A Charitable Heart

Soooo...I was watching TV the other night and something totally awesome was on...Topless pictures for charity!!

This is Chinatsu Wakatsuki.


She is a Japanese Idol. She is young, and cute, and apparently completely clueless about reality.

She got involved in a charity drive to raise money to build schools in India. A very laudable venture, indeed, and certainly I can't fault it. So, to raise the money for these young needy childrean, what idea did her managers come up with?
This!


(One of three t-shirts--another has a back shot...she's got a nice...back...)

They put bare-ass pictures of her on t-shirts and sold them at events where people could come out, buy a naked pictiure of her, and shake her hand. Brilliant!

But you want to know the best part? In the middle of the first even she broke down crying, overcome by the fact that 2000 people came out in the rain to buy t-shirts.

With her naked picture on them.

From her, personally.

Shocking, huh? I mean, 2000 socially awkward men, in the largest city in the world, lined up to buy a t-shirt featuring the bare ass of a hot young girl, which they can stare at while shaking that same young girl's hand?

I'd cry, too. Click Here to read the rest.

Done it!!!!!

The move is over, for the most part. We have a new place, and though we aren't compleetly unpacked, we are now living comfortably in our spacious new place.

It was exhausting, and we put off packing until the last minute so it wasn't all that well done, but it was done. The movers worked their asses off, so I felt bad that we got such a low price--one guy carried our 100 pound air conditioner up four flights of stairs by himself. He earned himself twice his pay just for that....

As for the new place, here's the view from my PC chair...


Yep. The sea. Not two minutes walk. Could be worse. Yes indeedy.
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Moving SUCKS.

I hate moving house. HATE HATE HATE HATE it.

So gues what I'm doing this week?

I can't wait to move into the new place, though, especiall since my mother-in-law suddenly decided to move in with use last Saturday. So now our tiny two room aparmtnet has three people in it. but it's actually not too bad. She's very, very happy to be out of her last situation, and my wife is very, very happy to be able to help out--as am I--and so things are all warm and fuzzy at the moment. Let's hope they stay that way.

And the new place will include a room all of my very own, and I plan to take major advantage of that. I'm buying some tools and putting together a little workshop to start making things. Nothing major, just maybe razor racks or straight scales....but still, I love the idea of making stuff.

Of course, the things I already make, stories, still stay out of reach. I got a rejection email for my last submission, but the editor did say it made it to the final round of consideration, so that's some encouragement. I guess maybe I need to work on it some more. *Sigh*

I do need to write, I know that, but...so much is going on in my head it's hard to tell the signal from the noise sometimes.
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Oh Wow...

So, I DO have two blogs. Sorry about that.

There is news in the land of the Rising Jim...Lots of it. Maybe I should write it down...

Perhaps the biggest news is, my wife and I are rather spontaneously moving. As in, we are moving because my wife decided she wanted to live in the place she randomly found on the internet. Yeah. That kind of spontaneous.

To be perfectly fair, the place she randomly found on the internet is fantastic...4 bedrooms (one with full tatami matting), a huge living/dining/kitchen, walk in closets and a real live HALLWAY...all for less than $200 more than we're paying for our current matchbox. It also has a balcony overlooking the beach...So yeah, can't really complain. Except for the whole, packing up all our belongings and taking them across the street (did I mention the new place is across the street?).

We've found movers, so I don't have to carry our big-ass refrigerator down 4 flights of stairs and up another 4, which is good. It'll be nice when it's over, and we have our new sofa and kotatsu and TV all set up...And I have my own room with PC and razor workshop (my wife doesn't know about that one...).

Thngs will be good, I think.

In other news, my wife is becoming more and more domestic...she's baking bread now.

See?

I love it. Fresh baked bread filling the house with its homey scent...Man, feels like Kansas!

And, of course, there's the economic crisis that is threatening my work, but hey--let's stay positive!
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Hot Lava!

So I'm back from my vacation in Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture, on Kysuhu Island. Aso is a volcanic area, nestled in grasslands ripe for farming. And it's VOLCANIC!

We drove down in the new car, with my Mother-in-law, Brother-in-law and his daughter; it was a nice drive, made nicer by the car. Damn, I'm glad we bought that.

It only took a couple of hours, really to get in the area, and it is beautiful. Grasslands leading up to very dramatic mountains.
Here's the plain around the mountain:


It's dotted with cattle and sheep farms, and Aso Jersey Milk products are famous--got some great caramel!

Then there was the volcano. Aso mountain is an active volcano--not as in lava spewing around, but it tremors frequently and there is always steam boiling up from the caldera lake. Like this:







The water, when it was visible through the steam, was a brilliant blue-green. I wish we could have seen more, but the other three crater viewing areas were closed due to dangerous levels of volcanic gases. Sweet!

After the volcano, we spent the night at a very cool onsen. ON top of the classic hotsprings and Japanese style rooms, they had free Karaoke, free carnival events for the kids, massage chairs, gourmet dinners and wireless internet. Fabulous place...

And on the next day, we went to"Cuddly Dominion."


Yes, "Cuddly Dominion". Not "Cuddly Kingdom", oh no, that would make sense. Oh well. Japan.


So anyway, this place is a zoo famous for it's star Chimpanzee, Pan-kun, and his bulldog buddy James. They're on TV, and they really are quite clever. We watched their show, and the ladies played with some cats, and we watched a miniature pig race, then after an overpriced lunch we went home.

Oh, and we saw BEARS!





Enough bears to choke a moose...and tear its head off. These bears are cute, though, begging for food. And of course, this being Japan, the zoo capitalized on the cuteness of feeding bears and sells whole frozen chickens for people to toss to the begging bears...
Isn't that just so CUDDLY???

Also, for some reason, there's a fantastic temple in the middle of the zoo.



Inexplicable, but awesome.
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Tis The Season!

Ahh, winter in Japan. Not a snowflake in sight, and people lining up for fried chicken. I love it!


Tradition. Big word. It's hard to talk about tradition in Japan, because I can't tell the difference between tradition, fad, and habit--I'm in a prety isolated situation, here, and my wife is not necessarily a representative sample of Japanese society. BUT...

One thing I can tell you. A Happy Kentucky Christmas is the BEST tradition in Japan.

I can't tell you how it started for sure. Apparently, the story is that when KFC first came to Japan, it was Christmas time and their campaign cenetered around happy White People (tm) eating fried chicken in front of the Christmas tree. The campaign must have been very successful, becuase it resulted in two things: A very successful KFC in Japan, and a big equal sign between Christmas and Fried Chicken.

Japan now eats chicken on Christmas. Not just KFC--grocery store chicken, convenience store chicken, everywhere sells fried chicken. However, KFC is the big winner...people line up for hours, around the block. They buy $50 roasted chickens. They make reservations a month in advance for their Chicken buckets. (They..I should say We. I am a JOYFUL participant). And on the big day, they hire traffic contollers to guide thecars into their tiny, 12 space parking lots.

I'm making NONE of this up.

Chicken on Christmas. Yum YUM!

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It's just WRONG

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in a while. Sorry, but stuff gets in the way. You know, life, shaving, naps...

Well, I felt I had to get back at this, because I need to get back into my writing and bitching about Japan. And boy, do I have a big one for you today.

Ok, here's the deal. The thing that people just don't really talk about when they talk about Japan. Japan, and I mean as a general society, does not particularly frown on pedophilia.

There, I said it. It's been freaking me out for more than 4 years. And even though it is illegal, and the police occasionally bust some shop for selling kiddy porn, and parents of course are mortified by the idea, Japan as a society saturates children with sexuality like nothing I have ever seen.

Don't believe me? Ok, Quick Quiz!
The following two magazine covers are from popular weekly Japanese magazines. One is an adult magazine aimed towards middle aged men; one is a weekly anthology of comics aimed at elementary school boys. Can you guess which is which?

A:


B:


Of course you can! Because the comic one has comics. But the awesome part? That weekly men's magazine, which features full frontal nudity and reviews of adult movies? All of the models on that front cover there are UNDER 15. It says so right on the cover. That's the selling point.

Yes, they're fully clothed, but...

My point is, children are intensely sexualized in Japan. Both in adults media and children's media. Comics aimed at elementary school girls feature graphic rape scenes, usually involving a student and teacher, which mark the beginning of a loving relationship. Kids are given breast growth chewing gum. Yeah. Like this:



When I walked into the adult video section of my local media and games shop, there were three foot tall mannequins dressed in elementary school kids' uniforms. In a porn shop in Tokyo, I walked in and saw a video of 8 year old girls in the park, with close ups of them eating ice cream bars and bananas. This is not underground, this is not in some seedy back alley, this was the 5th floor of an electronics shop in Akihabara.


Until 1999, the legal age of consent in Japan was 13. Now, it is 18, but it is clear that the law and the social consciousness are in some serious lag...

I could go on, about compensated dates and meeting bars, but I won't because I feel dirty. Ugh.

Click Here to read the rest.