karaoke

2D-Lovers

2D Love

“When I die, I want to be buried with her in my arms.” So says Nisan about his love Nemutan: a photo print of a X-rated video game character decorating a large pillow. They go on normal dates, including car-camping, karaoke, restaurant dinners, and photo booths.

It’s a little creepy that Nemutan is about 10 or 12, and that her otaku human lover is 37 and has adopted the name “nisan,” which Nemutan calls her older brother.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine author Lisa Katayama, blogger at Tokyo Mango, cites three potential explanations for this extreme  moe behavior: the high number of Japanese virgins (25% of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34; a movement led by Honda Toru against “romantic capitalism” whereby love is seen to have been commercialized that looks and money have replaced pure feeling; and one Japanese behavioral economist who compares 2D love to “becoming a Buddha.”

2D Love

The article fails to explore what ladies who have given up on 3D love are doing for their fantasy and fulfillment. Maybe they are busy reading Boys Love, and fantasizing about female-created man-on-man love. Ahhh, Japan. Ever so frustrated, imaginative and perverse 😉

Skilled laborers singing karaoke together

Skilled laborers singing karaoke together banner

You don’t need to be Donald Richie— noted American film critic, high culture interlocutor, and lover of Tokyo construction workers– to swoon over this neighborhood banner celebrating the association of skilled laborers. In Japanese, they are called gatenkei no hito (ガテン系のひと).

What says solidarity more than singing karaoke in hard hats and head towels? The husband reminds me that skilled workers, like yakuza, have a reputation for chosen male families and gay sex.

Lala Pipo by Hideo Okuda

Lala Pipo by Hideo Ukuda

I just finished reading Lala Pipo by Okuda Hideo in English translation. Above is Chip Kidd’s cover for Vertical publishers. It’s always bittersweet to finish reading a really engaging novel.

Lala Pipo focuses on six inter-connected characters in Tokyo– all unlikable losers who are purchasers, voyeurs, sellers, authors, enablers and underground stars in the sex trade.

The first character is a peeping-tom freelance writer, the others a cabaret scout, a lonely housewife, a karaoke box attendent, an older porn author, and a fat woman who picks up ugly men at the library. The stories revolve around loneliness, despair, poverty, resentment, incest, arson, school-girl prostitution, boredom, humiliation and abuse. It sounds heavy, but it’s a total page-turner!

The husband saw at Kinokuniya that this book will soon become a movie in Japan. I can’t imagine this novel selling well or being made into a movie in the United States.

Has anyone else read Lala Pipo? Is anyone else planning to see the movie? And now that I’ve finished this novel, can anyone suggest another?!

Studying for my first karaoke

Next Saturday I am joining three women friends (two from the ceramic studio) for my very first karaoke box. Those who know me can attest to the fact that I am a terrible singer– with no memory of lyrics or melody. So I am studying now.

Here’s my initial song list. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for simple yet womanly songs:

  • Que Sera Sera, Doris Day (Incredibly twisted, few lyrics)
  • Diamonds are Forever, Shirley Bassey (Favorable comparison between diamonds and men, double entendre galoure)
  • I’ve Never Been to Me, Charleene (Sick, and very familiar)
  • (They Long to Be) Close to You, Carpenters
  • Doggie in the Window, Patti Page

Several more challenging songs:

  • Self Control, Laura Brannigan
  • Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day (Token male vocal)
  • She’s Not Me, Madonna (Insane jealousy and delusion)

Any other suggestions?