Japanese Tabloids

The Mainichi Daily News Online Website has recently removed the "Wai Wai" section. In the past it was a rough translation of various trashy Japanese tabloid articles in Japan. Here is a short list of the type of headlines you'd see.

Schoolgirls' decade of decadence: panty sales have punters panting
University turns blind eye as foreign students turn tricks
Coffee pot tips seductress plucking schoolboy cherry
Depraved duo target pregnant women in horror rape spree
Super Onanism Machines rubs the lonely the right way
Lion poo proves roaring success as deer deterrent
Sex shop offers discounts for big sluggers
Quirky quacks prescribing sexual harassment
Old fellas savor the ins and outs of a porno actor
Sucking away for huge hooters in the land of itty bitty titty

It was trashy news, unfortunately for many foreigners who read the Mainichi Online, they usually get the most hits on the site.

So here's my problem. On the one hand, this is a clear example of the Japanese selectively censoring its image to the world in thier ongoing effort to show a sophisticated, and cultured face on the global stage. Although all countries do this, it just seems that the Japanese do this with such a brazen disregard of how constructed it looks to outsiders. On the other hand, defending articles on how nurses give tell alls on how they sleep with thier patients seems not worth the effort. What I do see is this, it seems as if the crime here is not that these articles exist, but that they are being translated to English. The Mainichi has never claimed responcibility for these articles, they are merely translating them for curious foreign readers. I find it hard to swallow that Managing Director Yoshiyuki Watanabe needed to be punished for this publicly, being that he had no power on what the articles were about.

My question is how did this ever become such a big issue? It seems that much of the attention was directed at bloggers bringing traffic to the "Wai Wai" articles, and the reaction to them from Japanese citizens who are afraid of how this reflects Japan.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

So I just got Mario Kart for the Wii recently. I've been holding off on buying this game for a long time because I knew a few things about this game.

1) It's going to be a fun game.
2) My friends will come over to my apartment just to play this game.
3) It will begin the slippery slope into "geeky consumerism".

It all begins very innocently, with this game I will finally have a reason to get a second Wii-mote. (Although I've been wanting one ever since I bought Trauma Center, but no one else really was willing to appreciate my love of hospital drama.) This second Wii-mote is quite an investment. It's 60 dollars for both the Wii-mote and a nunchuck. (Not to mention the 10 dollar Wii-wheel)

Of course buying begets buying. Now I'm happy with two Wii-motes, and the two GameCube controllers I already got for Super Smash Brother's Brawl, and I have three friends who actually want to play on my Wii. But now I realize that my TV is too small to play the game.

For most guys of my generation this is not a problem. They just slip on some sandals get in their light truck and drive out to the newly rezoned commerical area 40 miles out from the city and buy a bigger TV at a big box store. A decent size LCD TV isn't that expensive these days, and I can afford it even on my salary. But that's not the point. The point is I know that once I let that door open, I'll release the flood gate of even more buying.

If I get a bigger LCD TV, then I will be tempted to buy a gaming PC to hook into it. This is because I really would want to do things like play Mass Effect, (Which I don't own) Skype StarTrek style to my friends, and watch Homestarrunner and AdultSwim. You see what I mean, buying this one game has set off a chain of more consumption. Now I don't mean to imply that there are some marketing guys at some company laughing at their genius marketing plan, but there is something insidious with how our consumer culture has prepped us to buy things.

Art imitates Life

Above is Raytheon's XOS exoskeleton which was trotted out this weekend for a demonstration. It's no coincidence that Raytheon wants to connect the Ironman movie with their fledgling exoskeleton technology.

I have to say that the Ironman movie was very very good. This is truly a bold new age when superhero movies are actually pretty entertaining. I really like this movement for Marvel in their ability to make their superheroes have a universal quality. Spider-man wasn't just a movie about a teenager who gets spider powers, but carried the message of the choices one makes to become a healthy adult. X-men pushed the message of human discrimination. Ironman? the message in this movie was quite clear, and actually quite elegantly done.

We live in a world in which the corporations have become the most powerful force in the world. Outward conflict of guns, bombs and missiles are horrifically merely the backdrop to the truer means of control. Emile Durkheim wrote extensively on how social stability can be examined through understanding the centers of social solidarity. A nation is stronger, when everyone in that nation is aligned to a common goal. The idea of citizens rallying together against a common enemy is unfortunately a worn out tactic. What has happened now is the breakup of citizens in America in their allegiance to our country. Not to say that Americans have lost faith in America, but the vision of that faith has become fractured. What seems to be taking the place of national allegiance, is an allegiance to one's workplace. The dissatisfaction with the dirty hands of America as a nation, the romance of internationalization, and the ever expanding reach of transnational businesses have all driven this idea.

Ironman depicts a world which no longer rely on ideas of physical borders. (Honestly, Tony Stark takes a woman from Las Vegas across state lines to Malibu to have one night stand with her.) A company will sell weapons to anyone who will buy them, even if the buyer intends to harm the nation of the company headquarters. Tony Stark, horrified at this prospect takes it on himself (without the formal aid of the nation) to stop this menace. To further the point, he is recruited by Strategic Homeland Intervention, Engagement and Logistics Division or S.H.I.E.L.D., a nationless organization created to protect the world. (Think InterPol with a multi-billion dollar flying fortress.)

Research project on anime-fans

It's been way too long, and I've seemingly abandoned my blog. This was not for poor reasons, but I feel bad all the same. You see I've finally become gainfully employed. This means that I now work 9 to 5 and can't spend the day musing about stuff I find in my hours of reading blogs in my pajamas.

One exciting thing is that one of professors has asked if I would like to co-write a paper with him this summer. He is a sociologist who is an expert on the political atmosphere of Burma. He had done an extensive ethnographic research there and is usually listed in many articles related to Burma. He has found that he was referenced on the "NarutoForums" message board. After reading the thread on recent events in Burma, he was interested in the level of sophistication which many of these posters were speaking on the issues involved. He has asked me to co-write with him because he doesn't really understand the culture of message boards very well, and would also like my advice on understanding any cultural meanings in the anime references.

In short, from a sociological standpoint, this is a rare opportunity in which we have documented evidence of how an informal community carries a dialog about political issues relating to my professor's work.

I was telling him that this paper would be a good opportunity for me to get published a few of my own ideas about geek culture. This idea borrows greatly from Lars Konzack's work "Geek Culture: The 3^rd Counter-Culture" in which is sets up the idea that "Geek Culture" is the rejection of "Yuppie Culture" in the same way that "Yuppie Culture" was the rejection of "Hippie Culture". I would go into further detail as to how this plays out in terms of how geeks seek to understand the world around them. I feel as if for many geeks, the key element of being one is this comfortable attitude with understanding fantastic worlds. A geek would be able to see a strange situation, and quickly adapt to the situation and operate on the level of that situation instead of on a personal presupposition. This gets into various famous arguments like which would win in a battle if the USS Defiant was put against the Millennium Falcon. A geek would answer "Depends on who was in command". I feel that this comfortable relationship with fantastic worlds allows for an attitude which is able to grasp other cultures with ease and without disregarding issues as too foreign to care about. While many Americans can't point to Burma on a map, geeks are curious to learn more about a place if they are given even an inkling knowledge.

Wanna play some smash?

So my brother got me Super Smash Brothers Brawl last week. I've been playing it for a week and even had a few guys over to my place to really break in the game.

I really like the series. Super Smash Brothers has always been a solid game that understands that games should be fun. One of the things that I tend to get annoyed about many of the games out there is this idea that more violence, and darker themes would mean the game would sell better. Games that look like it was created through market research to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Last Saturday, I discovered (or maybe rediscovered) another reason this game is great. I had a few guys come over to play the game. All four of them were seasoned veterans of the last game and were fairly good players. (One of them seemed to continue to dominate using Yoshi.) We had been playing for several hours and had gotten used to the new controls. Then another friend of mine came over later in the afternoon. She had never really played the game, but was a big enough nerd to appreciate the appeal of Nintendo characters fighting each other. After only a few rounds of playing she picked up the subtleties of the game right away. Within 30 minutes of playing the idea of taking it easy on the new player was completely ignored.

For the most part the game is very well designed. Even if you're losing, it's still a fun game to play and the penalties for losing are so meager they don't really mean anything. Also the controls are really easy to pick up. No half-circles, no crazy button combos, everything is pretty straight forward. Really good players can dominate a game on occasion, but with the way the game is made, the range of how good one can be at the game is very short.

It's the type of game that follows the ideology of the Wii. Wii games don't have to be the most advanced game out there to be a very fun game that can be accessible to a wide range of people and not just to the gaming elite. It also gets me thinking about the idea of categorization of games, as in games for girls, infants, kids, and adults. In many ways these distinctions get into the realm of silly and insulting. Is SSBB a kid's game? is it girl friendly? These ideas create assumptions about the abilities of women and children that can hardly be generalized in any reliable way. I was concerned at the newcomer's ability to enjoy the game not because she was a girl, but because she was playing against people who had played the game quite a bit before. (being outmatched no matter who you are is never fun) But it was through the design of the game that was able to encourage even newcomers to the series to find enjoyment.

Who are nerds

This is a very fascinating bit on this guy that lives not too far from me. In fact I may end up going to see him in the near future if the desires strikes me.

Other than the fact that he's an example of a "white guy with too much expendable income". I don't have anything against him. He seems like your typical geek that has a hobby. To be honest, I've been inconsolably jealous of anyone with a lot of money lately. I don't even know why. I saw a site with several pictures of Dubai and suddenly had this fit of rage over how much freaking money is pouring into this city.

So the question is this, is being a nerd merely an extension of the culture of consumerism, or is there something more. Are you still a nerd if you don't have a lot of "stuff"? Does this stuff define you as a nerd? Are you a bigger nerd if you have more stuff? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that being a nerd merely means interests in things, and not the collecting of things. I knew this guy who specializes in selling rare and highly sought after comic books. He was telling me that he was selling "Amazing Fantasy 15" to an NFL team owner. I know nothing about this guy, and I'm sure he is quite a fan of Spider-man and all, but the question is, does it make him a nerd?

I consider myself a big nerd. I know that there are two Dr. McCoys, (Dr. Hank McCoy, and Dr. Leonard McCoy) I read Gizmodo and Kotaku almost on a daily basis, and learned Japanese to be able to read manga in Japanese. I own a fair amount of nerdy things including a boxed copy of Final Fantasy 1, a Wii, a 9 inch figure of symbiote suit Spider-man, and a Principality of Zeon flag. But I have this nagging feeling that there is more to it. A more central reason to why I do all these things, and these things are merely products of that.

Psychology

Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade has written one of the bravest bits on personal psychology that I have read in a long time. Seriously, of all the things that I have personally read about psychology and have experienced personally, this perhaps one of the astondingly reflective and honest discription of what's it like to deal with a psychological problem.

It was almost impossible to go get help though because the very nature of the illness prevents you from getting it. So I worry alot, I know that. So I start to think maybe I worry too much. Maybe I have a real problem. Then I think, "no I'm just worrying too much". This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. It's fucking inescapable like some kind of brain trap. So I have to write off this fear that I might actually be sick as another example of my needless worrying. Add to that the fact that I worry that if I do go to a doctor he'll tell me I have some kind of brain disease or I'm not treatable or maybe just as bad that there's nothing wrong with me. All this shit piles up and the result is that I'm 30 and I've never gone to the doctor about it until yesterday.

I started crying a bit a this part here. It cut very close to how I feel about myself and the way I am. I have often credited Penny-Arcade for it's quality work, but this is the first time I have wanted to send a strong message to Mike Krahulik that I am simply humbled by him.

Psychological problems are all too often linked to nerd culture. This could be simple depictions of nerds in the media as socially awkward individuals (see: Steve Urkel, Brian Johnson) or the litany of various claims that video games, comic books, and television would lead to psychological disorders. The Japanese have historically drawn much of their presuppositions on nerds from Akio Nakamori's "Mの時代"(The age of M). This was a case study of Tsutomu Miyazaki a famous serial killer. Since Miyazaki was also an otaku, the connection was commonly held that otaku may also harbor psychotic tendencies. (Similar distinctions have been made of both the Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho.)

I personally find it difficult to rationalize this in my mind. The only thing I could say is this. Perhaps there could be an attraction phenomenon. Reduced down, the promise of nerd culture could be said to be the promise of escapism. To be free from our physical and social restraints, of only in our minds and play with "what ifs" that would otherwise couldn't be. This could become a very attractive solution to people who are dissatisfied with their own reality. I take as an example Spider-man. If you're a kid living in a poor Jewish Romanian immigrant family in New York city, what better dream than to have someone who selflessly protects the people of the city. Even Peter Parker himself was a role model for me. When things in my life didn't work out very well and I felt like a failure, it made me feel a little better to know that even being a failure made me bit more like Peter Parker. In a time in which secular thinking is held at a pedestal, and we are no longer soaked in a culture of religious fervor, perhaps nerd culture acts as the non-spiritual solace which those who need it, seek it.