Guys you have no idea how long I have wanted to rip into this topic. That’s right, today I’ll be writing about anime. Buwahahah be afraid.

Now I’ll admit, I’m a video game girl so I’m impartial to video gamers, but honestly some anime fans make me want to insert my head in a door frame and slam the door repeatedly. To begin with, DO NOT CAPITALIZE THE WORD anime. Do we say “Hey let’s watch a Movie”?? NO! SO DON’T CAPITALIZE IT!

Okay my pet peeves aside, anime is an animated form of entertainment that is very popular in Japan. It’s basically animated TV shows that are aired on television. Dozens of new shows and new seasons are release yearly. The target audience for a show can vary, but a lot of shows are aimed at the teenager through the twentysomethings crowds. Only a couple shows are selected to be English dubbed every year, but a lot of bilingual fans will translate the shows, insert subtitles and then release them on the Internet.

So you know what anime is, so what are the stories like? To make things more interesting I’ll list for you the bias that an anime fan would have if they believed everything they saw in the shows. (And I did a lot of extensive research on this!) So here we go. If an anime fan believed everything they saw they would think: giant robots freely roam the earth; the world will end in the year 2020; the world already ended in the year 2000; clumsy, stupid girls make the perfect candidates to save the world; in every school in Japan there is at least one magic girl with a five minute transformation scene; changing your clothes in Japan to that of something magical will make everyone think you’re a different person; Japan just happens to be a mega-center for all sorts of human/demon things who want to take over the earth; in every classroom you have the typical stupid girl, smart girl, hott girl and athletic girl; swords/katanas will always beat guns; ninjas, who are supposed to sneak around, will either be faceless or wear bright jumpsuits; normal people can jump in the air and hover for a while before picturesquely falling back to earth without breaking a leg; all high school students in a sport can defy the laws of physics and the most needy/emotionally stunted guy will always get the girl.

Whew. I think I described an aspect of almost every anime. Or at least a great portion of them. That’s all for today, class dismissed!

America has the mob, Japan has ninjas, right? WRONG. Once again I, Japan Fan, plan to inform you about the Japanese mafia, the yakuza.

The yakuza is the term used to describe the organized crime gangs. The Japanese people sometimes refer to them, literately, as “violence groups”. The yakuza take offense to this because it can be applied to any violent criminal. (Because you know…the yakuza aren’t violent or anything. Pft, yeah.) Today the yakuza is one of the largest crime organizations in the world.

Historians believe that the yakuza were first started back in the 17th century. There’s several theories about what group they come from. One of the theories is that they’re from the machi-yokko. Back then the machi-yokko were hailed as heros because they protected the villages from the hatamoto-yokko. (Other historians think that the yukaza were derived from the hatamoto-yokko. Soooo they were either good guys or bad guys in the beginning.)

The yakuza are hard to characterize. Generally the lower yakuza members will wear wind suits. (Weird? Yes. Lame? Yes. I don’t get where this rule came from, and I can’t find any web page that explains why.) A lot of yakuza/yankee activities can be seen in the Japanese movie, Kamikaze Girls. It’s a fabulous comedy that I highly recommend.

Some of the rituals (and I use that term loosely) of the yakuza are: Yubitsume (finger cutting, how traditional) Oyabun (when an underboss would take the punishment of one of his men.) Irezume (tattoos, but the yakuza take it to a whole new level and get full blown pictures injected into their back) and then there’s a sake sharing ritual which seals bonds between two yakuza men, or two yakuza groups.

Well there you go. Hopefully I’ve convinced you not to go run out and join the yakuza, but if you’re determined to join them you had better look good in a wind suit.

Aren’t they gorgeous??

Japan Fan here with another topic that, like toliets, appears to be normal, but is NOT. Today I bring to you, Japanese vending machines.

The first vending machine in Japan was made out of wood and sold stamps and post cards. Japanese vending machines first hit it big when the 100 yen coin came into distribution in 1967.Japanese vending machines are famous for selling whacky and weird things. Run out of eggs? No prob. Run down to the nearest vending machine. Seriously, no joke. There are vending machines that sell: eggs, umbrellas, name card printers, bets for horse races, hot ramen, popcorn, rice, phone recharging stations, cigarettes, fishing bait, toliet paper, (to go with those toilet paper-less new fangled toilets) flowers, subway tickets, flight insurance, fried food, liquor, cameras, film, recycling machines, porn, underwear, bras, ice cream, beetles and dry ice. WHEW.

There have actually been lawsuits over Japanese vending machines. (Some sick guys set up vending machines that supposedly supplied underwear that were used by high school girls. The police tried to arrest them but couldn’t find any law against it so they finally made them shut down the vending machines by saying they had no proof the product was actually at one point used by high school girls, thus lying to their customers.)

Japan actually has so many vending machines it is estimated that there is one vending machine for every 23 people. Keep in mind Japan has over 100 million people. That’s a lot of vending machines.

Well, that’s Japanese vending machines 101! You can find more pictures and even weirder things sold in vending machines if you google “Japanese vending machines” Happy trails!

Okay. So far we’ve talked about toilets, the arts and the language. What’s next? Fashion!!

Today we’ll take a look at the infamous Ganguro style! It was a fashion popular with Japanese girls in the ’90s.

A Ganguro girl would fake bake her way to extremely tan skin year round. (Usually an attractive shade of pumpkin color, and might I add: skin cancer by age 30?) Next they would bleach their hair to a blonde/orange/silver color. (Perfect match with the orange-ish skin.) Some of the girls would buy blue colored contacts, and to finish this eye catching look a Ganguro girl would wear pastel eye shadow, silver pink lipstick and plastic sticky jewels on her face. The amount of make up varied from girl to girl, depending how devote they were to the style. The extremists would wear the make up almost like face paint. (Looking at them you could mistake them as a Broadway actress in costume or some sort of tanned clown.)

In addition to their interesting facial make up, these girls often wore bright colors, platform shoes and a lot of rings and bracelets. They also used a lot of slang and were generally portrayed negatively by the media. (Many Japanese books have the main female character picked on by clownish looking Ganguro girls.)

The Ganguro girls were generally fans of hip hop and attracted attention to themselves (because really who could miss a fake baked clown sitting next to them?) because they thought it was the ultimate way of self expression. They adopted this fashion for the attention. This style is now rarely seen and has been replaced with the “Goth Lolita” look, which we’ll examine later.

This is probably the only picture on the internet where a Japanese girl is not doing the traditional “V” or peace sign pose.

Konnichwa readers! (Good afternoon)

Japan Fan here with another delightful topic about the Japanese culture: toilets. Yes, be alarmed and be afraid; Japanese toilets are weird looking and difficult to operate.

Scary looking huh? I’m not going to go into detail about using these babies, but to answer your question yes, yes you do squat over the toilet as you go. (And we wonder why the Japanese are so athletic.)

One thing to remember is that a lot of the public bathrooms do not have toilet paper. Oh joy. However a common practice in Japan is to have girls standing on street corners promoting a business/product by handing out small packets of tissues. Yep, you get to use those instead of toilet paper, so try to keep some handy at all times.

If you are using the bathroom in a Japanese home you’ll probably see several pairs of slippers inside the bathroom. Yes, you should use those to walk to two feet to the toilet. It’s a Japanese custom/way of culture that I’ll get into later.

However, don’t freak out TOO much about the toilets. Western style toilets are the norm in houses/apartment buildings, and even in the cities a good portion of the bathrooms have both kinds of toilets. (Most of the hotels use western toilets)

BUT be careful when using any toilet in Japan. Japan, the electronic capital of the world, lives up to its name by having electronic toilets that will self-wash and do pretty much anything a maid can do. Be careful when pressing the buttons or you’ll get yourself sprayed with water or cleaner. The directions for the high tech toilets will most likely be in Japanese, so you may want to ask for help if you’re unsure about what button to press. (Better to be safe then sprayed.)

That’s all for today, happy toilet trails!