VANISHING FIGURE SERIES by Kenji Etori
In his profile, Mr. Etori says that since 2000 he has exhibited contemporary art such as figures and sculptures as well as clothing and ornaments, and that he is a lecturer at Osaka Seikei University in the Information Design Course of Arts Department.
Today it starting to show the first signs of spring in Tokyo, which immediately brings to my mind that the cockroaches awakening. On the WFMU music blog brings to you the artist, Epaksa, singing techno-style ‘Ponsori’, Korean traditional music dominated by vocals and percussion.
Fancymag.com has a good write-up on Epaksa observing that as a former truck driver, “His first album, Sinbaram (The Elation/Excitement of) Epaksa Vol. 1 was an instant hit among the truck drivers and middle-aged working-class audience…Over 1,000,000 cassettes were sold and E Pak Sa became a hot new sensation for the Korean middleclass…In the beginning of his career he performed mostly in clubs, but now he prefers banquets and birthday parties.”
You can also check out Epaksa’s Wikipedia entry and his myspace.com/epaksa.
Damn, I know I have posted another version of Epaksa before—The Epaksa Space Fantasy (youtube live in Hawaii, Japanese version) as well as a mixed modern Korean version with English subtitles or remix Japanese version…:
This month’s Metro “Manners” poster portrays Tokyo’s ‘rudest’ train as part their continuing campaign to improve the deportment of their riders.
This month’s poster is a very “green” since its ideas and artwork are 100% recycled from previous “Manner” [sic.] posters as shown below.
Original posters
Rumors are building: Is The “Gomiuri” newspaper going the way of the gomi/trash!?
MONDAY, 1 MARCH 2010
Days numbered at the Daily Yomiuri
OurManinAbiko.blogspot.com
Holy crap, who would have thought the real world (you know the one of falling newspaper circulations and no ad revenue) would have entered the Pravda of Japan, the Daily Yomiuri. Well, the hard times have unofficially hit. Here’s what Our Man knows:
1. The boss has been told to trim staff by 25%
2. The paper will be going to one edition in April from the current four
…more…
For more than a decade Tokyo had four English-language daily newspapers, The Japan Times, The Daily Yomiuri, The Mainichi Daily News, and The Asahi Shimbun. The Mainichi Daily News stopped printing almost 8(?) years ago and now has a minor daily news site. The Asahi Shimbun in English for the past five years just reposts content from the International Herald Tribune and doesn’t put much effort into translating Japanese news. If the The Daily Yomiuri closes, only The Japan Times will be left, which is shame because the Japan Times has increasingly become lighter in content.
BOTTOM LINE: Japanese news in English will slow to a trickle and Japan will fade from the world’s consciousness.
An hour ago I received a warning from the Tokyo U.S. Embassy’s warden….
“The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo is transmitting the following information through the Embassy’s warden system is ordering mandatory evacuations of all U.S. citizens residing between sea level and thirty (30) feet between the hours of 2:00-5:00 P.M. local time. Additionally, they are recommending evacuations for all U.S. residing between 30-60 feet above sea level.”
I live on uppermost reaches of a tidal estuary that’s at 57 feet above sea level, ha, ha. I have to check the river banks. Interesting—The natural banks are just starting to overflow a little. See the action at my webcam at: www.bousai.keihin.ktr.mlit.go.jp/Calamity/Points
I hope our 3Yen reader and frequent poster in Valparaiso Chile is ok.
Japan’s silver medal winning figure skater, Mao Asada, has spawned a rather odd fan site on the Japan Uncyclopedia (funky machine translation).
Here’s arather droll description of the Japanese figureskating costumes from BUZZMEDIA’s gofugyourself.celebuzz.com Olympic ladies figure-skating (fashions)
…Awesome: Japan’s Miki Ando
Apparently, she had to run to the rink as soon as she got off her shift serving cocktails on the casino floor of the Luxor, and didn’t have time to change.
Embiggen.
I applaud her, though, for Going There with her costumes in a way that the rest of the ladies did not. Take also her short program costume:
I am not wholly sure what her program here was about, but in my mind it was the ice-skating world’s take on Joan of Arc. Which, truly, is kind of awesome material, dramatically. You’ve got your religious fervor (hence the spangly cross), and persecution, and BATTLE, and then FLAMES (hence the red material, snaking up her body like the purifying fire of sainthood)…
…Getting right to the point is Japan’s Mao Asada:
You remember how, during the US Nationals, I was all blathering about how every year SOMEONE skates dressed in a genre I like to call, “Imitations of a Romanticized Consumptive 1800s European Prostitute?” THERE YOU GO.
scare-the-daylife.com-out of you - TOKYO – FEBRUARY 25: Male waiters, wearing woman’s clothes, serve customers at New Type cafe…[snip]…women customers saying they enjoy communicating with friendly waiters and male customers enjoying talking with the waiters who they can relate to as both men and women.
Like the jobs you never thought existed, cross-dressing Japanese pretending to be French maids serve primarily women at this maid cafe. Weird but what the hey, is anybody getting hurt by this? Nope.
Now for that all important close-up…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eeew!
The Hippo Kick aka Kaba Kick
For some sad reason, my ancient post of 2004 about the infamous toy of Internet legend, the Kaba Kick has disappeared, which is a travesty that needs to rectified.
The instructions and photos on the package are self-explanatory and note the Kaba means Hippo in Japanese. Enjoy this blast from the past.
Before you start asking me where to buy the Kaba Kick, you first need to get a time machine. The Kaba Kick is not listed on product index of the Flash-infested Takara Toys site because it ain’t been made since 1993.
The hippo that kicked
Thezoomar.tumblr.com blog today offered this great Google Earth satellite photo of a raft of hippopotami, and noted that their, “...favorite hippo is the one on his side.”
Be sure to check out the fully zoomed-in Google Earth photo.
As we always say in Japan, “You can never have enough Hello Kitty.”
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