Something Strange About Japanese Breasts

That is, I think.

They are smaller than they claim, size-wise. What a woman claims to be a C-cup would barely muster a B back home. Half of the boob size seems to be in the padding of the bra, which is both generous and ludicrous.

In the summer of 1989 I spent nearly every afternoon making love to Becky Huckster in her family's granny flat while ostensibly helping her cram for her end of year Geography exams. As for what the Japanese would make of her huge bulging bazongas, with those great hairy nipples sticking out like an old man's thumbs, and wriggling blue veins spreading across her chest like lines on a road map, it is impossible to imagine.

Why are there so many trannies on Japanese TV?

Japanese beauty: vagina not necessary




Talks shows. Game shows. Commercials. The Japanese queens, 'okama' are there in strength. Miwa Akihiro. Maeda Ken. Ikko. Haruna Ai. Ayana Tsubaki. Kaba-chan. Can't ignore them. Once you find out they're men, that is.

Some of them are hot. It's a bit disconcerting when you find out for the first time, when your girlfriend informs you.

Then you notice that the okama are excessively feminine, exaggeratedly, absurdly, comedically feminine. They're there to be laughed at, with the possible exception of the old battleaxe Miwa-san. Their value on TV is to provide variety, be laughed at, to amuse.

But what's going on here? Do Japanese people really believe all gays are trannies? Well, I think many do. In Japan, being gay is not about same-sex desire. It's about gender orientation, about being as ridiculously feminine as possible: same-sex desire is about crossdressing. The idea that same-sex attraction involves some kind of transgenderism or desire to be like the opposite sex is constantly reinforced in the media. To be gay is to be a queen. There are no straight-acting gay men.

But of course there are. They're ubiquitous. A casual aquaintance with Japanese night life will gain the average western man more 'Hershey Highway' invitations than an evening in an Oxford Street steam club.

Or hang on...maybe that's just me.

Anyway, gay sex is widely and easily available, and I personally think it is only a small exaggeration to say that Japanese men are constantly shagging each other. Japan is steeped in gayness.

Only it's hidden. Most of the men are married. And most, I suspect, would deny that they are gay. After all, to be gay is to be a cross-dresser. What these guys do is just sex. And as long as it is hidden, it is not frowned upon. Nobody minds. Kind of like sex in general in Japan. As long as sexual practices do not threaten the legitimacy of marriage and household, they are accommodated by Japanese society.

Which is a good thing. Sexuality is not the political battleground it is in the West. Homosexuality doesn't carry the baggage it does back home. There is little discrimination, and the kind of open hatred that you might come across in some Christian or Muslim communities is just completely absent here. There are no 'God Hates Fags' groups in Japan.

That's not to say the portrayal of all gay men as screaming queens is not troubling. The visibility of these men has not created the space for individuals to 'come out' in actual life- the development of a personal identity for gay men who express 'normal' gender identities is problematic. This, of course, contributes to the hidden nature of the phonomenon. But Japanese culture is not confrontational, and many gay men in Japan feel little need to 'assert' their rights. As one gay man said, "For me in Tokyo, subscribing to the concept of 'gay rights' is like carrying around someone else's baggage."

But the real question remains unanswered:

Why are there so many goddamn queens on Japanese TV?

Starbucks rocks

Best of a bad bunch, madly overpriced but always hot girls to have a perve at.

They know what they are doing- they know what people really want it sweet. Ordering a frappacino is like ordering a cup of sugar with a little coffee in it. Great stuff, a combo made with humans in mind.

The Prime Minister's wife is a space cadet

That's right. A certified fruitloop.

Yukio Hatoyama, the incoming prime minister, has an interesting wife. She is emerging as eccentric counterpoint to her boring as guano husband. While Yukio talks of international relations, Miyuki talks of interplanetary travel and...eating the sun:

"I eat the sun. Like this. Yum yum." Raising her hands in an interview and pretending to tear pieces off the sun. "It gives me enormous energy".

Well, nuclear fusion is likely to do that.

And in her book Very strange things I've encountered she related being abducted by aliens some 20 years ago and taken to Venus, which was..."a very beautiful place, very green."

She also reckons she knew Tom Cruise in a past life. I wonder if he remembers.

But I say bring it on. We need a dose of the alternative in Japan.

The Creepyness of Morning Musume

Morning Musume. Ubiquitous. Popular. Creepy as hell.

A no-apologies, no-holds-barred-made-for paedophiles girls band. Though most of the girls are mid to late teens, they can be as young as 12. They dance and sing sappy, cliched manufactured pop, wearing skimpy clothing and made up to the hilt; and they all have that "rabbit in the headlamps" deliberately brainless and defenseless look, designed to appeal to middle-aged paedophiles who are unable to relate to real women and resort to a ficitonalized semi-pubescent fantasy.

Formed in 1998, the name means "Morning Daughter", which is disturbing enough. Their biggest hit, "Love Machine", was sung by 13-year-old Maki Goto in 1999. Which is even creepier. The girls are kept young, as after a few years they "graduate", and new girls are recruited, so that the group survives and stays perpetually young.
All in all, I think it is safe to say that Morning Musume are not Japan`s noblest achievement.

This `band` could only exist in Japan, a society where paedophilia is tolerated and even encouraged, in that not only are girls sexualised from an early age, but adult women are expected to have a childish attitude to sexuality and retain it to maturity (forty-year-olds in pigtails anyone?)

If you have any doubts about the fan base of Morning Musume you can check out the audience leaving after one of their shows. Sends chills up my spine. No teenage girls in the audience; plenty on stage.




If all the semen pumped out from those guys the evening after the concert was collected, you could fill a swimming pool.

And then...you could drown the girls in it. How about that for a suggestion?

Shopping in downtown Yokohama

It amazes me that people can actually enjoy this. Then again, maybe it`s just a gender difference...because department stores are made for women...

...and hundreds of tons of Chinese-made junk, made en masse in factories and sold with 1000% markups. And these tons of junk are being displayed...by women; examined by women; bought by women; sold by women; wrapped by women; carried around in labelled plastic bags by women. Thousands of them, dressed and made up to the hilt, "picking out the trash that women are so curiously fond of," as Orwell wrote.

Michael Jackson is dead in Tokyo too

Thank God. It`s times like these, however, when I am happy I live here and not, say, in Sydney, where it would be impossible to escape the hype over the death of a paedophile who could do the moonwalk.

Apparently when the paramedics were working on him, trying to get his heart going again, they kept singing "Got to be starting something..."

Trying not to die in Disneyland

Last week I was dragged, kicking and screaming, to Disney Land. 30 minutes on the train. An hour on a bus. Hours in queues. Overpriced food. 80 bucks Aussie just to get in.
This was a traumatic experience. Obviously, no normal educated person could enjoy Disneyland. But I took it particularly harshly. Not because the very existence of Disneyland is an affront to human decency, an exercise in disgusting vomit-inducing sweetness, a land of fakery and creepily-sexual fetish make-believe, a lurid homage to all that is superficial in human nature. Not even because the success of Disneyland in Japan is a disturbing testimony to the overwhelming infantilism of Japanese society.

Or at least, not only because of those reasons. I do, after all, live in Japan and desire to accept the good with the bad.

Going to Disneyland was specifically traumatic because it made me, for the first time, afraid of death...in Disneyland. I was possessed by the terrifying thought, not of death itself, but by the thought that I might die in Disneyland. It was unbearable. To be born on the wings of youth and poetry and hope and expectation...not to mention Metallica and George Orwell and Shinkichi Takahashi and the fucking Silmarillion...just to be remembered by friends and family as having died on a visit to Disneyland...any fate, any horrible destiny, would be preferable to that.

Apart from trying not to die, the rest of the experience was relatively painless, just an exercise in grim endurance, like waiting in line at the bank, which is pretty much what you are doing for 90 per cent of the time anyway, only instead of a bank teller at the end you go on a rollercoaster. By the way, 90 per cent of the time is not an exaggeration; the thing you can always count on at Tokyo Disneyland is 3 hour queues.

My girlfriend had a great time, however. Loved the "atmosphere". Which is of course, the real reason I went and, indeed, the only thing that could convince to go through with it. That`s what a relationship is, I guess. Compromise.



Disneyland: Go only if it will get you laid.

Skin Whitening Cream?

This one made me a bit uneasy. I found my girlfriend using this cream and idly read the spiel on the back seeing it was in English. I was shocked to find that it claimed to be skin whitening cream. Does my girl so hate her own ethnicity that she wants to change her skin colour? I decided to study the cream more thoroughly. The description on the tube is remarkable for these two assertions:

"lightens skin tone by healing visible wrinkles" and

"prevents skin aging through effective whitening"

The claims are conspicuous for their implausability and incompatibility.
Paler skin is the result in the first case while in the second it has become the cause. Curious. Good trick if you can manage it.

My lover on the other hand claims total innocence. She got the cream, she said, because it is cheap and effective. It contains both foundation and ...something in Japanese that girls put on top of the foundation. Furthermore, she didn't know it claims to be lightening cream and didn't buy it as such. Being unable to read English, she was bothered not at all by the description on the tube.

So there.

My thoughts on wedding customs

When thinking of the wedding ceremony, I have always been dismissive of traditional customs. I have no respect for a ritual designed to glorify the superficial aspects of relationship over the substantial (why is there no emphasis of the wedding night, for example? No photos, videos, public toasts or speeches?)

I have no desire to sacrifice one of the most important days of my one and only life to empty ritual, lining the pockets of every hypocritical money-hungry parasite living off the vanity and earnestness of innocents in the process. Thousands of dollars for wedding photos? Those people should be shot. I want nothing to do with matching china, bridal veil styles and table centrepieces. In fact, not only would I eschew traditional wedding customs, I would like to demonstrate my contempt for mainstream culture by avoiding human practices of all kinds, even those which serve to separate the human species from our closest primate relatives.

"I would like to get married naked", I told my girlfriend suddenly.

"Why?", she asked, looking puzzled.