What's up internet losers. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sakura Shogun, overlord of Japan and Galvin's partner in making fun of the puny Japanese. As some of you may know, I am half Japanese and half American. You may ask yourself, how can Sakura Shogun make fun of his own people? WELLLLL, I sort of have a self-love self-hate relationship with my Japanese side (kinda like when you jerk off with one hand while you scrape your retina with the other). The Japanese have wonderful art, food, music, and produce wonderful sexually repressed conformist children, but seem to get a lot of other things "wrong". This is where I will step in, acting as a national lambada stick- the short good Japanese things will pass under the bar no problem, while the FAT TALL STUPID SHIT will hit their teeth on the spikey steel bar and die. Yes, this lambada bar will be very spiky and set REALLY low because I'm an irate bastard.

This page will serve as an outlet for my daily frustrations with Japanese culture. Of course I wouldn't write down anything here I liked because who would want to read that? In particular, I'll focus on Japanese tv and media. When I can pull myself away from my involvement in rikshaw racing and work as judge in the national suicide competition, I'll update my page.

Now, to sum up Japanese tv in one word- SUPREME! That's the only word I can use because it beats anything we have on American tv a million times over. No Real World. No Osbournes. No Olsen twins. No Urkel. No woman's channel. And if you think Jackass is funny, you're in for a surprise because Japanese tv shows have been doing Jackass-like material for 50+ years, most of it being better than anything Jackass could have come up with. Jackass is nothing but the product of suburban white kids who have nothing better to do than skate around and fall. Skate culture is the stupidest crap. The ONLY thing suburbia's created in its 60 years of existence and it's SKATE CULTURE. How about walking next time you need to go to the 7-11 to hang out in front and be completely useless? If you do BMX, inline, or skate, I hope you try to emulate your "heroes" from Jackass and end up paralyzed. I'd like to watch some paralyzed idiot with spiked hair try to do a fakey in a wheelchair. Now that's good tv.

OK, enough of my problems with American culture, we're talking about the Japanese here!

You also gotta remember when talking about Japanese media is that individual types of media in Japan cannot be separated from one another and are part of a larger general "media" which conflates music, tv, and movies. It's all the same. Not only is cross-promotion so rampant, but actors, comedians, and musicians will and can cross into other forms of media and succeed very easily. Therefore, when we talk about Japanese tv, the divisions and categories I provide are very loose and can change very easily. Wow, that was too academic even for a Shogun.

So, Japanese tv can be divided in a couple of different categories. First there are "DORAMA", or as Americans call them "soap operas". "DORAMA" usually involve the most trite storylines, SUCH AS, a porn star who gets out of the business in order to find true happiness with a guy who doesn't care about her past work- a bukkake video (where a girl is forced to drown in the man butter of usually over 30 men in one sitting), a pig video (where a girl gets banged from behind by a pig while she eats raw bacon), and the always popular Buddhist porn (which is especially eerie with the abundance of bald chicks and all that chanting). Alright, that wasn't too normal, but most of them are pretty soft, dealing with romance and other stupid crap I have no interest in. The second category is anime. If you like anime, I suggest you deoderize your face with a rusty ninja star because it is horrible. Anime is a rough genre to describe, but I'll offer you a few choice words- animated, ninjas, schoolgirls, fighting, lame, gay, kill yourself. The last genre, and the one I actually I like, is what the Japanese call "variety shows". This broad genre basically means anything that isn't "DORAMA", sports, or anime. And we're not talking Comedy Central Viva Variety type of variety, which sucked as bad as Perfect Strangers when they all moved into that big house. The range can go from shows where comedians are forced to receive anal probes if they answer a question wrong, to a show where people sit around and taste food. In order to understand the term "variety show", you also have to understand the concept of "TALENTO". These are basically celebrities who make their whole living just appearing on these shows where minimal talent is involved, just a pretty face (most of the time) and an ability to speak is needed. For the most part, I'll take examples of "variety shows" and break them down for your with my unique brand of masked humor.

Enough! TIME TO RIDICULE!!!

December 12, 2002 - BEAUTY COLOSSEUM