Archive for April, 2010

Pachinko Mascot: “Peeeeeee”

A commercial for a chain of pachinko parlors with their mascot, P-kun, saying “Peee” over and over again while doing weird stuff:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Fake Shanghai 2010 Expo Mascot

With the Shanghai 2010 Expo coming up soon, FTV filed a news report a few days ago commenting on how the city is preparing for the event. As seems to be the standard practice in such features, they included a clip displaying how bootlegging and piracy is still rampant in China:

After the scene of a woman selling unofficial reproductions of official expo souvenirs they replay some of their classic archival footage to remind viewers about China’s lol-worthy copy of Disneyland. Never forget!

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Dancing for spoonless yoghurt

Gurt yoghurt doesn’t need a spoon, and that seems something worth celebrating with dancing:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Love Love Ice Cream

Häagen-Dazs has a variety of people saying “rabu rabu” in this Japanese commercial:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

More trashy journalism from Kyung Lah and CNN

Apparently one story a week about niche porno games isn’t enough for Kyung Lah, Tokyo’s CNN correspondent. On April 2nd, she filed a follow-up report in which she continued to rave against the perversion of Japanese society for allowing hentai games to “thrive”:

In the two days since CNN.com posted the story on hentai games (specifically, the “RapeLay” video game), there have been thousands of comments, more than a million page views and many questions about how a culture can produce this genre of games and then quietly allow the industry to thrive.

She then proceeds to quote an associate professor of sociology at Temple University in Japan who says that Japan is a patriarchal society in which women are oppressed. Save for a vague line at the end of the article about the United States also having its own gender problems, we are left with the image of Japan as a sexist and repressed culture with a government that ignores or perhaps even aids in the oppression of women and the rape of hundreds of digital characters.

CNN also tried to stir up rage over the fact that the game, which has long since gone out of print in Japan, is available in pirated form on the internet. Even children might be able to download and play the game [thanks to CNN spreading the word about it, of course]:

On April 4th, Lah filed this report, digging up a story from several months ago about a Japanese guy who married a video game character so that she can add further comments on the “danger” such games pose to society:

Lah claims that many of today’s younger Japanese cannot express their feelings in reality and can only do so in the virtual world. According to her, this “trend” is showing no sign of slowing down. [The report includes no actual figures or data to back up the claim that this kind of thing is not extreme.]

[hat tip to Magus]

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Learn English to assist foreign grandmas and meet their grandsons

A new AEON English school commercial presents a scenario in which one might benefit from knowing how to speak English:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)