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THE "GREAT PUMPKIN" SUDDENLY APPEARS IN MY TIME OF NEED!
—Another Odd-Ball Public Toilet in Okinawa Japan—

by Okinawa Soba on flickr

Continues with many more photos…

Salt Art by Motoi Yamamoto
tumblr comments:
   • No demons getting in that house.
   • This is like slug hell.
   • Don’t sneeze.

via the tumblr of passio umbra: putris animae

 
 
I just saw a small thumbnail of this →
on Kickstarter and said to myself:
“Hmm, that looks Japanese to me.”
 
Yep, sure enough, the “OSTRICH PILLOW” is a Kickstarter product by a design studio called kawamura-ganjavian—Maki Kawamura (being a very Japanese name) was the design team leader of this pillow that allows, “you to create a little private space within a public one, to relax and unwind.”
Ri-i-i-ght.

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Schoolgirl STOMP…

Embiggen to full-size, 500 x 705 px.

…Above is a Japanese schoolgirl taking revenge on their “traditional” nemesis, Tentacled Menace of the Deep (3Yen / 2012-04-11), was sent in my the 3Yen’s correspondent-at-large, “Den4.

The image file was labled “Girl with octopus” by “Mashi” (mashi in Japanese can mean “better” or “modified”) .

Therefore, this could just be an old, modified, erotic print of an octopus. Alternatively, the orignal may have been made by a modern artist such as Fuco Ueda who has a very similar style and often covers the same themes—See: (1) or (2).

Roadside view of a tasty, tasty world
The Japan Times (book review) Sept. 9, 2012
The World’s Best Street Food – Lonely Planet, 2012, 224 pp., $19.99 (paperback)

…Japan has only one measly entry—the ever-reliable takoyaki. After noticing an image of a hormon (beef or pork organ meat) stall gracing the top of the book cover (mistakenly listed as a takoyaki stall in the photo credits)…
More…

To understand how to get the best out of Japanese street foods, keep the following points in mind:
  • Shown in the above photo marked with two white question marks and an arrow:
Stay away from the hormon–grilled beef or pork offal that is never refrigerated, often for days. Generally, grilled hormon tastes like my dead grandpa’s tennis shoes soaked in a soy sauce swamp.
  •If you sit down at a street cart in the evening, you may pay through the nose since those carts have to pay 20,000+ yen per night to yakuza gangster for the privilege to park in front of the station.
  •Like all street food, sanitation is poor. A street vender who is serving with glasses and ceramic bowls never washes them with hot water–just a nasty quick rinse in bucket sitting in the gutter (Japan has the highest rate of h-pylori stomach infections in the developed world).
  •As the reviewer said takoyaki, octopus balls (3Yen / 2011-12-09) is an “ever-reliable” choice.
  •Yakitori–grilled chicken on a skewer is also good but be careful when buying an assortment of five sticks because one stick usually has a tough, inedible strip of pterodactyl skin and another stick will have rubbery chicken gizzards. Also watch out for the suzume—sparrow-on-skewer—their skulls are splintery and bitter.

Deep in the engrish countryside, this Victorian mansion is …

KyotoDailyPhoto on Twitpic—Although it has the appearance of a Victorian mansion, this building is actually one of the old Biwa Canal’s a pumping stations. In 1895 the canal supplied Japan’s first public hydroelectric power generator.

Savor this image: I dare you…
A dwarf ninja with a telescopic spear lurking in a latrine pit waiting for a transvestite warlord in 16th century Japan.

Christopher Ross on “Ninja” by John Man
Literary Review | August 2012 issue
…One famous ninja was a dwarf who, according to some accounts, assassinated a heavily guarded warlord, Uesugi Kenshin (who may actually have been a woman in drag), by hiding in his castle toilet and drilling him per anum with a telescopic spear. Man reasonably speculates on this story and wonders how a shit-coated dwarf ninja managed to sneak out of a castle on high alert…more...

I know you want to check it out for yourself about this oddity of feudal Japan’s Sengoku period.
      • Wikipedia: Uesugi Kenshin’s death
      • TWC: On Uesugi Kenshin’s gender

Last night, the 3Yen’s crack reporter, Den4, thought he had uncovered the top secret location of Hello Kitty’s house saying (3Yen / 2012-08-10) that it …

^{Looks like Oh Hell Kitty House.}

Actually, that photo was Minnie Mouse’s house in Toontown^* of Walt Disney World’s Kingdom, in Orlando, Florida. Den4’s photo was taken at a stretched, unrealistic angle. Minnie’s house used to look like this…

*I said, “used to look like this,” because Orlando’s Toontown was torn down last year to make room for the expansion and renewal Fantasyland (etckt.com/2011/02/13/toontown-no-more).

_________

But wait! Not to fear. That’s not the end of the story.

Tokyo Disneyland still has Toontown, and it has an even cuter Minnie Mouse house!

Minnie’s House
tokyodisneyresort.co.jp | Tokyo Disneyland

Cheerful Akachochin lanterns are traditional Japanese lighting devices that often mark an izakaya/pub (Wiki). However, this one is from Nazi Germany…

TIME magazine photo essay: Hitler Exhibit Opens in Germany
—Embiggen the photo to a larger size, 604 × 424 px.

The 3Yen’s correspondent-at-large, Den4, just sent in this report of Cthulhu’s Minions, glow-in-the-dark squid, invading Toyama Bay, which is an inlet of the Sea of Japan.

Ok, ok, these bioluminescent Firefly Squid normally live in the Cthulhu’s Deep, but once a year waves push them squid to the surface from March to June. Refer to:
amusingplanet.com/2012/03/firefly-squids-in-toyama-bay-japan