the Samurai helmet

She is Taiwanese in her late-twenties who lives and works in Singapore. At that time she was going to join a match making party.


"I don't think I will meet a right guy at the party." She said.


That night we were talking on Skype.


"Love is not something you souhld think about or serch for. You just fall in it. It's an unhealthy activity, basically. You can't control it." I said, lying on a couch next to the bed.


"That's not what I expect... Maybe that's why we're (still) friends. Anyway I just wanna enjoy the party. Can you help me make my profile photo? I have to upload it on their website."


"Sure, you want a photo of yourself putting those Samurai helmets on?"


"Of course. But it's up to you."


I wan't sure whether she meant I would send a nice, sexy Samurai helmet to Singapore or just make a composite with Photoshop.

But it turned out the duty would cost about as same as the helmet itself to send it there. Of course it made me think twice about whether it is really worth the price. Is that really nessesary to post an image of herself as a profile photo for the matching party? I figured it's not, as long as people can catch something about her personality from the image, any photo works.

And after all that's why she asked me to make the profile photo, I thought with a firm confidence.


Next day, right after my granpa went out for a walk, I grabbed a camera and sneaked into granpa's storage room, where Samurai helmets were stored. There were seven helmets, three of them were green, another three were blue and one was red. I took them in hands one by one, weighed them, examined their quality. Without a doubt I figured the red one is the best since she is a pretty girl.

It was shiny and tiny, way too tiny. First I tried to put it on my own head, but it was too tight as though Frankenstein was pushing my head from the both sides of the head. This is gonna crush my skull!! I took it off, and searched around to look for alternative, nice ideas. Then suddenly I heard a very loud sound behind me. I turned around quickly and found it was a dog, mocha Boston terrier was burkng at me. But I was wrong, it soon turned out, he was burking at the red Samurai helmet. He jumped at the helmet and I, being upset, threw it high in the air. The helmet was slipped into his head in the air as he raising his head up toward the sky. His ninja jump was very high and so long that it made me want to give him a title of Air. Everything happned in seconds but it felt like a slow motion.

I don't know why but at that moment I intuitively thought he is exactly the one she and I was looking for. I briskly grabbed my camera and took a picture of him wearing red shiny Samurai helmets and posing confidently.


After I took several photos of him, he seemed to think that he got his job done, he suddenly disappeared with the helmet still putting on his head before I even noticed. I felt It was something like a destiny, so I didn't even try to run after him.

After I went back in my room, I send the pictures of the dog to her in which he posed like a knight with his eyes a little squinted. She seemed to be satisfied with it and uploaded it on the match making party's website.


It was 2 weeks since that day when I met that dog when I heard the news on CNN international that says Samurai dog has quickly become a viral sensation in Singapore. My mouth dropped when in that CNN report I saw she, the Taiwanese girl, was walking with the Air, the mocha Boston terrier along Marina bay bridge. The dog's still putting on Samurai helmet like it's become a part of his body, or it might used to be a missing part of his body which he'd been looking for, desperately and loyally. I rushed to a laptop and typed 'samurai dog' in the search bar, and Google showed over 3 million search results for the word . I also found out that Youtube's most viewed video ranking today, this week, this month was all dominated by this topic, and as always it looked like Raywilliamjohnson shared his humor on this phenomenon.

At this night I called her on Skype.


"Now I feel like I will win everything. You know what, the party is tomorrow." she said in a sweet voice, "Good luck." I clicked End call button softly. "Good luck."


The day after that, I went running with my granpa. It was a wonderful weather in Tokyo, and we really enjoyed running. I thought this was a good opportunity to talk to him about what has happened to his samurai helmet. I turned to him as I run, and that was exactly when I said "Hey granpa, you know that dogs sometimes travel overseas like us...", the dog running towards us from behind, and jumped at my granpa. He licked granpa's cheek, then run straight through us to a far, far away place, his destination. I turned to granpa, and he looked so calm, staring at the dog gradually vanishing from the sight. I decided not to talk about the dog and the helmet anymore, maybe granpa already knew it when the dog licked him, or he might not know about anything and just feeling nice running in such a nice weather. But at this point that doesn't matter, All we have to do is just continue running. As I run, I realized that the dog didn't wear the helmet when we saw him just minutes ago, where did the helmet go?


After about an hour-long running, we went back home. I lay down on a sofa and turned TV on with remote controller, and push channel 1 to watch CNN. It was about 6:30 in the evening, about a time for world report section of it's international news from Hong Kong. The first topic today was a live report from Singapore which was following a match making party there, I thought, but soon I realized I was wrong. The Indian-British news anchor was reporting about the girl who has become a national famous figure in Singapore in literally one night. She was wearing a helmet, and before I saw her face I already got the idea of who she was. I'd just forgotten that her head was really small. Probably she will win tonight, I mumbled to myself.

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Why Ryan Higa a.k.a. Nigahiga is not so popular in Japan?

The simplest answer may be 6 words, Because Japanese kids don’t understand English.

But this is not very accurate.

When I say he isn’t popular in Japan, I’m comparing his popularity among Japanese to among South Koreans and Taiwanese. It's may be a fair comparison since all of them are not English speaking countries.
According to his Youtube page,
In SK, Ryan is
#20 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - South Korea
#4 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Comedians - South Korea in Dec, 2011
and in TW,
#12 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Taiwan
#4 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Comedians – Taiwan in the same month.
But there’s no information about Japan. If you see the ranking of Youtube channel in comedy category of Japan, Ryan’s is even not on the list, while he appears in both South korea’s and Taiwan’s ranking . So why , even though he is Japanese-American from Hawaii, which sounds very familiar to Japanese fellows, he isn’t that popular in Japan? There must be more of a simple reason of language.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love his videos more than almost all Japanese comedy (actually I never watched Japanese TV for these last 10 years so I simply don’t know much about it)

I watch comedy to smile, laugh and feel happy and the role of comedy in this world is to make the world nice and happy, that's the way I feel. 

It's not just about quality. It's about whether it can leave people's mind with feelings that the world is or can be a nice place. And the fact that Ryan has a big and kind heart and many nice friends always assure me that this world will be nice a place if we will be nice guys/girls like him.

But the reality, as far as I can see, is Japanese people seem to be unable to get his awesomeness easily.

Here are some reasons I thought of.

1.

Do you know what happens when a small island on the far edge of Far East Asia which has homogeneous demographic and highly sophisticated oriental culture has been the world second largest economy over decades?

You'll know it when you see Japan. Everything in the market is customized to Japanese version. It’s really difficult to see things from overseas are remaining with it’s original description in English, Macdonald’s, Starbucks, Apple, Novels, Games… everything was translated in Japanese. (and I hate it, I love things unchanged from their original)

For instance look at iTunes ranking and compare Japan’s ranking to other countries’ ones. You must understand how Japan is different from others… say western countries. Taiwan and South Korea are somewhere in the middle.

Even though Japanese people generally have a good and subtle sense of beauty and humor, vast majority of Japanese people don’t reach to original English entertainments or everything not Japanese unless they are introduced & translated.

2.

 

This relates to the previous reason. Japanese has developed their own version of the enormous web communities, for instance, Nico Nico Doga is similar to YouTube, Mixi is to facebook, and 2ch is the biggest forum on the Internet in Japan. So even though there are more than 80 millions of Internet users, most of them stick around those websites but aren't as familiar with the worldwide websites like youtube, facebook as with Japanese equivalents. (So far, the only exception is Twitter, since 140 characters is ideal length to write a short message in Japanese, not too long, not too short.)

Btw since Japanese pop culture is so popular all over the world, there are a certain amount of population visiting Japanese big websites from overseas, especially to Nico Nico Doga where so many anime pictures has been uploaded and Nyan Cat was born.
But interaction between japan and the world in the online world is more like foreigners who are interested in Japanese culture introduce Japanese websites to the world population than Japanese introduce international culture to Japan.
And that imbalance is, I guess, somewhat making foreigners more interested in Japan, that they may think they know the originals not say... American version and may help them feel some kinds of superiority. But that's an another story.

3.

 

I’m not sure but it seems many of Ryan’s fans are girls, because they think he is funny, lovely, cute, handsome, hot, sexy, smart…. And for me he actually has some heroic air around him as a internet born Asian-American star.

But for a majority of Japanese girls, things are rather simple. Is he able to find the spot in the range of their definition of being hot? I have no clue since I’m not a girl but I have to say, he may be attractive for some people but his looking is rather normal in Japan. And he is definitely not a Kawaii type of man*.
Is there any chance to get Japanese girl know who he is and what he is like, and realize how cool he is… ?

*So who is considered Kawaii type of man? I often heard girls saying Yoochun, a former member of South Korean pop group Dong Bang Shin Ki (known as 東方神起 in China and Japan) is Kawaii, or Koike Teppei used to be said Kawaii.


4.

 

I mean… Rebecca Black or Justin Bieber…. he’s sometimes very harsh to such people in his video. And it’s not only him but also his fellows such as Kevjumba, D-trix have made similar videos.

Unlike American people, Japanese people don’t like negative campaigns such as Apple’s ads or Pepsi’s ads taking shit on their competitors. Japanese do it more imperceptible way, or at least not in that blunt manner. And when Japanese do beef, it often ends up with emotional and angry argument, and ends with no smile exchange like Piers Morgan’s interview to Ann Coulter on CNN.

Of course Ryan’s video is not just about mocking other people who he found something funny or strange, but he always adds his own creativity and humor to it. But still his beefing videos might leave something awkward, bitter feeling when Japanese people watch them.

But above all, who is Rebecca Black, and why so many people diss Justin Bieber?? Japanese people just don’t get it.


5.

 

He is so… American.
Of course he is American, but my point is that he is more of American than Japanese.

I’m sure he respect and proud of his Japanese legacy and maybe actually practice some of Japanese traditional arts. But tradition is, in the end, just tradition. The fact he grew up in USA makes it almost impossible to find any Japanese way of life from him. Maybe I went too far, what I'm trying to say is that his sense of humor has totally nothing to do with Japanese sense of humor that sometimes it’s difficult to understand his joke.

Actually for me, and I’m sure for most Japanese, British comedy always beat American comedy. But this is an another story.

Some might say he is not just American, but Asian-American. But being an American is a starting point for being Asian-American just as being a Japanese is a prerequisite for being Asian. If you say he is Asian, I'd rather want to say he is human. Why you need to categorize him as Asian or Asian-American? He is just American and Human.

What makes me as well as so many non american fans happy is some of his videos are more than just for American. They are generic and universal, they are for all humans. For instance “Nice guys” music video tells a simple but strong message and it’s something that everyone can relate to, and his acting is really funny and hilarious yet captivating as hell.
My all time favorite is “Best crew” video. The line David Choi is dancing for the audition is something I can relate to Japanese comedy and British comedy…. means it is surely generic. You can't please everyone but if you also need somebody who seriously critique you in order to continue. There is no more important thing than 'Balance'.

One of the most crucial thing for Ryan to keep continue is not to get bored of his own work. He doesn't have a large crew, professional techniques, big budget, and using only YouTube as a media for distributing films has its own unique limitation. It is possible that these factors let his works lack flexibility and look all similar. This doesn't affect his fans if he keeps making good stuffs, but if he ends up get boring of what he is making... well that's an awful thought I hope he will ever be creative.


So, in the end, is there really no chance that he would become popular in Japan? Probably Youtube will continue to grow in Japan and in the world, and so does Ryan. Whether he will be known in Japan or not just depends on how much Youtube will be localized and how much the border between English videos and Japanese videos will remain strong or become blurred.

Starting mandatory English education in elementary school is a very good news for connecting Ryan and Japanese audiences, since if Japanese kids become interested in English from such an early age, what they will do is nothing but to watch youtube videos in English. Then they must find watching Ryan's video is hundreds times as fun as boring English class at their schools. Even my mom says it may be fun to study English with his funny videos when she just only take a peep of one of his videos playing on my laptop.

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Shopping Japanese clothes online in U.S

It’s been a while since Japanese fast fashion brand Uniqlo’s gained a popularity in U.S. As the company’s executives say it’s edge is not that they offer latest trends at cheap prices, but they provide functional clothing with high-tech features.

Uniqlo's global flagship store, Manhattan

If my memory serves, Uniqlo’s first hit was fleece jackets, which has improved and developed it's function over the years while the price’s never increased. It’s about 20 USD and doesn’t look sucks, having a lot of color variations, and most importantly, it is really light and warm.

The second hit is more remarkable since the winters in 2007~2008 they were literally soled out in any of their shops. It’s a under wear line called Heattech. As it’s name suggests, Heattech has 8 high-tech features to keep your body warm and make it easy to maintain. This heattech was a first one I got from Uniqlo and ever since it’s become an indispensable item in winter seasons. Just as it’s fleece, this underwear line is warm, very comfortable to wear, and maybe it’s antimicrobial feature prevent from smelling bad. It has nothing unnecessary, just a plain or I should say simple or minimal design that never stand out but fit every kinds of fashion. Heattech is packed in plastic pack like a medical equipment which add a hyper industrial flavor from imaginary Tokyo.

Summer Girl, Uniqlo

But if I’m asked where I get basic fashion items from Japan when I’m in America, my answer’s not gonna be Uniqlo since, at least for me, they are just clothes not fashion items. In other words, you need a decent bread and butter at an affordable price every day but you can’t say it’s a dinner if you have only that on the dining table. You need a soup, a beef steak, fried potatoes or a hamburger, etc. in order to be satisfied your taste bud. But also you don’t want to use a lot of money for them right? I always buy clothes which are pretty standard, never get old, and never fail :) So after all these two are my frequent websites when I want to buy fashion items from Japan.

Design Tshirts Store granith

Granith has been famous for it’s Tshirts design. They have two stores in Australia, 3 stores in Taiwan, 2 stores in Hong Kong, and many in Japan of course.

They literally produce a countless number of Tshirts of different design every season. But their name Tshirts store doesn’t simply mean that they just offer Tshirts but it’s actually a design philosophy of their products. They make Sweat shirts, shirts, pants, coats, even accessories, all of them are simple and honest never complicated but still stylish just like Tshirts.

They launched iPhone App recently, which make browsing tons of their products on your iPhone as easy as on your Mac or PC.

They are ” sold for refreshingly realistic prices”, I nearly forget to say this but you can guess this from their name, T shirts are always real stuffs in our life right?

ZOZOTOWN.COM

You can find almost all famous fashion brands from Japan in ZOZO. This company also have Korean and Chinese version of same websites as well as overseas one. My favorite point of this website is that it provides detailed information about size and design of each item, but they don’t accept return due to a size issue.


Over all I prefer shopping online to going out to shops. I simply don’t want to waste time and energy to take trains and walk to there sometimes only to find out there’re nothing I want to buy. But the biggest reason is that in online stores I can browse hundreds of items in minutes which help me search out simple and minimal clothes suit my taste at minimum cost of time and energy. Of course this doesn’t work when what you’re looking for is very expensive or latest trends, ‘cause it’s just too risky to buy those things online. But since I rarely buy such things I usually… almost 50 % of clothes I currently own were bought online.

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Moe(萌え) character maker

This is how a Moe character appears on an evening edition's front page of major Japanese newspaper.

The article says “Now you can make a Moe character easily by using a software on PC. ... You may find Moe characters more and more often on cases or wrapping of products, or as mascots of local tourism, etc.”

A software company based in Tokyo developed the program “Comi Po” that you can make your own version of anime like character on your own PC with.

‘Cause it’s not only about hobby but this software will expand a possibility for small companies or small towns to make their commercial mascot at very cheap price (just 40 USD, as far as I know).

here is their website http://www.comipo.com/en/index.html or http://www.crunchyroll.com/comipo

Russian (roulette) cookie
"I don't care if you eat this or not!" "10 of 12 cookies are super spicy." "I warn you this is so spicy!"

Souvenir shop selling sweets from Hokkaido

I’m pretty doubtful that this kind of package design is becoming a new standard, I think it just looks weird and seems just attracts people who are looking for weird gifts from Japan to make fun of.

But after two decades of economic stagnation, Pop culture have been becoming seen as one of few things that have a potential to grow globally from Japan, and I guess, the border between mainstream Manga/Anime and somewhat pornographic ones (be sure that I don’t mean real porno) are slowly but gradually disappearing.

But is this giving a bad name to Japan? Because I believe no sane person look them as a thing to be displayed in main section of normal souvenir shops, normal media, normal bookshops, or anything normal.
I think it’s just for fans, but in Japan and the world, fans of this kind of lolita anime thing are extremely enthusiastic and spend a lot of money, makes these characters effective marketing tools, even major newspaper put a cute picture of Moe girl on their front page. In the real world, it just as peculiar as the front page of newspaper where a Moe girl smiling above the grim news articles.

Real Japanese Girls are as cute as cute as virtual Anime Girls. Don't forget that :)

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Jawbone Icon vs Plantronics, and a small tip to make Icon sounds better

--This post is for those who are looking for wireless headsets with good audio quality.


It’s been several weeks since I’ve started using bluetooth headset to listen to the music on iPhone and my PC. The comfort of being Wireless is amazing and once you experienced it, you can never go back to wired.


But here is the thing. Audio Quality of each products in the market differs so much, and if you choose a wrong product, you will be never happy with the idea of using bluetooth headset as a listening device.
Course it really depends on your purpose, and as for me, I’m using it to listen to downloaded Youtube videos and news podcasts, all of them English. I’m using intensively, like 4~8 hours a day. Since English is not my mother tongue, my need is very clear, ‘As clear speaking voice as possible’.


After going through a bunch of reviews, I narrowed my choice down to two headsets, Jawbone Icon and Plantronics voyage pro +. Here are their specs.

	Plantronics Voyage pro +	Jawbone Icon
weight	0.6 oz	0.3 oz★
A2DP	Yes	Yes (Must be updated)
Run time Standby time	6 hours★ 120 hours	4.5 hours 240 hours★
Button	Volume control, On/off switch,  Answer button,★	On/off switch, Answer button,
Style	Over-the-ear	Ear-bud

Both are nice guys.
After all, I got both.
Convinced by several reviews describe it like “With this, you will never fail”, I got Voyage pro + for 7,000 yen first. And it was amazing, very comfortable to wear, sound quality is almost as good as Bose earphones when listening to spoken words. But it turned out it’s a little bit bulky, especially when I am putting glasses, it fits really tight between my ear and the temple of glasses. So I got Icon. It may look like a waste of money, but since I almost always wireless headset to listen to anything from iPhone and PC, having two headset is still not enough considering their battery life.
Anyway now I’ve used both of them for over 2 weeks, I found a significant difference between these two headset which you would never know before you purchase them and use them.
So the significant difference lies in their sound quality. As everyone says, Voyage pro + is superior to Icon in terms of audio quality. But the difference it’s far bigger than I expected. Here you can listen to them.

*Sorry Jawbone is not with donut but default earpad*

*volume level on Voyage pro + is set Maximum.
*Icon has no volume control, so I increased the volume on PC from 5 to 20 for the better comparison of Audio quality not Audio volume. (But still smaller than Voyage, sorry!)


This is a huge difference, and difficult to believe, maybe something wrong with me? Nothing. I think one of the reasons is they are different in a distance between ear and headset. In Voyage’s over-the-ear style, Earpad doesn’t go deep inside an ear, it just touch an earhole softly, while with Icon the Earpad fits very tight in an earhole. So Voyage has to be louder at the same distance in order to deliver the same volume to your ear. But the sounds of Icon is WAY TOO SMALL, and the true reason is in their earpads. Look!

left: Jawbone Icon, right: Plantronics Voyage pro +

It’s, for me, ridiculous that Jawbone has put such earpads on their headsets as default, because even a baby can understand this earapd’s form prevents sound out, and it actually does!

Jawbone Icon has another option in their package. More like Plantronics one, and I call this type Donut (Doughnut).

Don’t you think this one sounds better than the previous default one? Yes it does. Listen!

The sound of Icon is still small but amazingly improved. You must put Earloop to use this Donut earpad and I love it, cause it’s really comfortable, of course not as good as Plantronics but very near.


note:
--All sample sounds in the video is played from PC which is connected to headsets and recorded on iPhone.
--If you connect those headsets to your iPhone, audio volume is not that different between them, some people may even feel Icon is louder. I can’t think of any reasons, just they are like that. But in terms of sound QUALITY, Plantronics is much better just like what you listen in the above videos.

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Kaiju Christmas card

Today I happened to find this interesting post about Kaiju (怪獣) Christmas card in this interesting blog (actually I dont know much about this blog since this is the first time I saw it, but it does seem interesting, and has very nice name). The first thing came to my mind when I saw this card was ”OMG this is totally new style to me, awesome!”, but I thought this thinking the person who created this card is Japanese.  But as you smart people can see, these Japanese written on this grotesque, or unique I should say, Christmas card are a little bit strange, I mean it looks like non-Japanese wrote it. Anyways I got really curious about who made this card and how it became like that, clicked the links (io9 and bradwick) and there I met an amazing or confusing story of collaborative work of an American and Japanese man who got to know each other during world war 2. 

Ok, so Japanese man Haruo made this elaborate illustrations according to American man Brad’s granpa’s request. What make me laughing is Granpa wasn’t very satisfied with this cards and he even burned all the cards when they arrived in the states. These cards are not a kind of things accidentally came into birth because of  mis-communucation or mistranslation. They must be products of intentional act, maybe malicious intention. So, What’s the problem with Haruo!?!? What the hell does “Check this box for jewish seasoning.” mean (see here)??? It has nothing to do with Christmas, right? And why this massage is on the front side of gift cards just below address? Omg this is made in 1955? Maybe he was too ahead of his time, and Brad's granpa was more conservative than Haruo expected?
 
Or was this a Haruo's own way to revenge for being shot in the face?
Well, the incident during the war might have a certain amount of influence the way he describes American in illustration but the quality of the card implies he gave everything he had into the creation, which means this is the result when he tried to create what he believed to be nice, unique and trendy!! (until Gozilla was first out in 1954, just one year before this, Kaiju style of cartoons or films were not that popular among kids compared to say Astro boy or Comic Shonen. So I guess this was really ahead of time at that time)
you can actually get this for five bucks from here

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