Wacky Wednesdays!

Forget the weekend -- everyone at CJS looks forward to Wednesdays. Everyone gets out at 11:00, and there are no more classes for the rest of the day. Today I went to Osu, which is the "young" area of town. Lots of shlocky clothing and ridiculous shops. Today's results?

I am currently listening to a band called Bullshit. The picture of the band on the disc showed them all wearing cowboy hats and snarling. It was only 500 yen, so I figured, why not?

If you've ever heard the Pixies' "Silver", the entire CD pretty much sounds like that -- punk rock with a country backbeat and steel guitar solos. It wasn't what I was expecting, but for 500 yen I'll take it. A single by a more popular band in that store cost 800. PS - one of the songs totally sounds like "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything".

Before I left for Japan my grandfather gave me a nice chunk of money to buy a kimono. I bought a yukata (the outer layer) in Kyoto and bought the obi (sash) and tie for it today...for significantly less than what I was given (score!)

We also went to a nearby doujinshi shop. Doujinshi is independently produced manga; they're usually about popular anime, manga, or movies. Copyright infringement? Absolutely. Also, the stories are usually "slash" (same-sex erotic pairings.) At Mandarake there was a large selection -- even RPS (Real Person Slash) -- Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean, anyone? I got a Boromir/Aragorn manga. I also got some souvenirs for a certain Harry Potter fan and a certain Mario fan.

When I asked for the Harry Potter section, the clerk smiled at me in a "Oh -- of course you'd look for Harry Potter" kind of way. Later, when I asked her if there was a section for Disney or Mario, the conversation went like this:

"My friend likes this stuff, so...do you have any Disney or Nintendo characters?"
"Nintendo?!"
"He doesn't like it as porn! I just think it'd be a good joke."
"Oh...well...I think we have some Super Smash stuff this way."

I also found something called "Girls Only" in the "by-and-for-girls girl on girl" section. This was my mistaken thought process: "Well, if it's made by women, it can't be as horrendous as the regular stuff. Might as well give it a go."

After I paid for the book, I joined my friends who were still browsing. I opened the shopping bag and paged through the book (most books in Japan are shrink-wrapped) -- and immediately began to dry-heave. I handed the book to one of my friends. When they were ready to check out, one of my friends realized she had misplaced the manga she wanted, so she want back and got a different copy. As we were leaving, my bag set off the barcode detector.

So not only was I feeling mildly disgusted with myself for buying raunchy, raunchy hentai, but now I had to explain that I wasn't a shoplifter, since saying I accidentally put my friend's book in my bag by mistake. Fortunately, they believed me eventually. Anyways, I'm thinking it's best if I don't go back to Mandarake, but I recommend it if you're into doujinshi or laughing. Or narsty hentai.

As for the book, I "read" it when I got home. I thought I'd give you guys a play-by-play as a joke, but it's actually not funny. At all. It seems to me that the Japanese view sex as an icky but necessary thing (I wish I knew why -- they love eating nato and that shit is like eating baked beans and jizz). So most depicitons of sex in porn (regardless of who's involved) looks a) painful, b) really goopy, and c) is usually against someone's will.

Here's the first story in the anthology: a manager at a tennis club has a crush on one of the tennis players. The tennis player is sleeping with her coach, but when she finds out the coach is also sleeping with one of his other students, she gets pissed. The next scene shows the manager hanging out in the locker room.

Here's how this would go if it were an American story (Mom, Dad, don't think too hard about how I know this): A) manager walks in on tennis player crying, "kisses" her tears away; B) tennis player confesses love to manager, since she realized she's not that into dudes anyway or C) manager comes on to player. They have rough sex on the locker room floor. Maybe with a tennis racket.

Here's how it actually ends: turns out manager masturbates with the tennis player's racket and clothing when she's not around. Tennis player walks in on her and begins to spank her with the racket, then forces the racket into places where manager was putting it anyway. In the end, tennis player becomes manager's BDSM dom.

The next story was even more bizarre.

It's not like the majority of these were necessarily disturbing, it just begs the question: why? Seriously -- who thinks of this stuff?

Guess I'll go back to that Aragorn/Boromir slash.