Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Snuggle up bitches


I am digging the graphics and layout on this month's poster. A gentle reader alerted me to this ridonculous collection of posters gathered by Pink Tentacle. If you want to see some outrageous stuff, click the shit out of that link. I should have been in Japan in the eighties if it weren't for the fact that I would have been about 5 and not able to enjoy all that the delicious bubble had to offer. When a colleague of my dad's came to Japan and I took him and his partner to dinner, he wanted to know whether there were still buildings in Roppongi with a different discotheque on each floor, which he had apparently experienced on a trip to the Tokyo of Long Ago. The closest thing I know in Roppongi to a discotheque is Lexington Queen and even that is a stretch (notice how I am using the old name, which tells you how long it's been). After we ate I sent them on their merry way and although I have no idea what they ended up doing that night, I hope they found some glam.


What does this anecdotal nugget have to do with the manner poster? Absolutely nothing, but I am terribly behind on posting and have been for the last, what, year maybe, so I feel I should say something. It's holy shit September already and time to get serious about Serious Things but I am hoping and praying to Buddha that by November everything will be fabulous. Just in case you're worried that I'm not having fun, I am, and just this past weekend I was out at Koenji's Awa Odori festival with the beau looking like a show pony in yukata with hair sculpted and coiffed and asking a Japanese friend if he had been busy doing sexy times the night before in a Borat voice, which context he did not get of course but it was fine because the couple we're hoping to double date with did and everyone laughed eventually. Phew. Thank god for fun friends who can all laugh together even when the joke has to be translated.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your blog - from a fellow gaijin in Kobe.

Green-Eyed Geisha said...

Thanks fellow gaijin! I hope if I ever make it down there you'll point me in the right direction :)

Beth Roeser said...

I was in Koenji that night! Of course.

Those posters make me think Tokyo was so much more fun back then. If I saw them today I'd be startled. They're so outrageous and clever and comical. Most advertising in Japan reminds me of 1960s & 70s advertising in America, very glossy and clean. The message is so blatantly like, "I am just so excited by the taste of this tea that they took a photo of me laughing aloud!" Even the wittier ads are more cutesy and sedate than these, like the Suica penguin and the subway manners posters. The Softbank Family ads are a lot of fun, though. Anyway thanks for sharing that link -- I've been meaning to blog more ads...

Green-Eyed Geisha said...

Beth: To think we could have clinked beer cans! Don't you love those posters? They remind me of all the wacky gadgetry and whatnot that was put out by Japan in the 80s and 90s. Today everyone is so buttoned-up :(