Tigers and Cranes

There, for a time being was a big hoopla over a limited edition “Cucumber Pepsi” that were sold in Japanese conbinis. Apparently a marketing gimmick, Pepsi of Japan marketed the drink for a limited run, and then, in a bid to perhaps to create an aura of legend behind(if one can indeed create a legend around a sody-pop), stopped making any more of the stuff.

In the latest issue of Business Week, there’s an article about it:

“Only a lucky few ever got to try Pepsi’s Ice Cucumber soda. The pale green drink began appearing on shelves at Japanese convenience stores in early June… A couple of weeks later, all 4.8million bottles of Ice Cucumber had sold out. But instead of ratcheting up production, Pepsi brand managers in Japan did the unthinkable: They discontinued the drink. “We didn’t want it on the market past the summer,” says Keiko Ishihara, who oversees PepsiCo Inc. (PEP ) sales for Suntory, the Tokyo beverage maker that markets the soda giant’s products in Japan. “The value of Ice Cucumber is that it’s gone already.”

It might seem strange to kill off a product at the peak of its popularity. But for Pepsi, Ice Cucumber was largely a marketing stunt: a way to generate buzz for the brand in what is arguably the world’s most cutthroat beverage market. It’s a $30 billion-a-year business in Japan, spanning everything from run-of-the-mill brown colas to drinks derived from green tea, coffee, and even kimchee, the spicy cabbage mix that is a staple of Korean cuisine. Of the estimated 1,500 drinks that come to market each year, only a handful survive long enough to win a loyal following.”

This is what I find most perplexing. Not the fact that the drink was on the market for a couple of weeks, but rather, this writer of the article mentions a “drink derived from ‘kimchee’, the spicy cabbage mix that is a staple of Korean cuisine.”

I suspect the reporter has never traveled to Japan, and certainly not for this story, since the whole “Kimchi Drink” thing is a hoax, perpetrated first here, at good ol’ Tigers and Cranes. Here’s the article from September of last year, where I talk about “Kimchi Coolpis”, a non-existent beverage thought to be found in Korea, and certainly not in Japan.

Don’t believe everything you hear…

Ramen.

I personally like mine “Sapporo Style”, with lots of seafood and miso based as opposed to shio(salt) or shoyu(soy sauce) based. This is no secret, and thus I am biased. And when in comes to instant stuff, Nissin Curry Cup Ramen is pretty excellent.

But, strangely, this particular thought never occured to me: Canned Ramen.

I mean, there are canned oden out there, as well beef stew, so why not the ultimate in convenience food, ramen?

This situation is rectified, as one can now buy canned ramen from a vending machine that pops out all heated up.

Canned ramen noodles are here. I can’t believe this wasn’t developed until now; you’d think the Japanese have seen Campbell’s Soup before, or at least an Andy Warhol painting or two. But anyway, here it is, and apparently it’s quite popular. Takeshi Yamada, owner of the famed Menya Musashi ramen shop in Tokyo, put east and west together to create this product to offset the food shortage caused by the Niigata earthquake of 2004. Like Chikin Ramen, dire times are the mothers of invention. My hat’s off to Yamada-san. Plus, you can buy it hot out of a Japanese vending machine! Get your ramen to go, along with a cup of Boss Coffee or a pet bottle of Ooi o-cha!

Rockin’. I hope it vends a pair of chopstix too…

via Rameniac

In this issue of Ray’s Diary, Ray discusses the fact that there are numerous bicycle riders in Japan, a sharp contrast to Korea, where it’s usually college students who own and ride bikes around.

In Japan, however, it seems everyone rides, men, women, children, highschool kids, grandmas, businessmen, I mean everyone. It’s not an uncommon sight to see a housewife with a kid in the back, pedaling while holding an umbrella in the rain.

I posit that in Korea, it’s not as prevalent, since it’s so cheap to get around, and there are buses aplenty, as well as low cab fares and subway fares.

In the final pane of this comic, Ray and his younger brother are using archaic Japanese, easily identified with the use of “gozaru” (a form of “desu”), and terms such as Sessha[拙者]せっしゃ, meaning I or me used humbly, and Wagahai[我輩]わがはい, which is another archaic “I”, but with perhaps a hint of arrogance.

Thanks once again to Ray for great comic.

It’s always mystified me why in Japan, with its proliferation of cigarette vending machines, one still sees old style cigarette vendors, usually older man or a woman, sitting behind a counter selling smokes, usually next to three or four cigarette vending machines.

What function do they serve? Are they there for customers who only have large bills?(unlikely, as I know many machines take large bills) To sell lighters?

I suspect that the reason that they still exist is to sell cartons of cigarettes. I recall walking up to one of these vendors, asking for a pack, and they told me to use the machines right next to them.

Here are couple of pictures of cutest cigarette vendors. I’d buy packs from them over a vending machine any day.

Daruma dolls are popular in Japan.
What are Daruma dolls? I’m sure you’ve seen it… it’s an egg shaped, usually red figurine made of paper, and has the visage of a mean, old dude with white, blank eyes.

Generally, one draws in the eye with black ink when one makes a wish, and when and if that wish ever comes true, one would fill in the other eye. Then… actually, I have no idea what happens after that. I suppose you keep it around forever, lest throwing it away also throws away your wish that came true.

The word “Daruma” apparently derives from the word “Bodhidharma”, the founder and patriarch of Zen Buddhism.

At any rate, At Rakuten, one can now buy a daruma doll mouse.

What’s unique about this mouse is the fact that one operates it by tilting the daruma doll on its Y-axis (Z-axis, if you’re a 3DS Max user). Clicking and scrolling is accomplished via four buttons on its back, and according to the website about 10 minutes practice fondling and tilting the creepy doll will allow one to get comfortable enough with the new way of pointing one’s cursor on computer screen.

Custom made and hand painted, get yours for 9,700 yen or about USD $79.

Even comes with a kickass wooden case.

Source: Red Ferret Journal

I’ve seen some whacky commercials from Japan, but by far this is one of the most disturbing, yet humorous one I’ve seen.

Warning: if you are easily offended by nudity, or villainous little kids, it might be better if you not watch.

Source: Skoopy

Thanks to my bungling, idiotic internet provider “Globat.com”, my website has been down for a while. This is the second time this has happened, and I’m flabbergasted as to how they stay in business with their incompetence. Anyway, it’s back up now. Sorry for the outage.

-Junosora

“Ray’s Diary” is drawn and written by a Korean expatriate named Han Yong Jong, living in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan. I find his drawing style and humor strangely captivating, as he chronicles his daily life living in Japan as a Korean.

I had the pleasure of him emailing me and we corresponded a bit, and I hope he won’t mind my reprinting his old comics here with my translation of his Japanese and Korean into English, so those who can’t read either Korean or Japanese can also enjoy these comic strips.

Also, the author even includes mini Japanese lessons on the bottom.

You can view his latest comics online at his website (warning, it’s kind of hard to navigate, since it’s Cyworld, a notoriously insular and difficult to navigate website, kind of like Korean version of Myspace or something.)

In this installment of Ray’s Diary, he talks about those ubiquitous tissue dispensing people that are all over large cities in Japan. They’re mighty handy, since you can practically solve all your noseblowing needs just by strolling through some busy intersections and looking for these tissue giver-outers. At close to 100 yen each for a pack of “handy tissues” in Japan, they’re practically giving away money on the street.

And what are they advertising? It seems almost anything and everything, but mostly pachinko parlors, from the ones that I’ve received.