May 12

Kirsten’s World: Oh, I’m a Joyous Glad T.V.

Writers Comments Off on Kirsten’s World: Oh, I’m a Joyous Glad T.V.

By Kirsten Phillips (Niigata-ken, 2005-08)

I would pay a ton of money to be a Japanese-comprehending fly on the wall of a Glico marketing conference. Summer approaches and Japan requires a new gum.

Eureka! I’ve got it! Monkey gum!

No one’s gonna buy monkey gum, idiot.

I tell you some folk can’t resist the idea of monkey gum! It’ll be a sensation! The people will embrace it by storm!

3 people will embrace it by storm–the guy in the strait jacket and the two men in white chasing him with a net.

You just don’t see my vision, man!

Ok. What exactly does monkey gum taste like?

I believe we may have found an appropriate vehicle for our as yet unlaunched gobo-yuzu series.

In what blanking universe does gobo OR yuzu have anything whatsoever to do with primates?

Who fucking cares??? It’s monkey blast! Simmianrific! Sarutastic! My mojo’s on the yen, baby! Tart it up, get Kamenashi in a chimp suit to whore it out and it’ll sell like スルメ in a Nursing Home!

The ironic thing is, ladies and gents? It likely will. In fact, it might even launch an American remake.

Such a fickle lot the Japanese are. Just when I’d start developing a bitching jones for キャラメル 味 Kit-Kats, I’d find them cruelly yanked come Winter and replaced by some inferior musk melon imposter. Fie! Thus ended the glorious money-making tirade that was my Kit-Kat hard on. Fortunately, there was always choco an-pan methadone to let me down gently.

Japan, you astound me. What the fuck is Men Pocky, anyway? Is that what Men are supposed to taste like? Or are you just fucking with everyone? And just who decided that Men’s Gum is to be packaged in badass sleek black wrapping and scented with (of course) roses. If anything, sounds more metrosexual to me.

Confounded I am! Where the fuck is the women’s gum, huh? What do we apparently flock to? I tried Men’s Gum and although it made my breath smell like a fucking odor eater, I can only wonder if the effects came across to the Japanese population at large as the empty-calorie equivalent of wearing steel-tipped boots to an Indigo Girl concert? Food at home isn’t gender confused.

Now back when I was a kid, you had Barbie cereal for the girls and video-game themed cereal for the guys. But we outgrow that noise and the gender divide in the kitchen blurs. Japan still somehow feels the need for gender conformity and it gets applied to the oddest things. Shounen manga. Shoujo manga. Show me a man who digs shoujo manga for its merit and not for its free range of blatant tits, and I will show you a unicorn. Formulas go far in Japan and those dudes have truly caught on to something.

But why assign a gender to food? I don’t get it!!! Why do I, as a woman, need to consume collagen? Bless every one of your marketing departmental geniuses for continuing to amuse and amaze every poor fuck you squeeze the last penny out of. We buy it, of course. We can’t resist you sly fork-tongued marketing douchebags! Intrigue sells much more than actual taste.

The following testimonial is absolutely factual down to the minute detail.

Once when I was a wee college meep, I actually bought a can of Japanese soda called “Gomen Ne.” It came in a gorgeous peach-colored can with fetching sea-foam green accents and a blushing, apologetic cartoon bunny rabbit on the front. Surely, thinks I, this is the flavor of remorse. The very essence of attrition! Apparently, “sorry” tastes just like a cross between a grape and a strawberry.

If there is one thing Japan does better than any other country I’ve seen, it is package.

I am convinced the average Japanese marketing team can make something as unpleasant as an enema look as pleasing as a whipped cream parfait, with the proper slogan and wrapping paper.

Dear Japan, never stop being who you are. Never EVER bend to the will of your Western-coveting, bling-wearing, MTV-worshipping youth culture. Take in everything and reinvent as you see fit, in essence, make it your very own. Fuck those who call you derivative and deny the naysayers who claim you’ve got no ingenuity. You’ve been around way longer than most countries and if you wanna spread every 12 seconds for the next new wave phenomenon, go right on ahead. Just don’t lose your weird.

The day you cease to be quirky to me, will be a sad, sad day.

In America, we tend to rely on what works. Ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper. Japan tires quickly of the same old things and even goes to surprising lengths to ensure your tongue has never encountered THAT before. They did this extremely well with potato chips. I tell you they had crisps designed and flavored after a 4-course tuck-in at KFC! That is not to say Japan does not have its staples. In fact, Japan prizes them very highly and why not? They are quite delicious if somewhat ubiquitous. 抹茶、あずき、黒蜜，栗、紅芋、かぼちゃ、きなこ. Never too sweet and full of complexity, the Japanese know better than to meddle with natural flavors (except for when they came up with ラムネ-flavored jell-o. What. the. FUCK, Japan???)

Exotic is an extremely relative term but every now and then I’d like to shock a Japanese person with tastes that might be deemed “outlandish.”  I have this habit of eating yogurt with salt, even with fruit in it. I despise sweet yogurt. As I often found the miso soup at school lunch to be rather bland, sometimes I would bring small packets of salt with me and slip it in there when the FEDS weren’t watching. If caught, I merely said it was 粉薬 or perhaps 毒 if I was in a maladjusted humor that day.

“Sensei, you put salt in your yogurt??” One wide-eyed sprout asked me once.

“You put potatoes and hot dogs on pizza..” (I could go on about the injustices inflicted on pizza by Japan)

Touché?  Cultural exchange in the making, folks!!! I personally feel the moment a student and I can agree that the other is a freak, that vital information has been mutually exchanged.