Unfunny Explination For An Unfunny Comic

A note about the last comic. I know it was heavy-handed and unfunny and all. And I understand if the topic seems unimportant to the folks back home. But the article that inspired the comic was about Hamamatsu, and for me, that makes the whole situation horrendously unfunny.

Back when I did study abroad, me and a friend went on a trip to Tokyo and stopped off at Hamamatsu just to stretch our legs. As soon as we stepped off the train, we could tell there was something different about that town, and we fell in love with it. We ended up spending a few hours there, just wandering around, talking to people, and soaking up that amazing atmosphere. Maybe it was because we had been in Japan so long at that point, but it took a while to realize what it was.

Simply put, Hamamatsu was the only place in Japan I have been where people could not have given less of a shit that I am not Japanese. People didn't stare at us for being foreigners, they didn't do double-takes and avoid eye contact, they didn't go out of their way to avoid us. To be treated like a human being again, not a "non-Japanese," was frankly something I had forgotten was possible.

And to hear the leading lawmaker of Japan's fucking one-party system talk about that type of integration like it's a bad thing...it makes me so angry and depressed, I feel like I'm coughing up blood. It's things like this that make you wonder if Japan really has a future on the international stage. I mean, America has it's own assholes talking about putting up a fence to keep out illegal immagrants, but for fuck's sake, it's not like Nancy Pelosi is talking about paying the descendants of Americans to fucking leave the country and never fucking come back because we don't want their dirty fucking mixed blood. Fuck.

So yeah, anyway, I'll put up some more crudely drawn comics later, but this is not something I could let pass without comment.

On The Shooting Of One's Own Foot

For real. This may be the stupidest shit ever.

I dub thee Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, beater of ass.

Among other lies I have told innocent school children: I speak five languages, my next-door neighbors are (on the right) Jack Bauer and (on the left), Obama, and I secretly work for the CIA. And they find all of this more credible than my ability to use chopsticks.


The next step is, of course, the introduction of Martian Law.


Just as Nintendo has forever ruined the name "Mario" for Italians who are not, in fact, overweight plumbers, they have ruined "Yoshi" for Japanese people who are not giant dinosaurs with sticky, retractable tongues.

Right to Privacy Vs. Right to Privates

This may be my favorite Demographic Crisis comic, if only for the use of the word "decriminalize." Also, obese anime fan is quickly becoming my favorite character.

And I just realized that my craptastic scanner cut off the word "crisis."

Resumé Stain

This is one of those few solutions that might actually work...if you consider what Japanese students go through to get into an elite universities, I'm sure they'd be more than willing to pop out a few kids. The only question is if the Ministry of Education could manage to make sex as joyless and soul-crushing as the rest of the curriculum. And you know the kids would have to go to after-school classes too...which would bring a whole new level of weirdness to the term "cram school."

Oh, and I forget to mention this last time: this comic ran in the November issue of the Hyogo Times, a monthly newsletter for the local JETs. Which was pretty exciting :)

Dude flying in background: "Kusooooo!" ("Shiiiiiiit!")

Yeah, that didn't work out so well last time.

Only four more old comics! Are you excited? I am excited! Also: JET interviews this weekend! Are you excited? I am excited!

It's almost impossible for a non-Japanese person to become a citizen of Japan, even if your family has been living there for three generations. Essentially, the only way to become a legal citizen is to marry a native, and even then, it's not a sure thing.

Then again, this is coming from the society that discriminates against ethnic Japanese whose ancestors worked "unclean" jobs. Even though those jobs aren't considered "unclean" anymore. So really, the Koreans are kind of screwed.

Apologies to Red Robot World Domination for using Red Robot...but not being red...or really looking all that much like Red Robot. Yeah.

I seriously want this to happen, at least once.