During Japan university students’ final year, many go through a long, physically and mentally draining process of finding a job before they graduate; a process known as “shuukatsu.” Students don matching black suits and attend job fairs, company briefing sessions and employment seminars en masse in the hopes of obtaining a job offer, or “naitei.” Young people often complain about the soul-sucking system and how difficult it can be to land a job offer without completely abandoning your personality along the way.
Recently, an animated short film has been making waves among Japanese netizens for the horror movie-like way it portrays the difficult and often depressing job hunting process in Japan.
“Aw, what an adorable little karate tot!” I thought to myself as I stumbled upon a video of seven-year-old Mahiro-chan about to do some adorable flailing. “It’s like someone put a karate gi on a Cabbage Patch Kid!”
Trembling in anticipation of some otherworldly cuteness, I clicked play and GAHHHHHHHH!!!! She’s TERRIFYING!!!!!
Like it or loathe it, Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” is still killing it in the charts more than six months after its initial release and remains of the most played songs on the radio. Sure, the lyrics are kind of simple, and its gets kind of repetitive, but when an artist devotes so much energy to being upbeat and provides a track that you just can’t help tapping your feet to, it’s hard not to crack a smile.
Fan-made remakes of the music video are ten a penny right now, with people all over the world feeling the urge to make their own smiling, strutting, and dancing compilations, but one particular video, titled “Harajuku Happy“, is by far one of the coolest we’ve seen, giving us a tour of the titular town while showing that life in Japan’s capital isn’t all black suits and bowing.
When people visit Japan, they often marvel at how great the service everywhere is. Trains run on time; a guy pops out of a little hatch like a station ninja when you’re struggling with a ticket vending machine; packages come precisely when they’re supposed to, and even if you miss them you can just call the driver on their mobile phone to arrange a new delivery time.
Day in, day out, stuff just works. And yet, unlike the many foreigners who live here, native Japanese take this all completely in their stride. Take this video, for example, which was taken by a foreigner living and uploaded to YouTube a couple of weeks ago…
YouTube videos that rack up millions of views tend to feature either funky music, dancing, or children or animals doing adorable things. These are the kind of links we share again and again, sending to our friends and happily watching multiple times. These two Korean babies rocking out to dance music, therefore, were always going to be the perfect mix for a YouTube hit!
For the most part, guys hitting on girls isn’t really a part of Japanese culture. Thankfully, there are a number of social institutions that take its place, such as frequent student mixers, company drinking parties, and singles’ dinners organized by groups of friends with an exactly equal number of unattached men and women present.
All of this largely circumvents the need for a guy to go up to a girl that catches his eye in a book store or coffee shop with nothing more than a smile and a hello. It also means that if a man is out and about and spots an attractive woman, if there’s no one to give him a formal introduction, a glance at her pretty face, and maybe a moment where her eyes meet his, is about all that he can ever hope to take away from the encounter.
For some guys, though, that’s enough, and for them, there’s a new website featuring nothing but short videos of cute girls walking past you.
Between spending all day basking in the sun and playing in boxes, there’s no doubt that the life of a cat is pretty great. And a Japanese musician has reinforced this with a recent video he uploaded of his cat achieving what looks like feline nirvana. The owner, a Tokyo-based music teacher, seems to put his cat in a trance by playing the instrument on top of the cat. Click below to view the video of the cat who could serve as an anti-drug PSA, teaching the world that the best way to get high is through music.
A full-sized replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza has appeared in a Chinese village near Shijiazhuang in China’s Hebei Province. The sphinx is open for tourist visits, angering officials in Egypt who say the appearance of the Chinese sphinx is detrimental to their tourism industry.
Ever find yourself alone in a situation where a cloned version of yourself would really help? Unfortunately, not all of us have access to Kim Jong Un-level technology, but one talented Japanese singer has found a way around that by duplicating himself on video to make a series of pretty creative covers.
Last week, his cover of “Wrapped in Kindness,” the end theme from Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service became a huge hit with Japanese netizens who couldn’t get enough of his great voice(s). Click below to see the video where one singer becomes a six-man band!
For those of you who thought phys-ed class never taught skills valuable in the real world, we bring you the story and footage of one Mr. Li of Zhongshan City, Guangdong.
Upon seeing an infant at a second-story window, the man dashed below and readied himself to make the most important catch of his life.
Hey, you! You’re a busy person! You have status updates to write; tweets about your lunch to send; videos of cats dressed as humans to watch. You don’t have time to read things like some kind of ridiculous, well-educated duck.
So instead watch this video, which tells you everything there is to know about Japan – covering population, annual food wastage, social awkwardness and much more – in just 10 minutes and 59 seconds.
One of the golden rules of the road revolves around the right-of-way. Dig up memories from high school driver’s ed, and you’ll recall that the manual says something like, “the right-of-way is something you give, not take.” In Japan, a term often used to instill defensive-driving skills is yuzuri-ai no seishin, which can be translated as “the spirit of compromise/yielding”.
But we all know people who think that’s crap.
So today, we’re introducing you to a video of a vehicular standoff in Taiwan that is fast racking up hits online. There are no guns or flaming crashes here; rather, the scene is a quiet, humorous one, the like of which probably plays out across the globe on a daily basis.
A voyeur was arrested by police in China’s southern Fujian province earlier this week after a neighbor caught him taking naked photos of her while she was in the shower.
One of the most frustrating parts about living in Japan was when I would go out to dinner with my husband. No, it wasn’t because I wasn’t able to read the menu or because I don’t like Japanese food – it was because more often than not, the server wouldn’t speak to me.
Since my Vietnamese-American husband cannot speak or read Japanese, I would always do the ordering. What the servers saw was a woman with a caucasian face speaking Japanese and what appeared to be a Japanese man not ordering for himself. After placing my order in Japanese, the server would turn to my husband (who couldn’t understand anything she was saying) and ask follow up questions about our drink order or any add ons. I would in turn, translate for my husband in English, and then answer our server in Japanese, but any remaining questions would be directed once again to my husband. This language triangle would continue until all the ordering was completed.
Of course, this didn’t happen every time, but enough for both my husband and I to take notice. When relating the story to my friends, many would confirm that they have encountered a similar situation. Some would posit that the server thought my husband was letting me practice my Japanese and was looking to him to confirm that’s actually what I wanted. But no matter the reason, I was always left a little frustrated.
A recent video on YouTube titled, “But we’re speaking Japanese!” confronts this exact situation, bringing light to a lingering stereotype in Japan.
Meet David Campbell and Ditlef Alexander Aasom Diseth, Asia’s latest internet sensation. A video showing one of them apparently stealing a girl from a Chinese guy in Hong Kong went viral.
A man surnamed Chen from Taiwan’s tech center of Hsinchu has allegedly had been spending the wee hours of the morning sneaking into a local morgue so he could ‘choke his chicken’ in front of a pretty picture of a deceased girl.
Chances are, if you’ve ever had a conversation in Japanese – or even any other language – with a native Japanese person, you might have been slightly disconcerted by their constant interjections.
That’s because nodding along, saying things like “I see” (naruhodo), “Oh really?” (sou desu ka?) and just plain grunting is considered a polite way to indicate to a speaker that you’re following along in a conversation.
This technique is called “aizuchi” in Japanese and, sure, it seems common sense in any culture to occasionally give a nod of the head or look up from your riveting game of Candy Crush Saga to indicate you have at least a passing interest in what’s being said, but the Japanese really turn it into an art form.