BMJ XMAS SPECIAL! Through the Eyes of a Santa Substitute

“Tanihata-sensei? Hello. I am Santa.”

With this confident proclamation I began a bizarre journey into the surreal world of the jolly fat man. I was on the phone with the Nagao Jidoukan children’s centre.

“Ah, Santa!” the lady at the other end – who may have been but probably wasn’t my contact, Mr Tanihata – replied before launching into a rapid-fire Japanese monologue. This was a problem.

From observation I have learned that one half of a Japanese phone conversation consists of the word ‘hai’ repeated at regular intervals for the duration.

Which is why many Japanese people feel safe allowing their dogs to take their calls. 

I decided this was the side of the conversation I needed to be on.

But three hais in, the lady on the other end of the line lapsed into an awkward silence. Dammit, she was on to me! In a panic I thrust the phone into the hands of my school’s secretary, leaving it to her to explain how I had inexplicably morphed into a fluent Japanese-speaking woman.

Ten minutes and an A4 page of notes later, the game was afoot. Santa Claus was, indeed, coming to town and he was coming on the 9:53 train from Hanayama.

The 9:53 train arrived at Yokoyama, Santa’s destination, at 10:23. A very nice lady met me at the station and drove me the kilometer or so to the jidoukan. I was ushered into the large, two-storey building with utmost secrecy. After all, it would not do to find a large white man who speaks no Japanese in a centre for Japanese children. The kids I was there to transport to an astounding dreamworld of Christmas magic were two to four years old, which made them small but not retarded.

Like the ninja I am, I made it to the changing room undetected, where I quickly squirmed into the suit, boots and beard. Looking at the end result, I was amused to note that this was the first time in my life that I had ever thought it would have been nice if I was a bit chubbier.

I'll keep working on it with the help of Coke(tm)! Fuelling Santa since 1928.

I had a flashback to my briefing. I knew it was a flashback because it was black and white and also it had just happened to me five minutes ago. The plan had been explained to me in the front office before I got changed. The combination of maps and hand signals made it seem two thirds covert military ops and one third joyful spreading of Christmas cheer.

Lock and load. Remember: nobody moves without my say-so. We are gonna Christmas these savages back to the stone age!

I decided I needed a codename. ‘Eagle’ was taken, so I went with ‘Mukade Foxtrot Hotel’. Yeah.

I looked at my expensive solar-powered wristwatch. It was almost mission commencement time. It was time to get into character.

I once read that Daniel Day-Lewis worked in a butcher shop, constantly sharpening knives and picking fights with complete strangers as part of his preparation for Gangs of New York. I didn’t have time for that bullshit, but even if I did, what was I going to do? Begin a short-lived flying deer breeding program? Go around offering midgets jobs?

Is there even a word for people who are compelled to employ only midgets? Seek help, Claus.

Nonetheless, I needed to be Santa. I needed to get in his head. Would Santa wear a solar-powered watch? He lived at the North Pole. I took off the watch.

Santa is a man who spends about 92% of his year preparing for the 8% of the year when anyone gives a damn about him. That’s got to take a psychological toll. It’s long, tiring, thankless work, but with the potential for a big payoff. It stands to reason that he is emotionally fragile, pinning his self-esteem on his ability to make children happy. By mid-December he would be flying partially on a magical sleigh pulled my reindeer and partially on a cocktail of anti-depressants and the manic side of a bi-polar disorder.

I looked in the mirror again and no longer recognised the man looking back at me.

With two fingers against the back of my ear I rasped the words, "Mukade Foxtrot Hotel: moving out," to no one in particular.

Eye of the Tiger, Santa. Eye of the Tiger.

I poked my head furtively out of the changing room door and whichever trickster god is in charge of this sort of thing made sure this was the moment a kid was standing in the hallway staring in that direction. In my agitated mental state, I wondered if I should choke him into unconsciousness. But after the eternity of a moment I decided that would be inappropriate. In that same moment, the child had made up his mind about what he was going to do too. I watched his face crumple; it was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Then he began to cry.

I did the sensible thing: said “hello, little boy” then whipped my head back into the changing room until the crying ceased.

5-10 minutes later, I mutter, “okay, that little bugger is out of the way, now it’s definitely go time,” tapping into Santa’s darker emotional spectrum.

Sneaking up the stairs, any worries I had melted away as I heard a chorus of tiny voices calling out for ‘Santa-san’. The heavy sack full of gifts was no burden. By the time one of the staff members began ringing their sleigh bells and the double doors were flung open the transformation was complete.

“Merry Christmas!” I boomed in a jolly cadence that I never knew I possessed.

And I wish all my readers the same. You don’t get the suit, or any presents. But still, Yay! Christmas! Stay safe and well. See you in the New Year ^_^

Can Smoking be Awesome?

I have had years of Pavlovian conditioning to make me hate smoking. Every time someone lights up around me I end up smelling like crap too. Must be all my luscious hair.

So I am in no way unbiased on the issue of whether smoking is fucking retarded. It is.

Hmm, but maybe you are a smoker. Don’t feel that I am judging you. Studies show that you probably feel guilty enough for the both of us.

And yet, in Japan I am starting to suspect that smoking could secretly be awesome. My past experience puts me in a position to evaluate this claim. Obviously because of my intense feelings on the subject it will be a hard case to prove. Are you ready, Japan?

Bring it on.

Advertisements

Where I come from, ads got banned so long ago I can barely remember watching them from my lead paint-lined crib. After that, we could only get our advertising subliminally through movies and TV. Then all of a sudden filmmakers decided that realism was important for some reason. It just didn’t make sense for the action hero to stop to catch their breath every hundred metres as they chased the evil criminal mastermind through the bustling train station/docks/market/slave factory/subterranean hideout/space brothel. So now smoking on TV is only for the truly evil or the infirm, as God intended.

The only advertisement you can see in New Zealand nowadays is teen mothers dutifully teaching their children about cancer.

Actually now that I think about it, I don’t think you can advertise smoking on TV in Japan either. It’s hard to know. When a sheep is dancing on a roller coaster and a space octopus gives it a yellow box while cheerfully singing into a floating microphone in a language I don’t understand then there’s about a 12% chance that that ad could be for smoking. It could be for sanitary napkins, trousers or buying insurance also.

Japanese ads are awesome.

But smoking doesn’t need your TV ads to make an impact. Japan has the most effective advertising campaign for smoking I’ve ever seen. It’s called life.

For example, there are some non-smoking areas in Japan. But I’m not sure why, because they’re usually located directly beside the smoking area in the same room. This is like having your Babies area next to your Dingoes area and expecting everything to work out fine. If there’s one thing smoke can be relied upon doing it’s whatever the fuck it wants.

Nobody puts Smoky in the corner.

So at present, I would estimate I’m smoking a pack a day, and that’s just out of my milkshake.

The most effective non-smoking area is the train. Even if someone’s smoking right next to the train, you just breezed by at 80km/h. Ahahahahaha!

Even if you could smoke on the train, good luck getting your hands up to your face to light it. Even if you could light it, good luck not burning someone’s ear off.

But we’re talking about advertising here. Stay on topic.

The second prong in Japan’s two-pronged assault on sissy non-smokers is the vending machine. Aside from the insane fact that you can buy cigarettes from a vending machine over here and they only cost 400 yen (which is amazing), every machine that sells cigarettes also has an ad for a particular brand prominently displayed on the machine or nearby. Or both, even if it’s the same ad.

I have snapped some samples of the truly magnificent ads I have seen in and around Kobe. I’ve used my innate genius to peer beyond the veil of advertising and tell you the underlying subliminal message for each ad. Now you can buy your death sticks with confidence, from a machine that is laughing at you and planning what to do with your planet when you’re gone.

Basic

The Subliminal Message: Smoking is Cute!

Oh my God, that dog is so cute! I bet that cute dog would totally smoke those if it could. But it has no hands so it can’t. That makes sense. But it’s really good at juggling, another activity that is usually pretty reliant on having hands. Did a person throw those cigarette packs at that dog but it caught them all on its nose and started juggling them? Ha ha, that’s funny! I wonder if I could teach my dog to do that…

This dog is so cute though. Did I mention that? But it’s kind of ugly too. And I find that cute. It’s cutegly.

Smart move, advertisers. Now your product appeals to the cute, the ugly, those people who like the dichotomy of cute and ugly things, and those people interested in canine juggling. 

That's pretty comprehensive.

Piannissiamo

The Subliminal Message: Smoking gives you Superpowers!

Did you notice that this hot lady has gold lips? This ad doesn’t come right out and say that Pianissimo cigarettes made her lips gold. But there’s a big old packet of them right there next to her gold-lipped face, so draw your own conclusions.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that Pianissimo cigarrettelettes caused this affliction. This is amazing! Ever since I was old enough to understand that with great power comes great responsibility I’ve been trying to get great power while avoiding great responsibility. With Pianissimo, I can do both, trading my own mortality for a delightfully slim and classy Midas touch.

Do you want some Pianissimo’s now?

What about now?

The one nagging doubt in my mind is, what if there’s something they’re not telling us? What if this woman’s entire respiratory system is now gold-plated? Obviously that would be fatal, in a James Bond villain kind of way.

Damn you, Pianissimo. God damn you.

I should probably try these out on a dog first. After I teach it to juggle the boxes, of course.

Marlboro

The Subliminal Message: Smoking is Badass.

Marlboro has been using the same subliminal message since 1876. Back then all their ads used to have a grizzled-looking cowboy sauntering around and smoking. I actually think this is a really good advertisement for smoking, for two reasons.

Reasons Cowboys are Good Advertisements for Smoking

1)    Cowboys are always out doing cowboy stuff way out in remote areas of the land. So the only person they will bother with their smoking is the other cowboy they have sex with.

You really should quit, darling.

2)    Nobody believes in cowboys anyway.

Anyway, for whatever reason Marlboro have done away with the cowboy. But they kept the horse?

What is it with smoking ads and animals? Are animals buying cigarettes now? Is that where we are as a planet?!

But there’s nothing much badass about a white horse all on its own right. It could be standing on a pile of kicked-to-death orphans, but we can’t see that. It’s just a horse, hangin’ out, wishing someone would put a sweet tasty Marlboro in its mouth and light it. The guy in charge of advertising, also standing on a pile of kicked-to-death orphans, sent this memo:

We need something more badass. And goddammit, Suzie, BRING ME MORE ORPHANS! Signed Bill.

So someone went back to the drawing board and we got this:

Holy shit, is that a mountain lion? I can’t even begin to fathom what that has to do with smoking. I guess it’s conceivable that this giant feral cat… wants… my smokes? And it’s going to lead with its special move, Ice Blast?

I’m really confused right now, but that’s what the Mountain Lion wants. I have to be ready. Red Dead Redemption has taught me that nothing good comes from meeting a mountain lion except for $6 worth of skin, if you’re lucky.

I also need to think of a special move, really fast. Jesus, I can’t believe I moved to Japan without a special move. It was on the immigration form and everything.

I’ve got it! Gold Lips Kancho Jugglllllllllllle!!! Oraa Oraa!

The Family Legacy

Finally, no discussion of smoking in Japan would be complete without taking about the social forces at work here. Japan is a very traditional country. And sometimes that manifests in unusual ways. 

I was in a café with a Japanese friend the other day and he pulled out his pack of smokes. I asked him whether he thought he would ever stop smoking one day. His reply went something like this: ‘My grandfather smoked and my father smokes. So I smoke.’

In other words, the men in his family hand down a legacy of death.

Is anyone else thinking about ninja right now?

"Happy birthday, boy, I got you these. I took them from a mountain lion that I choked to death."

So far I think we can safely say that I have proved smoking is more awesome here than I could have ever imagined. But I am not so easily convinced. I must investigate further. If you don’t hear from me in two months, give my notes to the Police and tell them that smoking has struck again…

How my First Japanese Video Game Purchase went Horribly Wrong

I need to be clear about something. I have played literally hundreds of Japanese video games. I have played, like, 5 video games in Japanese. That’s an important distinction. And you’re going to find out why.

See, the first four games I played in Japanese were arcade games that involved either hitting a drum or throwing a plastic ball at a hot air balloon. It’s fair to say I bungled my way through those tricky concepts.

Perhaps I was overconfident, but I figured the next step was to buy a game for my Playstation 3 that was entirely in Japanese. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve heard stories about people getting totally awesome games imported from Japan and just fudging their way through them. What’s the worst that could happen? I thought innocently, perhaps a little naively.

My first mistake was buying for the price. At only 2000 yen, what did I have to lose, aside from 2000 yen? Only my dignity and self confidence, as it transpired.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

They say not to judge a book by its cover. Perhaps the same is true of a video game. I looked at the front cover.

Sweet! There's hardly any Japanese going on here!

Buy it!

Like most J-RPGs, X-Edge is about a boy who looks like a girl (to the point where my wife PanPan said “Who’s she?” when the game started) wearing leather pants, fighting evil. Using my knowledge of Japanese culture, I figured I would just push the ‘fuck’ button whenever I saw a tentacle and the ‘shoot’ button whenever I saw anything else and it would all turn out fine. I would save the universe this way.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all shooting and fucking like in my real life. There was also talking. 

Good God, was there talking.

 It’s hard to know where you are plot-wise when you can only read the word です in any given sentence. But my Mama didn’t raise no quitter and my early childhood psychologist said I was “definitely not short of imagination” so I took my best guess. Here is the story of X Edge, as I interpret it:

Prologue

The Old Gods have awakened from their eons of slumber, thirsty for conquest. Their hoary gaze fell upon a planet so ridiculous looking, so physically implausible that utter domination was the only option.

And so they sent their godly golden war balls to that planet. Because nothing says domination better than hitting a planet with your balls.

Fade out. We fade in on two enigmatic youngsters. I think they’re drunk.

Effeminate Boy: Ugh, my mouth tastes like a homeless shelter for incontinent bears. Where the hell are we? And why am I wearing your pants?

Dowdy-but-obviously-secretly-attractive Girl: Never mind that now. We have to do something about those space balls!

Just then, something amazing happens!

Boobs: Hello. My name is Boobs.

Boy: Buuuuuh.

Girl: We didn’t order a stripper.

Boobs: Bitch. 

            I am here to help you fight evil. And by evil I mean wolves! Heaps of wolves.

Girl: We probably have it under control with handguns, but thanks for the offer. I’m sure your cape would have been really helpful.

This snappy banter continued for some time, in and around numerous wolf fights. But by then I was already bored. So I stopped paying attention to a story I was making up myself (which is a bad sign for my writing career). Then I got this:

Sweet Motherless Christ.

It was at this point that I realized if I wanted to feel confused and inadequate I would have stayed married to my first wife. I figured out how to save, and to this day I don’t know why. I played 5 minutes of a game I couldn’t understand, but at least now I can pick up where I left off?

If anyone wants a copy of X-Edge, drop me a comment. It’ll be 3000 yen.