Fucked Up Japan

In the spirit of Lifehacker and JapanProbe’s book recommendation posts today, I’ve decided to do my own list of recommended books on the darker side of Japan. Enjoy!

Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan” (Alex Kerr)

From a long time foreigner who despite his harsh criticisms continues to live and work in Japan, Dogs and Demons takes a careful and factual look at some of the less talked about seedier aspects of Japanese culture and history. There are no rose tinted spectacles here, but don’t be mistaken - Alex Kerr certainly doesn’t hate Japan. When I first came to Japan, I was recommended this book but given implicit instructions not to read it until I felt like going home. Of course, I ignored the warning, and in many ways I owe the inspiration for this site to this very book. A must read. Readers in Japan can purchase this book on the Amazon Japan site here.

“Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter” (Shoko Tendo)

A little light(er) reading from an ex-Yakuza daughter. Though the writing style is a little basic, the stunningly beautiful Shoko tells her story of growing up with, and eventually into the Yakuza - the drugs, the money, her crazed drunken father, and eventually the debts piling up and being ruined. Certainly an intriguing read for anyone with an interesting in gangster culture. Amazon Japan link here.

“Making Out in Japanese Phrase Book, Revised Edition” (Todd Geers, Erika Geers)

Ahh, this one really came in handy when my Japanese totally sucked. With this book, you can chat up the girl, find out if she has boyfriend, talk sweet nothings, and know the bed language you’ll need later - like how to say “could you give me a blowjob?” (fera shite kureru?). Absolute fucking essential when you first come to Japan, or indeed if you ever plan to. Isn’t there a famous saying, “when in Japan, be sure to fuck the natives“? Yes, yes I’m sure there is. Readers in Japan struggling to get laid can get the book here.

“Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook” (Izumi Evers, Patrick Macias)

My final recommendation for today is Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno, essentially a bible of current and past fashion trends in Japan and how they are all related. Pretty short, but some good photos and a nice little introduction on what to expect before you go galavanting around Tokyo’s cosplay and fashion areas of Harajuku and Akihabara. (Japanese Amazon link).

A pack of photobooks (500+ high quality scans!) and TV clips of Aki Hoshino. Anyone would think the person who collected this little lot together is a bit of an obsessive freak.

Well they’re not! She’s just the cutest idol there is and everybody should be able to share in her cuteness. So, enjoy. Here’s the covers of the photobooks to give you a taste.

Download now from PirateBay (1.8 gb) …

…And this time it’s serious - by which I mean it may actually affect me!

OCN/NTT Communications (read, my ISP) have announced a new daily *upstream* limit of 30gb in order to curb the heavy usage of a few p2p users - like myself, I guess. There are no current plans for a download limit, however they will send warnings to users found to be sharing files via the popular Japanese p2p application Winny .

Now 30gb may not seem like much to you, but when you have genuinely fast internet like myself…

30 gb uploaded is nothing, as you can see. Curious that my upload is actually faster than my download speed, though. According to speedtest.net, my internet is faster than 99% of everyone else who has taken the test, and is well above the Japanese national average of about 4 mb/sec.
Assuming my torrent seeds (for legal material, of course) were all running at maximum throughput, Azureus would rape 30gb in about 16 minutes. Yes, 16 fucking minutes. This could be a problem 128 minutes. Still a problem, despite my dodgy calculations.

For anyone else worried or affected by this fascistic limit, I did some calculations to figure out what the global upload speed limit should be set to so as to ensure the 30gb limit is never exceeded:

• Assuming you will be using your net for other things too like online gaming and such, let’s say a daily limit of 24 gb. That gives us a nice round figure of 1gb/hour to work with.
• 1,000 mb / 60 minutes works out at around 16.666 mb / minute.
• 16,666 kb / 60 seconds gives a final speed of 277 kb/s maximum. All decent torrent clients like Azureus and uTorrent allow you to set global speed limits.

So there you have it - set your upload limit to 270 kb and you should be safe. You might also want to turn on forced encryption and disallow torrent connections to unencrypted peers. This will make perfectly sure that your ISP has no idea what you’re actually transferring, even with deep packet inspection. I also highly suggest running PeerGuardian, which updates daily with lists of banned IPs, like anti p2p companies injecting torrents with corrupted data to fuck up your downloads, as well as various evil and / or governmental organizations that will harvest your IP address if they find you sharing and then proceed to sue your ass. You have been warned.

How fast is your internet? Does your ISP inflict insufferable limits? Answers in the comments, please!

What an ingenious idea to put all the varieties of loli into a museum for safekeeping - until some nasty Japanese men break in and start abusing the loli’s. Bad men. On the plus side, you can watch!

Download now from [piratebay]

Click the oversized thumbnail for an even bigger version that’s good enough to be your desktop *hint hint*.

Also, had a request for the pic that’s on my twitter homepage, so here that is for you! Just in case you don’t know, her name is Aki Hoshino and despite being in her 30s, she remains to the hottest Japanese girl alive. I’ll be putting together a little torrent Aki-pack soon, so keep your eyes glued! Until then, more Aki Hoshino pics from Google Images!

As for the results of the last poll, hit the jump and scroll down!

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick update on all the ways you can interact and appreciate the wonder that is FuckedUpJapan. Let’s getting fucked up in Japan!

Video Feed:

This is a podcast video feed I run using listpod.tv, and all the cool videos of loli’s, cosplay, otaku, random Japanese shit that don’t make it on the front page (an the ones that do) end up in here, automatically encoded for watching on your iPod. Just drop the video feed into your iTunes and there always be some random dodgy stuff for you to watch on the train! Updated about once a week, sometimes with 5 videos at once, so make sure you set your iTunes to download all the videos and not just the latest ones.

Follow Me on Twitter:

If you aren’t following my updates on twitter, you’re missing out on a treasure of random interesting links, torrent downloads, news articles I don’t think warrant (read: cannot be arsed posting) a place on my page. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those freaks that use twitter to publish my personal feelings every ten minutes, so what are you waiting for?!

Get Free Porn from Toyko Teens:

By following this link each day, you’ll get a new page of preview and sample movies!

Now, if anyone hasn’t voted on what kind of stories and posts you want more of, please do so now!

[poll id="2"]

Today I have an old Japanese movie for you, of the Yakuza-style-tough-girls-on-motorbikes-running-around-Kyoto style. Awesome movie, English subs with tough-girl Japanese language, nearly all filmed on location in central Kyoto. I realise the cover makes it look a little like a porn flick, but I promise you it isn’t.

Sukeban gerira (1972)

Miko Sugimoto is the leader of the Red Helmet Gang, a biker girl gang from Shinjuku who winds up in Kyoto and make a bid to take over the local girl gangs there. Successful for a short time in ruling the streets it isn’t long before Miko and her crew run afoul of the local Yakuza, and are forced to turn to Reiko Ike, a ronin Yakuza girl, and sister to one of the top Yakuza in Kyoto, for help, leading to a murderous showdown at a small coastal resort.

[IMDB link] . [Download link]

This movie is being redistributed as part of the Pinky Violence Collection, a selection of Japanese girl violent movies. If anyone can find a source for the rest of this collection, please let me know!

“The Pinky Violence Collection - Includes Audio CD (Criminal Woman: Killing Melody/ Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom/ Girl Boss Guerilla/ Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless To Confess)” (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, Norifumi Suzuki, Atsushi Mihori)