Weird Japan - Zen Pet Boom?

Conan the Chihuahua prays with his master at a Zen temple in Okinawa (Image borrowed from MSNBC.com.). Read the whole story:

Link to story at MSNBC.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23774245/wid/11915773/

In Body/Comm class we discuss many different examples of Japanese gesture. This semester we have discussed Buddhist mudras, our favorite coming from the story of Buddha and the Drunk Elephant. Yesterday we were analyzing the para para and other dance gestures in Maeken's Trance Project video. All of these things seemed to come together in the Zen dog story above.

But we might want to ask, is this visual anthropology? Or yet another example of weird Japan? There are a number of blogs that deal with weird aspects of Japan and Asia that have some great photos and videos. The danger of these blogs of course is the representation of Japan as being uniformly weird. Japan is often stereotyped as a homogeneous nation, so when we see these weird things, we might believe that such things are normal to the Japanese when in fact they are not. Japan has a population of over 127.4 million people all squeezed into an area slightly smaller than the state of California. So it makes sense that weirdness and creativity run rampant. Check out these sites for more doses of weirdness; place the photos and stories in a larger context and we might indeed have some data for visual anthropology...

Tokyo Mango: Everything you ever wanted to know about the birth city of Godzilla, Gundam, all-you-can-eat shabu shabu, panty vending machines, and me.
http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/

An Englishman in Osaka: he's english, he's a man, and he's in osaka.
http://anenglishmaninosaka.blogspot.com/

TV in Japan: This is what TV is like. In Japan.
http://tvinjapan.com/

Weird Asia News brings the best of weird, strange, funny, odd, and just plain crazy news and stories from the lands of the Far East. We have 6 authors who dedicate their time to bringing you the best breaking news possible.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/

If you have some recommendations for similar sites, please share via a comment.

Everything Is Blurry: Photographing Deaf People in Japan

What do all the photos in this post have in common? At least part of the picture is blurry. And why? The Japanese people pictured here are deaf. That means part of their body is being used to communicate while I was attempting to photograph them. Japanese Sign Language entails more than movements of hands and arms - it uses the entire body. In the photo above, I was attempting to take a photo of the young woman when at the last minute the man stuck his face in the foreground. He was very amused at the effect. Coincidently, he is a photographer...


I was attempting a portrait in this second shot as well as the subject is very colorful. However people walk in front of the camera, again at the last minute, fingers, hands and arms moving in active conversation.


The setting of the first three photos was a sign language workshop in Hirakata-shi given by two deaf people from Yamagata Prefecture. One of the activities was a modified version of jan-ken, or rock-scissors-paper. This was a very fun and animated game. The loser of the jan-ken match had to make a JSL sign using the handshape of either rock, scissors or paper (depending on which handshape they threw). If they were able to do a sign within a few seconds, they could continue in the match.


This last shot I took two weeks ago at an Okinawan izakaya in Osaka. Again, I was with a deaf group. One of the participants is a professional wrestler. He is the only deaf wrestler in his organization. I asked how he communicated with others during matches and he replied that he uses gestures and body language. I suspect he can vocalize to some extent as well. I also imagine he is a better communicator than most professional wrestlers, but of course this is my own bias... Anyway, he was promoting his upcoming matches and so had his mask with him. In this shot, he is pictured "wrestling" with Momo-chan, the tiny dog belonging to the master of the izakaya. Due to the continuing pet boom, these little creatures are almost everywhere.

Since he is promoting his show, I think it is OK to reveal his name: エロ桜馬, which can be translated as Erotic Cherry Horse. For more information (and tickets), see the link below (in Japanese). Apparently deaf people can get discounted tickets.

Link to Japanese professional wrestling website Toroumon.com
http://www.toroumon.com/