Why women should not fall asleep outside

UPDATE: This video was taken off YouTube. Took them long enough.

*Don’t worry: Nothing nasty happens in this video.

While Google is very anal about inappropriate content on the English side of YouTube, I guess they get a little lazy about finding foreign videos documenting questionable content. Sexual harassment? I think it’s kind of sleep at your own risk. If you are on a bench asleep with your legs wide open then, yeah, don’t be surprised if your stuff is on YouTube the next day. The crazy thing is that these shots were taken by a woman. Imagine how the guys must be.

Welcome to the Year of the Rat!

From Metropolis magazine:

Welcome to 2008, the year of the Rat

People born in the Year of the Rat are thought to be go-getting charmers. They work hard to acquire the objects of their desire then keep them close. While often successful, they tend to gossip and are easily angered. Notable people born in the Year of the Rat include actress Scarlett Johansson (1984), rapper Busta Rhymes (1972), singer Kyosuke Himuro (1960), hockey legend Bobby Orr (1948) and designer Yves Saint-Laurent (1936). Last year was Year of the Pig, and it sometimes seemed all the attention was hogged by the many skyscrapers and mixed-use complexes that sprang up around the city. Whatever 2008 has in store turn the page for our forecast we at Metropolis would like to wish you health and happiness throughout.

Best wishes this new year, guys! Watch a video of New Year’s greetings from Japan Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. His Liberal Democratic Party recently created a YouTube channel. Click here for an article about it.

About 40% of Japanese Men Sit To Tinkle

Photo from Flickr; The amount of adult Japanese men who admitted to sitting while peeing has grown from 15 percent in 1999 to now 49 percent, according to Fuji TV. Image from Japan Probe

As I have said before, newspapers do not have to worry about disappearing in the digital age because many blog posts stem from news articles. This is the case with this awesome nugget of little known Japanese fact. Mainichi Daily News reported that about 40 percent of adult Japanese men sit on the toilet to urinate, according to a survey done by Matsushita Electric Works Ltd., a manufacturer of Western-style toilets.

The survey, which was conducted with 518 men as well as 518 women, shows that mothers and wives encourage the men in their families to sit down so as to avoid unnecessary spraying and urine cleanup. I guess we know who wears the pants in those households. Since 1999, the number of Japanese men who sit to do number 1 has skyrocketed. Matsushita started designing toilets with larger holes years ago to accommodate male sitters.

The number of men sitting while peeing is probably larger than what Matsushita is reporting. Not all men probably want to admit to the habit because they fear that they would appear feminine. Japan Probe was one of the first blogs to post about the article. They also included interesting graphics and a video from Fuji TV news, who did a report on the findings.

A year to forget

All photos from Flickr

There were definitely things I don’t remember about my 21st birthday party the other week. Mostly I don’t remember anything that happened after 11:30. In Japan, there are parties where everyone is suppose to forget. They are called “Bonenkai” or “forget-the-year parties.” These office parties, which start around December 10th and normally last until the end of the month, are held to help people forget the unpleasantries of the last year and to start fresh with the new year. The Japanese workplace is normally pretty stiff and strict, however, at these parties the bosses and the rest of the employees usually get ridiculously drunk, and all decorum gets thrown out the window or the cubicle or whatever.

Will Geisai Miami bite the dust? Your guess is as good as mine.

Maria Adelaida Lopez’s doll house covered with vacuum cleaner dust. Photo from: Critical Miami

I was really excited when I found out that the popular, bi-annual, Japanese art show, Geisai, was coming to the States. The talented Takashi Murakami has been on the grind the last few months. Geisai Miami, the first edition of the Geisai art festivals in the country, appears to have been a dollar store of unknown art. But alas, nothing is as good as the original. There was more reporting done a few months ago about the artists being selected than reviews of the event itself. My advice to Takashi: Keep Geisai in Japan.

Nigo keepin’ it fresh like raw fish

Photo by Jeff Minton for Portfolio

Portfolio magazine did a feature on Nigo, the ultra-rich creator of A Bathing Ape clothing brand. I blog for Portfolio.com once in awhile, and I was surprised to find that they would cover Nigo. The magazine tends to be a little “bougie” but apparently someone there thought this was important enough to give it a lot of space in the magazine.

Nigo, whose real name is Tomoaki Nagao, is at a crossroads in his career. He can either be a sellout and make Bape a much more international brand by opening more stores and pursuing other lucrative projects (Bape cologne? Bape sports drink? Bape condoms maybe?) or he could make the line more exclusive and go back to his Japanese underground roots.

The secret to Nigo’s success is that he fights to keep Bape fresh “as in raw-fish-in-a-refrigerated-case fresh. The clothes and footwear are intended to be seen as perishable; rare; manufactured that morning, perhaps; and presented for you in a sushi-bar-style display.”

David Choe is still a bad ass

Choe gave the Facebook offices a face-lift. I can’t find the page I originally got this photo from so if this is yours please let me know so I can give you credit. Art below is from Choe’s official Web site.

If you like graffiti, ninja stars and talking whales then you should check out L.A. artist/muralist David Choe. His art is provocative and destructive yet somehow comforting at the same time. He’s not afraid to do whatever the heck he wants with anything he can find. He did the cover art for Giant Robot’s 50th anniversary issue, and he is also featured in their biennial art exhibit at JANM.

An art school dropout, David Choe developed a following after his highly successful, self-published (thanks, Kinkos) “Slow Jams.” The graphic novel tells the story of a masturbating art student, who gets obsessed with an unattainable girl.

Choe can make anything out of anything on anything.

He was arrested in 2004, after he beat up an undercover detective in Tokyo. He spent four months in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison. This didn’t stop him from creating. Imprisoned, he used soy sauce and even his own urine to continue to make art. Since then, he has developed a cult following.

Choe has done work for Sony, PlayStation Magazine, EA Games, Harrahs Las Vegas, Levis, Hurley, CBS, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, FTC Skateboards, Tower records, Warner Brothers Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Jane Magazine and much much more. Does this make him a sellout? He doesn’t think so.

It doesn’t help that people say shit like, “I admired and connected with your work because it was raw, fresh, unglamorized, and a “not giving a fuck attitude towards it”. Your work was the level I wanted to be on. I’m over it now though. No offense, but you shouldn’t get too comfortable doing the same type of shit over and over. I know it sells, but cmon, man.” It’s like, do I like the work or the story of the artist? The line became blurred for me in regards to you.” … Bottom line though is that I don’t give a fuck, I make art that I like for myself, to express myself, and if my personality gets in the way of that then don’t read or watch any more interviews. If you think I’m repeating myself your fucking tripping.

Well, there you go.

Choe just finished a nationwide tour. He wants to eventually retire early and illustrate the entire Bible and paint the Great Wall of China. Oh BTW he’s not Japanese. He’s Korean.

Here’s a video of Choe messin’ around.

Check out his most recent book published by Giant Robot called Cursiv.

Check out his blog and his Web site for more info.

My Humps, my Humps, my Humps, my lovely lady lumps

Forgive me for the Fergie reference, but this title actually makes sense when you hear the story that goes with the picture below (from CelebritySmack).

Yes, that’s the girl from “Heroes.” No, that isn’t a photo shoot. Like any other young starlet, she has a warrant out for her arrest, and it’s not for DUI or being caught with illegal herbs! Our favorite cheerleader, Hayden Panettiere was trying to paddle out on a surf board in a cove near Taiji (Japan) to interfere with fishermen on a dolphin hunt in late October. The “bad girl” was collaborating with the Save Japan Dolphins coalition. Her group of bikini-clad activists attempted to reach some dolphins before they were killed. Unfortunately, the girls were blocked by a fishing boat before they could go far enough out. Here’s the video of Hayden crying after being turned back. Now, they are wanted for trespassing. If they all look actresses in the photo that’s because they are! The middle, model-like girl (another Aussie) is “Home and Away” star Isabel Lucas. If I was going to save some dolphins that’s the outfit I would wear.

“I was very excited that people were interested in what we did,” Hayden told E! News. “In [Hollywood], you tend to only get publicity for not wearing underwear or going to rehab.”

You’re such a heroine, Hayden! Ultra rebellious! Now celebrities are even trying to use dolphins to get publicity…

After you get all the giggles out of you, it’s time to actually get serious. The AP is reporting today that Japan will not back down and will continue its annual whaling hunt despite international outcry. The poaching of whales and dolphins is culturally acceptable in Japan in the same way other countries treat fishing. A Japanese fleet embarked on a whale hunt yesterday that is being labeled as the country’s largest whaling expedition since the 1960s, a new addition to the grocery list – the protected humpback whale.

Does Japanese culture allow criminals to get away with murder?

Photo of Saito from With-Malice.com; I’m not sure where they got it because I couldn’t find it; A Japan policeman “on the job” from Flickr

According to a recent L.A. Times article, a 17-year-old sumo wrestler with bruises, cuts and burns on his face and legs was declared by police to have died from “heart disease.” The news has already made laps around the world in the last few months. BBC, The New York Times and everyone else and their mama has reported on it, however, I think The L.A. Times brought up something new.

“As is common in Japan, Aichi police reached their verdict on how Saito died without an autopsy. No need for a coroner, they said. No crime involved. Only 6.3 percent of the unnatural deaths in Aichi are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2 percent of cases.”

This is the same Takashi Saito that Reuters reported on in June. Because of the teen’s profession, “heart failure” was spun to make sense as a health-related cause of death.

Kanye, Lupe and other Hip Hop Artists Bloggin’

XXL had a short article about rappers who blog. As I said in a previous post, one of the ways a blog could be good is if it’s written by a famous person. People are just a lot more interested in what the person is thinking and doing. Kanye just launched his blog in September and he (or someone he is paying) is doing a very nice job updating it frequently with not only news about Kanye but also some of his favorite designers and personal photos. I find it weird that Twista is publishing a blog on The Chicago Tribune’s Web site. I wonder how they convinced him to do that. Lupe Fiasco’s blog is fresh too, though I’m not a MySpace fan.