Mottai Nightland Christmas

I think a lot of people get caught up in materialism. This time of the year you can't avoid questions like, "Whose pants are tightest around the ankles?" and, "Which video game has the most graphics?" But it's things like the above video that remind us of what this season is all about. From the golden unicorn that visited baby Jesus to those little ghost men acting like snow, this commercial tugs at the heart. I'm just going to call it like I see it. If you watched this and had even one dry eye by the end, I can deduce that you belong to some fake religion. Am I right?

Whisper Pure Hada

I've been getting a lot of e-mails from readers asking about Japanese sanitary napkins. Many of you are particularly interested in how they are marketed. A couple of thoughts on these requests:

1. I'm disgusted by you.
2. I'll do anything for my readers, and, God help me (I'm sure this is some sort of a sin), but I'm going to write a little about the subject. Let's look at the commercial for one brand, Whisper Pure Hada:

First off, hada means skin, so I guess they're guaranteeing that they can cure your horrible rashes. Also, I love the symbolism of the pink frogs (let's just say that if it were that time of the month for Dr. Spock, the frogs might be a lighter green). The big sell here is that the napkin is so absorbent that not only are your unspeakable liquids sucked up, but so are all of the terrible odors! Now you get why it's called "Whisper," right? I mean, it's not completely silent, but it's quiet compared to most women's traditional odor removal tactics (power vacuums, maracas, etc.). In the song they promise the smell will go to zero (the frogs say double zero). Furthermore, the day's worries will go to zero (typical women, no worries in the world other than the strong stench wafting from their bodies).

Stride Gum Hard Case

Boss Man: Ok, guys, we're introducing a new hard case with more than twice as many pieces of gum inside. Any ideas on how we can move some units?

Employee 1: ...ah...move units...?

Boss Man: Yes, basically can you think of a way to make this product appealing so people want to purchase it.

Employee 1: Oh, right...Well, maybe we start with some sort of an ape man...

Employee 2: Why do you have an ape man in everyone of your pitches?

Boss Man: Hear him out.

Employee 1: Well, maybe he eats a piece of gum...

Boss Man: Brilliant.

Employee 1: And then he transforms into a man with a huge head of hair that... is shaped like a giant pack of gum.

Boss Man: I'm not often moved to tears, but...

Employee 2: I don't really get it. Is the hair like hanging off the side of his head or what?

Employee 1: He's floating in space you idiot!

Boss Man: What's with the negative attitude, Employee 2? And another thing, your breath smells like horse crap!

Employee 2: It's Sam, and I've already said several times that there appears to be quite a bit of some sort of animal feces smeared in the carpet of this room.

Employee 1: (In a very comical voice) "It's the carpet, not all that horse crap I ate for lunch." (Returning to his normal speaking voice) Ah, ever heard of a toothbrush?

Boss Man: (Chuckles) OMG, Employee 1, you've just earned yourself a raise.

Employee 1: Thank you so much, Boss Man.

End scene

Mie Tourism

Mie, a prefecture in central Japan, only has a couple true tourist spots. There's Ise Shrine and the pilgrimage trail to the shrine, Kumano Kodo, and that's about it. Perhaps the race track in Suzuka sometimes draws tourists, but other areas have trouble getting visitors. For example, why would anyone want to go to Yokkaichi?

1. There's a Santa love hotel near the station.
2. You can try to discover where that strange smell is coming from.
3. ...

A bit of a problem if you're working on the Mie tourist board, isn't it? Luckily, some genius assigned mascots to each area of Mie:

Most of the mascots are a type of food made in a certain area. "Wait, they have tomatoes there? Cancel are honeymoon in Thailand!" I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Momoiro Clover Z Q-tips

Have you ever been annoyed that you can't support your favorite band through your choice of cotton swabs? Well, Momoiro Clover Z is changing all of that. You can buy a 5 pack for ¥500 with a color representing each member. Which of the girls will you choose first to clean out your ears. And who will have have the honor of being stuck up your constipated baby's anus? That's for you to decide!

Labor Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23)

Today, Saturday, was Labor Thanksgiving Day (勤労感謝の日) in Japan. Before the end of WWII, the holiday was a harvest festival known as Niiname-sai. Then, at the urging of the U.S. (at least according to the Japanese Wikipedia page), the holiday was changed to Labor Thanksgiving Day (apparently with the idea being to combine the two American holidays of Labor Day and Thanksgiving into one). Now it's just a public holiday, and other than not having to work, little is done to celebrate the day. This year the holiday fell on a Saturday. Some companies require employees to work on Saturdays, so those employees were given the day off, but basically everyone else gets screwed out of a national holiday. What a great way to celebrate all the hard labor the citizens are doing, by letting them have Saturday off. On a side note, when a holiday falls on a Sunday, people are given Monday off.

Lotteria Merry Xmas

While people in America are wasting their time thinking about what to prepare for Thanksgiving, the Japanese are festively making reservations to eat fast food fried chicken on Christmas Eve. Most restaurants ask that you place your order buy the end of November. I know a lot of readers out there are too busy to look at advertisements themselves, so I've decided to place this unpaid advertisement on The Gaybot Times as a service to you. Lotteria has changed their menu slightly this year. They are still offering boneless chicken and juicy chicken pieces, but the french toast has been replaced by raisin danishes (a very risky move), and the pigs in a blanket have been replaced by ebi-dogs (think stick docks but with ebi instead of hot dogs. Also, ebi means shrimp). It appears Lotteria is taking a step backwards this year, though the 2 packets of Heinz Ketchup is a nice touch. Will one of Lotteria's competitors offer a more scrumptious menu? Check back soon to see if I remember to write about that!

JA Bank

You know how a squirrel's life depends on its ability to save food for the winter, right? Well that's why a giant squirrel is the perfect mascot for opening a savings account. JA Bank has made several squirrel based ads (the one above is the best in my opinion). Each ad ends with the slogan, "This winter save money at JA." Now you understand why 12 giant squirrels are dancing on the moon. Maybe you want to check out some other ads that make sense:



Too cute for you? Try another version:

There are 19 of these if you hunger for more.

Sheena Ringo - Netsuai Hakkaku Chu

Ringo Sheena is already a pretty strange musician, but her latest song and video are a new brand of weird for her. She teamed up with Yasutaka Tanaka of Capsule (also the guy who writes Perfume's and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's songs). The song sounds much more like Capsule than Ringo Sheena, and Ringo, who normally doesn't dance, busts out some moves I'll for sure be making part of my repertoire.

I haven't figured out a good translation for the title, but it literally means, "detecting passionate love." In the video, the paparazzi (or something) kill Ringo, and then another Ringo (the lover of the first Ringo?) murders a bunch of people. The highlight comes at 2:50 when she throws 2 ninja stars that make 4 slices across some dude's face. Also, there are 6 Ringos dancing and singing. Enjoy.

$25,000 Stolen from Widow

Visual approximation of woman.

A farm working woman (65) in Chikusei, Ibaraki experienced a wacky, unlucky series of events. First, her husband died (that's not funny). In Japan, people give large gifts of money to the family of the deceased when attending funerals. This woman did what we'd all do: put the ¥2,500,000 (about $25,000) she received in a paper bag and put it in a coin locker at the funeral home when she attended her husband's funeral. Then she made a couple common mistakes (I think we've all had this experience).

1. She forgot to lock the locker.
2. She forgot that she'd put $25,000 in the locker.

It seems that the fact she'd placed the money in the locker on the morning of the 10th slipped her mind until the evening of the 15th. On the morning of the 16th she called the funeral home... and some monster had stolen the money! What an unlucky lady! What's next? Is she going to smell bad because she forgot not to smear rat droppings in her hair? Stay tuned!

Source: Yomiuri Online

Pizzana Review

Japanese Food Review #74

 I'm what you might call a "human that enjoys pizza." So under normal circumstances I would be excited to hear that Meiji has developed a pizza snack using a new technology. The problem is that this technology is call "sauce in snack," and the sauce on the cover appears to be strawberry jam. I asked Girlbot how she thought they'd be. She said that they would be better than you would think (this seems to be a strange thing to say when I ask you what you think it will taste like). She predicted a 6. Thankfully, the actual snack did not match the image on the bag.

It looked and tasted more like soggy bread.

Ratings: 
Gaybot: 2 The actual flavor was fine, but "sauce in snack" is as gross as you would expect.
Girlbot: 3 They were worse than she was expecting. She thought the outside cracker should have been harder.
Overall: 2.5

No need to try these, dear readers.

Ice Cream

Will: I was just thinking about how cool that is that the "messenger of happiness" is also the symbol of ice cream.
Bill: Wait, I thought it was the angel.
Will: Um, same difference noodle brain. (audible chuckle) What is your brain made of noodles or something?
Bill: Come on, you know it's not!
Will: Hmm, I'm kind of hungry for spaghetti... Oh hey! Maybe I should cut open your head and eat your brains cause it's probably spaghetti or something!
Bill: I will murder you with a wrench!

End Scene

Caramel Pudding Yukimi Daifuku

Japanese Food Review #73

Yukimi Daifuku is a brand of ice cream mochi. One of their special flavors is custard ice cream with a caramel center (that's what the standard pudding is in Japan). Another fun fact: The Japanese word for pudding is purin. There's you Japanese lesson for the day. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Yukimi Daifuku and find eating it to be a nearly erotic experience (at least part of that wasn't a secret). This flavor was good, but I still prefer the standard vanilla and last year's cheesecake flavor to this.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 6.5 It was kind of fun, but I don't need to eat it again.
Girlbot: 10 First off, Girlbot is super into this type of pudding. Secondly, this was better than she was expecting because the caramel was quite bitter and not really sweet. If it had been sweet, it would have ruined the mochi. Just to point out, she gave the cheesecake flavor a 10 as well.
Overall: 8.25

Cheers with Dad

This is an old commercial for Qoo, a fake orange juice aimed at children. This ad encourages you to drink Qoo while your dad drinks a beer before bed.

Firefighting

This poster is telling us to put fire detectors in our homes. The bottom caption reads, "We're all heroes!" I like how the firefighters are wearing effeminate scarves and know karate (Girlbot says he's just doing a cool pose and it's not karate. Also, they are cute and in no way funny).

Find the Toilets

I've been blessed because two buildings are being torn down near The Gaybot Times offices. And lucky for you, we've invented a new game. It's called "Find the Toilets in the Wreckage" (I don't know, that's a working title, but it's pretty catchy). How many toilets can you find in the photo above? Too easy? Here's another angle that's a bit more difficult:

This second one might be impossible.

Hint:
There are three in the top photo and four in the second. Have fun searching!

Hopefully some more building with multiple toilets will be destroyed so we can play another round.

Ham Burglar Done in by Saliva

It was the perfect disguise... if it weren't
for that mouth hole that allows licking.

Katsuhiko Iwamoto (60) was arrested last August for burglarizing 27 restaurants and coffee shops between December and June. He stole money, of course, but also raided the refrigerators. On at least 7 occasions he made himself a meal before fleeing. He enjoyed ham, gyozya, etc. In all, he stole ¥2,000,000 worth of items (about $20,000). At one establishment, he made fried bean sprouts. Up to this point you're probably thinking, "Wow, cool, this guy is a modern day Robin Hood..., or something. I wonder if he wears a green pancho?" But here's where the story takes a turn for the worse. Turns out this man has no manners at all, and he didn't even do the dishes. Because of this, investigators were able to secure DNA from the spit he slobbered all over the utensils and plate he used. This ended up being his downfall. The unemployed man wined, "I don't have any money and I was hungry." One can assume the judge retorted,"Sorry, but I don't understand filthy pig language. Can we get a translator in here?"

 Source: Yomiuri Online

Patriotic Elephant

It's amazing to think that Japan, a country that had already developed the technology of "elephant mind control," somehow lost WWII.

English Lesson: Stick Docks

I think I can safely assume that a large percentage of my readers are Japanese attempting to study English. I write about the culture they know and love in a "hip" or "gnarly" way. That might all sound a little technical, but to put it in layman's terms, they read The Gaybot Times so they can learn how to be "b-b-b-bad to the bone" like me. Hopefully this will be the first of many English lessons. Today we will learn how to use the popular phrase "stick docks."

Stick docks are a wildly popular food in the West, so the phrase may simply refer to the foodstuff most people consume daily. However, it is also used heavily in business.

Example:

Business Human 1: How is business with those new goods you have been telling the humans at our office so much about.

Business Human 2: Oh, those goods are selling like stick docks.

Note: Business Human 2 may or may not wink towards the end of that statement.

 This concludes the first lesson. Let me know if you have any questions. Oh, and don't forget to keep studying... that is if you want to make the big stick docks! (wink)

Stew Popsicle Review

Japanese Food Review #72

Gari Gari is a type of cheap popsicle in Japan. It's a normal popsicle on the outside and chunky on the inside (it's supposed to be like a snow cone). Normally the flavors are sweet, but last year they made a corn pottage flavor popsicle, and this year we have a stew one. It should be pointed out that stew, pronounced shi-chew in Japanese, is almost always a white cream based stew in Japan. The package boasts that there are real potatoes inside.

First I licked the outside. It was sweeter than I expected. It was almost vanilla ice cream flavor, but then there was a fairly gross stew aftertaste. I bit in. It was not good, but clearly it was edible. Another bite. Hit a potato chunk. Pretty disgusting. It was a real potato, and it was soft, which means there's some weird chemical keeping it soft in the freezer. I took one more bite. Got a couple more potato chunks. Decided that was enough. I ran it under some water. Of course many of the chunks fell away, but you can see that there were a lot of sizable hunks of potato.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 2 It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it still shouldn't exist.
Girlbot: 3 She agrees that it's not that bad, but she can't eat it. She took one bite, seemed pleasantly surprised and said, "Hmm, it's very bad."
Overall: 2.5

Cat Piss

I've been seeing a bunch of cool handmade signs about urine lately. This one was at the zoo near some leopard cages. It reads, "PEE sometimes flies out, so be careful!!" One, I didn't know leopards were that awesome at urinating (it would have to fly at least 5 feet to get you), and two, this means at least one person has been pissed on by a leopard at the Nagoya zoo.

Pumpkin Haagen-Dazs Review

Japanese Food Review #71

 The "Pumpkin Flavored Treat Spooky Fun Challenge" rages on. Today, Haagen-Dazs is presenting a pumpkin (actually squash) flavor ice cream. There were actually little chunks of squash in it, and it did taste like sweet, milky squash.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5  I like squash, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather have normal squash with vanilla ice cream (though I've never tried that)
Girlbot: 8 She said it wasn't as good as their purple potato ice cream. Still, she wanted to give this a 9 (same score as the potato one), but I convinced her she should probably lower the score.
Overall: 6.5

Not the strongest Haagen-Dazs, but it was still victorious.