One of my pet peeves is the Japanese insistence on using English when they use terms like "Samurai" to refer to athletes and sports teams.
The latest team of "samurai" is their next entry in the World Baseball championships.
I doubt they see the irony in desperately clinging to a romantic idea from a time gone by, but doing it in English and with foreign sports. However, Yomiuri Giants coach, Tatsunori Hara, seems to think that the Bushido code is somehow synonymous with baseball. I suppose he's going to tell us next that the samurai played a game similar to baseball in their down time and that bokutō were the world's first baseball bats?
I'd love to hear him explain exactly how that bat wielding samurai in the logo would slide into second in that hakama without flashing everyone in left field.
Has the baseball bat replaced the sword to personify the soul of Japan?
Well, a Samurai is literally “one who serves”. While that’s a nice sentiment for the national team, we’re talking about pro athletes here.
I think they've failed to realize that “self-serving” doesn’t count!
⇒ Then again, I suppose we could forgive the misunderstanding. Except for martial arts converted into sports in modern times, Japan has no indigenous sports or any tradition of sporting competitions except Sumo. Besides, in fairness most Japanese know as much about Samurai as most Canadians do about their own history. Take a survey and I'll bet most Canadian's think that a Voyageur is someone who peeps into your bedroom window at night.
⇒ In any case, we have to be forgiving with a proud culture that is still searching for a post-war identity. Japan may have long since given up the sword, but I'm sure there are plenty of men who would like nothing more than to take them up again so they can cut down this new generation of make-up using, bra wearing sissies.
Gotta make sure those man-boobs don't sag, especially as their natural estrogen levels increase along with the gradual shrinking of their proverbial manhood as they sink further into gender purgatory that I like to call "No man's land" (where, hopefully, they will be cut down my German machine guns).
Apparently in modern Japan, looking feminine is becoming pretty manly.
⇒ Men in bras, and incompetent prime ministers It's no wonder people like Hayao Miyazaki are worried about the future of Japan.
⇒ This doesn't happen every often, but; Although I don't agree with the way he said it, there is a lot of truth in what Taro Aso said yesterday about lazy, fat-asses straining the health care system in Japan.
That doesn't change the fact, however, that Aso is an intellectual oaf and about as articulate as a drunken illiterate with a speech impediment.
⇒ As I posted yesterday, there's a 30 page Urasawa comic Blowin' in the Wind that no one outside Japan seems to have heard of, about another person that's difficult to understand (but not for the same reason as Aso).
But, if you don't get the Blowin' in the Wind reference, you may not want to bother with the comic either.
(More on the comic/book when I find it.)
And that just about clears the cache of everything suitable for mixed company.
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