cat /proc/claus

A few weeks ago, I got from a Couchsurfer a pack of Kangaroo meat as a present. In the package, there was an illustration of a herd of Kangaroos in the wild. That got me thinking about one of the things I find most surreal in our world.

Have you ever noticed how many packages for animal-based foods, or restaurants which specialize in a kind of animal, often sport images of such animal in a happy or cartoonish way? Like the pork restaurant with a cute pig with a chef hat in the billboard, or the fried squid tents in Japan with a happy squid preparing the fried squid balls. Now, while I don’t object in any way to eating meat, these kind of illustrations are just creepy to me. I mean, the animals probably wouldn’t be too happy about being eaten, and certainly would not be preparing the food themselves. Really, it is just WRONG.

When my RPG player blood is strong, I often enjoy imagining counterpart scenarios, like festivals made by trolls and orcs where images of cute little boys or smiling women illustrate the tent where they sell snacks made of unlucky adventurers…

By the way, the Kangaroo meat was not that good, if you were wondering.

I was talking to a friend these days about our childhoods, and I heard something that stuck to my mind.

There is a holiday in Japan for the birthday of the emperor. Currently, this day falls on December 23rd. However, during the previous emperor’s reign, of course, the holiday was in a different day. After that emperor died, however, that date remained as a holiday, and it’s name was changed to “Green Day” or “Nature’s day” (and if you never knew where “midori no hi” came from, now you know).

Now, when she was a kid, this friend thought that, since the former emperor’s birthday was still a holiday, eventually, after a number of emperors had passed, most of the year would be made of holidays! So, in her kid mind, she wanted the emperors to die as quickly as possible, so she could have more days off school.

I found this pretty amusing

Funny YouTube videos that I saw this weekend:

日本の形：
A series of movies mocking japanese culture from a japanese comediant pair: “Ramenz”. A few of these movies have english subtitles, but they are WAY funnier if you can understand japanese (and know a little about japanese day-to-day life). I had posted a links to the “sushi” and “relationships” clip in a past post, but since then new videos have been uploaded. The origami one is extremely funny (no english subtitle, but do not require that much language understanding).

Calls for Cthulhu:
Jaque sent me this one. Cthulhu “kinda of woke up”, and will be taking calls in a talk show style until he can get sleepy again. Hosted by a plush cthulhu. The first few ones are quite funny. But as the series continues, I doubt it will be able to keep up the gas. There are just so many ways you can tell the same joke again.

No links in this post. Just paste “日本の形” and “Calls for Cthulhu” in the YouTube search box.

And, really, I cannot see what people find so funny about “Ask a Ninja”

So, here I am, just trying to review a paper at 0:30 in the night, when the warning system in the lab starts playing: It seems that some other lab is doing some experiment with the water, and we shouldn’t be using the water in the meanwhile.

Fair enough.

Except… that the warning is playing over, and over, and over, and over again. It has been replaying for at least 30 minutes now, and I don’t know where its coming from, or how to ask to turn it off. There seems to be no one responsible in the building that I can call to.

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Shut up already!

Finally, 4 years after being properly introduced to japanese pop-culture by coming to japan (well, one of those 4 years I spent in Brazil), I’ve received the fabled valentines-day chocolate.

First, some background: Valentine’s Day, in japan, unlike in other V-day celebrating countries like the U.S., is the day where the girls give guys chocolate. I can’t precise where or how this “tradition” began, but it has evolved considerably - certainly thanks in grand part to marketing from the food industry.

Anyway, in VD here in japan, girls are supposed to give chocolate tho men in their social circle, be them friends, or lovers, or even just job accquitances. Usually, it can be just a symbolic gesture - pick a 100 chocoes box for 100 yen, and hand them around - but usually the closer you are to someone, the more complex is the chocolate gifted.

I have heard stories (and seen it in some videogames), that to differentiate the “lover” from the “friend” chocolate, the girl writes “giri” (duty, or as a better, looser translation, consideration) in the chocolate - but I have never seen it live, even in the ubiquitous cheap choco stands in combinis. Maybe it is only part of the akiba subculture?

Anyway, enough of background - today Marilia prepared for me a chocolate fundue at her place, with enough fruits, bread and fundue to make me more than full. So not only I got my first VD japanese chocolate, but it was an authentic tezukuri-choco (hand made chocolate), which is supposed to be the toppest rank in the VDC (lots of acronims here) hierarchy.

Well, it was quite oishii! (even if we couldn’t quite control the fundue fire, and I burned my hand) - I even got double servings, by means of a box of choco mint thins that I brought with me back home.

And thus a 3-year tradition dies.

Now I have to prepare something for white day (the “response” to valentine day in japan) - oh s… !