Cute Stuff

Hey all! New happenings of the past week - last Wednesday, I had my last teaching class at the elementary schoolers, and one class of third graders all gave me thank-you notes. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to discuss what big business "cute" is in Japan.

To begin with, there's the stationary. Kids buy stationery and school supplies with cute as the only factor considered in their purchasing decision. I guess it's the same in America, but it's just all that much more prolific over here. I just happen to have some prime examples of this.

Love Bambini - Small fawn was born!

Happy elephant - soursour brand stationery

Marie from the Aristocats and Bunny from Bambi are pretty big figures

Happy food - a pretty common theme. Personally, if I saw my ice cream cone smiling at me, I'd be pretty weirded out.

Says it all, really.

Awesome Engrish - "CHEERFUL DAYS - The first step toward happiness. Footloose and fancy free. Make your daily life pleasant! - I am full of play mind! A wonderful presentiment. I like what is like you. - I feel comfortable with my heart exhilirated."

Kid drawings of Jeff-sensei (I just kinda get all happy when they call me Jeff-sensei)

A game we'd play sometimes where I'd swing a stuffed soccer ball on a string, and call out "high" or "low" and they'd have to jump or duck, and if it hit them they'd be out. From the picture, apparently I've totally KO'd two small children with that thing.

Me towering over the crowd

Me on the playground - I used to play with them during recess. It was great. Japanese tag games are fun, and dodgeball is slightly different but more interesting. The Incan temple with a clock at the top is supposed to be the school, I think.

The coup de grace - one of the kids slipped me a tiny, tiny gum eraser, with a picture of a hamster, with a peach for a head, holding a small, smiling green ball. Overkill, in my opinion. Exasperated sigh.

I have a lot more of that stuff, with origami cranes and paper airplanes and everything. Third graders are really nice. ^_^

Anyway, other cute stuff. Student drawings of themselves is often fun to see - it's usually anime style, with either huge eyes and spike hair or chubby faces, button noses and the like. Capsule machines are VERY common over here, you can get all kinds of small accessories, pins, and danglies for about 100 yen each, in all your favorite popular themes of the moment. Danglies are huge, I swear there's something hard-wired into the Japanese female brain. If it's got a loop, it'll have a danglie attatched within 8 hours. Yes, I have one on my cell phone too.

I don't have a picture of this, and it's a shame, but the most ingenious danglies I've ever seen in Japan was Winnie the Pooh characters... dressed up... as OTHER Winnie the Pooh characters. For example, they had the base characters, and they were all basically the same shape - Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger - and they also had costumes of those four characters that would slip over the base characters. They were interchangeable, too. It looked like a costume party where everyone dressed up as their friends. Of course, you could make them look like they were wearing a costume of themselves, too. Darn cute stuff. Hmm, now that I think about it, a "dress up as your friends" or "dress up as yourself" theme might be pretty fun for Halloween some year...

So, that's cute stuff. Serious business.

Last week, I also went to a volleyball match at Kanashima-chu, and saw the Taiko show as promised. I will update with images of those soon. For now, I'm'a call it a night. Take care!