Aside from the advantage of being visually rather than textually based, the popularity of Dragonball and Street Fighter outside of Japan made it easy for Makanokosappo to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries and catch on with internet nerds around the globe. Now, Japanese humor is often painted as being all-but impenetrable by those without a high level of proficiency in the language, and the idea of not being able to be at least moderately funny in Japanese is quite a discouraging prospect for learners in the early stages of their studies.

But never fear! Just because you aren’t JLPT N1 yet doesn’t mean you are doomed to bore the pants of others when communicating in Japanese. As this article in The Japan Times points out, there is lots of Japanese humor that only requires a basic command of the language to be understood, enjoyed, and used to send your Japanese friends flying into the air from the sheer force of your wit! Three contenders for this year’s Japanese Buzzword of the Year Award have been taken up on the internet in a big way and become memes, and they are perfect examples of how Japanese humor is quite similar to the kinds of things that make us English speakers giggle. So, without further ado, let’s us proceed to teh lolz!

Meme #1: Itsu Yaru Ka? Ima Desho!

Osamu Hayashi’s now-famous catchphrase “Itsu yaru ka?…… Ima deshou!” (When are you actually going to do it? NOW!) made its first appearance in 2012 as part of a T.V. commercial for Toshin High School. A nationwide chain of cram-schools focused on preparing students for the infamously grueling university entrance exams, Toshin tries to lure in customers by showing clips of their best teachers motivating students through their “unique characters” and “inspirational words.” While making the mother of all doya-gao (a Japanese phrase describing look of smugness or self-satisfaction), Osamu faces his students and asks “Itsu yaru ka?” (When are you actually going to do it?), leaves the smallest of pauses, and then answers the question himself “ima desho!” (it’s now or never, right!). The word “ima” simply translates as [now/the present], while “desho” is a grammatical term that, in this particular case, implies that the speaker is very confident that their opinion is correct.

The video gained some attention, but it wasn’t until Toyota hired Osamu to do a parody commercial in 2013 that the videos went viral and Osama’s catchphrase rapidly became one of the most popular memes of the year. Toyota’s commercial mimics the original video, but the “yaru” in “istu yaru ka” is replaced with “kau” (buy), turning the phrase into “When are you actually going to buy it? NOW!”

Usage and Examples

Within a matter of weeks of the commercial being aired, Twitter, Facebook, Mixi, and other such sites were flooded with remix videos, gifs, and image macros.

Dubstep remix anyone?

Or how about the Kirby version?

Another popular way to procrastinate online is to change “itsu yaru ka?” to another question, or alter the response by replacing “ima” with another word or phrase. In the picture below, やる “yaru” has been replaced with 殺る, which is also pronounced “yaru” but means “to kill” or “to knock off!”

“Itsu yaru ka… ima desho!” When are you actually going to knock them off?…NOW!

As Japanese has quite a limited number of sounds, the majority of words have at least one homonym, aka a word that is pronounced the same but written differently and has a different meaning. In the original Toshin commercial, the “ima” meaning “now/the present” is written 今, but there is another “ima” which is written as 居間 and means “living room.”

“Doko de yaru ka? Ima desho!” – Where are you going to do it… In the living room, right?

So when’re you going to start using this meme? Err… sometime soon?

Meme #2: Je! (Je!) (Je!)

In standard Japanese, surprise or shock are usually expressed with the word “eh?”, meaning something like “huh?” in English , or “bikkuri”, which translates roughly as “what a shock!” However, in the dialect spoken in Kosode, Iwate prefecture in North-East Japan, surprise is given voice to with the expression “je!”. The greater the surprise, the more times you repeat the sound, three repetitions usually being the maximum.

One Japanese website gives the following guidance for usage:

Level 1 ‘Je!’

“Udon yori soba no hou ga karori ga takai da te”
[You know, soba noodles are apparently higher in calories than udon noodles]

Level 2 ‘Je! Je!’

“THE BOOM ni wa okinawa no hito wa hitori mo i inai rashiiii yo”
[It seems that not one of the members of The Boom, who play Okinawan-style music, are actually from Okinawa!]

Level 3 ‘Je! Je! Je’

“Ano hito, ojisan ni mieru kedo, jitsu ha obasan nan da yo ne”
[That person over there – they might look like an old man, but it’s actually an old woman.]

So, perhaps you are wondering how and why “je!” became so popular? Well, it’s all thanks to a T.V. drama called ‘Ama Chan’ that was aired on NHK from March to December this year. The story revolves around a girl named Aki Amano who visits her mother’s hometown of Kosode when her grandmother is taken ill. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but I will say that the story involves Aki struggling to qualify as a sea urchin diver and aiming to become a famous idol at the same time. The majority of the main characters in the series speak in the Kosode dialect, and thanks to both the popularity of the show the once little-known expression “Je” has taken off in a big way.

Usage and Examples

As with “Ima Desho!”, YouTube videos featuring the expression have been a big hit. One user decided to record his “improved version” of the instrumental theme song by singing along to it with “Je! Je! Je! Je!…”

… while a slightly more ambitious user created his own song inspired by the show, with a “Je”-filled chorus.

Sukoshi odoroku je！ When it’s a little surprise ‘Je!’
Futsuu ni odoroku je！ When it’s an every-day surprise ‘Je! Je!’
Sungoku odoroku je! je! je! je! je! When it’s a big surprise ‘Je! Je! Je! Je!’
Nipponcyuu je! je! je！ All through Japan ‘Je! Je! Je!’

Ever since the first episode, when Aki’s mother receives a message on her phone where “je!” is written using the emoji (‘j’), usage has been a huge hit on social sites such as Twitter.

‘Je!’ = （‘j’）／
‘Je! Je!’ = （‘jj’）／
‘Je! Je! Je!’ = （‘jjj’）／

“Okaasan taoreta! (‘j’)/” [Mum feinted! :O]

Or you could just make a macro by slapping the phrase on a picture of a surprised looking cat because, let’s face it, cute animals are what the internet’s really about.

“Je je je je je!!!!!! Nanda are?” [Ahhhhhhhhhhh! What is THAT?]

Meme #3: Bai Gaeshi

Our third meme also comes from a 2013 T.V. drama. “Hanzawa Naoki” centers around an incredibly bad-ass banker called (shockingly) Hanzawa Naoki (!), who works for the largest financial institution in Japan, Tokyo Chuo Bank. The series tracks the challenges and scandals he encounters as he climbs his way up the administrative ranks. His catch-phrase “yararetara yarikaesu, baigaeshi da!” means “If your enemies hurt you, take double the payback!”, and as the series progresses and his opposition get more dastardly it becomes “jyuubai gaeshi da!” (10 times the payback), and eventually ”hyaku bai gaeshi da!” (take 100 times the payback!).

Just like “ima desho!” and “je! (je!) (je!)“, this one-liner was a huge hit with internet users, and popped up all over the place as the show gained popularity.

Aside from the usual remixes, there is also (the rather difficult) “listen-to-the-phrase-for-three- minutes-non-stop” video challenge.

The interesting thing about the phrase “bai gaeshi da” is that without a specific context it can have a lot of meanings. It can be translated as “double the payback” or “give back twice as good as you get”, depending on how it is used. As a result, there have been numerous discussions about what else should be given or taken back in double.

“Raisu tanonda hazu na no ni han raisu ga kita.”
[Even though I ordered a full portion of rice, I only got a half. Take double the payback!]

“Omiyage wo”
[Souvenirs: give back double what you get]

Humor really is one of the most awesome forms of communication out there; sharing a joke and laughing with someone allows you to break down barriers, establish common ground, and I know I would be more likely to want to spend time talking with someone who can make me laugh. Moreover, language learning is more efficient, beneficial and, well, fun (!) when you are enjoying yourself as you study, so exposing yourself to Japanese humor seems like a pretty good idea overall. One of the great things about these memes is that they’re not exclusively used online – they have been appearing on T.V. and in real-life conversations throughout the year, so you can work them into both your written and spoken Japanese!

Do you know any other Japanese memes that can be easily understood by English speakers that you can share in the comments?

[hr /]

Bonus Wallpapers!

[2560x1600] ∙ [1280x800]

Or, you might be intently watching a very important YouTube video on how to create your own origami ninja stars when Linda Blair herself jumps out of your screen, forcing you to change your underpants yet again. Hopefully you remembered to do the laundry.

If I see this on Youtube one more time… 

It’s true, these things might give you a scare, but luckily, other than inducing a heart attack or making your computer spend some good bonding time with your axe, scary videos and pop-ups on the internet really can’t hurt anyone in real life. That is, of course, unless you run into “The Red Room.”

The Legend

The Red Room is a Japanese urban legend about an internet pop-up that advertises one thing and one thing only: your imminent death. According to legend, The Red Room appears as a red window displaying only the words “あなたは〜好きですか？（Do you like ____?)” which are read in a mangled but supposedly cute voice. Just like this.

“Do you like ___?” Now, you may be thinking, “That doesn’t even make sense! I’ll just exit out of this stupid pop-up and end this right here and now!” But no. Once the Red Room has chosen its next victim – there is no escape. The more you try to exit out of the Red Room pop-up, the worse things get.

As you get increasingly frustrated and start madly clicking the exit button as if you can avoid your grim fate, “あなたは〜好きですか？” begins to transform as the words “赤い部屋が” slowly appear. Click by click, the complete question is eventually revealed: “あなたは赤い部屋が好きですか？ (Do you like The Red Room?)

At this point, all hope of survival is lost. You can kiss your miserable butt sayonara. Once the full question is revealed, the entire computer screen is enveloped in red and a list of names appears – past victims of the Red Room. What happens immediately after that is unclear, but one thing is for certain: victims of the Red Room commit “suicide,” coating the walls of their rooms with their own blood. Hence, the legend of “The Red Room.”

The Notorious Flash Animation

Around 10 years ago, someone created an interactive flash animation about the legend which allows viewers to walk through an encounter with the pop-up. If you’re bold enough, you can experience the original flash for yourself:

Here

If you can’t understand Japanese, well, the flash won’t have the same effect (lucky for you), but you can kind of tell what’s going on based upon the pictures (the beginning will be boring). However, if you can understand Japanese but you can’t read kanji, or if you’re too scared to go through the flash without an adult, there are plenty of Red Room videos on YouTube narrated by bored, adrenaline-junkie teenagers.

In the flash, the protagonist is told about the legend of the Red Room by his friends at school. As soon as he goes home, he attempts to research what he heard, but fails to find anything interesting. However, as soon as he gives up and returns to his routine website, ratemypoop.com, a pop-up appears. It’s the Red Room! Confused and bewildered, the protagonist proceeds with caution, but eventually he panics. Trying desperately to escape, he clicks one too many times and reveals the final question: あなたは赤い部屋が好きですか？Suddenly, the screen turns bright red and a list of names appears, the last one being the name of his good friend and classmate. With that, the protagonist slowly becomes aware of an ominous presence behind him, and all fades to black. The next day at school, there are whispers of gossip about 2 students who committed suicide the night before, painting their rooms with their own blood. At the end of the flash, the protagonist’s computer is shown once more, and the viewer can see that the his name has been added to the end of the list. Mwuahahahaha.

Are you scared yet? No?! Okay, I wasn’t either … at first.

Connection to the Sasebo Slashing

So, the idea of a “death pop-up” may not be the scariest thing you’ve ever heard of. It could easily be dismissed for one of those chain mail messages that people used to post on Myspace all the time, predicting your bloody murder by a killer clown at 3AM. At first, I had no idea what the big deal was with the notorious Red Room. In fact, the legend wasn’t even taken seriously in Japan, that is, until something truly terrible happened.

Warning: This Part Gets Bloody

On June 1, 2004, an unspeakable event occurred in Sasebo, Japan. The “Sasebo Slashing” refers to the brutal murder of a Satomi Mitarai, a 12 year-old elementary school girl, by her younger female classmate known as “Girl A,” or more colloquially, “Nevada-tan.”

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “elementary school girls” and “murdering each other” together, something seems amiss. I might assume it was an accident of some sort – perhaps someone was running with scissors. Just thinking about it sounds like a more extreme version of Battle Royale – absolutely impossible.

However, this incident was not an accident. The 12 year-old admitted to murdering Mitarai over a comment she made on the internet, slandering Nevada-tan by calling her “goody-goody.” In response, Nevada-tan brutally slashed her classmates throat and arms with a utility knife. She then proceeded to walk back to her classroom, covered in blood.

As expected, all of Japan was shocked and disturbed by this incident. What could possess a 12 year-old girl to commit such an act? Further investigations produced something eerie: the 12 year-old murderer’s number one bookmark on her computer was the Red Room flash animation. It was this unnerving discovery that lead to the Red Room’s notoriety over the last decade as a truly evil force.

Although there haven’t been reports of students covering their bedroom walls with their own blood, this comes pretty close. Somehow, after knowing this fact, the Red Room becomes a lot creepier. You can’t help but wondering if the red room really is the manifestation of something dark and unknown.

Other Versions

As rumors of the Sasebo Slashing’s connection to the Red Room began to spread, more and more stories of the Red Room started cropping up all over the place. While the original legend still remains, new interpretations of the Red Room curse have emerged as well.

One story depicts the Red Room as the silent ghost of a woman dressed completely in red. The rumors of the Red Room started amongst cab drivers, several of which claim they’ve picked up such a woman in the dead of night. They say she possess the power to allure men with her mystery and enchanting beauty – even her eyes are color of blood. Cab drivers beware: do not pick up this woman!

The Red Room legend has even been recreated by the Japanese horror channel. Below is a short sketch about the Red Room curse. This one is a bit closer to the original tale, so be warned, things get bloody again:

Where Did it Come From?

So, if the Red Room curse has been around even before the Sasebo Slashing, where did it come from? There are multiple theories on this, some of them being obvious crack-pot conspiracies. Here are the top three:

1. COMMUNISTS.

That’s all I really need to say. “The Red Room?” Well, red is a symbol of communism, so that must mean it was created as some sort of systematic communist brainwashing tool! Puhfliwauhhilfwakjn.

2. North Korea Abductions

In the last half century it hasn’t been entirely uncommon for North Korea to abduct a few people from Japan here and there – a high risk game if you ask me. In order to lower the risk of collecting “followers” in such a brash way, many people believe that the North Korean government has created several mind-control internet pop-ups in the last decade with one goal in mind: to gain as many zombie followers to do their dirty work and obtain foreign currency as possible. NORTH KOREA!!!

3. The Red Room curse is a type of love letter virus.

Around the year 2000, virus love letters were a big trend in Japan. It’s most likely that the Red Room legend began due to a prominent virus of this sort. The list of names at the end could have been a list of infected computers, but seriously, I think we all know “communists” is the most appropriate answer to this mystery. Case closed.

No matter where the Red Room curse came from, I never want to encounter it. Ever. There are very few urban legends out there that seem to produce evidence in reality, and this is one of them.  It’s one of those things that just keeps getting creepier and creepier the more you think about it. I pretty much never want to browse the internet again. Maybe this could be a cure for Facebook addictions?

Think you could outrun the Red Room? Try again. The Red Room curse will follow you, even if you take a shotgun to your precious iPad. Let me know if you’ve ever came across this pop-up before in the comments section below. Oh, but wait, you’d be dead. Sorry.

[hr]

Sources:
【都市伝説】ネットで伝わる「こわ～いうわさ話ベスト１０」
赤い部屋

Japanese cell phones, for example, have long suffered from “Galápagos syndrome” — meaning that they have evolved in very specialized and unique ways that make them suited for Japan and Japan alone.

Toilets too, have evolved in uniquely Japanese ways that haven’t ever really caught on elsewhere in the world. If only we could have the sort of heated seat, butthole-sprayin’ luxury of Japanese toilets here in the USA.

Then there are fax machines. While it seems like a lot of the world has moved on from the fax machine and embraced the personal computer, Japanese has lagged behind. According to the Washington Post, almost 60% of Japanese households have a fax machine, and most businesses use one regularly.

How did Japan become so infatuated with this archaic piece of technology? What’s next — are the Japanese going to dust off their Laserdiscs and eight-tracks too? (Quadrophonic sound is pretty cool tho.)

The way I figure, there are three main reasons the Japanese cling to fax machines:

Aversion to Personal Computers

I’d say that Japan still loves the fax machine for a lot of the same reasons behind Japan’s Tokugawa-style isolationism on the internet — Japan didn’t adopt the personal computer as swiftly or as whole-heartedly as the rest of the world.

This not only means that Japanese website are kind of wonky, but it also means that Japanese people aren’t as accustomed to using a personal computer. Thus, scanning and emailing a document seems a lot harder than just faxing it.

Go Hard (Copy)

Let me share something embarassing with you: I still get my bills in the mail and even *gasp* buy CDs, just because I like the physicality of it all.

Fortunately for my pride, I’m not alone in this preference toward the tangible. On at least some level, the Japanese still hang on to a lot of old traditions just for this reason.

Résumés are often still hand-written, so it’s probably no surprise that the Japanese much prefer a copy via fax than via email.

Older Folk

Everybody knows that Japan gettin’ pretty old (we’ve talked about Japan’s elderly many times before) — it’s one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world, meaning that there are more old people than young people. And not to be ageist but, generally speaking, older people aren’t great at adapting to new technologies.

If faxing works, and people know how to use it, why change it? Just like the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Will Japan Ever Give Up the Fax?

It’s pretty clear why the Japanese still use the fax, but less clear whether or not they’ll ever ditch it in favor of more modern tech.

More than anything, the problem isn’t technical — it’s cultural. Faxes will only be phased out in Japan once the culture around them changes. For better or worse though, cultural changes are near-impossible to predict, so it’s kind of a crap shoot to say if or when Japan will give up faxing.

Who knows? Maybe they’ll switch over to telegram.

Read more: Japan and the fax: A love affair, In Japan, fax machines remain important because of language and culture

Header photo by Yortw

So how did Japan get so behind despite being on the bleeding edge in terms of most technologies? How is it that internet usage is can be so different? There are a lot of things at play here, but I have a theory: they are practicing internet isolationism. It’s the Tokugawa Era all over again, except this time it involves more LOLcats.

Japan’s First Big Isolationist Period

Let’s jump back a few hundred years. It’s 1641 and the Tokugawa family has gained control of Japan after a long, bloody war. In order to protect their newfound control, the new Shogun implements what is known as the Sakoku Policy. Basically, no foreigner could enter Japan and no Japanese person could leave Japan on the penalty of death. That being said, they actually allowed some foreigners (from Asia, mostly) to come to Japan to trade, but where they were allowed to go and what they were allowed to do was very restricted. It certainly was not the gay old times when everyone would sing songs together after crashing their boats off the Japanese coast.

There were a couple presumed reasons for this isolationism. First, the Shogunate was worried about foreign influence. Religion and colonialism were both a serious threat. Another reason was to keep the daimyo (basically like lords under the Shogun) down. Some of the Daimyo had pretty convenient trade routes with East Asia. Before Japan was unified under Tokugawa, these clans would use these trade routes to get rich and build powerful armies. In order to stay in power, the Shogun had to curb and control this trade so that he and only he got the main benefit from it.

Although Japan wasn’t totally cut off (just extremely restricted), it was quite isolated. During this time ship after ship was turned away. Sometimes they were even attacked. During this time the government built anti-ship defenses too just in case anyone got the wrong idea. You can see a giant list of attempts to trade with the Japanese government during this Sakoku Policy period. It certainly wasn’t easy.

After a while, though, the Western powers got pissed. Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay with four warships and showed off his big cannons so that the Japanese could know who was really in charge around here. A year later Perry came back with even more ships and Japan was all like “Okay, you cool. We can sign a treaty.”

The rest is history, as they say. So what about them Nyancats?

Isolationism In The Japanese Web

I should start by saying that the isolationism of the Tokugawa Era and the isolationism of the Japanese internet are two completely different situations. Of course, Japanese Internet Isolationism isn’t anywhere near as severe as the Sakoku Policy ever was (duh). It’s quite tame in comparison. It’s also more subtle, and not something that was instituted top down. Instead, the Japanese internet version of isolationism came from the bottom up. It happened naturally, slowly branching the Japanese internet off from the rest of the modern world.

The beginning of all this, I think, had to do with cell phones. The Japanese took to cell phones much faster than the West, staying way ahead of us for at least a couple of decades. Because of this, the Japanese didn’t take to computers like we did, and our internets took two very separate paths. Japan has been using the internet on their phones for a lot longer than us. Their infrastructure was made for it and the Japanese internet evolved accordingly.

One such evolution was the creation of services like i-mode. In i-mode, site creators actually make an i-mode version of a site to display that works well in cell phones. If there isn’t an i-mode version, for example, you can’t access it. It’s almost like a whole separate internet that you can only access from your phone. We experienced a very shallow version of this during the time before iPhones then smartphones became popular in the West.

Due to the speedy advancement of the Japanese cell phone internet infrastructure, the use of personal computers was a lot smaller. This means that the Japanese have seen the internet (as we know it, at least) for far less time than the West. It also means they’ve been (basically) using a different kind of internet than a lot of the rest of the world, aka a kind of internet that is very Japan-specific and somewhat isolated. This has caused web culture to develop separately as well causing a lot of the isolationist features you see in the Japanese internet today.

The Closed Japanese Internet

Perhaps the greatest example of isolationism in the Japanese internet comes from Mixi, one of Japan’s largest social network (as of 2008 it had 21.6 million users). It’s a lot like Facebook in that you share journal entries, thoughts, pictures, and so on. What makes it different is how closed it is. Due to the registration setup (you need a Japanese mobile phone email address to join) foreigners basically can never join unless they’re living in Japan and have a cell phone. As for as isolationist Japanese websites go, Mixi certainly takes the cake and has done so for a long, long time.

But it’s not just Mixi that does this. Gree and Mobage (the other two big social networks in Japan) also require Japanese mobile phone addresses to join. If you don’t have one, then you’re out of luck. Everything on the Japanese internet feels so closed, down to the users themselves. On Facebook using your picture and your full name is the norm. On Japanese websites it’s a rarity. There’s a level of anonymity on their web that you don’t see so much on the Western internet. In fact, 2chan (anonymous forum that 4chan came from) is from Japan. It doesn’t get much more anonymous than that.

This is all cultural, though. Like I said, this isolationism comes from the bottom up, not the other way around. It’s not wrong, it’s just different, and this has caused it to be very difficult for the big Western internet companies to break into the Japanese web. It’s like all those trading vessels that tried to land in Japan only to be turned away by the Shogun.

Of the big web companies to make it over to Japan, only a couple have stuck… and not even that much (though they are gaining traction, keep reading). Facebook had problems with its real name policy and real picture culture, causing it to see slower Japanese growth than it wanted or expected.

Google still lags way behind Yahoo Japan, though they recently pulled off a great deal where they took over all of Yahoo Japan’s search much like Bing did for Yahoo in America. Still, people visit Yahoo, not Google in Japan. Yahoo is the internet.

Speaking of which, Yahoo Japan is majority owned by Softbank, a Japanese internet company. It’s not even an American company, which probably explains why it did okay making the jump to Japan in the first place. Softbank knows what it’s doing over there.

Basically, if you’re in the internet, it’s hard to get into Japan. It’s closed, it’s different, and your Western trade vessels aren’t wanted here.

So Where Are Perry’s Black Ships?

If we’re going to pretend that the Japanese internet is like Tokugawa Isolationist Japan, where are Perry’s black ships? Who will come and flex some cannon muscles to get Japan open up their Internet for the rest of the world?

It’s not quite that simple, unfortunately. This isolationism has come from the people, not from the Shogun. No one person can open up the Japanese internet. It has to spread from person to person, slowly but surely allowing more and more outside internet in.

That being said, I think the black ships have already pulled into Edo Bay, metaphorically speaking. Google and Facebook have the best shot. After a bad year in 2010, Facebook made huge progress in 2011 (much to the thanks of the Facebook movie, supposedly, even though the Japanese thought Mark Zuckerberg was a hamburger). I’ve also seen a lot more of my Japanese friends join Facebook and add me as well. At the same time, Mixi is beginning to struggle. It’s having its MySpace moment. Twitter is probably the biggest success story. For the longest time, even before it was translated to Japanese, Japan was Twitter’s number two country in terms of users. It’s still very popular today, too. That being said, Twitter caters to you not having to use your real identity making it more acceptable to Japanese internet users.

As the Japanese people become more web savvy (at least on personal computers) we’ll see a lot of changes in the old internet guard. The Shogunate will crumble from within and we’ll see something interesting rise from the ashes. I think Facebook will start taking off and Google too. I don’t see all the Western internet companies getting a spot in the Japanese internet market, of course, but it will become more international. I think we’ll even see some trades, too. Japanese companies will make the jump to America and blow our socks off. Pixiv and Gree are a couple that come to mind, but more will wash up on our shores later.

But, the black ships have landed. They’re taking their time, though. They have to convince the individuals to open up, but once they get enough people on board it will snowball and hopefully allow Japan to show the internet world what they have to offer as well.

Let me pull back the curtain for a bit and show the absolute nightmare that exists behind Japanese text on the internet.

Kanji, Kanji Everywhere

If you’re unfamiliar with Asian history and culture, ancient Chinese culture had a tremendous impact on virtually every culture in East Asia. Other countries in Asia adopted Chinese food (like ramen!), customs, and parts of the language.

Most of you probably already know that the complicated characters in Japanese called kanji come from Chinese characters, but it doesn’t stop there. Korean has its own adaptation of Chinese characters called hanja, and until colonialism, Vietnamese used Chinese characters in its language.

These are all known as han characters, or sometimes CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters.

You’d think that this would be a good thing, right? All these different countries and cultures using han characters, it’s like everybody’s joined hands and is singing We Are The World, right?

Oh, if only.

Why Kanji Doesn’t Look Quite Right On The Internet

Why are these han characters a problem? It has something to do with Unicode, a commonly used standard that’s used to display text from different languages on computers.

Somewhere down the line, somebody thought that it would be a great idea to save time and space by saying that, in Unicode, all of these han characters are, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same. This process was called Han Unification, and would soon become the bane of my existence.

Han Unification is a problem because han characters can look different and mean different things in each language.

Just take a look at this picture: it’s the same Unicode character, rendered in five different languages:
The Chinese versions look completely different from the other languages.

Unless the website explicitly says that a piece of kanji text is Japanese (with the HTML lang attribute), it won’t look quite right. It might use the Chinese style and make everything else (i.e. kana) look out of place.

This becomes a problem more often than you might think, whether it’s on your phone, when using electronic flashcards, or just reading the news.

And when you throw in different fonts, operating systems, and browsers into the mix, all bets are off.

Worse still, people argue that this is exactly what Unicode should be like. The argument is that, despite stylistic and cultural differences, underneath it all these characters are essentially the same.

I can understand the rationale behind Han Unification but, since I have the emotional capacity of a child and just want things to work, I’m going to say that it’s dumb and stupid and I hate it.

Why Japanese Isn’t Readable On The Internet

But hey, if your kanji looks wrong, all’s not lost. You can always use furigana, the simple, little characters you see above kanji to help you read them. Right?

Wrong.

While there is the technology to do this on the web (the HTML ruby element), you won’t see it much. It just doesn’t work on all web browsers (like Firefox), and few people choose to use it on their websites.

I would love to include furigana in the kanji I write to make it easier for beginners, but right now it’s not really an option.

But, unfortunately, web developers seem much more interested in tech demos and proof-of-concept sites than making sure the web looks as good in other languages as it does in English.

Maybe someday Japanese will get the first-class treatment on the web that it deserves, but right now I think we have a long way to go.

For a mere １５０円, you can have any Japanese soda, milk tea, iced coffee, or other novelty beverage your heart desires.

Whisky and M&Ms? I'll take two!

But that’s not all; the Japanese have vending machines for practically everything. Want a fresh banana straight from a vending machine? You got it!

In short: they bring clunky American vending machines to shame.

Why America, why?

Japan has upped the ante once again and begun to stock its vending machines with the greatest product of them all: the internet.

The Problem With WiFi In Japan

As Koichi wrote about a few years ago, finding wireless internet in Japan can be a huge pain. While Japan has some of the speediest internet in the world, it can be tough to find a public place to get your internet fix.

Fortunately, beer titan and vending machine operator Asahi has decided to combine Japan’s fast internet and awesome vending machines into a vending machine that dispenses honest-to-God free wireless internet.

The wireless signal reaches out about 50 meters (or about 150 feet) and auto-kicks people after half an hour, so no four-hour-long WoW raids on vending machine wifi while slurping down can after can of Boss Coffee.

Once you connect to the WiFi, you’ll be welcomed by a screen that shows you everything that’s available in the vending machine, along with information about local businesses and tourism. Definitely a lot more friendly than stealing your neighbor’s WiFi.

Line ‘Em Up!

Asahi hopes that customers will be drawn in by both the free internet and tasty beverages like moths to a flame.

And it helps that the Japanese are notorious for loving to wait in line. The longer and more useless the line, the better. A brand new doughnut shop? Better wait 4 hours in line for a taste.

Perhaps the hope is that as people start hovering around Asahi vending machines to siphon some of that sweet, sweet WiFi, more people will be attracted to the machine. If there are people loitering around a vending machine, then surely there must be a good reason, right?

Will Asahi’s new vending machines create popular hangouts around soft drink dispensers? Well, probably not, but it’s still a pretty cool idea, and will be definitely welcome in WiFi-starved Japan.

P.S. Are you reading this from a vending machine? Follow us on Twitter!
P.P.S. Reading this post on another appliance? Check us out on Facebook or Google+.