Protocol 7

For my fate and my mind. What will immigration decide? Also, I’m lost.

If you haven’t already played Ico, an oldie but goodie for the PS2, I highly recommend you go out (and by go out I mean browse on over to amazon.com) this minute and pick up a copy. The total play time is rather short by some standards, about 10 hours or so, but those 10 hours are filled with wonderful puzzles, stunning vistas, and great game play.

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The following list is in no particular order except numerical…

1. Old lady rocker hair-dos. The grandmas of Japan know that gray hair takes dye like white on rice, and they don’t let it go to waste. Bright blues, pinks, and purples (and sometimes all three in a calico combination) are often seen atop the heads of older women, whereas their counterparts in the west tend to go for a more dour purplish-grey color.

2. No tipping. Ever. Really.

3. The extremely short hemlines of schoolgirls nation wide. They aren’t that short when school is in session, but boy howdy if they don’t go short-short once school is out. Lolicon, however, is still strange.

4. All things kawaii. Kawaii means “cute”, and there is an abundance of that in Japan, from anime characters to women. While it may not be strange anymore, it can definitely be annoying. This wired article (highly recommended read) sums up kawaii and it’s role in modern Japan quite well.

5. Thirty dollar watermelons and twenty dollar canteloupes (of normal to smallish size).

6. Small children in yellow helmets. Young children (ages five and up perhaps) are allowed to roam freely on their own, something that is pretty much unheard of in the States these days. The younger ones wear shiny yellow helmets, ostensibly to protect them from the world, but I suspect that it has more to do with how cute they look since the helmets are way to large to sufficiently protect a child’s head.

7. Beer in vending machines. Anything in vending machines, really. Also add the fact that vending machines are everywhere. Oh, and the vending machines that talk to you.

8. Kancho. Kancho is a game played by Japanese school children in which they put their hands together and stick out the index fingers kind of like a gun, and try to stick them up your bum. I’m not making this up, I swear.

9. Japanese toilets (I was using them back-asswards for a while).