The Japanese are crazy

I didn't say it. 

"The Japanese are crazy," or JAC, is the name of a website devoted to presenting tidbits from Japanese TV, some charming, some alarming, and others downright weird.  I mean, what to make of Hard Gay?  In Japan, where one hears hardly a whisper about same sex marriage, who would have thought that the biggest TV celebrity would be a buff ex-wrestler dressed up in leather hotpants and a pelvis in perpetual bimbo yusuri." (Bimbo yusuri is the Japanese term for...what the hell do we call it in English, when you jiggle your leg up and down as part of a nervous habit...just 'jiggling your leg'?).  Anyways, he's the guy you'll see when the current JAC video starts playing automatically.    Here, he's contrasted with the "Yong-sama", the slightly yesterday Korean actor who specializes in sentimental roles about enduring love.

The selections have been devastated by the recent YouTube crackdown on unauthorized use of Japanese TV, so you might draw some blanks.

I liked this one, in which they get a young  chimpanzee to walk five bulldogs several blocks to a cake store, where he's been instructed to pay for and pick up his own birthday cake, and then head back.   Be sure to click on parts II and III.  It should be pretty clear what's going on even if you haven't a lick of Japanese, so enjoy.

This one is good too, featuring a burriko, or an adult woman who acts like a little girl, who goes to the zoo.  I've seen a longer version, in which she begins by asking stupid questions about the animals, then tries to get the attention of a polar bear, who seems to have no interest in her charms,  It's only when she gets the idea of putting on a cute baby seal hat that things get interesting.  The order is scrabmeld in the version they have here, but you'll get the idea.

Comments

[rachjak]

Like many Americans, I suspect, the extent of my exposure to humor of Japanese origin is contained in a file folder of owner's manuals for various household gadgets (which once upon a time were all made in Japan) that are translated to English, often with side-splitting ineptitude, from the native tongue. Honestly, some of the usage exemplifies the phrase "you couldn't make this stuff up." What makes them so satisfying, of course, is that the meaning, against all intuition, is left intact. The caption under the polar bear video reminded me that I should dust off the assembly instructions to, like, my water-pik for a few nostalgic yucks:

"Details: A girl and a polar bear gets up and personal. The young girl doesn't seem to get together very well though."