In fact I remember seeing these “Big America” burgers when we were in Japan filming last winter, though none of us tried them. The idea is that each region/state/city gets their own America burger. Of course, not all states are represented, not even by a long shot. Most Japanese, let alone Americans, don’t know what a North Dakota is, after all, and Ohio is just how you say “good morning.” Basically, they’re picking and choosing famous spots from around the US, figuring out a stereotyped feature of that place (missing completely, sometimes), and then putting it in a burger.

Let’s take a look at these “Big America” burgers while we wait for McDonald’s line of “Small Japan Burgers” to be released.

Texas Burger & Texas Burger 2

This burger’s first run was so popular that it got itself a sequel! The Texas Burger 2 comes back with a “wilder” taste (not sure what to think of that), and has chili beans, bacon, onions, a slice of American cheese, old-fashioned mustard relish, and a quarter-pound of beef. I think the creators of this burger watched one too many cowboy movies.

Yeehaw!

Grand Canyon Burger

Sadly, they don’t cut the Grand Canyon Burger in half when serving it to you, nor does it contain donkey meat, but it does have an egg McMuffin-like round egg disc, cheddar AND mozzarella cheese, crispy bits of onion, steak sauce, and Big Mac-esque bun and beef layout. Not sure how this has anything to do with the Grand Canyon, but maybe they were going for some kind of Arizona vibe? Even that doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe if we watch the commercial it will all come together?

No, I’m way more confused now.

Las Vegas Burger

Once again, I feel like McDonalds failed to capture the essence of the location this burger was named after. They should have a system where they fill one in a million burger containers with money, then at least there’d be some gambling involved. But no, they had to go with LV staples like sauteed sliced beef and onions, lettuce, and cream cheese? That cream cheese is so money, baby.

Broadway Burger

Broaaadway!! ♬ Nothing sings “Broadway” like mozzarella, bacon cured pastrami-style, mixed vegetables, and a mustard and cream cheese sauce. Okay, I take that back. Many things sing “Broadway” more than the featured Broadway Burger items listed above.

California Burger

California is a big place, but this burger tries to capture it all, from the sands of Los Angeles to the redwoods of the north. Can you guess what makes this burger “California?” I would have guessed avocado, but came away pleasantly surprised. Between two “artisan” buns there’s a quarter-pound of beef, spicy cheese, bacon strips, tomato slices, and lettuce. This isn’t all that “California,” though, so they up the ante and top it with a special sauce made from red wine that’s actually produced in California! Gotta give this one an “A” for effort, at the very least.

Beverly Hills Burger

Unlike the “improvement sequels” that we see with the Texas and New York burgers, the Beverly Hills Burger is something unique and different from its geological predecessor, the California burger. This burger’s unique features are: guacamole, cheese, Cesar salad dressing, an egg, and the meat of abandoned chihuahuas. For some reason I don’t see the people of Beverly Hills ever buying or associating themselves with a burger like this.

Idaho Burger

As if you didn’t see this one coming. The Idaho burger’s special feature? Potatoes. Like, a whole breakfast hashbrown worth of taters, but more circle-shaped. In addition to this is bacon, onions, a quarter-pound of beef, cheese, a peppery sauce, grainy mustard, and an onion bun, because Idaho makes a lot of onions too.

What kind folk you have out there in Idaho!

Miami Burger

The Miami Burger simultaneously concludes that “all Hispanic people eat at Taco Bell!” and that “Florida is filled with these homogenous Hispanic peoples.” The purpose of this burger is to evoke the feeling of “tacos” and in order to do that they insert tortilla chips, shredded cheese (because that’s so tacos!), a “spicy tomato chili sauce” (sounds like an unholy matrimony of salsa and ketchup), a quarter-pound beef patty, and something that looks like it might be taco meat, but I’m not totally sure. For all I know it’s meat made from a leg that washed up on Miami beach.

Personally, if I were McDonalds, I would have taken the “Florida is filled with retirees” approach and blended the burger into a smoothie and added vitamins to it, but I suppose that would be too much work.

New York Burger

Kind of a boring burger, to be honest, the New York burger has Monterrey Jack Cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, and a grainy mustard. Maybe they realized that this burger wasn’t all that great, which is why they made a sequel to the New York burger and zeroed in on Manhattan:

Manhattan Burger

They weren’t happy with the New York burger so they made a follow-up. The Manhattan burger has everything that the New York burger has but adds a slice of pastrami and two servings of sour cream sauce to provide a “modern, airy, refined taste.” Mission accomplished? I’m not so sure.

If that McDonalds car was stuck in the middle of the intersection in real New York people would be dead right now. DEAD. Then who would eat your burgers? Fuggedaboudit.

Hawaiian Burger

Did the Hawaiian burger just blow my mind by not including pineapple in any shape or form? Of all the opportunities that they had to capture the (stereotypical) essence of a geographical location in America, this was their chance! Still, it doesn’t look too bad. The Hawaiian burger features a special gravy, an egg-disc, chopped lettuce, an American cheese slice, bacon, and of course a lot of beef. It looks like they were going for a pseudo loco moco, so I gotta credit them on not going straight for the obvious pineapple cop out.

Now the only thing missing is spam. Lots and lots of delicious spam.

[hr]

There you have it. I summed up the answer to “what is America” via McDonalds hamburgers eaten in Japan based off of American places. If this trend continues, I can only imagine what they’ll come up with next. Maybe a crab/salmon/oil burger from Alaska (that actually sounds good)? Or what about an Oregon burger that’s topped with kale and kombucha? Maybe they could even do a North Dakota burger where you open the box and there’s nothing there. The possibilities are endless!

If McDonalds Japan were to do a burger based off your state/city/region/province/country/landmark, what do you think they would do? Not so much what they should do, but how will your location be stereotyped in burger form? Let me know in the comments.

Bonus: Here’s a papercraft I came across of that weird McDonalds RV that’s in all the “Big America” commercials.

[hr]

Bonus Wallpapers!

[2560x1600] • [1280x800] • [1280x800 Animated] • [700x438 Animated]

Sorry, Hulu tends to only be viewable in America :(  … use a proxy?

Okay, fine, normally we do Timewaster posts on Saturday… but, today’s Timewaster post does at least come from Saturday Night Live (keyword Saturday), so that’s gotta count for something. If you watched this week’s episode of SNL, you’ll have seen this skit titled “J-Pop America Fun Time Now!” which is a fake Michigan State Campus TV college program. Basically, it makes fun of weaboos for five minutes. I’m going to break down all the hilarious stereotypes covered. It’s more hilarious, though, because it’s stereotypes of non-Japanese people trying to be Japanese thus creating new stereotypes of Japanese people. Awesome!

The Dancing Intro

One of my favorite Japanese stereotypes is the weird repetitive dancing that all Japanese people apparently do. This probably stems partially from para para dancing (popular in Japan starting from the 80′s, during the disco boom), and partially from how Japanese singers and such tend to dance even to this day.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv1JFIypo4w&hd=1']

Anyone can do this – you just need more than one person (preferably) and you do the same kinds of things over and over again. And, of course, at the end of the video one of them does the peace sign to pose. You always pose at the end of a Japanese dance. C’mon. That’s standard dancing stereotype.

Peace! er… ピース!

The Clothes

The clothes, of course, are pretty standard weaboos stereotyping Japanese stereotypes. You have a ton of layers and the guy has the long hair with it sort of puffed up in the back. Of course, it also has the “I tried to bleach my hair, but my hair is too black and Japanese to be totally bleached!” look.

The psych hospital had a breakout… be on the lookout for strange individuals…

Clothing looks like it came out of a 70′s pawn shop. My guess is that they’re trying to copy the weird sort of “Harajuku Girl” style which of course isn’t what most Japanese people wear, just a small percentage that seems to represent the whole when it comes to Japanese clothing style.

Basically, everyone’s just a big Japanese Hipster. They do a pretty good job making everyone dress like this, but the key difference is how they attempted to dress like this (but couldn’t quite capture the entire spirit of it) because all their clothes came from Goodwill, not Japan. So, it’s sort of a halfway-there sort of thing, where they’re trying, but they just can’t quite do it because clothes in America is different from clothes in Japan, and no matter how many layers you add, or how many colors you attempt to clash, you can’t quite get that crazy Japanese look down. I had like 5-10 people in my highschool / college who sported the Goodwill-Japanese-Look. More points for SNL.

Calling Yourself Name+San

When the program starts, they introduce themselves by saying:

“Konnichiwa! I am Jonathan Cavanos san”

“…and I am Rebecca Sternmarkawitz san“

They hit it right on the head here. Lots of folks who don’t want to take the time to learn Japanese but wish they were Japanese run into this. They call themselves Name+san because it seems right, even though adding san to your own name is a big boo-boo. Basically, the name suffix -san elevates the person who has it attached to their name. So, you use it on other people’s names, but you don’t want to add it to your own (because you don’t want to be some kind of jerk).

In this sketch, they start things right off by calling themselves san. Either they just didn’t know better and they went for it or they had a really good adviser helping them to be very stereotypically weaboo. Bravo again, SNL. Bravo again.

Singing To Japanese Music

Hey, if you like singing Japanese music, then more power to you… but for some reason, it seems like everybody sings Japanese music. Search any Japanese song on YouTube, and there’ll be like 40 teen non-Japanese girls mouthing the words to the song (or sometimes actually singing if they’re really fancy).

Still, in this sketch, the sudden switches to singing in Japanese for almost no reason is kind of hilarious. Also, they’re making up words because they don’t know how to speak Japanese (like a lot of the folks they’re making fun of), which makes it all the more funny.

“We Should Clarify: We Are Not Japanese”

“Tee hee hee hee hee!”

I love these lines:

Rebecca: “Before we begin, we should clarify that Jonathan and myself are not Japanese. I am from Nebraska.”

Jonathan: “And I am from Daytona Beachuru. We have never been to Japan, but it is our dream.”

Together: “hee hee hee hee hee hee”

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard Japanese wannabes clarify that they’re not Japanese… I have no idea why, it’s totally weird, but it happens from time to time.

Oh, and then there’s the dream of going to Japan. That’s cool – I’m all for that… but as for the characters in this sketch… totally standard.

And then lastly, there’s the “tee hee hee hee hee” laughter… what’s up with that? How do characters like this teach themselves to laugh unnaturally like that? Japanese people (mostly girls) laugh softly because it’s drilled into them from a young child. But, you are not a young Japanese girl, so quit it. Japanese girls who laugh soft and titteringly should quit it too. I like normal people laughs.

Sensei Mark

By far, the best character introduced into this sketch is Sensei Mark. He has to be there because he is their most honorable hero (talking like you’re in an English dubbed Anime? Check) and also they need a faculty present to run the studio. His first quote is one of the best.

Hey guys, I love the enthusiasm… I would like to point out to everyone watching that what Rebecca and Jonathan have… um… latched on to, represents a very narrow and mostly inaccurate view of Japanese culture. They are actually my two worst students.

Jonathan and Rebecca respond by saying:

Thank you Sensei Mark. “Sensei” is Japanese for “one who has been guided by the spirits of many ages.”

Sensei-Mark just says:

No.. no no no… no no… it’s not. It just means teacher. That’s all it means

So, SNL didn’t just bring in characters to be the weaboo students… they also brought in that poor, poor teacher who has to put up with everything. He’s all serious and academic about the Japanese language, but his students are not :( I’ve seen this sort of thing between these two characters in real life all too often. Definitely was surprised to see SNL bring out the teacher character for this sketch, too. Normally folks only know about the student characters. The teacher makes it ten times as funny.

The Guest

Then they bring in a guest (after doing their para para singing dance thing). Their guest is someone who has the largest Anime video collection on MSU’s campus. Who was that on your campus? There’s always one winner.

Of course, the guest is wearing a Sailor Moon outfit and sporting the Sailor Moon hair. She then goes on to make up some Japanese (then Sensei Mark interjects letting everyone know that “no, no… none of those are actual words.”).

Turns out the guest made their costume from a character they made up named “Cherry Cherry Rock n’ Roll.” Gotta say, sounds like a Japanese band name, so that’s something. But, have you noticed? Characters like the ones depicted here often make up their own characters. I have no idea why, and that’s their own business, but nice and spot on for an SNL sketch.

They go on to compliment each other by saying they are all the most Japanese. Sensei Mark (go Sensei Mark!) interjects again saying, “None of you… none of you are Japanese. Also, you’re riding a fine line between homage and racism.”

Japanese Girlfriend

Then, after the racism comment, Jonathan replies “Sensei Mark, you must know I am not racist. My girlfriend is Japanese!” Then they cut to the Fred, who’s a pretty hot Japanese girlfriend… gotta say.

hawt.

But, I love that response. I think I’ve heard that before, too. Something like “I can do that because my girlfriend is Japanese” (it’s always Japanese girlfriend… rarely you hear this kind of thing talking about a Japanese boyfriend). It’s kind of like saying you can be racist about black people because you have a black friend. Pretty sure that’s pretty racist, though maybe not for me, because I have two black friends. Take that, racism police!

But yeah, I love that he has a Japanese girlfriend.

And The Rest

The guest goes on to say she’s holding a viewing party of some Anime, and that she’s so happy that she wrote a song in Japanese about it. She sings something that doesn’t really sound like anything, and then they all thank Sensei Mark (who made it all possible!). He goes on to reply “No, no. Don’t you dare put this on me.” Lols.

They all sing themselves out while psudo-para-para-ing – the perfect ending, of course.

Anyways, I somehow ended up writing over 1500 words on an SNL sketch. I was just impressed how well they made fun of a stereotype of a stereotype. Definitely mirrors a lot of people I’ve known and seen over the years, especially in college / high school. There’s always a few, right?

Notice anything else particularly hilarious about this video? Let me know about it in the comments. Hope you enjoyed this rant / timewaster / just for fun post. I enjoyed watching the video thirty times in order to be able quote everything. Time to go create my own Japanese character along with a song for it. See yah! Or… as the Japanese would say. jaa ne.

jkjk.

P.S. Want some J-Pop America Twitter Time Now!?
P.P.S. Or, perhaps you’ll find your very own Japanese girlfriend (as cute as Fred Armisen) by liking our Facebook Page.