Author: Video Ichiban

How To Peel A Banana With Your Butt

The poet Bashō is named after the Japanese word for a banana plant. The “bashō” planted in his garden by a grateful student became a source of inspiration to his poetry, as well as a symbol of his life and home.

[Bashō’s] disciples built him a rustic hut and planted a banana tree (芭蕉, bashō) in the yard, giving Bashō a new haigō and his first permanent home.

Fundoshi (褌) is the traditional Japanese underwear for adult males, made from a length of cotton. Before World War II the fundoshi was the main form of underwear for Japanese adult males; however it went out of use quickly after the war with the advent of new underwear, such as briefs and trunks, on the Japanese market.

Kirin Lager Meets YMO

Kirin eventually, somewhat belatedly, in early 1996, gave in to consumer preferences and changed Kirin Lager to a less bitter, draft beer.

Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) is an influential Japanese technopop band formed in 1978, and renowned as a major influence in popular music and for pioneering the technopop music genre. The principal members are Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards). The band have reunited in 2007 for an advertising campaign for Kirin Lager which lampooned their longevity and charted No.1 on various Japanese digital download charts (including iTunes Store chart) with the song “Rydeen 79/07”, released on Sakamoto’s new label commmons.

Moog synthesizer (pronounced /ˈmoÊŠg/, rhymes with “rogue”) may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for analog and digital music synthesisers.

Train Passenger Pushers

Oshiya (押し屋), or “pusher”, is an informal Japanese term for a worker who stands on the platform of a railway station during the morning and evening rush hours, and pushes people onto the train. It becomes difficult to shut the doors when the number of passengers is over 200% of the capacity, but oshiyas are often stationed on platforms when trains are at around 120% capacity, as they also help to organize passengers.

There are 27,268 km of rail crisscrossing [Japan]. JR (a group of companies formed after privatization of JNR) controlled 20,135 km of these lines as of March 31, 1996, with the remaining 7,133 km in the hands of private enterprized local railway companies. Japan’s railways carried 22.24 billion passengers (395.9 billion passenger-kilometres) in fiscal 2006. In comparison, Germany has over 40,000 km of railways, but travels only 2.2 billion passengers per year.