….Japanese heroines of the evil are a disappearing thing…and when they die a fierce death in the last moment of a story they make the best impressions….more, more, MORE….

Yikes! I stumble across so many fun Japanese things on the Internet such as these prints of ‘Coon balls. The tanuki— racoon-dog of Japan is considered in legends as a mischievous, jolly master of disguise and shape-shifting. In folk tales, the tanuki voluntarily enlarge their scrotums such as this traditional print.
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View full-size on Paper-Cuts

Patrick, my neighbor up the hill was so inspired by these prints and the legend that he created and posted on his own tanuki interpretation on his PaperCuts artblog of his cut-paper creation, Kintama Parachute.
Click to view the full-size photo of Kintama Parachute on PaperCuts.

Note: Kintama means
balls in Japanese.

Attending the Chanel “Mobile Art” Opening Reception, this scary looking culture vulture is actually the Japanese artist Vivienne Sato. A self-described “Artistic Drag Queen,” Sato was a part-time carpenter and architecture student who now uses internal trusses to prop up her/his towering trademark wigs filled with feathers and assorted junk.

The Chanel “Mobile Art” exhibit—a nautilus shell shaped museum that is traveling the world—was set up in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Olympic Plaza on May 30, 2008 for Opening Reception and will remain there until July 4. Admission is “free” but reservations (240 yen service charge) may be needed on the weekends. For details visit the exhibit’s Flash-infested website at:
chanel-mobileart.com

Sorry folks, but I have been playing Japanese salaryman for the past few weeks and posting has slowed to this uphill trudge.

Photo thanks hiromy’s flickr.

Note that this photo was taken in one of the most expensive places in Yoyogi in expensive Tokyo, but the environment is a tangled Mass of overhead wires and cables celebrating Japanese-Pastafarian worship of clutter and concrete.

Bejeweled Elephant Shaped Liqueur Tantalus Demands $612,000
EliteChoice.org 2008/May/13…this elephant shaped liqueur tantalus is a striking creation by French luxury crystal maker Baccarat. Exhibited at the Baccarat’s exhibition and Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi...more...

Q: What’s a “tantalus” you might ask?
A: It’s a liquor decanter with a post-graduate education.
(Tantalus– a type of drink decanter stand in which the bottle stoppers are firmly clamped down by a locked metal bar, as a means of preventing servants from stealing the master’s liquor. The decanters themselves, however, remain clearly visible.)

According to a rough machine translation of the Baccarat.co.jp website, this is a reproduction of a “liqueur set of the elephant” produced for Paris World Exposition of 1878. Baccarat is having an exhibition of this and many other pieces from May 13 to 18 at the headquarters of Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi, under the theme of “Light and Sparkle of a Far-off Dream.”

Hey, I just report it—I can’t explain it.

Aliens with blue-eyes invade the streets of Tokyo!
With the extra-long Golden Week holiday, performance artists like the “Medaman-Medaman” eyeballs are cruising the pavement of the Ginza and Koen-dori districts.
Try finding the alien invasion on the live webcams of Koen-dori in trendy-to-tears Shibuya.

UPDATE

POOP-DE-DO0!
—FECAL FACIAL IS LATEST WACKY SKIN TREATMENT—
April 29, 2008 — New York Post….just $216, Shizuka Bernstein will slather your face in feces for a full 50 minutes - what she calls the “Geisha Facial” - at her Midtown spa, Shizuka New York. The ancient Japanese cleanser - geisha and kabuki dancers have been using the bird poop to wash off their heavy white makeup…more…

Let’s white happy!
While I’m in the drug store in Japan, I always find aisles devoted solely to skin whitening products. And my favorite traditional Japanese product for skin whitening is uguisu no fun aka swallow nightingale droppings. Being Bihaku ) or a ‘white beauty’ is hot shit here in Japan.

In a machine translation of the product description ofuguisu-no-fun, the cosmetics company uguisunofun.com says to whiten your skin you should take from 0.5 to 1.0 grams (about 1/3 of teaspoon) of the bird poop powder and mix it with soap in your palm and wash your face in the regular manner. Product No. 151 Container (26 g), price: 1,029 yen.

As Japanese love to quote the old Chinese saying: “Being white can cover/compensate for three times of ugliness. ” In the past months that I’ve spent in the hospital, the Japanese student nurses lube me up with NIVEA Whitening Body Lotion after my sponge bath and I always teased them I might disappear into the sheets.

For some women, it’s beauty and the bleach
Concord Monitor—-
….Take a daylight drive through Asian immigrant enclaves such as Monterey Park and Irvine, and you’ll see women trying to shield themselves with umbrellas - even for the short dash from a parking lot into a supermarket. While driving, many wear special “UV gloves”- which look like the long gloves worn with ball gowns - to protect their forearms, and don wraparound visors that resemble welder’s masks….There are doctors who, for about $1,000, will use an electrical field to deliver vitamins, moisturizers and bleaching agents to a woman’s face in a procedure known as a “mesofacial.” Whitening products have been a mainstay in Asia for decades, but cosmetics-industry officials said they have emerged as a hot seller in the United States …..….more….

Typical Japanese bihaku ads for skin whitening products (mostly fraudulent and ineffective like my hospital’s Whitening Body Lotion).

Here a bit of Japanese charm stemming from their old saying, “Crying babies grow fast.” Last Sunday, Tokyo’s Sensoji Temple held this traditional event with a long history, Konaki Sumo (baby-crying bout)—also called Nakizumo (sumo of tears).

Isn’t child abuse fun?

Babies face off in ‘crying sumo’ contest
Mainichi Daily News - 2008 April 28–….In crying sumo the babies are held up by amateur sumo wrestlers in a ring, and the baby who cries first is the winner. If both babies cry, then the one that cries loudest wins. …more...

I just noticed the Kyodo News on their “live” news ticker is bemoaning that the number of ALIEN sumo wrestlers in the top rank of wresters is now 16—the most in the history of sumo.

You gotta feel sorry for the Japanese. They just simply are too small to succeed in their own national sport, sumo. However, foreign-born sumo wrestlers from the United States are no longer doing very well in Japanese sumo either. Sumo is like boxing, you have to “stay hungry” and be willing to suffer. Basically competitive athletes from a comfortable, middle-class background ( whether they are Japanese or American) don’t succeed in fighting sports.
Nowadays it’s young, hungry guys from Russia and other former communist countries who are providing the majority of the new foreign sumo wrestlers. They’re the only athletes who are motivated and “hungry” enough to succeed in rising from the lower ranks of sumo (where the pay is low and the life is not fun because of the strict–some say torturous–discipline/abuse).

Here’s my new favorite website….
*M*i*r*r*o*r* *W*o*r*l*d*
Photographs Of Unknown Origin



Let’s hope they keep up the quality and randomness.
See also: myspace.com/WelcomeToMirrorworld