OMG – Coke!!!!!!

Coke’s subliminal push for the 14 year old American girl market somehow ended up on the Japanese product.

Maradona-san – you did this.

There’s not a lot more pitiful than a sad lookin’ pooch. & having his team on the verge of not qualifying for the World Cup is a sure way to give ‘lil Inu-chan a biggerthannormalforJapan sized case of the downs…

Maradona-sensei, Diego, if I may – if you cannot urge your team to qualify for the pride of the nation, or even for yourself – please do it for this little feller. We just want to see him smile again.

Aye aye!

It has come to my attention that I am not a very consistent blogger. Although my other blog is updated quite frequently, possibly because that involves cars and I spend a lot of my time around awesomleytunedJapanesecarsthatmakemegoWootWoot!!YeahYeah!!! – sorry – had a bit of a funny turn there…

So, in the spirit of being a more worthy blogger, here are some boats I saw at Shonan Beach a month ago. I rode my jitensha out there, which is about 30km & got nicely sunburnt on the way out, encountered mist over the beach for four of the five hours I was there, then had a bona fide monsoon hit as I was about a quarter of the way home. Took four days to dry my shoes, black canvas Vans slipons – surely some of the easiest (apart from those easy dry/sandal/or even Croc(?) things & I aint wearing those No Sir) shoes ever to dry. Ever. I think Im starting to understand Japanese weather. Which means that I now understand that it is beyond being understood.

So, boats. Whoohoo!

Misty as all heck, but was about 36deg C. Steamy desu!

No sign of the painter. I imagine they’d been lost to the mist…

Hot & Wet. Not in a good way.

 

Meh. Rainy season sercks.

Back in Ichigatsu, we knew that we still had a couple of wintery months to deal with & I was feeling just a little jaded by the samuiness. Winter, incidently, having begun a little early on Jyugatsu Kokonoka at Fuji Speedway. The day previous had been quite warm, so manus here didnt take a jacket. Yep.

These people all had jackets.

Aaanyhizzle, silly old nature (the crazy joker) decided to throw a late January curve ball (baseball season still several months away, so quite a masterstroke. Ha ha. I said…) our way with one 26C Saturday. Followed by a sub artic Sunday. But I’d like to go on, and on, about the Saturday. I was so discombobulated by this state of affairs that I even went to the park. Twice. With the missus. Both times.

As you might expect, if youve suffered through my previous rantings, it took me next to no time to go quite troppo. Thus I did some unseasonable lurking in the undergrowth. Being technically mid winter, the undergrowth was somewhat sparse. The overgrowth was just sticks. Pretty poor effort really.

My little bird buddy here couldnt believe his crazy warm weather luck.

It was all going swimmingly until the pidgeons turned up.

Followed by the Americans.

This sign was only here during winter.

Presumably these noisy little creatures get all sweaty under the helmet (Ha ha! etc.) in warmer weather, thus staying away from the park, rendering a nattily crafted warning from the municipal authorities somewhat redundant.

Of course, if one was to take one’s  inu for a pleasant sampo in the koen on an unseasonably warm Doiyobi, then one would need not be concerned about rowdy midgets with potential under helmet sweat.

Although old Hat’n Jacket’n Sausage Inu here seemed to be running from something…

…Gajin Four Eyes trying to steal his soul perhaps?

Or maybe those racket making Americans with their warlike aeroplanes of wardom.

Not just I had gone troppo. Here, a local tree attempts to fly a kite.

Ultimately unsuccessful, but kudos for giving it a bash.

Beaver Shot.

I mean, if you had a flash beaver like this, you’d want to show it off to the neighbourhood wouldnt you?

 

Anata no Eigo sensei wa Marvellous desu ka?

Who wouldve thought that a Japanese English language school would have miniature versions of John Campbell teaching madly away in the depths of suburban Tokyo?

Now hows that? A little spooky, but kind of marvellous at the same time.

Ah Japan. Even in a porcine tainted world financialmageddon, they still kick out the jams with a stylin’ PocketCampbell.

Be prepared desu.

Yesterday, Japan’s first swine flu case (in Osaka) was announced on the morning news.

So my mother in law wasted no time in gettin’ to the mask store…

I dunno. I think we need more…

& where is the black one with the skulls? For me? Oh right. I get it. Kuso baba!

For your own peace of mind…

Happy Inu Year!

I know. Puns are rubbish. And it is most certainly not Year of the Dog. And we are over a month into 2009. What hey!

2009 dawned cold (unsurprising, given the whole middle of winter thing) and clear, which happens a lot here and is much appreciated by myself. Shochu for breakfast (again, appreciated, etc) and a stroll to the Shinto shrine at the end of the street was the first plan of the year…

Others seemed to have the same idea. Fortunately for us all, the shrine was right where it had been last year. The vaunted Japanese efficiency comes up trumps again!

My atama may have been a little itai, but the sky was blue, the air was fresh, apart from the smoke from the fires lit to give elderley men a place to stand, and I was heading for my first dose of Shinto sake.

The first inu of the year is a corgi! Smashing.

The people on the left are attending a small shrine where you throw in a coin (usually a “lucky” 5 yen piece) and say a little prayer wishing for good stuff, like health, prosperity and a slightly more efficient family than last year.

My father in law (the taller one to the left) was highly amused by the antics of the small fellow, who in turn seemed quite entranced by the movements of the chap carrying the skateboard.

The main shrine up yonder was holding Shinto New Year services, where you could also go through the coin/health/efficient family ritual. As we did.

Light the fire, the old blokes will arrive. Actually, slightly off the subject of New Years Day, today we were discussing the geriatric aspects of driving a Honda Fit and surmised that to fit the Fit, as it were, I would perhaps need an old bloke hat (although the Fit has no parcel shelf to display said hat as a warning of slow, yet erratic maneuvering to the line of traffic following behind), a pipe and a tweed jacket, possibly patched at the elbow. In the interests of New Year efficiency (the 5 yen worked!) I have decided to settle for a tweed hat (unpatched) and shaking my fist at pidgeons. Even shook at a few pidgeons this afternoon. Quite a lark. Although I couldnt find any larks to threaten. I did however stare balefully at a crow. Because codgeritis hasnt consumed me fully, I can remember what I was on about before, so back to January 01.

You wouldnt believe how many Honda Fit owners I had to elbow aside to get this close to the fire. Shouldve brought along some pidgeons to distract them…

Inu Nichi! I wouldve thought that this fellow was much more worthy of entering a shrine than a corgi, but Im no expert. I cant really even intimidate a pidgeon…

Enough of this tradition madness – there are more dogs to greet and a mall to loiter at!

This is Yuzu-chan. She lives on the way to Glandbelly Mall.  A little pungent, but always good to catch up.

If you squint your eyes just so, you’ll look a bit strange. Also, you might notice that there is a Ferrari F40 behind the white thing. F40 lives across the road from Yuzu-chan.

Since you were wondering about what other cars we saw on the way to the mall, here is a Lotus Exige making all kinds of racket on the way to Minami Machida railway station. Almost at the mall now!

Turning to face the other way, there’s a New Year’s glimpse of Fuji San. Aki Mashite Cobber! I know, you want to get to the mall. Those two look like they have already been. Meh. We aint goin’ to shop yo. We goin’ to loiter.

Crickey. Another corgi. Wearing a Mickey Mouse coat.

Dork.

That’s better. A real dog. That pushchair thing in the background is not for a small child. In there is a pathetic excuse for an inu which most certainly is not keepin’ it real. Homies.

It was a pooch-o-rama on these here stairs. I tried to capture both with me soul stealer, but ended up failing with both. Pretty cool how the front one casts a tail shadow that looks like a palm tree. Not sure how many parties that trick would work at, but worth a try.

It seemed that several others shared our mall idea. Some even came without dogs. Madness.

Holmes here didnt even have a dog, but that didnt stop him. No Sir.

I guess a canine kimono has to be better than a pouffy little Mickey Mouse jacket.

You can’t see my dog because I put it in this bag! Watch me lift it above my head, because I’m quite strong!

This may be the dog version of a pink muscle shirt. Go the Rabbitohs!

Oh bloody hell. Some things you should just leave at home.

Almost Taiko Time!

Sure the photo is blurry. But you takes what you gets when you snap the Poodle of Darkness.

Oh yes. It’s Taiko Time!

I hadnt begun my pidgeon threatening campaign at this stage, so these two were safe for now…

This dude strode up and down the line of patronage, menacing the young and elderley alike with his manic drum beating and wildy contorting facial expressions.

Then he was joined by a tomodachi. No-one in the crowd was safe. Unless, perhaps, they were equipped with inu… Surely not?

Why not start the year with an ’80′s suburban cowperson revival? I could think of a few reasons, but why not follow your dreams. It’s winter, after all.

My guess is that little Fido here had left an unchi on the tatami and was being made to wear the Flouncey Blouse of Shame as a punishment.

I wanted to finish with this bit of awesomeness. Definitely less owls than pooches, in fact this seemed to be the only one at the mall.

Hoot!

Heh. Japan…

Fuji TV commit many crimes against those who are daft enough to watch. One show, Hexagon, is explained to a certain extent here, which makes me feel better, as I was wondering if I was being a little sniffy in finding some Japanese TV, well… crap.

This evening on

the culprit

 

Hexagon, the fey looking clown in the middle of the DVD cover image was asked what the national bird of New Zealand was. He guessed the Chicken.

sizzle

 

Ok. Mebbe. The question was then passed to the floor (ie. tarento – a scourge unto themselves), so the next offering was the

really?

 

Penguin. So they seem to have called in the geographic brains trust for the final attempt and came up with the

if you cant sing, whistle

Duck. Ive chosen the Black Bellied Whistling Duck for the photo because you would really, wouldnt you.

None of the Mastermind panel could get there, so they moved on to new challenges. Which leads me to wonder, given what we found in the local “Australian” Family Feedbag

where they might reckon lil’ holmes here might come from?

And… what would NZers prefer to be known as in Japan: Chickens, Penguins or Ducks?

Shame theres no bird known as a Manus. Although Dotterel is pretty kool. And Kokako is fun to say when youve been screen printing sheets of vinyl stickers in six hour stints in the middle of summer. Not that printing ink damages the brain at all. Ffffftt fffffttt drainpipe mashup.