easter.

(Oh yeah, and I guess I should do some April's Fools joke or something, but I can't be buggered so go check out the Penguin's blog and read his thing from last year and pretend that I wrote it, you just mentally have to exchange some details but I'm sure you'll do fine!)

It's not golden, but at least it's silver

This week, Japan is lucky enough to be in a year when the so-called "silver week" occurs, when the stars are perfectly aligned and "respect for the elderly" day and the "autumn equinox" day come with just one day in between resulting in that we get that day off too. So, from Monday to Wednesday Japan this week Japan is enjoying a little holiday, resulting of course, in the regular insanity on the roads and in the airports since Japan insist on everyone taking vacation at exactly the same time making sure that wherever you go is extremely crowded.

The Sunshine-Salaryman household was actually thinking of taking a trip outside Japan this time but some quick research into tickets to places we could consider going to quickly set us straight since basically everything was fully booked and if it wasn't, it was at least twice the price you would normally expect to pay...

Considering that Japan is now finally moving out of the summer heat and into the much cooler and nicer autumn Japan is not that bad place to be, all things considered, so we decided to stay localized to the islands of Japan this time even though the next time the stars and holidays will line up accordingly will be in six years time...

One of the good things though is that since there exists a "golden week" and a "silver week" I suspect that there is one, even more amazing, "platinum week" that I have yet to discovered but just thinking of the possible amount of vacation in such a week just makes my head dizzy...

This week is golden!

Again, with the risk of feeling like I'm repeating myself, it's time for that Golden Week now in Japan again. One of the issues with keeping a steady stream of postings is that the novelty wears off a bit after a few years, but at least this year offers a slightly better proposition than last year giving us poor overworked salarymen and office ladies 5 days in a row off this time around.

I must admit that I do have issues making a funny spin out of this one with all the influenza business going on (making those poor bastards that actually paid up for those expensive flight tickets out of here feel really bad about it) but since my main agenda is full with exciting home activities with Ms. Sunshine I can't really be bothered.

At some point, I probably should list up the string of stupid holidays that the "Golden Week" actually is made up of (who actually celebrates "greenery day"?!), but at this time I'll just shut my mouth and be thankful that I got a breather!

(Bonus points to whomever can figure out who the doll is made out to be!)

Oh, come f**king ON!

In a recent post, I discussed a bit on the plight of the "announcer" in Japan, something to which a person calling himself "Colin" had a pretty insightful comment. With the aim steadily focused on the future, I won't dig into the exact details of that post or anything, anyone interested can simply go back and read it.

That said and out of the way, this post is more generally about Japanese "comedians" and more specifically about the comedian going under the name "Dandy Sakano". Now, for those of you living in Japan and/or following the Japanese media, you already know that most of the mainstream comedians that do the circuit in big Japan tv shows have a gimmick or a gag that is extremely simplified and basically repeated ad nauseum until their time has come, the public has grown bored with them and a new fresh "talent" takes their place.

I'm sure many of you can throw out countless of examples of "comedians" like this, but coming to my mind immediately are "Tetsu and Tomo" with their annoying "何でだろう？” ("why is it like that?" ) song, Kojima with his speedos and "関係ない”("What's that got to do with anything?!") thing and "Neko Hiroshi" with his thing that I never figured out what the hell was so great with him!

However, what most of these "comedians" have in common is that the thing they do is usually a little bit amusing, perhaps not to the degree of getting primetime in every f**king tv-show, but at least have a little novelty value.

But, whichever way you look at things and twist and turn, this cannot be said of "Dandy Sakano"　(WARNING: Painful video if you click that link!). His "thing" was basically saying "ゲッツ!" ("Get's!") in Japanese English and pointing his fingers as guns in front of him while being dressed in a silly yellow/golden suit. For some reason this caught on and people all over Japan started saying "Get's!" and doing the gesture when they managed to get/win something. This was horribly painful and for this reason I have difficulties looking back at the year 2005.

Then, the inevitable happened and his act was growing thin (it took the general population a good six months to realize this, it was thin the moment it started as far as I'm concerned...) and he faded out for television to do the local circuit where all these washed out comedians end up in the end. New, and less annoying, novelities took his place in the entertainment circuit and all was well.

I had basically forgotten about this horrible act and basically written it off as one huge communal mistake by the Japanese population at large best forgotten. Then, without any warning, he makes a comeback in a tv-show just last week! Same f**king yellow suit! Same f**king lame "Get's" gag! What the hell is going on here?! Usually these type of celebrities go out of fashion and stay out of fashion. This is a major paradigm shift in the world of Japanese comedy and I'm not sure I can take it!

It's that time of year again!

Yep, once again Salarymen all across Japan are rejoicing! It's that time of year again, the "Golden Week" of legend!

A string of public holidays put in quick order making for a short breather in the harsh world of business, the holidays are exceptionally pointless. Ok, "Constitution day" has at least some historical significance, but "Greenery Day"　and "Children's Day" score pretty high up there in pointlessness in my book. "Children's day" is about "a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness". I can now very clearly say that I will not celebrate neither their personalities nor their happiness.

However, to add insult to injury, this year has the holidays placed in a pretty bad order only giving a measly string of 4 free days in a row.

Holiday you say? So you're thinking fun trips to exciting places? No I say and I'm a salaryman so I know what I'm talking about. Because the whole nation is off at the same time, any place you think is a good idea to go to is already swarming with thousands of salarymen with their families that had the same thought you did. The best strategy is to try and stay out of harms way and don't think about flying anywhere because the airport is swarming with people and the travel companies are consumer friendly enough to pump up ticket prices to almost the double of normal rates.

I have a vague recollection of someone earlier posting a comment on a possible "Golden Shower Week" as a theme for this week and I will personally abstain from that theme this year but to each his own!

Staring into the Abyss

I am a changed man now... Gone are the days of playful laughter and snickering at the incompetence that is going around all over the place. We have started a new project and for some reason it is still me, Luke and The Boy on this project as well. We've been working together for so long now that the work style that has developed is quite fascinating in a disturbing way. I might elaborate on this at a later stage more, but it can be summarized in a few key words: Obscenities, Ebonics and Stupid Nicknames. But again I digress.

We gave up on searching for the Bigfoot Management, tired of being ridiculed and laughed at by management experts that refuse to believe that such a thing can exist. However, just when we thought that we were safe the Bigfoot Management style entered a new phase and it's name is Mr. Chin... His prescence became known to us not because of what he has done, but because of what he hasn't done... We are now caught up in a tornado of incompetence and are desperately trying to find something to hold on to while this lasts, it's not decreasing either...

I recall the words of Nietzsche: "If you stare into incompetence long enough incompetence stares back at you"...

Not the most coherent post, I can admit that, but for now I am just trying to survive until "Golden Week" here in Japan. The topic of "Golden Week" probably deserves a separate entry when I get around to it, but in the future I promise to lay out such interesting topics as the sometimes violent relationship between El Presidente and Mr. J as well as the you-won't-believe-it's-true story of Mr. M's in-company "love blog" (it's even better than it sounds!).

Otherwise I am surprised to see that my blog has received a few comments, something which both disturbs and amuses me equally...