Hello again from an extremely enjoyable Anime Expo, which is still going on here in “Animeheim, CA.” We’re having lots of fun, meeting customers and shaking hands and showing off a lot of our cool products — X-Change 3 and Enzai are flying off the table, along with our T-shirts, Domo-kun and other items. If you are in the area, do try to make plans to come down to the show — it rocks like no other event in the animeverse. We’ll be here through Tuesday!
I’ve had many kinds of culture shock since I moved to Japan back in 1991. Vending machines selling beer, eggs and rice (as well as a few unmentionables). Advanced technology and old, dilapidated buildings set right beside each other. Squid on pizza. But when I married my wife and made plans to come live into her house — since I am a son-in-law who did not take the last name of my wife, I am a “Masuo” (mah-suu-OH), named after the husband in the long-running anime Sazae-san, who is in the same situation as me — I had another shock: the toilet in her house was a bo-ton (ボットン、pronounced bo-[small pause]-TON) (a “small tsu” if you know what that is), essentially a sceptic tank with a great hole over it. You squatted over the hole — a Japanese-style squatting toilet, of course, not a sit-down toilet as we would have in the U.S. — and did your business, waiting for several seconds until you heard the bo-ton (splat) sound. I wasn’t too thrilled with living in a house with an old-style toilet like this, and laid down the law: if I was going to live there, we were going to have to “reform” (what they call remodeling) the house and put in a modern toilet, which we happily did.
When it comes to fast food hamburgers in Japan, you think of McDonald’s, like most other places in the world. In addition to the usual hamburgers and “Biggu Makku” that you’d imagine, they sell Chicken McNuggets, (which are originally based on Japanese tempura), Teriyaki McBurgers, and the new Shrimp McSandwich, shrimp pressed into a patty and batter-fried, which is kind of gross to me. But according to many fans, the better fast food experience can be had at MOS Burger, the #2 Japanese hamburger joint. Established on March 12, 1972, MOS Burger set out to bring a higher standard of quality to the lowly hamburger, with better quality meat and organically-grown lettuce and tomatoes. Although the MOS in the name might give the occasional gaijin pause, it stands for “Mountain, Ocean, Sun” and does not make Japanese people think of moss being scraped off a tree trunk to be put on your burger. Every few months MOS Burger comes up with something new and interesting, like the Curry Naan Dog, a hot dog served on Indian naan bread with curry over the top. Although foreigners in Japan usually like the offerings of MOS Burger, the portions are so small that we usually need to order two sets in order to feel full.
Prime Minister Koizumi, hands down the coolest leader Japan has had in the past few decades, will be stepping down in a couple months, as his five-year term comes to an end. He’s just finished his “sayonara tour” of the U.S. where he went with President Bush to Graceland to sing a duet of “Love Me Tender” with the President. A noted fan of Elvis, the Japanese Prime Minister thanked the U.S. for the great songs of The King.
