Toilets in Japan

No time for a real post, but I HAD to post this picture.

First, in brief:
1) I'm moving to tokyo
2) no other news that I am ready to report yet, but hell, its gonna be a big move so lets leave it at that.

Now, for the ongoing saga of the Toilet Report, a new discovery in the world of Japanese toilets. At my ex-roommate's house, I saw this:

THIS is a control panel that hangs on the wall next to the toilet. I circled and labeled one of the buttons in red. Do you see what it says? Thats right. The bide has a MASSAGE button. I have heard of massage chairs and massage mattresses (wheeee!), but a toilet?
I asked my roommate about it, and he said, you know, I have never tried that before....
I told him he probly shouldn't; he has five roommates and that could get a little, well, disgusting.

Ecch!

Mine!
Erich von Meatleg

Happy New Year!

Wha-? Huh? It's freaking February?
Time can sure fly when you are busy going into debt, doing nothing.
Anyway, here is my annual 年賀状 (nengajo - New Years Card).
This is the Year of the Rat.


Compare this card to last year's card, and the year before that.
See a trend? That's right, each year the new year's animal kills the old year's animal.
Cause that's the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh uh-huh).

I'll try to post more often. I might BACK post, so that I can add things in the December month that I wanted to add.
Ta ta-
Erich von Meatleg

Halloween Hangover...

No time to write a real post, so here are a couple of pictures from a halloween lesson i taught for my six year old student Takuma. He is awesome. We made jack-O-Lantern masks! No, really, I am wearing a mask, I swear!!!


Ta ta,
Erich von Maatleg

My New Favorite Restaurant!

Some of you may remember my favorite bar, but I have just found my new favorite restaurant!!!! Walking down the street, looking for a Subway (sandwich shop) I instead found this appetizing place to eat:

That's right, it wasn't Subway, but you can probably get a FOOT LONG here...

Also on the menu, tossed salad, reach around pork, and teabag oley!

Apparently this place is Italian, but I wouldn't EAT THE SAUSAGE!

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

New Site!!!

yeah yeah yeah,
i know youre thinking, "Erich you never write anymore O Great One! Please edify us with your avalanches of sticky wisdom!!!"

well, ive just been busy...
im making a new site for money for example.
for the 三重県のバレエスクール (or of a ballet school of Mie county)
its REALLY simple, but the pictures look nice.


MINE!!!
Erich von Meatleg

I'm watching you....

New site!!!

been working on this for months now....
its finally up
Ocean Boom DOT COM

it now has a new music player at the top courtesy of my friends PETE and NAO as well as a new way to display band pictures....
i love it

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

Day at the Beach

so the first part of the day, was going to the beach early in the morning with a really, freakin' gorgeous (married) hungarian lady. we met at the TV station at 8am, and went with the TV crew to a beach near the Osaka airport. there we filmed a scene walking on the beach, pretending to here a noise coming from across the sea. my only picture of the two of us together is a little blurry because its from my cell phone...(accidently deleted my picture that i took on my real camera)

then we went back to the station, and she (Kate) went home. i stuck around to meet the black mayonaise guy s(BMG) and decided to go to nara to shoot another scene with them later. i waited around with the BMG to see them do a green screen shoot so they could put computer graphics in the background. the BGM were pretty funny, dancing around.

the story of the commercial is, one of the BMGs is painted green to look like a big buhdda statue, and he is very sad. so he drinks the Oronamin C drink, and gets soooooo happy that he screams with joy. the scream is so loud however, that its frightening and painful to the ears of anyone close to him, and me and my freakin' gorgeous (married) hungarian lover can hear it across the ocean.

i think there will be more than one version, because the third part of the day was spent going to the magical, holy city of nara. nara is full of parks with buhdda statues and it is well known for its VERY tame deer, that you can feed and are particularly beau-

well, they are tame anyway. and where there are tons of deer, there are also tons of

i arrived with the TV crew and the BMGs, and then we were joined by about a dozen students of a specialty "talent" school where they are studying comedy, TV announcement and radio DJing. in nara, i was with them in the background helping to keep the deer in the picture by feeding them and acting just like regular tourists.


in the next picture:

the director is on the right, and one of the BMGs (Yoshida) is in the middle with the black plaid shirt. the buhdda statue BMG (Kosugi) is in green here:


the camera guys kept feeding the deer all of the "deer wafers" they could eat to keep them in view. they were well fed on this day.

while shooting, invariably i discovered how REALLY famous these guys are. if ONE kid saw one of them, a huge cround would gather in the wings of the shoot:

and it wouldnt dissapate until the guys took an "autograph break". there were four or five breaks in the five hours of shooting in nara, and the kids were always jumping with joy.

since i have posted some pics on my japanese blog tons of people have left comments on it saying that they cant believe i got to meet these guys. apparently they are as famous as the Seinfeld troop would be in the US, or Mnoty Python in the UK and they have their own show as well as a lot of guest appearances on other variety shows...


overall it was a fun day and i hope to be able to get a recording of the commercial up on youtube soon. i saw a couple of my old students and told them that i was gonna be in this commercial and they were freaking out too. here is another pic of some random kids waiting for autographs:

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

PS - if you like the little effects i have been putting on my pictures, you can get the same software i use to do it here: its called Picturesque

Fun with deer and TV commercials

This is what a shoot looks like in the magical city of 奈良 (Nara) in Japan, where the deer (but not the antelope) play pickpocket and fertilize the ground that you just realized you stepped in. Had a great time recording the commercial today. Did it in two different locations, on a beach near the Osaka International Airport, and in the old, temple laden city of Nara. The Black Mayonaise guys were great. Really fun guys. I'll give a full report later, too damn tired now. Enjoy the picture!
Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

PS - That guy painted green is supposed to be a Buhdda statue, and if you watched the video two entries ago he is the guy on the left.

Going to the beach...

Just got a call from the guys I am seeing tomorrow at the TV station.
I'm meeting them at the station and then we are going to the beach to record a commercial....
So it isnt for a TV show persay, should be fun....

Black Mayonaise

No, this isn't the name of some new (or should I say reallllllly old and ripe) Japanese delicacy that I find disgusting. This is the name of a Japanese 漫才 (Manzai - or comedy duo) team. I tried to find a video of theirs with English subtitles, but couldn't. These guys are pretty funny. This particular joke-discussion is based on te fact that the dude on the right is 32, and has a new girlfriend who is 18 (sound like anone you know? ) He is really stressing out and is trying to figure out what to TALK about with her or DO with her what wont make him seem old....

This information interests you the most because, well, its a long story.

I got an call the other day from the bass player in the band that I have now apparently inherited (see previous entry).
On Monday, I got a call from Kazu and he told me to send me a picture of myself. I had no idea what it was for so I sent him this picture...

I really didn't know what it was for, so I thought it was maybe for the website which still has the old singer on there.
The next day, Kazumasa sent me an email with Japanese that was kinda broken, so it was a little hard to understand.
What I understood was:
"It hasn't fully been decided yet but, can you get up early Friday morning?"
" Oronamin Commercial"
" Black Mayonaise"
and "perform together"

I was like, huh? The band might perform with these guys? And he said, no, just YOU.

So, I will apparently meet and record something like a drink commercial with these guys for Japanese TV.
I think. Not really sure, but I'm gonna wear a band t-shirt just in case I can sneak in some kind of self promotion...

The biggest problem is, it will take me an hour (plus some) to get to the TV station, and I gotta be there at EIGHT IN THE FUCKING MORNING!!!! Lately I have been going to sleep at five AM, and it's almost two AM now so I guess I better start getting my sleep schedule adjusted...

I'll keep you informed,
Ta ta
Erich von Meatleg

PS - If you want a sneak preview of the new site I am building, click here. the oceanboom.com 2.0 will have a new blog engine and photo gallery display so it will be faster to post articles and it will look better. OH, and my friend NAO (from Dever/Tokyo, see the previous previous entry) built me a nice flash player so you can hear music from some Japanese bands.

Late video posting

For those of you that still havent seen it....
This is a video of me singing.....On May 3rd...in Osaka

I'm filling in for some friends of mine. The singer songwriter "Pete" from the Osaka band *fna* is in the USA right now and Im helping their band out by singing for them so they dont have to cancel gigs. The rest of the band is Japanese, and yes, the drummer is a hot chick. I included a little Japanese banter with the crowd including me telling them that the band has T-shirts, CDs and two kinds of underwear for sale (new and used)...

I like these songs, but they aren't mine... Hear the real singer at http://fnarock.com

The first song we did is called "Brigette" ( a tribute to Brigette Bardot - Google her) and the next song is called "Lights Out" ...


I interviewed these guys when I the original singer was still here, and you can hear the interview at my music site:
http://oceanboom.com
Look in the podcsat section and *fna* is the fourth, most recent podcast.....

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

Degrees of Separation

Much has been said of the Six degrees of separation, and here is another story that makes the world seem very small.

Short story: i met two people in different states of the USA (about 900 miles apart) that DON'T know each other, and their FATHERS are good friends and live about a five minutes walk from each other.

Long story:

Springfield, Missouri: 1997
while standing in line at the school cafeteria of what is now called Missouri State University (when i went there it was called Southwest Missouri State University), i heard two pretty Japanese girls speaking to each other in Japanese. i stated talking to them, trying out the japanese i had studied in high school. one of them, Emiko Aoyagi, became a good friend, Japanese teacher and roommate. We had a lot of fun and helped each other a lot until she went back to japan in 1999. I visited her family for the first time in December of 2001, staying for about three weeks at her parents house in Kanazawa-Bunko (bout 30 minutes outside of Tokyo). She had a beautiful baby about three years ago with a nice guy from India named Sureeni and spends most of her time raising him now.

Emiko and her Family:

The Aoyagi's, Emiko's parents:


Denver, Colorado 2002 (ish)
i was looking for a roommate at the same time as my friend Ruben, and he randomly met a Frenchman named Antwan. Antwan randomly made some other french friends at a grocery store or something, and one of the beautiful French gals had a Japanese boyfriend named Nao Ishibashi. Nao lived in the USA a total of about 15 years until he moved back to Japan last year. He is now in Tokyo, living with his parents in Kanazawa-Bunko.
Nao and his dad:


Tokyo, Japan 2007
When I went to the Iron Penis Festival earlier this month (sorry no penis blog yet) I stayed at Nao's house and met his parents. While Nao's father was giving us a tour of the area, I offhandedly asked him if he had any friends named Aoyagi. He said that he did know one person named Aoyagi, and this Aoyagi's daughter had young half-Indian child. My other friends in the car were shocked because I had told them about my friend Emiko on the way to Tokyo. Later, Ishibashi senior drove us over to the Aoyagi's house and surprised them. Turns out that Mr. Aoyagi has been teaching Ishibashi how to make ramen for years.

Circles of connection can be really mind blowing and reinforce the "six degrees of separation" theories that abound in many cultures. It is a small world after all....
Strange huh? Just thought I would share...

Ta ta
Erich von meatleg

Crazy Politics

No time for a real post now, so take a look at this latest you tube sensation. This is a REAL politician named Toyama Koichi that ran for the Prefectual governer of Tokyo "County". Every politician is given equal airtime in Japan to explain their platform, and the TV stations can not edit it and are therefore not responsible for its content. This guy is INSANE! I'm gonna memorize this whole speech for Japanese practice...

The best part is, over 15,000 people VOTED FOR HIM!!!
And they say there is no hope for politics...

Mine,
Erich von meatleg

Iron Penis Fesitval Pics!

Posted some pictures here on Flickr!
Enjoy!

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

Iron Penis Fesitval

My trip to the Iron Penis Festival was fairly successful. I sold about $600 worth of peni and peni postcards, I even sold the peni FLUTE that I made (and we think the buyer was a flamer, so I really hope I filed all of the sharp edgeses smooth enough for him...). Here is a video that I took of the festival CLIMAX, of the three main floats/portable shrines coming back into the main courtyard.

Ta ta,
Erich von Meatleg

PS - the full Penis-bloG should be up by the end of the month...

My next adventure!

Last year, as you know, I managed to make a violin out of steel here in Japan. It was really quite difficult and you can see all of the hard work and effort I put forth in my Violin-Blog.

This year, I will attempt to make something else out of steel....I will make penises. I will make penises to wear, blow on, sit on and ring like a bell. All out of steel. I will be making an official Penis-bloG, much like I did the Violin-Blog so you will all be able to chart my progress during the LONG, HARD journey I will take (puns intended).

Why will I be doing this you ask? For money.
Who will buy these things you ask? People that go to the 金まら祭り(Kana Mara Matsuri) or the Iron Penis Festival in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. Until I can ERECT my own blog (pun DEFINITELY intended), please read about this festival here, here and here, and take a gander at these videos from Youtube:




I love Japan.
More later.

Mine,
Erich von Meatleg

PS - on a non-phallic note, I have started a new blog, just for other Macintosh users so that we can keep track of all of the cool Mac software that we find...
Great Software for Mac OS X

World's bravest (dumbest) underdog...

Not a position I ever want to find myself in.....
Ta ta
Erich von Meatleg

Long time no blog...

yeah, ive been busy. been teaching at a new school for the past month (finished with that as of tomorrow). and trying to study japanese and so on and so forth.

one of the weirdest things to come out of the japan for the past month and a half is this thing:

this is the 外人犯罪裏ファイル - Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu - in english, the "Secret Foreigner Crime Files" or something to that effect. this stupidass magazine is the most blatant, racist propaganda i have seen published in a country outside of wartime. now i specify wartime because when a country is at war, it must villify the enemy at all expense to make them less than human and easier to kill, and this is much easier to do when the enemy is a different race than your side is. one need only go back as far as WWII propaganda to see the best that humanity has to offer in that department. the links i have provided are just US-JAPANESE propanda, not the really hideos Nazi crap.

if wars bring out the best in human nature as far as racism goes, then the publisher of the Secret Foreigner Crime Files must have declared his own war on foreigners in japan. trying to put this in perspective for my friends and family in the US:

if the KKK published a magazine on race relations in america, who would read it? what kind of morons would drop a few bucks down for that kind of enlightenment? maybe an even more important question is, who in their right freakin mind would PUBLISH tripe from such an organization?!?

one has to ask such things in bewilderment when you actually see a magazine like the Secret Foreigner Crime Files, because that is the kind of garbage that the magazine is pushing. along with some purposely distorted statistics and comic sections that graphically illustrate japanese people as the victims of foreign crimes, the magazine displays otherwise innocent pictures of interracial couples kissing in public with things like this in japanese:

HEY, NIGGER, GET YOUR HAND OFF THAT J GIRL’S ASS!!”
(and yes, they did actually write the word "NIGGA-" in japanese)

“YOU BITCHES THINK FOREIGNERS ARE THAT GREAT?!!”
“HEY HEY HEY, NONE OF THAT TIT RUBBING ON THE STREET!!”,
“HEY HEY HEY, GET YOUR HAND OUT OF THAT GIRL’S PUSSY IN PUBLIC!”
“THIS IS JAPAN! GO BACK TO YOUR OWN FUCKING COUNTRY AND DO THAT!!"

and, my personal favorite that highlights the true insecurity of the writer of the magazine:
"WE KNOW JAPANESE GUYS ARE SMALL, BUT..."

pure lunacy. there was a threat of boycotts here started by us foreigners, it got bad press all over the world and we got this crap taken out of the convenience stores where it was being sold. it can still be found on Amazon unfortunately, and will probably continue to be sold now that it has become a collectors item. a milestone in racist history. for more on the contraversy, go to the website of Debito Arudou to get info in english and japanese.

i guess i would like to believe that a great majority of the worlds population is not a horde of xenophobic segreation loving racial purists, but seeing crap like this really makes me wonder. i guess every country has its idiots, and one idiot in this country managed to publish a magazine. at least know we know racists are not all so inbred that they cant read and write. that isnt much of a moral victory however...

ta ta
Erich von Meatleg

Happy MLK Jr. Day

first of all, thanks to all of my friends and family that tolerated/entertained me when i came to the USA. for those of you who didnt get to hang out with me, well, better luck next year...

one of my favorite parts of teaching my kids in middle school is the section about one of my favorite heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. its in the 8th graders text books, and i always bring in my ipod so that they can hear what his voice sounds like. i dont expect that they will understand the details of the speech like "interposition and nullification", but they can hear the phrase "I have a dream" and it makes for a bit of listening practice for them.

here are a couple of videos to celebrate MLK Jr. the first one is a video of his famous "I have a dream" speech. I love not only his message, but the sound and swell of his voice. his command of his vocal capabilities are what made him one of the finest speech givers in American history... anyone interested in hearing more of his voice, should look up the audio book called "a knock at midnight"-it is a collection of his recorded sermons that i really enjoyed listening to even though i would not consider myself very religious.


this next video is from an animated cartoon called "The Boondocks"; inspired by the black artist Aaron McGruder (important to note that he is black or this nex clip might be considered quite racist) who also created the comic strip of the same name. this episode is called "The Return of the King" and it fanatacizes that MLK Jr had not died when he was attacked, but he went into a coma that lasted over thirty years and woke up to be disgusted with what is now popular black culture in the USA. this is the last 6 minutes of the episode wherein King blasts all of those attending a party, which was supposed to be a gathering in King's honor. the creator of the boondocks seems to dislike popular black culture quite a bit, as is evidenced by his fantasy of what King's tirade would sound like.


enjoy...
peace...
more about japan later...

Erich von Meatleg