Saturday, May 9, 2009

Where Ixo Buys Some Tee Shirts

...And this is what my posts have become.

My life is some hamster wheel, and I do the required walking to keep it spinning, but not much has come around the wheel recently, so I find a lack of interesting things to post about. My warrior has dinged 80, oh boy oh boy, but that's about as exciting as reporting that the sun has risen, because eventually it was bound to happen. I live my life's days going about my business, and then when night falls, I break out plastic vampire teeth, and raid Ulduar PUGs till 5 in the fucking morning.

It's not very healthy.

The deadly combination of having shit to do during the day (watch my son, pretend to be an active human), coupled with the 'you have fuck all to wake up early in the morning for (a.k.a A JOB)' spells disaster for our hero's sleep schedule, so while the house in Kurosaki sleeps, I throw back tall cans and begin to slur on vent.

I'm a horrible person, and will accept my position in Hell gleefully, assuming they get a decent wireless connection down there.

So it happened the other day that I found myself shopping. At a store named UNIQLO, which I'm not positive exists on the eastern side of the pacific. (***side note: I love that Japan and all of Asia is 'the east' when I took a plane westward to get here.) Imagine Old Navy, or some generic hipster store back home, and you're on the right track. They had a poster on the wall advertising Mega Man and Ghouls and Ghosts teeshirts, but the closest I could actually find to anything resembling them was a Xevious shirt, which I bought.

Now, at this point, I should go out of my way and just lay a few things on the line. While it's retarded enough to go buy hipster World of Warcraft clothing at Hot Topic that says 'for the horde' or whatever, how much gayer must it be to buy a Xevious shirt when really... I don't, like, hold any high scores on Xevious, and would probably be hard pressed to pick it out from a line up including Gradius and some knock offs? As far as I'm concerned, I know that it's at least similar to Gradius, so there's my frigging qualification to buy/wear the fucking thing, okay? Christ, it was 1500 yen, and I really wanted the Ghouls and Ghosts one, okay?

Fuck, I even hate how green it is. I'm never going to wear this frigging thing.

Ugh.

Anyway.

I suddenly became aware again of tee shirts in Japan, though, where before I had sort of built up a tolerance for them. When you see shirts proclaiming "Your Happy Is THE HERE FOR YESTERDAY!!!" everyday, your mind eventually just gives up, and you stop paying attention. I was gripped in the throes of Jap-o-shirt madness again, though, and decided to bask in it for a bit, as soon it will be gone.

There are a few different types of shirts in Japan that have English written on them...

1) The default "English Soup" variety that just picks words totally randomly, and mashes them together.





This is by far the most common tee shirt in Japan, and I really should have taken a few more shots to demonstrate how bad it is. PRESENT NOW EXIST EVERLASTING PLEASURE WORLD kinda sums it up pretty succinctly though, I think (*EDIT* added the second and third pics today). They range from a few words to full on paragraphs, but they're all horrible.

2) The shirts that actually contain "correct English", but make you wonder what the fuck inspired the sentence on them:

Um, okay. What is this, like a white guy's Thanksgiving Jersey? Pocahontas would be stoked, bro. Way to go, whitey... you finally get it? Wait, no... they're Japanese... I'm lost...

And 3) The ones that are totally awesome, but only by sheer accident:

That's my niece, Chisaki, modeling the tee shirt for your pleasure, and I had a hell of a time trying to explain to her what a "troll" was in my busted-ass Japanese. That there was two kinds; the ones that live under bridges, and ones that clog up internet forums, and how awesome this shirt was because it addressed the latter perfectly, being that I run a website. This shirt was LADIES ONLY, and ended up driving me to purchase the shitty Xevious shirt in disgust when my wife got this one without fully comprehending the significant double meaning, and I didn't want to walk away empty handed.

As a bonus feature, I include a picture from the as-of-yet-unknown-to-me FOURTH category of Japanese shirts. This was a rare discovery I made in the children's clothing section, shopping for a pair of shorts for my son:

Yes, the fourth (and rare!) category of Japanese tee shirts containing random English: Children's Apparel Containing the Word "Fuck". It was not my last wish to have my son Rocking, Kissing, and Fucking in America, so this one had to stay on the shelf.

Sorry, Roy. Maybe one day we can share that dream together on a victory tour of Japan in the future; but at 8 months old, I gotta draw a line in the sand (for now).

18 comments:

Mordiceius said...

That toddler's shirt is fantastical.

Anonymous said...

I have a modest proposal. Instead of playing WoW till 5 in the morning, why don't you brush up on your IT skills and what have you, so you can appear more knowledgeable when you get back to the USA and need to, you know, look for a job.

There is a bunch of new stuff out, like 2008 Server, Exchange 2007, etc.

Mixtil said...

UniQlo exists in the UK; here it just sells brightly coloured clothing and good jeans though. There are occasionally a few japanese t-shirts, but mainly it's all bright green, bright red, bright blue, bright yellow.

Rich said...

Instead of playing WoW till 5 in the morning, why don't you brush up on your IT skills

NO

you fail to realize i worked IT 6 years, and then moved to japan to teach elementary school english.

sit on a log and think hard about what I've told you. the magical answer will make itself clear soon, i promise.

Tragedyx said...

Another great post.

I actually frequent your site more than I visit news sites. IMO, you need to write more. It's always great.

Lmfao at the kids shirt. Today I almost bought a shirt in 4x because it was cheap and awesome. I tried it on and the collar slid past my shoulders and the shirt literally fell off me and onto the floor.

Damn clothing.

Kyir said...

Blizzard has been more and more out of touch with their own game it seems. Keep playing Ixo!

Anonymous said...

OK, then, resume what you are doing. I do wonder what your wife's parents think of a guy who plays video games till 5am and is planning to take their daughter and grandson out of the country. Maybe they think you will become a professional video game player.

Don't want to do IT, ok, but playing games ain't furthering any goals.

Kyir said...

If you think about it, many things aren't.

For instance, by posting here, you're not furthering any goals.

Do you want to be worthless?

Ithiel said...

ROFL! Awesome shirts.

Also, I've been in IT for about 5 years now.. Teaching english to japs actually sounds like a refreshing change. lol.


Ithiel
WoWFailBlog.com

oshin said...

This post answered some question I have long held about T-shirts and any other item with random words in another language. What does it actually mean ? Would you wear a shirt with random kanji you got in the US on it around the streets of Tokyo ? If its the same as english shirts in japan, then definitely not, at best people will think your tool with some sappy sentence on your shirt, at worst a retard.

Oh and you definitely rule out buying one for your kiddy.

I find the righteous comments about not wasting your time funny, everybody goes between jobs thesedays, and this gives you much needed time to sit on your ass and take it easy. its not like your on social welfare and trying to figure out how to avoid child support payments to a kid you dont careabout

Rich said...

it's also not like i've written about 80 other posts about what I'm trying to do, work-wise... : / One stop trolls are the best kind, because they get self righteous, and then invariably never come back for the next post two days later.

P.S. added some more English Soup ones to the main body text.

Anonymous said...

OK yes, I guess you have written about your desire to be a video game designer. Well, that is a longshot, since that seems to be a prized position. You have no programming experience and you are not an insider. Blizzard would basically have to not promote from within, but instead pluck you out of the lineup by chance and give you a plum spot that I am sure many internal programmers are wanting.

Backup plan? You have IT experience, but you don't want to do IT. You also lack a college degree, a minimum requirement for many "generic" white collar positions.

So all this equates to little marketability when you get back stateside, unless maybe you want to continue teaching English. Oh wait, kindergardeners in the US are already fluent in English.

Whatever, dude, it's your life, but you seem like an intelligent guy, and it sucks watching you set yourself up for failure. I have enjoyed some of your posts in the past, and perhaps this is my away of attempting to repay you for the free entertainment, though I suspect it is not welcome.

I wish I could afford to play games till 5 am. I like games, but all I have time for is reading about them, it seems. And I have an established career. I cannot imagine what it would be like for someone who is actually trying to get established. There is so much to do.

Seriously, if I were you, I would smash the WoW disks. Get your head straight, man. Put away the childish things, you are an adult. Sorry that it takes a stranger on the Internet to tell you this. Perhaps those close to you are too close.

Well, hope I am wrong, and maybe you do have all your business together, and I am just seeing a minor part of it here. Good luck.

Kyir said...

You don't actually need the disks to play WoW.

Shows what you know.

oshin said...

Some of those english soup ones could pass for poetry, although the rubbish kind you see beatniks doing up in cafes and thinking there clever (do people like that still exist ?)

Khatib said...

I like games, but all I have time for is reading about them, it seems. And I have an established career.You established a pretty shitty career there guy. Most people I know who are about 30 and are established in their career work a 40 hour work week, make 60-80k, plenty to live comfortably without kids, and enough to cover kids even (I live in the Midwest, it's not that expensive to live up here) -- and did you catch the only work 40 a week thing?

40 hours a week + under an hour commute (I said midwest remember, we don't have real traffic here) = MORE than enough time to play 2-3 hours a night if that's what you want to use your time for.

The majority of my college drinking friends have said they actually go out far more and drink more now that they are in the working world, since they only work 40 a week, and now actually have money to spend. Of course we drank quite a bit in college, and til ***5 am*** on a lot of weeknights even... But we usually didn't start til 10 and slept til noon all the time. Now you work your 8-5, hit a bar at 6, drink til 11, and still get your 8 hours of sleep in. And on weekends you do houseboat trips, vegas weekends, random travel to visit friends, etc, etc, etc.

I don't know what you established your career in that you're apparently working 80 a week with no free time to persue personal fun, but maybe you should consider switching it up. Might be fun to be a super important high paid lawyer or a fancy pants doctor on call all the time, but me -- I'd rather be a super smart, super geeky engineer, work 40 a week except in rare crunch time cases, and enjoy my life.

And what the fuck are you? Iso's long lost grandparent or something? Dude is in between jobs, on a planned hiatus from work. He's taking a month off cause he WANTS a month off. Get off his shit.

Anonymous said...

Yea, I think I do work a little too much, maybe 50 hours a week. After that, there's family time, some TV shows I follow, social time with friends, there seems to me little left for games. Maybe an occasional Civilization or Halo. I have my own business, so I have been fortunate to have a good income, and hope to retire in 10 years or so, but to each his own.

But. . . a month off, my ass! If you are independently wealthy or have no responsibilities to anyone, sure, no one's business but your own. But that is not the case here. Nothing is stopping him from getting back to the US and making everything comfortable and in place for when the family arrives, instead of doing all that house hunting/furnishing/job hunting business with wife and baby involved.

But anyway, you are right that I have no business to preach. It's just that I have seen crappy dads around, and it bothers me to see someone headed that way. It's going to especially stressful on the marriage that one partner is in a foreign country. It is only natural that she is going to look to him to be the strong one here. She is already going to be missing her family and friends. Too much slacking off, and the marriage could be over, and he may never see his wife and kid again, as the whole Wednesday/Every other weekend visitation deal doesn't work when the kid is across an ocean.

Anyway, I promise to shut up now and mind my own business.

Rich said...

and wow, seriously, you're giving me marriage and child rearing advice, too? I didn't even see that last post.

I didn't realize Captain Planet had sex with Mother Teresa, and their glorious offspring is visiting my blog, I take back everything I said before.

Hatch said...

Thank you for sharing those T-shirts, really hilarious. Though (sanctimonious parenting advice incoming!) I would have let the kid wear the fuck shirt. :D

I haven't read your post responding to him yet, but before I do I gotta say...can't really take preachy douche seriously when he has time to read your blog and make long comments. Clearly he's a paragon of productivity with all his blog commenting...