The Washington Post Discovers Japan’s Billy Blanks Obsession
It’s taken months, but the mainstream western media has finally picked up on the Billy Blanks mania that is overtaking Japan:
Asked to explain his runaway popularity in Japan, Blanks said: “The Japanese people see there is no phoniness to my workout. They see my spirit. Yeah, I am giving them orders, but they see I care. They see my heart.”
Then he showed off his abs: Not a Brad Pitt washboard, but impressive for a man of 52.
“Billy is a god,” said Kumiko Maezawa, 41, a homemaker who was among the paying and sweating customers when the BootCamp tour stopped in Yokohama.
“I’m not a masochist,” she said, “but it is nice to be bullied around by him.”
While the article is a pretty interesting and fair representation of the Billy fad, I was a bit baffled by this line:
In the streets of Tokyo, it can take hours of looking before spotting a single person who could honestly be called tubby.
I readily agree there are far fewer obese people in Japan than there are in America, but I’d like to think that one doesn’t need to write wild exaggerations about it taking hours to spot a fat person to get such a point across. Overweight Japanese people exist, and it doesn’t take so long to find one if you’re in a crowded area!
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is yo knee? can i get a spell check on isshoni in the hood?
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I got that image from a sales page for his Boot Camp DVD’s. Since “syo” and “sho” produce the same しょ when typing on a keyboard, whoever made it probably was just going with the way they type rather than standards of romanization used by foreigners.
When I used to teach English at a Japanese elementary school, I read over a textbook their teachers used to teach children romanization of Japanese. It contained lots of confusing words such as “Issyoni” and “Huji” instead of Fuji. They also wrote out づ “du” and つ as “tu.” It might hurt them when they have to learn English, but it works fine when teaching them how to type on keyboards…
interesting. i’m glued to this sight.
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That’s the silly “official” Japanese romanization, used only in a few occasions but generally when they shouldn’t (I’ve seen shougakkei texts with the romanizations at the end, all in that form). Since not even government agencies use it much in any consistent form, I have no idea why it sticks around. It usually finds expression in cases like this, from mangled and half-remembered romanization lessons or bad keyboarding. It make Mt Fuji into Mt Huzi, btw, not Huji. ふじ is ha-hi-hu-he-ho then sa-si[sic]-su-se-so with the dakuon to make it za-zi etc. And that can really through you.
Read somewhere recently that the F sound is apparently what the H-characters sounded like: a book about Japan from the 16th C called it “Nifon”, and it would explain the f sound in Fuji etc.
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Now that you mention it, I think the book did have a Mt. Huzi in it. I wish I had stolen a copy of the book so I could have scanned that page and posted about it….
“through” you? Damn. I mean “throw” you. Serve me right for posting in a hurry….
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I think Japanese women just really like being bossed around by a big black man.
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I can’t believe he is 52 years old.. wow.
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Man, today, I saw a ton of fat Japanese. And don’t even get me started on the obese guy who went into the bath the other day at my local super-sento without even attempting to splash himself off. きもい！
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