Both unflattering (Wimpus Japonica) and kind of complete animated video explaining Japan’s “herbivores,” the young men (perhaps 30%?) who are eschewing sex for domesticity, fashion, and the company of other well dressed young men.
The 1 minute 30 second video covers post-Bubble austerity, a new rejection of hetero sexuality as consumption, Japan’s declining birth rate, and gender boundary crossing. (Via Mutant Frog Travelogue).
The title quote is from Eric the Fez, who sends in a Bloomberg news story that the most recent Arizona shooting of a congressman, child, judge, and others has increased sales of semi-automatic Glock pistols. In another report, I read that the congresswoman, shot in the head this past weekend, had boasted of having this exact gun in a political message last year.
Apparently, the lesson is buy more guns. Please do not blame me for pretending to be from Canada!
Ok. This is in very bad taste. But, I am hoping to improve my listening abilities by following the lurid trial of Oshio Manobu, an attractive if arrogant actor accused of providing ecstacy to a Ginza hostess and then abandoning her when she had a heart attack.
This story has many important angles: the first famous “lay judge” or jury trial since it was recently introduced in Japan, a story about drug panic in Japan (love the visual at the beginning where hundreds of pills are flying across the screen), its location in a super expensive Roppongi apartment possibly owned by the Peaches John bra shop’s female owner, and so on. Here’s yesterday’s summary in English.
Verdict is on Friday!
What makes the story mesmerizing for me, and probably for many Japanese female viewers, is the combination of Oshio’s bad character and his many hot looks. Is it wrong to think sexual thoughts of a bad person? Can you learn Japanese while feeling conflicted? (I have posted twice previously last December and August).
What do you think?!
Arashi’s Sakurai Sho bares (almost) all in anan magazine’s special “male body” issue. Sho is one of the most popular members of the Johnny’s boy band Arashi, a Keio graduate from a wealthy family, and now a night-time newscaster on Zero presenting serious news, including the current state and history of Japan-US relations. The husband thinks Sho aspires to become Prime Minister one day, which would be a great triumph for the boy band creator Johnny.
anan is a young Japanese woman’s version of Cosmo. The magazine focuses on sexuality, appearance, polls, and men, men, men. This must be one of their sluttiest issues ever. There are taxonomies of the 8 male body types portrayed by comics and tarentos (all variations of skinny and boyish, except the normal sized “Big Boy” and the one fatty), photos of athletes and professional wrestlers, and a pictorial about how you might imagine young men at work without their clothes.
Dear readers, do you think Sho showing his skin will help or hinder his political aspirations? And, before I get any complaints, despite the fact that Sho is made up, waxed, and air-brushed to look barely legal (or younger), he is in fact 27 years old. I think he looks a bit like a Ken doll, plastic and a bit sexless.
What do you say? Should I post more images from this pictorial?
Just when I feel jaded about the blogosphere, I discovered a new blog InvisibleGaijin that mixes wicked satire and faux news with a focus on men’s fashion. Swoon.
The above is from InvisibleGaijin’s story about Japanese underwear, which connects undergarment obsession with recession and soshoku danshi (herbivores), and in part reads:
Self-professed gaijin with love/hate relationship with Japan, Fuzakeruna Konogaijinme, commented, “Japanese salarymen always turn inwards in recessions, peering into their navels in hopes no one notices they don’t do shit at work. Underwear that makes your balls feel good always sells.”
(Image from www.pants-ya.com. Almost NSFW).
Tokyo Moe 