Pushing the 3button on your toilet seat (the butt button, Japan’s most significant technological contribution to the world of bathroom science) is more than an adventurous leap of faith. It is a self-actualizing action: a life-affirming tipping point. The essence of the Japanese conception of ヨロ (YORO, sometimes incorrectly called YOLO the way GOJIRA is mispronounced GODZILLA). It is this spirit, this philosophy of mind and body synergistic, that Horace had in mind when he wrote “Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero. trans. Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future.” While pushing the button may be the first act of realizing, this mantra is not limited to rectal hygiene. There are opportunities to vigorously exercise and expel your YORO onto the world all around you.
It’s Friday, so you are likely gearing up to go out and, perhaps, get into some trouble tonight. You’ll head to the bar, have a few tasty brews, maybe some cheap beers to finish it off, wash it all down with a bad-idea bourbon. Think about talking to that girl across the room then chicken out and stumble home alone like you always do.
But do you know what you could be doing? Anything else. Will you be, like the gloriously skinny, stunningly white boy in the picture above, stripping completely naked and wrapping yourself in sumo-style traditional Japanese underwear (褌 fundoshi)? Will you be running with thousands other through icy cold water in the middle of the night, drunk out of your mind on sake, whiskey, soju and god-knows-what that 70-year-old man insisted that you pound, to crowd into a thousand-year-old temple to push and shove and elbow and fight your way to ropes to climb and slip and fall and break and bruise? This weekend will you find yourself sandwiched and squeezed between so much man-flesh like a bag of gummy bears in the back pocket of some guys skinny jeans on a hot summer day? Cry “YORO!” and let slip the hounds of war. Laughing and crying with every laborious breath; pissing yourself and throwing up at the same time until finally—FINALLY—grasping in your hand the blessed stick that is the object of so many thousands’ manly impetuses.
Do your weekend plans include public semi-nudity, socially-acceptable brawls and excessive public drunkenness? Because they could. YORO.
Photo: On my way by Dust Mason on Flickr.
In the hot wetness of summer, over the gentle rhythms of frog fucking there is a buzzing in the air. Inside the mosquito coils are smoldering once again, but outside… Outside there is a different kind of fire in the damp air: the rich aroma of burning loins.
![[Kanamara Matsuri] Kanamara Pose](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3535/3712034069_939ec65950.jpg)
Japanese summer smells like come. Man-seed. Jism. Baby gravy. Spunk. Spooge. Man-spackle. (“Cum”, if you must.) Walking or bicycling around outside of the city, you’ll catch whiffs of it on the breeze. It’s as if the entire country is covered in bukkake. Given how moist the air is these days, that’s how I feel when I walk outside anyways. Covered in all kinds of nasty.
They say that the islands of Japan were formed by drops of water off of a god’s sword as he lifted it from the ocean. Well, apparently that’s not all the gods dropped. Something on this island reeks of jiz. For the last ten years this quesiton has haunted me. What is that smell? It was my hatch. My sin. My obsesssion. Light of my life, smell of fiery loins. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.
I never discovered the source in high school. I left the island for the first time bitter and jaded, vowing never to return. But for years the mystery of the manthrax musk continued to haunt me.
But I returned. This island has a way of pulling you back. And now I know the truth.
I have identified the culprit: the Japanese pear tree. The Japanese pear tree smells like a 12 year old boy’s crusty old tube sock. Flowering, it looks quite pleasant; almost like sakura. If cherry blossoms were covered in man butter.
JR (Japan Rail) trains are notoriously punctual; most lines are rarely more than one minute late. However, it’s not uncommon for there to be massive delays due to severe weather (like the massive typhoon scheduled to hit Japan tomorrow) and something called “human damage”: suicide delays.
Suicide is a substantial problem in Japan. The country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, at 23.8 per 10,000 people in 2011 (China and South Korea also have remarkably high suicide rates). This is typically attributed to social pressures to succeed in school and business, culturally relaxed attitudes that sometimes celebrate suicide as a selfless act, as well as the recent economic turmoil.
But of all the ways to kill yourself, why a train? Japan does not allow guns, so the speediest and (seemingly) most reliable method is off the table. But there’s also the anonymity of a rail suicide; nobody you know needs to see the results. Typically, rail suicides occur at smaller stations skipped by express trains. As Special Rapid trains barrel through local stations without stopping, these offer the surest guarantee of fatality. Furthermore, smaller stations often lack the watchful JR personnel of larger hubs.
Due to the high costs of cleanups and delays, families of the victims often get slapped with 1 to 10 million yen (approx. $10,000 - $100,000) cleanup bills. If a secondary goal of killing yourself at a train station is to spare your family the hardship of finding your body at home, this potential financial burden should act as a deturrant. Now, if it was the victim’s family that was largely responsible for pushing them to take their own life, this cleanup bill can act as a final “fuck you” to next-of-kin.
To discourage suicides, JR has installed blue LED lighting on many train platforms. This is supposed to have a calming effect. Though common in subways, very few train stations have installed suicide prevention doors; the cost is simply too great.
I’ve known a couple of people who were on trains that hit someone, and I’ve been caught up in long delays caused by “human damage”, but thankfully I’ve never witnessed anyone take their own life. Occasionally, standing on a platform I’ll see some world-weary salaryman walking along the platform or standing too far over the yellow, studded “danger blocks” as the train comes in and my breath catches in my throat as I wonder if things are about to go horribly wrong. But then he hears the buzzer going off, or an attendant taps him on the shoulder, and I realize that he is in fact just drunk, not suicidal.
If door knob licking is a thing that is happening in Japan now, I don’t want to live in this country anymore. Hell, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
I recall a similar story back in 2002, when David Beckham was playing in the Japan-Korea World Cup (soccer, football if you’re fancy) some whack-o Japanese girl broke into his hotel room and was caught licking his toilet seat like it was a Tootsie-Roll Tootsie-Pop and a philosopher’s owl had tasked her with a quest to get to the center of that motherfucker.
From that anecdote, these pictures, my (modest) familiarity with Japanese pornography, and the weird train dude in Nagahama who’s always hitting on foreign guys, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there’s some strange tongue stuff going on in this country.
Come to think of it, the Japanese language almost never requires its speakers to show any tongue. Perhaps that’s why it’s found so erotic here. No hard TH sounds. Say DEATH METH BREATH. REOWR.
Stay classy, Japan.
For the Japanese parent who cannot afford a Nintendo 3DS and the newest cartridge of Pokemon: Bedazzled Black and White 2, there is the exciting world of beetle fighting. The stag and rhinoceros beetles being indigenous invertebrates to Japan, your child can experience a deep connection to his or her proud heritage by embracing the centuries-old traditon of insect bloodsport.
Supplies for raising these big-bad fighting machines can be had in any ¥100 store. Pet stores, discount shops, and your occasional invertebrate vending machine sell these ferocious fighters by the millions for modest prices so that your children can get them all hyped up on sugar, gunpowder, Lipovitamin-D, cocaine WHATEVER IT TAKES to spark that hemolymph-lust and make Jean-Claude Van Dung rage in that cage. Or dirt-mound sumo ring. GO WILD.
In related news, Monster Energy drinks have begun appearing on shelves in convenience stores and supermarkets in Japan. While I cannot condone the use of such beverages by human beings, let alone children, I suspect that it will have a transformative effect on the world of mollusk match-ups.
While we’re on topic, could we also get some Four-Loko and Sparks (original recipes) up here? Do you remember Zima? It still exists here.
[video]
めっちゃ (meccha)
slang: totally, so, fuckin’
ええ、めっちゃかわいいよ！
OMG! That’s so fuckin’ cute!
めっちゃ原減った。
I’m so fuckin’ hungry.
In the first weeks of the Fukushima disaster, my friend’s mother talked him into withdrawing approximately $5000 in cash from the bank despite living inland hundreds of kilometers from the reactor. Several others received radiation badges from home along with hand-written tear-stained notes pleading with them to flee the country at once. Another ALT’s parent tried to send a fully-functional ten pound Geiger counter into the country (apparently this is a customs nightmare). Well, now the Japanese mobile phone industry is stepping up and filling that need.
(Reuters) - Mobile phone operator Softbank Corp said on Tuesday it would soon begin selling smartphones with radiation detectors, tapping into concerns that atomic hotspots remain along Japan’s eastern coast more than a year after the Fukushima crisis.
Some commentators are asking: what next? A Godzilla warning system?
Photo by Derek Doi
Media outlets outside of Japan seem unaware that Godzilla detectors have been in all Softbank phones since the company (then J-Phone) introduced an early warning system in 2002 built on technology developed for the Japanese SpaceGodzilla program of 1994. These detectors and the Godzilla Jouhou (情報) Information System Manager (Godzilla JISM) saved countless lives in the Tokyo S.O.S. disaster of 2003 and the Final Wars of 2004.
Godzilla has not appeared in Japan since. However, scientists have warned that fallout from the 1998 NYC incident Codename Bueller may result in another attack on the United States in the near future.