Category: Random Stuff

My mother sent me an email a few days ago concerning her website:

“There’s a guy who constantly leaves silly messages in my guestbook (calls himself Mugu). This has been going on for a couple of years now. I just delete them of course, but do we have any way of figuring out who he is and blocking him? He is really starting to annoy me.”

Being the loyal filial son that I am, I immediately (well, ok, a few days later) set to work finding out who the mysterious mugu man was. All I had to go on was the fact that he leaves messages like this on my mother’s page:

Name: MUGU
Addressfrom: mugu@mugu.com
Subject: seee
Message: Mugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit finishMugu no fit

This strange and obviously not quite sane creature would not hide long from me. I would find The Mugu Man and discover why he haunted my mother’s online guest-book. Being the highly trained researcher that I am, my first course of action was, of course, to do what everyone else does these days to find absolutely anything in the online universe: I googled the Mugu man…
Continue reading The Mugu Man

Sayaka and I went for some sandwiches at subway a few days ago. While enjoying our meal, I watched as someone ordered a side of french fries with their food. An employee filled a little bag with french fries and placed it on a scale. She then removed one french fry before giving it to the customer. The experience reminded me of buying vegetables in the market.

On the train home yesterday we heard the usual announcement overhead which includes the standard warning, “Cell phones are an inconvenience to other passengers, please turn off your phones while on the train.” I’m used to this now. The inclusion of this phrase comes from the ubiquitous use of the phones on the train have become annoying for others but also, apparently, due to trouble they cause for passengers with pacemakers etc.

However, before the final, “Thank you for your cooperation,” there was a new addition to the announcement, “By the way, chikan (sexual molestation in the form of touching, groping etc.) is a crime. Please report it to our staff.” What can we conclude from the new inclusion of this phrase? (Also, this same train line has just introduced, or I have just noticed, the “Women-only” cars during commuting hours.) Read a recent article on this issue.

I strolled in the door today and found Sayaka studying GRE vocabulary and watching some Japanese TV trivia show (its complicated). I watched it for a few minutes (I try to minimize brain rot), long enough to learn about Japan’s Train Timetable Proficiency Test. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, given the amazing variety of tests one can take in Japan to become certified at something, but it is a perfect example of one aspect of a more general social trend which worships the acquisition of knowledge, in this case a process measured by the command over a growingly arbitrary set of atomic factlets.

This particular examination, apparently taken by an average of 2800 Japanese every year, tests a mastery of all the details of JR transportation system (trains and buses) as faithfully recorded in the monthly Timetable book one can purchase at most kiosks and convenience stores. Participants in the test are asked questions like, “Which of the trains listed below crosses stations on all three of the following lines” (the answers were train listed by code number and their departure times) and “Which of the following lunch-box meals sold at station [So and so] is the cheapest?” (the answers list four different lunch-box meals available for purchase at that station).

In an interview, the guy who runs this (I didn’t catch the organization which issues the test) admitted that the test did not, “have any considerable social value to speak of,” but this doesn’t seem to dissuade the thousands who take the test, attend cram classes in order to prepare for the test, or pay the money to take the test and compete for one of 6 levels (or the prestigious silver or gold card awards) which demonstrates their detailed knowledge of Japan’s public transportation system.

On a note not altogether unrelated to the test I mentioned in my last posting, check out the world’s dullest blog and the free downloadable NaDa software. They are both very contemporary celebrations of irrelevance that border on brilliance. They also, for some reason, remind me of the stupid old joke of the Zen master who told the hot dog vender to, “Make me one with everything.”