The Crandall Surf Report 2.0
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Sunday, November 17, 2002
 

Homebrew light rail in Russia. They share the rails with real trains!

Of course railbiking has been around for some time, but these folks tend to use abandoned tracks.
6:19:29 AM    


Clara Hemphill wrote a piece on the insanity in nursery school admissions fueled by competition among the wealthy. This is what lead Jack Grubman to expecting a bit of "kid pro quo". (although the real issus for him is probably entirely related to an addiction to power)
5:54:42 AM    

Someone recently pointed out a very unusual Japanese Kikkoman ad. Not knowing much about popular Japanese culture I was lost, but fortunately Gary is well versed and offers the following explaination.

Some insights/guesses:

This is a Kikkoman commercial.

Kikkoman is the leading producer of soy sauce, like the Heinz of Ketchup. I agree, the Kikkoman products really do taste better and set the standard for everyone else.

Kikoman also produces other sauces, so the fish head is probably a fish(-flavored soy) sauce, or maybe it's just a fish-head dispenser for regular soy-sauce?

The motorcycle headlight also looks like a soy sauce dispenser.

The black liquid pouring out is the fish-flavored/soy sauce.

The three tempura (crispy batter-fried) items are probably shrimp.

The yellow jar is probably a mild lemon-like sauce for ton-katsu (fried pork chop). The wimpy defeated yellow jar head is probably some competitors ton-katsu sauce, while the muscular yellow jar head must be the Kikkoman product.

The stylized white cat is a common character, often holding a coin for good luck/fortune. In the first cat scene with fried egg in front, he appears to choose correctly and end up in a dream heaven.

The Japanese word for soy sauce is shoyu, so there's a Japanese/English play on words for Show Me / Show You (shoyu homonym).

The white cube looks like tofu (bean curd), maybe they have a special sauce for tofu, or maybe they have some product that comes in white cubes and just looks like tofu cubes here.

Kikkoman makes a sad man happy.

Notice that one of the characters has "heints" on their front. He's muscular, so maybe Kikkoman and Heinz have joined together? You can hear the word "ketchup" in the song.

In the second cat scene with rolled-egg-omelet in front, the cat appears to choose the wrong company's sauce and dies.

Kikkoman gets the girl, of course.

The parade of various foods look like 1. banana-looking food could be a banana, or takuan (smelly pickled yellow-dyed daikon (Japanese radish)) 2. mushroom 3. fish sauce

1. ice cream

2. azuke-bean popsicle ( a common gotcha for non-Japanese is to expect a fudgesicle and get azuke bean taste instead)

3. fried ice-cream(?)

The singing is horrible, but then this needs no translation!


5:47:03 AM    


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Last update: 6/9/03; 1:34:28 PM.
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