These made me cry at work. Despite that, they're absolutely beautiful and touching even though they make me realize that no matter how far we think we've come, it just takes one day to tear it all apart.

Just to clarify a little - this is a particular genre of TV known as "monomane" - impersonations of celebrities. The networks there do see it as pure entertainment, but it's done seriously - they really go all out with costumes and makeup. I don't think the blackface comments necessarily apply here - 1) most Japanese have almost no experience with Africans/African-Americans at all, outside of Bob Sapp and Bobby "the Nigerian," so I don't think you can necessarily classify this as willful racism or something without considering that they're attempting "whiteface" as well here, with the same attitude of "foreigners are strange and amusing."

The Something Awful forums had an amazing Guido megathread going for awhile, and it lead to a lot of reminiscing with a friend from NYC - the girlfriends of guidos are called "guidettes," by the way.

Oh man, they included Old Forge style pizza - it never fails to amaze me when my little hometown makes it on the web. :) Since the author admits to knowing the least about it, I direct you to a blog post where one man logs his attempts to make an authentic Old Forge white pizza, which is one of the most delicious foods I've ever had: Stephen Cooks OF White Pizza. Just looking at the photo makes me want to go back and visit my family.

I learned from a tv show that furoshiki actually were traditionally used as towels to spread on the floor when you got out of the bath tub (furo = bath, shiki = to spread). It's kinda neat how they've outgrown their nature to become such useful objects!

Ajikan has been my favorite band for about 5 years now, and through shameless promotion, I've managed to get multiple friends (not only age 24 and up, but not even particular fans of Japanese culture or anime to begin with) into their music. They have a very upbeat, driven rock style that I really recommend to anybody who hasn't tried too hard to get into non-English music - maybe try watching the videos to Loop & Loop or Kimi no Machi made (To the Town Where You Live) - the songs are easy to enjoy, and the band has a good sense of humor about their videos and performances. I'm really pleased that Salon is introducing them to new listeners, and I'd recommend the albums Sol-fa or Kunkei Five M if you're looking for a place to start.

The scents are listed on the Wikipedia page for the phone. My translations/spelling might be a little off, but:

* Aqua（爽やかなベルガモットミントの香り)
A light Bergamot mint scent

* Marble（あまいミルキーフローラルの香り）
A sweet milky floral scent

* Exotic（気ままなトロピカルソルベの香り）
A willful tropical sorbet scent

* Romantic（優しいフルーティローズの香り）
A graceful fruit rose scent

* Flow（とろけるハニーダージリンの香り)
A melty honey darjeeling scent

* Gorgeous（華やぐホワイトムスクの香り）
A brilliant white musk scent

* Misty（神秘的なオークシトラスの香り）
A mysterious oak citrus scent

* Twilight（安らぐオリエンタルモカの香り）
A relaxing oriental mocha scent

* Ocean（静寂なディープブルーの香り）
A quiet deep blue scent

このほか、有名ブランドとコラボレーションした限定パネルが発売されている。
In addition, the scent panels for various famous brands' perfume collections will be sold.
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Aside from the question of what "quiet deep blue" smells like, this phone is definitely targeted at women. :)

I remember that at a discussion session about culture shock in Japan that we had at a conference for the Japan Exchange & Teaching Program, we were talking about things that Japanese do or say that foreigners find annoying, like constantly being asked if your country has 4 seasons, if you like Japanese food, etc.

The speaker talked about his own experience at his wife's funeral. The man was American, and his Japanese wife had died of cancer. As the funeral was beginning, the priest turned to him and as he started to hand him the set of chopsticks to pick up the bones, his eyes widened and he asked, in the way that almost all Japanese people eventually do when confronted with a foreigner, "...can you use chopsticks?"

It would have been amusing if it had been a joke, but I can imagine that the poor guy must have wanted to bite the priest's head off at that moment.

Gah! I don't know how I missed the release of this one already, I am definitely off to the bookstore today. As an aside, if you're entirely new to Discworld, my starter book was Night Watch, which I found tremendously easy to use as an entry point to the books - I didn't even realize it was part of a greater series when I started reading it, and it will get you caught up on who's who and what's going on very easily without overloading you with information.

As an elementary school English teacher in Japan for the past 2 years, I can tell you that collecting beetles is a huge pasttime for 6-10-year-old kids there, definitely in large part because Mushiking got them interested in bug stats and also for the gross-girls-out factor. Here's a kuwagatamushi (I'm guessing a kind of stag beetle) that one of my elementary kids carried with him all day:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmurawski/187311754/

One of my kids came running down the hall to me to show off his new Atlas beetle (which was huge!), which he explained cost $10 and was from Indonesia.