Filed under: Japanese, Weird | Tags: Japan, Japanese TV, Matt Harding, VISA
So you guys know all about “Where in the world is Matt” right? If you don’t, watch the video, it’s kind of fun.
I was watching TV the other day (I forget which station). And I happened to catch the new VISA card TV ad. This ad has always featured long dead Japanese historical figures Natsume Soseki, Hideyo Noguchi and Fukuzawa Yukichi in modern day settings. This time however, they’re all with Matt himself doing “the Matt dance” all over the world. The ad finishes with Noguchi saying “By the way, who are you?” to Matt. As a foreigner aware of the dancing Matt thing I found this hilarious, but my guess is he’s not that famous in Japan – hell he isn’t really THAT famous outside of the Internet. Certainly Mayumi nor any of the guys at the office had a clue who he was. Here’s the ad:
Seems a strange choice for the face of VISA if no one knows who he is or why he’s dancing like a fool. But there’s really no accounting for some of what happens on Japanese TV.
Filed under: Politics, Teaching | Tags: Japan, prime minister, school, Taro Aso, Yasuo Fukuda
Every year some kid discovers the internet and becomes slightly stupider. Kids in their naievety think that by discovering an online translation website, inputting all of their scrambled Japanese syntax into the application and pressing “translate”, they’ll have an award wining novel. What they actually get is 200 words of garbled literary diarrhea. It’s actually quite fun shooting them down.
Scene: Teachers room
Me: T, did you write all this yourself? About your holiday in Osaka?
T: Yes!
Me: Wow, this is long.
T: It took ages.
Me: However, it stinks.
T: What?
Me: What does “It was the most terrible turning of the pen that was amazed” mean? In Japanese please.
T: ….ehm…
Me: And this part: “my friend he does and does” ?
T: ….
Me: The jewel in the turd crown however is this part : “He was the behind of celluloid board and sticker posted too. Red ink to my skin was afixed duely” …what the hell were you doing on holiday?
T: I uhm…
Me: Did you perchance stumble across a translation site and think you could completely avoid doing your summer homework?
T: ……yes…..
Me: Then you’ve won the chance to play the “let’s do this again” game. Hand it in tomorrow, all written in your own hand to win the chance to not be picked to sing solo at the English speech contest next month.
Regretably, the self done effort wasn’t a massive improvement, although noticably shorter.
In more relevant news, once again the Prime Minister of Japan has resigned, with little explanation save that “he doesn’t want to do it anymore”. Since Jun-chan’s, enormously popular reign came to an end, two Prime Ministers have risen and fallen, both in less than a year. His direct replacement Shinzo Abe was deeply unpopular, but seemed to catch a lot of the blame for the Japanese pension crisis, which frankly I can’t understand as he wasn’t there long enough to cock it up, unless he went down to the office himself and burned all the records to create more space for desk lamps following the opening of IKEA in Osaka. After a year he quit stating “heatlh issues” and was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, who is about as interesting as John Major and slightly less interesting than HB pencils. Fukuda suddenly resigned after not quite making it through a full year, stating that the Democratic party (opposition) make things too difficult. Stupid democracy. Anyway, the new guy is likely to be manga loving Taro Aso, having tried for it the last two times only to lose the in-party popularity contest, probably because he’s an otaku and smells.
Anyway, here’s to you Aso, and whoever replaces you when you burn your tongue on hot coffee and your toast falls butter side down.
-GaZ-
- They should rule who are able to rule best.
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Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), Politics
