27 July 94 I just saw another Kirin Lager Beer commercial w/ Harrison Ford - it's funny to me because they have him speaking Japanese "Kirin Beer o kudasai" - actually I think that's the only thing they have him say. It's really funny to me (others w/ celebrities in it have them speaking English.) A couple of things I forgot to mention that I've thought about recently is pornography and androgyny. But first (now that I've got your attention) the karaoke densya. That was so fun! They had cokes and juice and croissants for us and gave us headbands, fans, a free one-day pass and a densya keychain, and of course we got to karaoke while the densya traveled through Hakodate (this densya is one that can be rented for parties - so this was good advertisement for them - we got plenty of attention along the way. The guys from NHC came again and I even got interviewed by them and a newspaper man =but= I did not get in the news clip (I guess they didn't like my quote - I;m not good at speaking Japanese at a TV camera. But maybe I'll be quoted in the paper. Maybe I'll be in a picture. It was great fun - we were dancing and everything and I got to try on my samurai split-toe socks and geta and these were my feet [picture of my feet --] tabi, my heel hanging over the end (it's supposed to do that) You should see me in full samurai get up - it's way cool. I wonder if I get a helmet too. Now to what I mentioned earlier - pornography isn't hidden away here in Japan - I keep getting shocked by pictures I don't expect. For example, in the Marumai book section I went over to the manga and picked one up at random and opened it to a picture of a naked woman giving birth to a snake. Pornography is kind of mixed in with everything else (mostly soft porn I think, ut I don't know - not really looke at anything but covers of these and mainly its fully naked women.) It's not like they have more pornography here - it's just that it's not covered up or iin an adults-only section. The other day at Seibu dept. I was looking at what laser disks they had and I came across an Emanuelle laser disk and one of Japanese porn. (This is kind of interesting - I'm watching a TV drama - but it's puppets! They're pretty dolls but it's kind of interesting how much they do to make it seem like real people. There's never be anything like this in America - I think the show is an enactment of a well-known - just wait okaasan says it's an enactment of Japanese history. It is really neat.) Androgyny and cross-dressing is not really odd here - there are alot of men here who make a living as female impersonators as actors (not just Kabuki actors) and alot of girls and women here look male. I just saw a commercial in which there is a woman acting as a conductor and she has short hair - before she spoke I wasn't sure if she was a man or woman - she was truly androgynous - not really masculine or feminine - there seems to me alot of people like that here (but I guess there are lots of people like that in America - I've been told I look butch sometimes and Matt Welsh made such a pretty girl...) Another shocker today - after all these people dancing around, there finally started to have alot of sex in Tokyo Love Story. At the end of the show, Kanchi finally admitted he liked Rika and after that she said "sex shioo" which means "let's have sex". Because I really despise the people in Tokyo Love Story I pulled out my IllustLogic Book and was working on it and other people were also getting bored by it and then we hear "sex shioo" out of the corner of our ears and everyone said "What?!" I mean, we thought that Japanese people wouldn't be so - direct. From all this I draw the conclusion that Japanese don't have such inhibitions about sex that we have in America - I don't think people say "let's have sex" in America that often - or maybe I just don't know people who do. A very unrelated but interesting fact: you know those pictures of Japanese ladies who have lots of things sticking out of their hair/wigs? Not all of those were combs - some were knives. Also, in traditional Shinto get up, a bride carries a knife (I think the guy does too, but I don't know.) The earlier "high society" here seems to have been carrying knives and swords all the time, men and women alike. And they say Americans are violent...