It's not as scary as this spider:

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2008/10...-news.html

Quote:The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior.[4] The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full ten minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years.

I am no longer afraid of spiders.

True, I'm afraid of brazillian initiation rites now :X

*scraps 'become brazillian warrior' from try before you die list*

Rekkusu Wrote:True, I'm afraid of brazillian initiation rites now :X

*scraps 'become brazillian warrior' from try before you die list*

There is no way I could do that.

IceCream Wrote:i left japan but, im happy to get back and start studying hard!!
in the end i got much more chatty, though my output vocabulary is small, and my grammar is poor, i could have a conversation!! it feels like such a huge acheivement!!!

btw, does anyone else find the drinks in japan a bit weird? like, why do we need to consume 1500 lemons in one drink, or have some massive dose of vitamins?! i mean, probably it can't hurt, but it seems a bit overboard...

Oh, you're already back home?
What a shame!!
But congrats! ^-^

I find the drinks strange because all of them are waaaaaaay too sweet!! :/

IceCream Wrote:btw, does anyone else find the drinks in japan a bit weird? like, why do we need to consume 1500 lemons in one drink, or have some massive dose of vitamins?! i mean, probably it can't hurt, but it seems a bit overboard...

The lemon thing is funny because it's completely inaccurate. I guess the most famous is C.C. Lemon, which says that it has 70 lemons worth of vitamin C in it (in the 500ml bottle). However, check the average vitamin C in a lemon, and the amount of vitamin C in C.C. Lemon, and you'll find that there's nowhere near 70.

The 500ml bottle has 1400mg of vitamin C, but according to the USDA a lemon has between 30 and 83mg of vitamin C. So, really C.C. Lemon has between 17 and 47 lemons in it. That's pretty far from 70, if you ask me.

I read somewhere that the number of lemons of Vitamin C is not printed when the drink is sold in America. Can anybody confirm this? I hear that it's sold more often on the west coast.

梅雨明けおめでとう！

Tzadeck Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:btw, does anyone else find the drinks in japan a bit weird? like, why do we need to consume 1500 lemons in one drink, or have some massive dose of vitamins?! i mean, probably it can't hurt, but it seems a bit overboard...

The lemon thing is funny because it's completely inaccurate. I guess the most famous is C.C. Lemon, which says that it has 70 lemons worth of vitamin C in it (in the 500ml bottle). However, check the average vitamin C in a lemon, and the amount of vitamin C in C.C. Lemon, and you'll find that there's nowhere near 70.

The 500ml bottle has 1400mg of vitamin C, but according to the USDA a lemon has between 30 and 83mg of vitamin C. So, really C.C. Lemon has between 17 and 47 lemons in it. That's pretty far from 70, if you ask me.

I read somewhere that the number of lemons of Vitamin C is not printed when the drink is sold in America. Can anybody confirm this? I hear that it's sold more often on the west coast.

It seems like that's based on a 20 year old guideline by the Japanese department of agriculture.
農林水産省によって昭和62年に制定された「ビタミンC含有菓子の品質表示ガイドライン」
1 レモン equals to 20mg, when you print it on products containing Vitamin C. I've never seen CC lemon in the states, but if USDA says its 30mg to 83mg, it sounds like its only appropriate they don't show that in the US.

There was a guideline made by the Japanese government when it comes to the amount of vitamin C in drinks and stuff. It was based on the average amount of vitamin C in "juice" of a whole lemon of the average size. One lemon consumed in Japan does contain about 90 mg of vitamin C. But you only count juice when comparing with pops and such. That's why you get the "a lemon = 20 mg vitamin C" formula. Most likely the US has different standards if they don't get the same label.

And yes. The Japanese are obsessed with vitamin C for a reason that remains mysterious.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you had a nice trip, IceCream!

In America, the laws against false labeling/advertising seem to be more strict (except when it comes to religion).

Ah, that explains it!

Edit:
Now if only someone could explain why fashion based on Victorian fashion, late Baroque fashion, or Alice in Wonderland is called 'Lolita', a book written by a Russian-American author in and about 1950s America.

Just bringing it up because I'm curious. Maybe there was a film version of Lolita that used that fashion? The book doesn't mention that type of thing at all.

It's not named directly from the novel's character, but rather the figurative usage of the proper name that had become widespread in the 1960s and 70s due to the novel's popularity. Since the word itself came to be defined as a seductive young girl in mainstream society's mind–the archetype of the character rather than the character itself– that usage was used for the Gothic Lolita movement, since attractive, playful youth is what it tries to embody.

Pretty sure. I try to detach myself as much as possible from Japan's fashion fads to be honest

Eikyu Wrote:It's not as scary as this spider:

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2008/10...-news.html

Which is no where near as scary as this one...

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2008/09...-news.html

Make sure you look at the gallery. Note this isn't in Australia, but rather South Africa.

Aijin Wrote:It's not named directly from the novel's character, but rather the figurative usage of the proper name that had become widespread in the 1960s and 70s due to the novel's popularity. Since the word itself came to be defined as a seductive young girl in mainstream society's mind–the archetype of the character rather than the character itself– that usage was used for the Gothic Lolita movement, since attractive, playful youth is what it tries to embody.

Pretty sure. I try to detach myself as much as possible from Japan's fashion fads to be honest

Could be true. Though, actually, from what I understand about Lolita fashion, for a lot of the girls it's a rebellion against seductiveness rather than embracing a specific type of seductiveness. Sweet Lolita (甘ロリ) also seems more in line with this description than other types, like Gothic Lolita; it's more childlike.

And, at any rate, the original character of Lolita is really not portrayed as being all that seductive to the average guy--more like, Humbert Humbert is just a pedophile (who sleeps with a bunch of underaged prostitutes, and stuff like that, before he meets Lolita). So, even as an archetype it's quite off.

Though, I've heard that at least Kubric portrays Dolores Haze (Lolita) as being a lot more seductive than she is in the novel. Lolita as a seductive girl probably comes from the movie.

How stuff like this gets its name is always pretty interesting. It's like the long path in America of 'emo' music coming to refer to whiney teen pop punk.

[Katsuo]

The spider tangent seems to be heading to The Far Side.

A rather strange coincidence: I was leaving a restaurant with a couple friends last night and some people on a nearby roof dangled a big ugly fake spider in front of my face. I screamed. They laughed. weird.
(as gags go, it just seemed so....cartoonish? cliche? retro?)

Was it a curds and whey restaurant by any chance?

Katsuo Wrote:The spider tangent seems to be heading to The Far Side.

This might be the perfect post. Because it works in at least three ways.

1) A spider tangent which is heading towards more ridiculous spiders eating bigger and bigger things.

2) A sudden additional tangent that involves a book in which a man kidnaps ('captures') a child.

3) This thread is woefully off-topic, you could say it's 'going to the far side.'

So, yeah, it pretty much perfectly encapsulates everything that's happening on this thread.

At any rate, first person with a picture of a spider eating a child wins the thread!

Tzadeck Wrote:At any rate, first person with a picture of a spider eating a child wins the thread!

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn252...Spider.jpg

....oh wait....

人対蜘蛛スレ

I like spiders. They keep the mosquito population in check. The larger webs can be amazing to look at with early morning mist glistening on them.

Gawd, you're still talking about spiders?
Can I change the topic, pls?

Is it so extremely hot where you live, too?
What are you doing to survive this heat?
This is already my 4th summer in Japan, but somehow it feels like it's only getting worse each year!!!

chochajin Wrote:This is already my 4th summer in Japan, but somehow it feels like it's only getting worse each year!!!

I found last years summer to be quite mild actually.

おめでとう！

Congratulations!

Welcome back home.