1/15/2007

While the temperatures can hover around freezing indoors* in Tokyo now, I need to wear a hooded sweatshirt and sweat pants at home. In addition, Japan has never invented XXL clothing either, so my old orange hoodie is looking a bit boro-boro (ボロボロ) ragged as you can see in photo on the upper left.

Even though I look like a kojiki(こじき)/hobo at home, I’ve given up trying buy clothes in Japan —Nothing fits a rokushaku san sun (六尺 三寸– 6ft 195lbs) guy like me. Normally, I just buy clothes when I’m on vacation in the Real World and order from the US online. Sadly, most mail-order companies will only send things via UPS or Fedex. That makes a $20 sweat shirt cost with shipping more than $50 from LL Bean, Lands End, et al.

But wait. I just remembered that the 3Yen.com’s sponsor, J-List sells wild XXL-size clothes with cho-berri goo (extremely very good) Japanese writing…. And they ship via postal air or cheap surface mail as well as super-fast, air-freight EMS.

My only problem was picking the hooded sweatshirt with appropriate Japanese kanji and hiragana characters that would scare the locals here in Tokyo, hee, hee. I had to pass up or “Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend” (or worse “Looking for a Japanese Boyfriend”), the sly smile of Totoro logo, and the always favorite “Expel the Foreign Barbarians” “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians”sonno joi ( 尊皇攘夷 – sohn-NOH JOH-ee).

Finally, I decided to go with idea of truth-in-advertising—-In just a few days I’ll be wearing J-List’s cho kakkoi(超格好いい) “Beware of Perverts” XXL Hanes all-cotton hoodie!

*One of the marvels of hi-tech Japan is that they never invented central heating or insulation here. A few of the charms of “modern” Japanese housing practices include: no ground-fault breakers and a laughable 30 amps for entire households, no smoke alarms, no P-traps and undersized drains, un-vented kerosene space heaters, single-pane aluminum frame windows without weatherstripping, nil insulation and never any vapor barriers.