Plug your iPod into your "idog" so it can dance to your Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Hey for about 3,980yen ($38.60) I?ll dance for you. Seriously, this is no better the very passe? dancing Santa doll and the the singing Big-MouthBilly-Bass?. It?s gotta be weird that this ?idog? is designed so you can jack your iPod into its leg.

Tokyo ?Japanese toy maker Sega Toys Co., Ltd.?s new pet dog robots, ?idogs,? dance in tune?. Depending on how the robot dog feels, ?idog? plays creative sounds. Owners can speak to it, sing for it, plays music for it, and it communicates back with melodies. It can also dance if connected to a music player at a jack at its leg?

Decades in Japan---How did you do it?
Topic: Me
Q: Taro, you've lived decades in Japan; how did you do it?

I'm chemically unbalanced, hee, hee.
Billions of folks' brains are pumping depression juices. Not me.
Prenatal -- I was calm and non-kicking.
As a baby, I was all smiles, gurgling and never cried.
Grade school-- I was a happy camper.
Teenage flew past me by without any angst and college was a breeze even when I was being arrested at protest marches.
Now, I live in a concrete slum with salary zombies and I'm smiling---- See. Unbalanced, hee, hee.


Ok, here's the box score on 23 gaijin that have worked for me, with me, and preceded me for the 30 years my office has existed. You do your own odds.

Escaped in less than week 3
Escaped in less than 12 months: 7
Left under heavy medication in 5 years: 8
AIDS: 2
Suicide: 3
Retired: Me, goofing off on the job right now.

I'd say the odds favor "escape" as the best option for gaijin in Japan.


_________________
モ?ベッタ...

Gorki rules!
'I PEE IN SOVIET SUPREME'S SOUP AND GIVE HIM GRIEF.'

via the soon-to-expire BBC's "Global Hits" Thursday, January 20, 2005 8:42:14 AM
...the Cuban government views rock as the quintessential artistic expression of capitalism.
And if you use rock to criticise the Cuban revolution, you may just find yourself in a heap of trouble.
That's pretty much the story of Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco. He goes by
Gorki to the twenty and thirty-somethings of his generation.
For them his appeal is obvious.
Gorki IS a rebel.
This tune by Gorki comes from the CD he recorded just before he was
arrested in April of 2003.The track is entitled Trova Ovation.
"I don't want to be a blind king's puppet," sings Gorki. "I pee in his soup and give him grief."
....Their logo is a sickle and a
hammer, and the hammer is a penis and the sickle are the lips of a
vagina. But it's very well done...
_________________
モ?ベッタ...

Colonel Sanders, the Buddha
The New Yorker, book reviews, Jan 17, 2005
John Updike takes on a book review of the
surreal Japanese author Haruki Murakami in the latest The New Yorker:
I?ve real most o of Murakami but didn?t even know this novel. An
inportant point about Murakami is that his novels are the least
?Japaneseque? of authors?if tell a Japanese that you worship Murakami?s
work, they nod their head and say, So ka (since Murakami is the most gaijin like of modern writers).
SUBCONSCIOUS TUNNELS
Haruki Murakami?s dreamlike new novel
?Colonel Sanders, in his white suit and string tie, appears?.as a
fast-talking pimp. The Colonel, questioned by the startled Hoshino
about his nature, quotes another venerable text, Ueda Akinari?s ?Tales
of Moonlight and Rain":

Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I,
rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man.

?To quote Colonel Sanders once more:
?Listen, God only exists in people??s minds. Especially in Japan, Gods
always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the
war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God,
and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person.?

"COUNT ME BLUE" and "I DID NOT VOTE 4 BUSH'
Anti-Bush bracelets, AP , Jan 14
....Selling blue bracelets that say "COUNT ME BLUE" ...
....Fairway, Kan., offers blue bracelets that say "HOPE" ...
... Moscow, Idaho, is even more direct; their black bracelets proclaim, "I DID NOT VOTE 4 BUSH"

The 'blank where the Japanese live'
Topic: Japanese life

Novelist Kenzaburo Oe once told journalist Patrick Smith that the West has just two images of Japan: The Japan of samurai, geisha and Zen on the one hand, and the Japan of Sony Playstation, anime and high-tech efficiency on the other. "Between the two, there is a blank where the Japanese live,"

--- Bruce Rutledge, "Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan" Chin Music Press, 2004

Yep, I am a paid Japanese transvestite.
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Me
In Japan, every foreigner seem to have a side scam. I have a lucrative business consultanting job for a foreign fragrance company one evening a week.
One hard part of the work is to find Japanese people for their fragrance focus groups and product evaluations. Therefore, I am called in the "sample-n-evaluate" their new products for them. On fragrance surveys I have to emulate the responses of their marketing target, 20-something Japanese female. Yep, I am a paid transvestite.
Fragrances go into all sorts of products that I test and evaluate. Besides getting paid for sniffing their Ty-D-Bowl Man having has way with Toilet Duck in test toilets, I often get paid for testing shampoo, hee, hee.

Picture in your mind ....
Now Playing: Tom Waits
Topic: Me
My internal theme music for commuting to work is PURE Tom Waits. Picture in your mind ....


It's midnight in the Rock-Island Line switching yard on the Chicago South Side.


Steel-on-steel clacks out the back-beat as dioxin vapor rises off the the Sagg Canal off in the distance.

Marching towards the steaming sag piles and smoking their reefers,
the seven dwarves who all look like Tom Waits start chanting in the
minor key:


"Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it's off to work we go!"





Heigh-Ho! (The Dwarfs' Marching Song) - Tom Waits Listen here.




Also...




I got the sizzle, but not the steak / I got the boat, but not the
lake / I got the sheets, but not the bed / I got the jam, but not the
bread / But, hey I'm big in Japan, I'm big in Japan/ I'm big in Japan,
I'm big in Japan



--"BIG in JAPAN", Tom Waits, in 'Mule Variations' CD (1999)

Getting a job in Japan
Topic: adviceS
The old Bible of thousands of FG wannabes for the past 20 years, "JOBS in JAPAN" and most others likeHow to Land Jobs in Japan advice to come here cold and semi-illegal to find a job.



Most J-companies do NOT wanna hire a Pig-in-Poke. The Bad-Case scenerio
is it's gonna take you 3 months to find job and more than $5-10K to get
your own squat, phone, fidge, etc. (The Good-Case scenerio is it's
gonna take you 3 weeks and $1,200). Please note many major Japanese
companies will not sponsor visas (your soon-to-be-bucho is forced to privately).

YIKES! Come to think of it, most of the long-term gaijin on the the FG
Forum came here under some sponsorship such as job transfer, Japanese
education, martial arts, JET, etc. I got headhunted here but I was told
to "wait" for 3-4 months. I scrapped and scammed as an illegal worker
in a bunch shitty jobs and then had to do the Korean visa run on my own
and at my own expense to get my work visa. It was DAMN TOUGH and I ran
out of money ($3,500 spent in 9 weeks). Without leeching off my Judo
sensai and a friendly mama-san who frequently gave me "taxi money" I
would never have "made it".

BOTTOM LINE: Go for it.

Life in Japan is shitty vocab lesson
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: adviceS


IMPROVE YOUR VOCAB... カタタタキ


肩たたき 【かたたたき】 (n) tap on the shoulder; request to resign

Been there. Done that. Mo' betta' job because of it.

WHEN?


Friday?
Coffee zanmai dinner after work in Shinjuku?

Bobby Fischer in Iceland

How long does it take to study Japanese?
Topic: adviceS
Q: How long would the full-time Japanese language course in the YWCA take to get me to the top level in Japanese?
A: "How long"? --->For me a lifetime.
Two classes a week for two years will get you the Japanese level 3 in about two years. For level 2, more "intensive" study is needed at least 4 days a week, several hours a day for one year. Level 1 for a Westerner studying at the YMCA is not a reasonable expectation---at least 2 years (more like 4 or 5). All the Western translators working for me as just as trainees with only Level 1, took 5 or more years to get to that point.

Q: I read somewhere that you have to have JLPT Lvl 1 to enroll in a Japanese university, so... if i take that language course i still have to take the JLPT up to level 1 right?
A: To enroll in a Japanese NATIONAL university (dirt cheap, or free scholorship) takes JLPT Lvl 1 to enroll although Level 2 will be accepted for a real scientist. Private universities will accept anything but they are expensive. Your best bet is transfer into Japan as grad student in a real major (not language or humanities) and live on a general research or Ed Ministry scholorship which pays more than 180,000yen/m plus housing.
Botton Line: It's easy, fun and maybe lucrative as long as you're not in not language or humanities major.

Japanese behavior: Why do they follow the "calendar" and not "weather"?
Q: Why are all the Japanese dressed like there is going to be blizzard to start any minute even is will be 16 degrees C --- just over 60F in real degrees.

A: Easy.
Above all things, Japanese worship sameness and predictablity. That's why NHK public television has the flower "news" report everyday.
Get with the program: WE ARE THE ROBOTS.

Rear Adminal Taro Pongi's newest adventure: Random Rob Pongi's
Some guy picked up on the Japaneseque Rob Pongi vib all the way down in South Africa where he "claims" to have never seen Cup-o-Puke Ramen --- lucky boy. Anway as a Real Adminal in the Pongi Self Defence Forces I just have to repost this EVERWHERE, hee, hee.

ModBlog - Sex is a beach, be careful of crabs. [@nonymoused]
Ramblings::

Meet Random Rob.

Yeah that's right, I'm Rob. Random Rob. Why am I called Random Rob? That's cause I'm random baby. One minute I'm ...sitting on a giraffe eating gravy, uhhhh....assuming there is a large gravy supply nearby of course...and a reasonably domesticated giraffe, the wild ones scare the willies out of me with those sharp teeth of theirs.. Umm...yes *cough* but when you're someone as cool and hip as Random Rob things like that happen all the time.
....there's nothing funny about waking up in the middle of the night only to find your self humping conveniently shaped medical supplies.
...at least it was better than that one time I tried to prove my randomness by mating with a piano..in public.
... the uhh..damned drawing took away 5 hours of my life.... I still admire the guy for surrounding himself with so many asian women and not getting publicly beaten.)

For reference see RobPongi.com.

Run ASIMO. Run.
ASIMO robot is running faster nowhere (Read the article)