Before you get too riled up: that’s not really her bum. This is a Japanese product that’s on the market. The skirt has a picture of a bum printed on it.
I found this on David Galbraith’s site. Sometimes what Koreans say about Japan goes too far, but sometimes I have to agree and say something very weird and vaguely sinister is going on over there in Tokyo. Certainly not all bad, but… kind of… well, hmmm.
Wow. That’s weird. Kind of interesting, in a “am I really looking at that?” kind of way.
Many aspects of the modern Japanese society are incredibly alien to me. I wonder what they think of American Geek subculture in Tokyo.
Yeah, well… as far as it goes, in Korea mainstream culture is slightly closer to American Geek culture than you might imagine… the humor, the obsessions of your average Korean friends, the way people talk and think about things. It’s one reason Korea is comfortable for me. But it’s weird… the kind of a fusion of Geek Culture and Mainstream that we have here makes it hard for a foreigner to really place anyone on the map. (And Koreans seem not to feel the same way about nerds as we do, especially foreign nerds whom they sometimes think – or claim to think – quite cool.) And then you start thinking of foreigners that way, and then you know readjusting to North America is gonna be damn hard if ever you must do it.
Givenwhat I know about Tokyo, American geek culture is definitely fetishized somewhere, and probably even studied in great, probing detail.