At the end of October (previously unknown) experimental fashion designer Aya Tsukioka unveiled her urban camouflage range of clothing and accessories. These included the coke machine skirt (top left), the fire hydrant backpack (top right), and the manhole cover bag (left).
Although these are serious attempts by Tsukioka to address Japanese fears about personal safety, I can’t help but feel these would be more suitable as Halloween costumes (perhaps explaining their October launch?). You’d certainly get plenty of attention walking about with any of that gear. captured imagination.
Geekologie has photos showing the transformation from - to - in stages . Also Weburbanist has these photos of urban camouflage from other countries - the ‘couchmouflage’ looks cool, but you’d need to be partially-sighted or horrendously drunk to mistake the ‘carmouflage’ tent for a real car. Funny stuff.
drunken assailants. Which is perhaps why the dress transforms into a Coke machine rather than a beer vending machine
raises some questions
Halloween costume, GPS - feel sorry for kids with paranoid mothers. Not only are they forced to carry GPS cellphones that allow parents to monitor their every move, but they may now also be exposed to ridicule from classmates for wearing a fake fire hydrant on their backs.
Over the last few decades the concept of Christmas has gradually been seeping into Japanese culture. Like Halloween, Christmas appeals to the Japanese love of costumes, festivals and western culture(1) - although perhaps more significantly to the love of rabid/frenzied consumer spending. As with all Japanese imports from western culture, there’s a tendency to adapt rather than simply adopt. This means that Christmas in Japan doesn’t exactly resemble the Christmas non-Japanese people are used to.
kfc heralding xmas modern consumerist era
The launch of KFC (known locally as kentakkii) in Japan in 1970/71 is often cited as the first major injection of Christmas spirit into Japanese culture: commercials for the fast food chain featured Colonel Sanders dressed as Santa Claus, as is common in western countries. As the concept of Christmas was largely unfamiliar at the time, the belief that foreigners eat KFC for Christmas dinner was propagated by this accidental (or perhaps intentional?) synthesis of Santa and the Colonel(2).
While
spectacular non-event
romantic
X’mas
Notes
(1) - The growing popularity of Halloween in Japan was highlighted in an article syndicated recently by Reuters that can be found on stuff.co.nz.
(2) - This strong association of KFC and Christmas might explain why KFC restaurants in Japan often dress their colonel statues in other costumes during different seasons and different promotional campaigns (a practice not usually seen in KFC restaurants in other countries): it may be the case that consumers subconsciously think it’s an ideal time to have fried chicken whenever the colonel has shed his favoured cream-coloured suit for a new costume. If you’ve never seen the kind of alternate costumes I’m talking about, check out this photo of the Colonel dressed as a samurai, or the costumes on Undercover in Japan.
Japanese language features quite a few interjections used to express surprise, including majide?, uso!, honto? and ariehen! These can be equated with English expressions such as ‘really?’, ‘I don’t believe it!’, ‘no way!’, ‘get outta here!’ etc.
One such interjection often heard in Japanese conversation is heeee / hēē / he～ (へえええ), which is pronounced ‘hair’ but can be elongated to express greater surprise. The length this phonetic phenomenon is sometimes drawn out to Read the rest of this entry »
While the behaviour of other types of student is often problematic for teachers or classmates, the Mentalist’s behaviour can either be problematic or benign. Whichever way though, their behaviour is so bizarre that you suspect they’re mentally ill.
Every year the words and phrases that are most searched for by internet users around the world are published in Google’s Year-End Zeitgeist. As the name suggests, the report is a snapshot of where the world’s curiosity and interests currently lie, and as such offers a fascinating insight into global internet usage and the national psyche of the countries that are also listed individually.
Thanks to Google’s awesome Google Analytics software I have installed on Big on Japan, I too can take a peak at what internet users around the world are searching for and how they arrived at my site. And as with Google’s report, the bigonjapan.com year-end zeitgeist indicates the popularity of a number of topics, albeit generally restricted to ones relating to Japan. The top 10 for 2008 follows, with last year’s position in brackets: Read the rest of this entry »
Japanese people often seem easily impressed and frequently display this by clapping like trained sea lions and exclaiming ‘sugoi!’ (that’s great!). In particular, things like magic tricks and new gadgets are guaranteed to get this reaction. Where foreigners are concerned, being able to use chopsticks or speak a few words of Japanese is often enough to elicit a round of applause and a chorus of ‘sugoi!’. Read the rest of this entry »
Depending on the situation it’s used in, sumimasen can be used apologetically to mean ‘please move out of my way’ or ‘I’m sorry’/’pardon me’. It can also be used to get someone’s attention politely (although it often sounds otherwise when barked loudly), as in ‘I’m ready to order now’, ‘I need another drink’ or ‘get over here!’. Additionally, it can be used to say ‘thank you’ in an apologetic way when someone has done you a favour, as in ‘thank you for going to so much trouble’ or ’sorry to trouble you’. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently received the following topical and amusing chain email:
Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the run on Northern Rock in the UK, uncertainty has now hit Japan. In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Read the rest of this entry »
See below for previous entries in the Beer in Japan series:
Part 1 - Availability; Taste Part 2 - Pseudo-beers; Pricing Part 3 - Marketing; Uniqueness Part 4 - More uniqueness
Beer Trivia
Beer cans on display in Japanese vending machines are typically ‘display models’ - that is, they’re empty and have a flat top with no ring pull or hole for drinking out of.
itadakimasu (lit=’I am receiving something’)
One of many Japanese expressions that has no direct translation in English, ‘itadakimasu’ can basically be equated with ‘saying grace’, a short prayer said by a lot of religious families (particularly in the US) to thank God before eating a meal. Read the rest of this entry »
Following my earlier post on the Camouflage Coke Machine Skirt, here are some more urban camouflage photos I found on other people’s sites. These first photos are off Treehugger, but this story was widely reported on loads of blogs, as well as in mainstream media like the New York Times, the Daily Mail and BBC1’s Have I Got News For You. 
