Back when my first child Ash-kun was born I remember how helpless I felt being there as my missus zoomz underwent a prolonged and painful labour. zoomz had insisted on giving birth naturally and she was a damn hell of a trooper about it as well. Unfortunately the Gods were not on her side that day. Ash-kun had failed to progress after 12 torturous hours and he had started to show signs of distress. It was therefore decided that he would be delivered by Caesarean section.
I accompanied zoomz to the operating theater where a team of obstetricians prepared to perform the C-section. To obstruct our view of the action that was about to occur they placed a screen over zoomz’s chest. On the ‘business end’ side of the screen the doctor made an incision in her abdominal wall and uterus and pulled Ash-kun from the womb and into the world.
The doctor held Ash-kun up and proudly announced “Congratulations! It’s a boy!” I popped my head above the screen for a look and remember thinking “Oh My God! It’s a frog! No, it’s an alien frog!” To be brutally honest, there was a fleeting moment where I had wondered if he was a science experiment gone wrong. In Ash-kun’s defence the poor kid was overdue and a Caesar which I guess meant that, without a vaginal delivery, he didn’t have the chance to get the juices squeezed from him on the way out giving him a bloated ‘alien frog’ look and a pair of Simpson-esque eyes.
The seventh Rugby World Cup kicked off in New Zealand today and I can’t think of a better way to mark the commencement of this sporting spectacle than to recollect from the retro video archives the cool ad from the 2003 Rugby World Cup featuring popular ex-Wallaby John Eales taking on the Japanese train crammers as he tries to board a crowded train in Tokyo. The ad, embedded below, was part of Visa’s advertising campaign launched for the 2003 Rugby World Cup and is a parody of the Japanese train crammers who are renowned for wearing white gloves and stuffing people into already crowded trains.
After rushing through Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and paying for his train ticket with Visa, an airport bound “Ealsy” gets to the train but is confronted by a carriage overflowing with people. Noticing the overpowering white-gloved train crammers at the other end of the carriage stifling the ability of the commuters at his end of the train from boarding he uses his Rugby prowess to pack a scrum with fellow commuters that overwhelms the push of the white-gloved train crammers helping to pack more people through his train doors and eventually squeezing himself in too.
The soundtrack to the advertisement is Turning Japanese, possibly the most misinterpreted song of all time! Released in 1980, it is the second single by the band The Vapors and is popularly interpreted to be a euphemism for masturbation as it is believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.
To me nothing epitomises the sunny season in Japan more than the heavy hitting summertime rock release “Nuts Bang!!!”, the 23rd single of the Japanese rock band FLOW released on 22 July 2009 to celebrate summer.
The upbeat, fun and enjoyable surf-inspired track is in the embedded video below. The opening sequence kicks off in a surgery with band members Keigo (playing a nerd, vocalist), Kōhshi (a hippy dude, vocalist), Take (a simpleton, guitarist), Gotō (a shy introvert, bassist) and Iwasaki (a yakuza-looking businessman, drummer) all looking to gain muscle surgically. Their dream comes true at around 1.27m (of the clip) when the actual song starts and they hit the beach with their newly bulked up bodies.
Throughout the music video you see bikini-clad glimpses of model Megumi Ikeda but then that is followed by some rather effeminate looking handkerchief twirling at 3.27m. There is also some death growl guttural vocals at 3.54. The track utilises Take’s guitar churning and includes rapping and singing about “Summer Days”.
As for the song title Nuts Bang!, which evil gaijin translated that name? Apparently the song title is supposed to be interpreted as “Natsu Bang(u)” – or “Summertime Explosion”. Hmmmm, supposedly.
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