Category Archives: japan - the funny

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part II

After our unsettling experience putzing around the smelly Gates of Hell, we cracked open the guide book and tried to figure out where to go next. "Hey panda, I've got an idea." piped up KC as we headed away from the noxious odors of the sulfur fields. "How about visiting these temples in Yamagata?" "Sounds good!" I mumbled absent mindedly, trying not to drive the Purple Elderberry of Doom off the side of a cliff...

Panda and the Eau de Gooch

...this person - and I've had a lot of time to think about this and what metaphors to use here - is surrounded by an odoriferous vapour cloud of doom so horrible, so vomit gag inducing, it's like the stank of a sweaty salt ham stuck inside a pile of old wet moldy hard cover books....! I mean... it gets you.... gets you right in the back of the throat - it's like... as if... I dunno - like.... a thousand stanky gooches simultaneously rubbed themselves all up and down your tonsils...!

Night Photos and Naughty E-mails

Which brings us back to the present, and this gigantic very explicit pornographic image plastered on my screen, right smack dab in the middle of a crowded Japanese office...!

"EERGLPPPFFFHHH!!!!!" I squeak out an incomprehensible sound as my mind begins to register what the frick is happening. "OH MY CHRIST!!!"

"OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!!" I stammer-yell to myself as I realise I'm on a Mac and that shortcut doesn't work. Instinctively I move to hit "window" plus "l" which on a PC will blank your screen and bring you back to the security log on. Guess what it does on a Mac in Entourage. It "refreshes the message list", which means it has just refreshed this gigantic set of pornographic boobies displayed in my e-mail screen.

Inappropriate...!

I wince at the t-word. People, I am not a "manly man". I have a hard time talking about things like this with other men. If you've ever watched the TV show Scrubs, then you'll know what I mean when I say I'm like Elliot Reed when it comes to sex: shirt on, lights off and my idea of talking dirty is substituting "bajingo" for what would normally be an awkward throat clearing and a vague gesturing of eyes towards the ground (well, I exaggerate, but with strangers I'm a prude) So you can imagine how incredibly uncomfortable I was at this particular moment, with this young, obviously undersexed young Japanese man trying painfully hard to engage in what I can only imagine he thought was "male bonding" brazenly discussing his preference for gigantic boobies. I mean, just because Sir Mix-a-lot can openly declare his love for big butts to the entire world in a rap song does not mean that you have a free reign to describe in graphic detail your love for gigantic mammaries at the dinner table, young man. Do you know why? Because he is Sir Mix-a-lot. And he is awesome. And you are not. I mean, he has a music album entitled "The Return of the Bump-a-saurus". Do you? No. And this is the first time we've really spoken to each other for any extended period of time.

Setsubun - the face smashing festival

Are you imagining that phrase? Now while keeping that image in your head, slowly replace those words until it becomes "like hurling heavy beanbags at immobile foreigners trapped in a crowd about 25 feet away from you from an elevated wooden platform." And then add "oh and you're a gigantic muscular sumo wrestler." It was, as they say, all fun and games until someone got hurt, and that someone would have been the random old lady who took one to the dome with a rather sharp and alarming plastick-y "srrrMMMMGAAAACCCKKK!" as the beanbag caught her with a glancing blow to the temple. She stumbled back for a second, dazed and shell shocked, then bumped up against the chest of a larger guy behind her trapped by the surging crowd and could retreat no further. I watched as she valiantly tried to struggle to her feet only to catch another round straight in the forehead, chin snapped straight back from the force of the impact as she slowly sank into the murky darkness of the trampled ground below the crowd line, one hand upstretched piteously, palm splayed, grasping uselessly at the heavens, mouth echoing out its last plaintive gasp: "Damn you ..... beeeeaaaannnnnsss........."

No Chicken, No Life

Sign spotted outside a downtown Izakaya (Japanese-style bar). Hard to argue with this sentiment I suppose! Speaking of chickens everlasting - (actually, this has nothing to do with eterna chickans, that was a horrible transition) - I am planning on taking my new pretty baby out and about this weekend to take some pictures. Originally, I had planned to head over to Narita-san temple in Narita (town next to the international airport) to get some...

Thundar Dolphan!

The first thing it did out of the gate was skyrocket right into the eye of the furious storm far up above us at a sharp degree angle towards what we later learned was a height of 262 feet, the 5th tallest in the world. It was a dark and stormy night, much like Snoopy used to write, but unlike a Peanuts cartoon, the sky took on increasingly darker and more menacing shades as we were ratcheted into the heavens. The flimsy orange low sidewalls of the car suddenly felt incredibly inadequate and I began to seriously consider the possibility that maybe I might slip out of lap belt. The wind began to howl as if heralding the coming of something wicked borne on massive leathery wings about to burst from the heavens, and the thin twisting rails of the track shook and shuddered, swaying under each groaning gusty assault. To the sides and all around far off below in the distance the tiny gray skyscrapers of Tokyo faded into pinpricks of diffused shapes and melty light, while I turned to my left to see b.a. silently mouthing the words "oh... my... god." with a look on her face that expressed the "what on earth does this dolphin have in store for us..!?" feeling pounding through my chest at that very moment. Just then, we reach the crest of the hill and hung, momentarily for one second on the apex, a bright orange 5 car dolphin of thunder precariously perched hundreds of feet in the sky as if in mid-leap out of an urban ocean, silhouetted against a swirling maelstrom of thunder and bubbling cauldron of roiling liquid gray clouds and bursts of lightening burning fire within the stomachs hungry pitch black clouds and strata far above in the distant skyward darkness.

The Great Bike Theft of 2006

[In My Head]:: "Somehow, Scotland Yard, I'm not holding out much hope you're gonna find my bike next week, let alone in 4 or 5 years given that your investigative technique to date seems to consist of drawing a map in crayon on a crumpled piece of paper and measuring the distance to random buildings. Not exactly C.S.I. up in this motherfucker, is it?" [Out Loud]::"...ummm, if you find my bike in 6 years, you can just keep it as I'll probably have bought a new one by then." "No, no, someone must take responsibility for the bike, even if just to pay for the disposal fee. More importantly, what about when we arrest the criminal? A case like this will remain active in Japan for seven years. If we arrest the criminal and send them to court, someone needs to press charges. If you're gone, who will do this?" "...umm, that's okay, I don't want to press charges. I just want my bike back."

Nice n Easy Sign Language

Part of the ease, I suppose, is that sign language isn't like "regular" language - you don't make sentences proper, you just sign the most "important" parts: subject, objects, main verb, etc. You don't need to worry about all those other bothersome parts of language that make you sound like a retarded 3 year old monkey when you speak (what natives refer to as "particles", "adverbs", "tenses", etc.), and given that my spoken Japanese basically goes something along the lines of "Me. Hungry. Eat." or "Toilet. Hole. Ground. I. Poop. No.", I find I'm already well on my way to the minimalist approach eschewed by sign language practioners.

Jumbo the giant panda

And while it's not the most inappropriate comment I've ever been subjected to in Japan (that dubious honor going to the intrepid junior high school boy who caught me off guard once with "hey panda-sensei, how big is your cock?" in perfect English (my snarky-yet-simultaneously-pathetic (insofar as I'm comparing penis size with a 12 year old) reply: "bigger than yours will ever be", greeted with tremendous "oohs" and what I can only assume is the Japanese middle school equivalent of "snap!!!" and "awwww shit!" from his boys - penis measuring humor is universal it appears)) – nonetheless it seems to me that one doesn't make a comment like "look at how huge you are" without having some sort of specific desired response in mind.

Bicycle Misadventures

So I'm back in Japan. Whoo-hoo. Actually a lot of things have been going on here recently which have contributed to me not posting much of anything. Let's start with my bike. The piece of crap I have to ride until my new bike arrives So I arrived in my new spiffy location down over Tokyo-ish (more ish than Tokyo, sadly) and find most of my stuff has arrived. Awesome. Now all I need is...

From the mouths of babes...

A while back, some local first year high school students were given an assignment that required them to write a short story that started with the phrase "once upon a time" or "a long long ago". Oh, and it had to involve a baby panda. These are three of my favorites: The charm of first one is due in large part to the author's rather... unique word phrasing - it's bizarre enough to make me...

Snow Tires

"AAAARRRGHHH!!!" I curse, frustrated by both my failure to stop my car's backward careening slide and inability to figure out what the hell "a vague deception of a dying day" means. I'm getting desperate - any second another car is going to come around the bend below me and I'm going to crash straight backwards into them. Or worse yet, I'm going to slide right into the living room of the house at the bottom of the hill. I struggle to remember the chapter in my driver's ed book entitled "What to do if you're sliding backwards down an icy hill in the middle of Japan and about to T-bone an old person's house"...

The Cliffs of Death

WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHERF-ING BLACK JESUS WAS THAT!?" I bellow as my car starts to spin out of control, mud splashing up on my windshield, shocks creaking to absorb foot deep slime-filled potholes, the sound of ten thousand tiny gravel meteors flung up by spinning wheels at 70kph streaking through the air and denting the hell out of the car body. Tennis jolts straight upright in her seat desperately grasping for poor monkah (sent flying through the air from his vantage point on the dash as soon as we hit the gravel road) with one hand and the emergency stabilization handle above the door with the other. For one second, as the car starts to power slide (most unintentionally, let me assure you) through the gravel and mud towards a very painful looking ditch on the side, we catch glance of each others' panicked faces and I imagine this is what rally car drivers and their helpless navigators must feel the second before they lose control around a hairpin loop and crash head on into a tree or catapult off the side of a cliff.

The great orange hair disaster

Looking in the mirror the other day, I noticed my hair was getting pretty shaggy. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so, though, as I had heard (in the typical Japanese fashion) from a co-worker of a co-worker who was a friend of the section chief that the center chief wanted me to get a haircut as apparently it was "too long for a man". While the egalitarian in me wanted to...

Pooping in Japan I - Panda and the J-toilet

So startled and shocked was I by the sudden eruption and splashing of frigid toilet water in my poor nether regions that I involuntarily started, attempting to leap up from my agonizing crouched position, only to have my by-now numb legs and knees cry out in tremendous pain before giving out completely, whereupon I found myself tumbling down in an alarmingly out of control arc at the complete mercy of the unforgiving ministries of that evil bastard gravity, arms flailing out, mouth opening in a long, slow-motion "nnoooOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" which no sooner had left my lips than....

Emergency Button...

...Kita hands over the pizza and I pay him. He keeps glancing over at the alarm going off to the right and the senile old woman sticking her head out the door. I realize that if I don't do something right now, I'm going to have to listen to that alarm all night long. And Mistar Dominos Delivery Man is my best chance to handle this situation without getting falsely arrested. I grab his arm. "Kita is it?" I ask, looking at his nametag. I'm certain at this point that he must be no older than 18. "Mate, you need to come with me" I say to him. I take him by the sleeve and pull him over to the woman's apartment. The old woman starts beckoning us to come in...

The Prearranged Marriage Slip Up

My Japanese is so-so. I'll be the first to admit that considering how many years of Japanese I've had, and how long I've lived in Japan, it should be a lot better. In my defense, I humbly submit the fact that when your major requires high level course work in genetics and molecular biology, Japanese homework tends to get pushed to the back burner. Oh, and I spent my entire exchange student career as a...

Panda fails his driving test...

I try not to be a stupid guy. I'm fairly certain that I fail at this task more often than I succeed, but nonetheless, at least I make an attempt to keep my stupidity within the realm of plausibility - accidentally leaving the clothes in the washing machine for a couple of days, setting the toaster oven too high and burning my breakfast, occasionally walking into doors, that sort of thing. But sitting there, cheeks...

Graffiti Bench...

I was standing at the bus stop the other day after work getting rained on and thinking of how I was going to dive into my warm waiting futon and snuggle deeply into the comfy blankets the second I got home. Since I had just missed the previous bus, I knew I had a little while to wait before the next one came by, and so, huddled under a tiny roof outcropping, I sort of...

Eterna-Bread

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I had a rather dramatic head-over-heels-over-handlebars tumble off of my bike last week, resulting in a ripped suit coat, dinged up bike and rather battered panda, who ended up hitting the ground pretty hard, right-hand first, which was good for saving my head from an unfortunate run in with the pavement, but not so good for the hand and arm itself, which bore the brunt of the...

Truth in Advertising

Seen at a train yard up north. Does one applaud this honesty or silently groan at the prospect of spending the next two hours standing shoulder-to-shoulder with smelly obaasans coming back from a weekend at the onsen resort? In other news... I currently have an opportunity to pick up a gently used Canon Powershot G2 for a pretty decent price. I'm deeply tempted, especially since this particular model has a manual shutter control of up...

Panda gets run over by a car

The day started like any other day - rainy clouds covering the entirety of the sky, gloomy teachers shuffling their way around the staffroom, bored-out-of-his-mind panda desperately trying to avoid stabbing himself with a straw while playing human tape recorder to the disinterested, disaffected student masses - so on and so forth. The scene of the crime. Looks so innocent right now, doesn't it? Around 2:15, panda finishes his last class and hops on his...

Point Cards

Japan can be a wacky place. After living here for a while, you tend to get used to a lot of it however - banners featuring topless women advertising massage parlors in the middle of the day, 85 lb. wanna-be B-boy Japanese boys walking around in baggy "thug" clothing simultaneously festooned with the logos of every single NBA team currently in existence, mayonaisse invariably finding its way into every single dish you order at a...

Gum, taxis and confused panda

This week is exam week, which means that I get to sit at my desk and do nothing all week, an arrangement that seems strikingly similar to jobs I've held in the past (save the miserable year I spent working for the USDA, where my work week was dominated by incidents of exploding bags of cow shit, hydrochloric acid spills and torturous days spent locked in a tiny 8x10 foot concrete cell with a "particle...

Mochi made with hate

Wednesday was "Kenkoku kinen no hi", or "Foundation Day", here in Japan. Foundation Day, or "Kigensetsu" as it was originally called, started out as a religious glorification of the Emperor, celebrating the fact that the original Emperor Jimmu (ostensibly directly descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu) ascended to the throne of a unified Japan on February 11th, 660 B.C. Handa enjoys a mochi (actually Monju). It reads "Iwai", which means "celebration". Foundation day eventually became...

Diary of mistar yukipanda

Dear Mr./Mrs. JET Administrator. Hello! My name is Mr. Panda and I want to thank you for sending me to the freezing ass end of Japan. I know that on my "location request" form I wrote down such wonderfully warm places as "Kobe" "The Kansai region" and "Okinawan Islands", but I appreciate that in your infinite wisdom you took that to mean "Please send me to the coldest place on Honshu one can possibly fathom"....

Snow falling on pandas

Snowy panda. Note super cool neck gaiter from back in the states. Wow, so it's snowing a lot tonight. This picture doesn't do it justice - this is the snow that was left on my body after I put away my bike, walked up three flights of stairs, fished around for my keys, got in my apartment, took off my shoes, put away my perishable groceries and then hunted around for my camera. Believe me,...

Random babblings

Today was like one gigantic bad-weather hairball all rolled up in a divine kitty's throat and hacked up upon an unsuspecting populace. I mean, it snowed, rained, sleeted, hailed and practically hurricane'd all within the span of eight hours - despite my head to foot raingear, I got soaked to the bone and almost blown into a drainaged ditch three times on my harrowing bike ride home from school. Goodness gracious!! Panda shows the effects...

Students learn a naughty word

I made an interesting discovery the other day - Japanese girls love Velveeta cheese. Velveeta - "Melts better and 1/2 less Fat than Cheddar Cheese" A while back, my family sent me a big box of goodies from the states, and included in the box were a variety of foodstuffs, including Velveeta cheese. Anyway, M came to visit me a couple of weeks ago and for dinner one night, I ended up making some grilled...

Another day

First of all, my deepest thanks to everyone for their words of support on my last post. I really and deeply appreciate it. Waiting for a train while watching a cold winter sunset... Things are slowly moving on here in the House of Panda. Today marked the inevitable return to work for me, my oh-too-short panda holiday having sadly come to an end. I returned to the office to find the teacher that sits next...

Back, finally

Well hello. My apologies to all the loyal panda-ites out there for my recent absence. It was just one of those weeks. To make up for my extended absence, I have for you today a story of how the forces of evil tried to run game on the House of Panda and abduct him for their evil purposes. It was an incredible struggle, to be sure, and its retelling is rather long. But I thank...

Strange day at the office

I had another weird experience today at work. But before that, I'm so happy to note that I'm gonna hop on over to Tokyo in a couple of weeks for some much needed "cultural furlough" (translation: "panda partying in the big city"). I miss Tokyo - not only my friends, but also the atmosphere, people, clubs, shopping, public transportation other than the bus...!... etc. It will be great to get back - I really need...

Dead panda walking

I'm slowly, but surely, starting to feel better. Furthermore, through some bizarre detail of scheduling, I've somehow managed to sneak the day off today, to rest and recover (my supervisor says it's to compensate me for working on Saturday - I still think that I'm coming out ahead on this deal, seeing as how I got Monday off, but I'm keeping my yap shut!). This helps. Hey, by the way, who knows what this is!?...

Back finally....

Wow, so xanga has been offline for almost an entire week.... arrrgghhh!! But its good to be back and no longer frustratedly hunching over the keyboard hitting the "F5" key to see if it would be back up this second...! Well, I finally got fed up with the stupid no-brake-no-gear-having grocery getter granny bike that my predecessor left me, so I went off Thursday to "get sorted with a proper bike" as these crazy members...

A random business trip

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Not having a computer at home is really cramping my style lol. Must... get... computer... soon. Hmm, i guess we all know what my first paycheck is going for... (that and a proper bicycle...!) Also, sorry about the crappy cell phone camera pics - i can`t upload my regular digicam pics to the internet cafe comp. Just got back from what was described to me as a "business...

Squat Toilet

anyway, if you hang around me long enough, chances are you've probably heard the deadly trilogy of my japanese toilet experiences (two washiki and one evil Toto robotoilet from hell). For those of you who've never seen a squat toilet and don't get how it all might have gone down (so to speak), please watch this animation: evil squat toilets In traditional weblog fashion, I'm going to now inform you all of how I'm...