"A Japanese pop star has shaved her head and offered a filmed apology..."

"... after breaking her management firm's rules by spending a night with her boyfriend."

"I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48," [said Minami Minegishi ].... "If it is possible, I wish from the bottom of my heart to stay in the band. Everything I did is entirely my fault. I am so sorry."...

Minegishi was one of the original members of AKB48 when it was launched by producer Yasushi Akimoto in 2005. The band is made up of some 90 girls - whose ages range from mid teens to early 20s - who, in teams, appear daily in their own theatre and regularly on television, in adverts, and in magazines.

They portray an image of cuteness known as "kawaii", and have become a huge phenomenon both in Japan and increasingly in other Asian countries, correspondents say.

I'm no expert on Japanese culture, but it seems to me that if there were 90 of these AKB48-ers and you were destined to exit soon enough by getting slightly older that going out like this is a more effective way to achieve pop stardom than being in the darned group.

"Until about 30 years ago, the typical 'Dutch Wife' (love doll) sold at sex shops in Japan was of the inflatable type..."

"... and of shoddy quality that was easily subject to deflation at the slightest, er, prick."

That's just offensive. Not just the terrible pun, but the abuse of the Dutch.

“When customers brought the dolls in for repairs, vendors would stick on hot patches, like on tire inner tubes,” [said Hideo Tsuchiya, president of Orient Kogyo K.K., a manufacturer of state-of-the-art love dolls].

Some of these buyers, however, had their own reasons for preferring rubber joy mates to real women. Some weren’t satisfied with going to brothels. Others, jilted by their mates, had become eternally suspicious of females....

Orient Kogyo also provides after-service. When and if the time comes for the dolls to part with their owner, the company will conduct a kuyo (Buddhist memorial service) for the doll, complete with floral offerings....

"Tomorrow I’ll be on the S__ line departing at such and such a time, in car number X. Please fondle me."

Investigative journalism from Japan.

The super-expensive Starbucks coffee from Costa Rica called "Geisha."

"We have loyal reserve customers who are interested in any opportunity to try something as rare and exquisite as the Geisha varietal," said Starbucks spokeswoman Lisa Passe.

Names, names, names. First of all: Lisa Passe. I love it! The name Lisa peaked hugely in 1960, when it hit #1 for female newborns. It crashed immediately after and almost no one names a baby Lisa anymore. It's passé. So Lisa Passe is a perfect euonym for someone passing off something outmoded.

Second: Geisha. From Costa Rica. Even if the varietal was already called Geisha, Starbucks did not need to adopt that branding. It chose it. Why? You emphasize that it's a particular coffee from Costa Rica, and you brand it with a word associated with Japan. What's worse than the geographic mismatch is the gender. It's a word that connotes a female catering poshly to a male.

Here's the Oxford English Dictionary definition, in full: "A Japanese girl whose profession is to entertain men by dancing and singing; loosely, a Japanese prostitute." Here's a long Wikipedia article about geishas. I'm not fussing over the details of whether geishas are prostitutes or not or how much power and autonomy they maintain today or in bygone eras. I'm just saying: What the hell kind of Starbucks branding is this?

Now, the product must be intended to appeal to women. High-priced items with a strong emotional, mental element creating the worth — they have to be speaking to women. But Geisha is not a word that should inspire females to hand over their money. You should be giving me money. A lot of money.

Does Starbucks assume its customers are if not dumb then free-floating in the present, unconnected to information of a geographical and historical kind? They're not really this dumb...



... are they?

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

There's some risk that a Geisha Venti would mean blow job. 

"In recruiting women over 40 years of age, companies are finding young women who will misrepresent their true age on application forms."

"Legendary jukujo performer Mariko Kawano was one of the first, apparently claiming to be 34 when in fact she was really three years younger."

"McCartney’s 'Great Wall of Vagina' deemed obscene by Tokyo police."

"The images are exactly that of female genitalia.... The degree of obscenity is high."

The description is accurate but fails to mention how artistic it is.

ADDED: Here's a photo of the "wall" as displayed — badly, I think. The individual rectangles ought to tile an entire wall, not be framed and lined up like that. I guess they are more saleable in that form, but it's just not a great wall of vagina. Plus, I'm sorry to be pedantic, but don't say "vagina" for "vulva." I'm not concerned about obscenity. It's the false advertising that bothers me. This is "Decorously Framed Vulva," not "Great Wall of Vagina."

"Subsurface insanity."

In Tokyo.

"Japan’s first masturbation bar for women opens in Shibuya."

That's the headline, but it's not what it sounds like. It's a place for women to talk about masturbation:

The wall behind the counter is adorned with dozens of colorful sex toys. Megumi Nakagawa, the bar’s proprietor, explains that typically a bar will have bottles of alcohol lining the wall. The appearance of vibrators, however, provides women with more confidence in speaking about spanking.

“Once they take a seat, customers are able to experience a pleasant place in which they can openly discuss masturbation,” says Nakagawa. “Since most people view female masturbation as something of a mystery or taboo, it is not a usual topic at typical bars.”

ADDED: Clicking around over at the Tokyo Reporter, I've finding other hard to fathom headlines, like "Erection of Tokyo Sky Tree leads to mobile prostitution service":

A 45-year-old who runs a tangerine (mikan) farm in Wakayama Prefecture encountered the operation towards the end of August, when he went to see the 634-meter-tall structure with three of his colleagues.

So... tangerines are involved...

Kodokushi.

Lonely deaths.

Are Japanese youths uninterested in sex?

Instapundit links to this article that cites a survey that supposedly shows that "A startling number of Japanese youths have turned their backs on sex and relationships."

CNN spoke to a Midori Saida, a 24-year-old Japanese woman who described "herbivore men" as "flaky and weak."

"We like manly men," she said. "We are not interested in those boys — at all."

BBC News spoke to one such "herbivore" man (see video above). The man, Yusaki Yakahashi said: "Building a relationship seems like too much effort. To get her to like me and for me to like her... I'd have to give up everything I do at the weekend for her. I don't want to do that."

Are we really talking about sex or relationships? I think it is quite common for individuals to feel sexual and to want sex but to opt out of relationships. They've just lost hope that relationships are worth all the effort and the negatives. I think the distinction is terribly important.

What kind of sale?!

Oh... that explains it.

Super Happy Awesome also discovered the real reason why there was a "fuckin sale" in the first place. Apparently fuckin is an unfortunate pun on fukubukuro — "lucky bags." It's a New Years tradition for Japanese retailers to put their overstock from last year into big grab bags and sell them at a discount....

A Japanese beauty trend: crooked fang teeth.

The "yaeba" look is supposed to make you look cute and young.

A book about what's annoying is entertaining... to people I find annoying.

Here's a NYT review of a book called "Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us."  The review is actually annoying me, maybe because the reviewer couldn't find entertaining enough tidbits (and consequently it's much less bloggable than I'd predicted). Now, the reviewer does assert that the book is "immensely entertaining," and I note that it's written by Joe Palca, a science correspondent for National Public Radio, and Flora Lichtman, an editor for the network’s “Science Friday” program, and so I'm thinking it's "immensely entertaining" the way NPR is immensely entertaining... to people I find annoying.

Here's the most annoying sentence in the review:

And so when you begin to kick my chair, I could try to pretend that I am Japanese, for it seems that the Asian ideal of subjugation of the self to the group makes for less annoyance with one’s neighbor.

***

Here's an old post of mine "Will you quit annoying me?" It contains the ultimate film clip about annoyingness.

"My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation."

"They have concluded between themselves that it is inevitable some of them may die within weeks or months. They know it is impossible for them not to have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation."

"They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind."

"They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots."

Volunteered... or assigned...

"Gilbert Gottfried's jokes about Japan just cost him his job as the Aflac Duck."

Okay... and... are we allowed to make jokes about that?

"Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami."

Move the slider back and forth to see the horrible destruction.

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown... volcano.

Volcano.

Meltdown.

Presumed.

"Entire villages in parts of Japan’s northern Pacific coast have vanished under a wall of water..."

"... many communities are cut off, and a nuclear emergency was unfolding at two stricken reactors as Japanese tried to absorb the scale of the destruction after Friday’s powerful earthquake and devastating tsunami."