Madonna Verde eps 1-3

Madonna Verde has a very interesting premise. Rie (Kuninaka Ryoko) had her uterus removed because of cancer. However, she had her eggs frozen so that they could be joined with her husband's seed in a petri dish and implanted into a surrogate mother. However, surrogacy is still very new to Japan and the laws do not recognise it. In other words, Japanese law view the surrogate mother as the true mother.

Rie is an emotionally detached person but she has this strong desire to have a child. Desperate, she convinces her mother, Midori played by Matsuzaka Keiko to carry the child for her. Yup, this is a story about a grandmother who is going to give birth to her grandchild or one could look at it as a story where a woman is going to legally get a sibling who is actually her child. Its interesting stuff and what makes it fun is that Rie is this obsessive in her single mindedness to have her mother be the surrogate and her emotional detachment prevents audience empathy and sort of casts her as a sort of antagonistic character.

For Matsuzaka Keiko, this has to be a dream role for her, playing this mother who would risk pregnancy at 55 in order to grant her daughter's desire. Nagatsuka Kyozo plays this haiku dude, Toshi who's infatuated with Midori, finds out about the plan and has to stand in as the child's father. He is in the other dorama that I really want to watch from this season, Kazoku Hotei. I wonder which dorama was shot first cause he appears frequently in Madonna Verde. Speaking of Kazoku Hotei, no one has uploaded it to d-addicts. The last episode is airing today so hopefully it'll show up at my local dvd shop HK translated.

Hello hot mom to be..

Minami Akira has a supporting role as a 20 year old pregnant gyaru who's boyfriend has left her and she has an admirer who wants to be the father. She's got no future, blah blah blah and is unsure whether to keep the baby. Yawn. Its probably an uplifting story for a country with low birthrate but raising a child costs a lot of $$$ or in this case yen. In the end, its filler plotline and as long as the main story is good, I can't complain.

Katagiri Jin from Quiz Show plays Rei's husband but there's little room for him in the story so far.

With Rie's personality and the illegality of the act, you know its not going to be long before things go crazy. Its got two fun characters in the center of it with Midori and Toshi and I'll be interested to see when a rift forms between Rie and her mom. Come to think about it, what makes Madonna Verde fun is how unlikable Kuninaka Ryoko's character is. If this had your typical idol in the main role, her character would be nice, there would be lots of pop songs and the story would be boring. With nothing else really worth watching right now and the upcoming season being barren of any potentially interesting shows, Madonna Verde is an oasis in the jdorama desert. I leave you with a Matsuzaka Keiko singing Ai no sui chu hana.

Stunning Revelation! Tokyo Man Grows Testicles Out of Cranium! Fukushima Radiation?

Shocking Revelation! Man in Tokyo with testicles on his head stuns onlookers!

Train passengers in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area were shocked on their morning commute today by the appearance of what seems to be an elder gentleman who has testicles protruding from his cranium.

"He looks somewhat like a shriveled upside down penis!" shrieked one woman.

A spokesperson, who wished to remain anonymous, tried to calm passengers and the public at large by reassuring those that these recent sightings of the "Testicle Headed Man" were not related in any way to the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Train poster of the Testicle Headed man

Still many of the western press and the anal retentive segments of the foreign community in Japan insist that there is a government cover up and conspiracy. Some were quoted as saying, "They found rabbits without ears, and car air filters that were radioactive, didn't they?"


One commuter, a businessman in his late 40's said, "I've heard of people being called 'dick-head' but this is taking it one step too far. Something must be done."



This reporter, a longtime expert on Japan and drinking stories, has investigated these occurrences and found several examples in Japanese folklore of sightings such as this strange creature.

Call this guy a "dickhead" and he might rip your arms off

As other countries besides Japan have their legendary creatures too. Some examples are the Abominable Snowman, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and Elvis Presley. 


Upon further examination, though, this reporter finds that the "Testicle Headed Man" is indeed a Dickhead and a relic of sexist Japanese advertising and marketing for supposed "Health Drinks" are are to help tired Japanese salary men to become energetic while entertaining the mirage that these drinks can also help their flagging libido.


Besides, doing something to help even psychologically with a sagging member, the drinks also help older Japanese men's flagging self-image and tries to convince them that if they drink this stuff, they might get a young girlfriend.

As I said, it's not real. It's all just a legend and a part of some old guy's  imagination.


These old guys can still dream, can't they? 

Free Rock Concert July 24, 2011 in Shibuya!

Bam!はまたフリーライブ７月２４日（日）行きたい？ここクリック：

http://www.wazoo.jp/open/wildcard11/
完全無料招待制LIVEイヴェント 

WILD CARD vol.11!!!

開催します！ 

ライヴハウスに行った事がない人も 
自分の知っているバンドが出ていなかったとしても 
そんなこたぁ関係ないんです。 今回も180組360名をご招待 
(定員に達した場合は抽選)  

OPEN/16:00 START/17:00 

Acts:
MY LIFE STORY


SUNSET DRIVE

http://sunsetdrive.jp/blog/

and more

お笑い：
ライオンヘッド

Tickets by Wazoo.jp チケット欲しい？ここクリック。

Radiation Effects? Baby Born with Three Arms!

Several weeks ago, the western media were all aghast at a rabbit being born without ears in Fukushima. At first, many attributed that event to radiation.


I even had some people write nonsense to me like, "See? Admit you were wrong. Plants and animals mutating are proof of a nuclear disaster!" Again, I will admit that the nuclear problem in Fukushima is a huge problem for the nearby area, but for us in Tokyo, hundreds of miles away, and even further, it is not a big problem.


I already showed that the nonsense about the rabbit being born without ears was most probably not caused from Fukushima as earless rabbits are born all the time and I showed that plant mutations were observed and written about as early as the late 18th century. In MSNBC Links to my Blog About Earless Rabbitts and Fukushima Radiation! I wrote:

".... a while back demolishing that hyperventilated sensationalist nonsense that people were touting as proof positive that radiation from Fukushima was causing birth defects.

Now, after initially jumping on the band wagon, many mainstream media have thought about it for a while, did the minimum amount of research, and backtracked. 

One earless rabbit does not make for proof of massive nuclear contamination. Earless rabbits are born all the time.

(By the way, so are mutated plants and flowers that were first described in 1790 by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe in Metamorphosis of Plants.)

That MSNBC has linked to my article is part of the proof that it is a huge stretch of the imagination to think that one earless rabbit constitutes a nuclear fallout catastrophe for our DNA. Far from it.


This one episode (amongst many) has been touted, then demolished, as proof of a nuclear disaster... Amongst the foaming at the mouth panics that we've had that I've done my best to dissect, we've also had radioactive car air filters (chuckle); a 35% increase in infant mortality that was shown to be completely untrue; "anecdotal evidence" of people having metallic tastes in their mouths that PROVES a nuclear disaster (honest, we wouldn't kid you or make this stuff up!); unprecedented wind pattern changes that, after millions of years of being different, suddenly start blowing nuclear fallout over Tokyo, just because some idiot scientist in the USA doesn't know how to read a weather map; as well as all sorts of pronouncement from some clown Sci-Fi writer named Michio Kaku, who was once quoted as saying as recently as January 27, 2011; 


 "All you can do is run" to people who live near Yellowstone National Park. You might remember a while back when Old Faithful was acting funny. That was when Kaku said in an article that was quoted in the "End Times Are Here" that the volcano under the Yellowstone National Park was a "super volcano" that was going to"wipe out the United States as we know it."


There's a whole litany of this sort of nonsense going on. 


I've shown how pollutants from the oil and gas industry kill over 3 million people worldwide annually and yet you hear no one complaining about that. 


So far the deaths from Fukushima nuclear accident? Zero.


So every time I rake one of these clown across the coals for scaring people needlessly or I take my former "co-workers" in the mass media to task for sensationalism, I get attacked by some readers who just can't stand dealing with facts.


The weird thing is, though, these attacks from the bizarros who actually do wish for Fukushima to turn into armaggedon so that they can claim that they were "right" and we can all live happily ever after with no nuclear power and live like people did in the early 1930's in an agrarian paradise have stopped.


They can't deal with logic and the truth so they've taken their toys away and gone someplace else.


Need I say more?


Here's something that I thought was interesting. In 2006, there was a baby born in China that had three arms. 


China has a much bigger problem with radioactive wastes and pollution than Japan does. China has had a problem with this for a long time, even the Chinese government admits it, but you don't hear much about this radioactive pollution story at all in the main stream media or the alternative media either. 


Curious, I think.


Even more curious when you realize that, China has many more earthquakes than Japan does, a bigger problem with pollution and radiation, a huge problem with poor building standards, and yet, when the Fukushima disaster struck, many foreigners and their companies fled Japan to China. Go figure.


Do not misunderstand my point here. This is not China bashing. I've been to China many times and simply love that country and her people. I'm just stating facts here.


You know that if this three armed baby were to be born in Japan now, the press would be all over it claiming it as proof that radiation from Fukushima is worse than the authorities are letting on and that we are all doomed.


But, no, this is in China not Japan.

See video of three armed baby here: 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/e75BU6oJ1B

From what I understand, this child had a good prognosis to be fine after surgery to remove the extra arm. I hope the surgery was a success and the kid grows up to be happy and healthy and has a long life. That there was nothing reported after the surgery points to a successful result.


You know what they say, "No news is good news."


He is a cute kid he deserves happiness and a long prosperous life. Neither he nor his family deserve to be scared or frightened by pundits from the peanut gallery claiming the end of the world.


By the way, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 33 babies are born with birth defects .

Moteki the movie???!!!

 Thanks to Maiku for the heads up on this one. All I have to say is thank the jdorama gods they did not recast Densha as Yukiyo. If you read DarkMirage's review of the manga here, it seems like the dorama is pretty similar to its source which is a bad thing as according to DarkMirage's review, the pacing in the manga goes off because it was only intended to be a one volume story and not to mention that the ending is inconclusive. This is one of those rare instances which I think it would be ok for an adaptation to not follow the source material.

If you have a read of Tokyohive's article which is also where I stole the picture from, Nagasawa Masami plays a magazine editor who meets the Yukiyo through twitter. Sounds different from the dorama. Maybe someone saw the dorama and decided that if they could tighten the script so that Yukiyo fucking up doesn't get repetitive and give it a more definite ending then it might turn out pretty good.

One paragraph from DarkMirage's review of the manga struck me;

Over the course of four volumes, Fujimoto learns that he is not the undesirable loser that he thought he was and that romance is about more than just finding the courage to say, “I love you.” He matures as a person and eventually finds the self confidence to help the girls around him and himself to become (slightly) more well adjusted individuals.

Hhmm. The only thing I got from the dorama besides him fucking him the chance to bed three beautiful women is the going to be someone else's moteki line at the end which says to me that he was going to seek happiness by making someone else happy and not expect it to somehow drop on his lap.Let's see how the movie goes. I really like the dorama cast and the girls for the movie don't seem right. But then I'm guessing the characters will be slightly different. At least there is one thing everyone can agree on, with the Moteki dorama and movie, Moriyama Mirai is one lucky dude.

Anal Retentive Foreigners in Japan

The term in Japanese is ”ケツの穴ちいちゃい男” (Ketsu no ana chichai otoko) it literally means "A guy with a tight a*shole."


You'll never learn this term in any Japanese language textbooks or even from most Japanese friends. I learned this term from working with some Japanese comedian (Taro Furukawa) for over 12 years. Taro is one of my best friends. He is a real rock and roller and he and I have been involved with many legal and illegal activities before which shall remain unnamed.


He's the one who taught me this term, "Ketsu no ana chichai otoko".

Taro Furukawa

"Ketsu no ana chichai otoko" means "a guy with a tight a*shole" but, in English, I think it is closer to being "anal retentive."


Trust me that, god damn! there's a sh*t load of anal retentive foreigners in Japan. Really, I'm not kidding. Sh*tloads of them. The fact that I won't write "shitloads" and instead write "sh*tloads" shows that I am and wimp and one of these anal retentive folks.

Famous bumper sticker in USA: "I + love +

c*nt + tree + music"

Anyway, there's lots of these sh*thead foreigners in this country. God, what a bunch of dilweeds. 

This last week, I got this crap from a few of these dimwits concerning the origin of "Flyjin" and the boring repercussions. I can't believe that people even care about this anymore. They were complaining and insinuating that I was one of the "types" who thought up "Flyjin" and that I was losing friends.

First off, I' not smart enough to think of such a term and, two, I have no friends to lose. 

But, OK, I'm game. I'll play along. That morons who left Japan, at the start of the nuclear problems at Fukushima, split because of the "nuclear holocaust" that was going to happen, but hasn't happened, now defend that leaving Japan, because of said nuclear holocaust, was going to happen because the government was "lying" about that nuclear accident, that was supposed to happen that didn't happen, proves that the people who left Japan were right and those who stayed were "wrong" proves that the "Flyjin" were "right" (in spending hundreds of thousands of yen splitting and then returning though nothing has changed nor gotten better). This proves that the Flyjin were "right" and those that stayed were "fried" as in "Fryjin" even though the Flyjin have returned and the situation hasn't gotten any better or stable since March 15th. And not a single person has "fried".

Whew! Got that? Excellent logical and deduction skills! Bravo!

One clown, who will be unnamed, wrote on his Twitter account about how the term Flyjin started:

"Yes, the term was started by Gaijins. I personally know the sort of bad apples who did. They now have even fewer friends than b4."

Bwa! Ha! Ha! Ha! What a twit. Really? Let's be really anal retentive and pick this crap apart. Don't complain, that I do this only leads more stupid people to try follow this guy as his Twitter account is at least good for comedy.

First he says says:

"Yes, the term was started by Gaijins. I personally know the sort of bad apples who did."

Oh really? Aren't you embarrassed by this? You personally "know the sort of bad apples" who started this? Oh really? Or maybe this is a case of bad apples or jealousy on your part? You personally know the type? Or maybe you personally have penis envy to them?

Which is it?

Then this clown actually writes: 

"They now have even fewer friends than b4."

Laughable. Why? well, if you look, this clown only has 14 followers on Twitter. Fourteen! One four. 1 - 4. One - four! That's even less friends than your dog next door has on Twitter. Jeez. Think before your write, dude! That's just fricking embarrassing.

Anyway....

There's a ton of self-righteous foreigners in this country. You'd think that they'd have their arguments and act together before they go and shoot off some illogical and poorly written nonsense....

But then again, if they did check their work before handing in to the teacher, then they wouldn't be idiot students... That they fail to do the minimum check only proves that they are poor students and will always be anal retentive foreigners in Japan.... With (quite deserving) low paid jobs with little or no job security.

People who couldn't get jobs washing cars back home come to Japan and can at least get a job and a cute girlfriend. It's not too bad.... Yet they complain and run away at the first tinkling of the alarm. 

This is what we call ”ケツの穴ちいちゃい男” (Ketsu no ana chichai otoko).

Attack of the Radioactive Giant Jellyfish

OK, well, I lied on that post about being a suicide blogger. I decided that I am going for the sensationalism! We're doomed! Giant Radioactive Jellyfish are Attacking Japan's Nuclear Power Plants!


Death and destruction! The world holds its breath as Japan waits for the inevitable Armageddon and apocalyptic end!... Read on!


As if Japan doesn't already have enough troubles to deal with concerning nuclear power plants and hyperventilating journalists telling us that it's the end of the world, now we're under attack by jellyfish.... Again!


No, these are not the giant jellyfish that, quite coincidentally, attacked Japan and that I reported on the very morning of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami lead to the nuclear accident at Fukushima nuclear power plant! I faithfully wrote about it in Japan's Attack of the Giant Jellyfish from Space that reported:


Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. It's true! It has been reported from Hiroshima, of all places, that hordes of millions of giant jellyfish have invaded the seas around Western Japan. These jellyfish are massive with some weighing in at over 210 kilograms!

Don't believe me? Well here's proof! The UPI reports:
HIROSHIMA, Japan, March 9 (UPI) -- Giant jellyfish, thought to be from Chinese waters, have been floating into the Sea of Japan and wreaking havoc on the Japanese fishing industry, officials say.

Millions of the creatures, each weighing almost 450 pounds with a bell reaching almost 7 feet across and trailing a tangle of long, stinging tentacles, have moved into the Sea of Japan every summer since 2002, LiveScience.com reported Wednesday.

Armadas of giant jellyfish, Nemopilemanomurai, probably originate in the coastal waters of China, Shin-ichi Uye of Hiroshima University said. Uye said he has documented the movement of young giant jellyfish from Chinese waters into the Sea of Japan on currents, and the growth of these jellyfish along the way.


Go to here to also see news photos and video footage of these giant monsters wrecking havoc on the Japanese coast.


But now, as the summer heat is upon us, along with the Japanese people and businesses lowering their electrical consumption by 30 ~ 40%, Japanese nuclear power plants are working over time to fill Japan's soaring electricity needs as the air conditioners need to be turned on. 


So what timing! Just like out of some Japanese monster movie from the 1960's, some nuclear power plants in Shimane prefecture have come under attack from jellyfish! You cannot make this stuff up! 


Reuters reports:

TOKYO, June 24 (Reuters) - Jellyfish sounded the retreat on Friday after blocking an all-important seawater cooling pipe at a western Japanese nuclear power plant, the plant operator said.

Several Japanese utilities are struggling to meet peak summer demand due to safety concerns after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co's plant in Fukushima, north of Tokyo.

The jellyfish managed to block the cooling system at one reactor at the Shimane plant on Thursday, prompting the operator to lower its generation capacity by 6 percent.

The Hiroshima-based operator, Chugoku Electric Power Co , said on Friday the jellyfish, common in Japanese waters during the summer, had backed off and operation was back to normal.

It was the first time jellyfish, about 20-30 cm long (8-12 inches), had interrupted operations at the Shimane plant since 1997, a company spokesman said.

See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRjEuRHfxyo The news report also added a note that I have written on before. It said:

Not resuming operations at the reactors would lead to power shortages around Japan, while replacing all energy generated by nuclear reactors with thermal power generators would raise costs for industry and consumers.

"Would raise costs for consumers"!? Probably an award, or at least a nomination, for the "Biggest Understatements of 2011 Award."  

I'm wondering how the next Keith Harmon Snow, Arnie Gundersen or Michio Kaku clone will twist this attack of jellyfish upon a cooler at a nuclear power plant into the next coming of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse?