Things the Japanese Don't See So Much These Days

[Mulboyne]

[Osakadave]

A couple of those I'm not quite sure about - the local bookshops around here still have heaps of magazines. And I know plenty of back alleys...

I've been around long enough to miss a number of things on that list. I even kinda miss the local bosozoku's weekly Saturday night run up the street I live on...

[Iraira]

I miss the "Color Gangs" of Ikebukuro...and before them, the "Teemers".

Sounds like some J-style West Side Story.

[jingai]

Iraira, add bosozoku to that list, although maybe they're covered by bancho.

For another one, what about kotatsu?

[Big Booger]

31) Street touts?
32) Sweet potato vendors who drive around at night with a noisy tape recorder over a bullhorn saying shit like "Delicious" "Cheap" "Sweeeeettttt Pottttaaaatoooo!"

[wuchan]

god I live in the sticks......
We still have plenty of:
Public phones
small shops
open fields
Rice paddies and vegetable plots
Department store rooftop playparks
Hometown festivals
Old-style coffee shops
trees
street vendors
sweet potato trucks
bosozoku


We even still have milk delivery, green tea delivery, a guy that comes and changes the mop head, a guy that comes to clean our glasses, three kotatsu, shit I even saw a wild badger not too long ago.

[Osakadave]

[Yokohammer]

Chiri-gami koukan (the guys who used to exchange old newspapers and magazines for toilet paper). Those guys are history.

Unfortunately they have been replaced by the extremely noisy and annoying "Sodai Gomi Kaishu-sha."

[Osakadave]

Yeah, the guys who do that in my neighborhood are worse than the election vans.

We've still got the wandering yaki-imo and warabimochi guys here - it's not summer til I hear "waaaraaabiiiii mochi". The ramen guy gave up the ghost around 2000 or so.

Ah, and as I type this out, here comes the singing garbage truck - that'll probably be done for as well (repalced by a boring garbage truck...)

[kusai Jijii]

add bosozoku to that list

How the fuck could ANYONE miss those pencil dicks?

[kusai Jijii]

When I lived in Osaka, there was an ancient dude that used to come round the street late at night with his ramen cart. Fuck, he must have been 47538 years old. He died. And now the old 'hood apparantly has no more late night ramen cart...

[dimwit]

God!!! Matsuyama still has about three quarters of the things on the list. I guess that is why I never fell nostalgic about Japan.




Damn it! It looks like all the taxi are taken

[Taro Toporific]

God!!! Matsuyama still has about three quarters of the things on the list. I guess that is why I never fell nostalgic about Japan.

Sheee-it. My Rice Ranch outside Matsuyama just got a flush toilet a couple years ago.

[dimwit]

Sheee-it. My Rice Ranch outside Matsuyama just got a flush toilet a couple years ago.

So before that, did you have a hole in the house or a hole in the yard? A friend of mine has parents in the real boonies that have an indoor outhouse, which is something I'm sure no Japanese are nostalgic about.

[Taro Toporific]

So before that, did you have a hole in the house or a hole in the yard? .

Sadly, two holes attached to the side of the house.

Nothing to get nostalgic about (and as stinko as the rest of that list of 'Things the Japanese Don't See So Much These Days').

[Mike Oxlong]

Ah, the "potton benjo"...

[wuchan]

A friend of mine has parents in the real boonies that have an indoor outhouse, which is something I'm sure no Japanese are nostalgic about.

Shit we had one of those about five or six years ago around the time I came, we also had an outdoor one and a rule... no poo inside.

[Mike Oxlong]

Had one in my rental, until it was torn down three years ago...

[IkemenTommy]

No-pan Yakiniku

[Molokidan]

Beer vending machines?

[Yokohammer]

Beer vending machines?

Yeah, most of those are gone.

But then they allowed convenience stores to sell booze so underage kids can buy it by intimidating (or befriending) the pimply adolescent arubaito at 7/11.

Gee, that was a good idea.

And as a bonus the friendly local mom-and-pop sakaya-san who survived by selling a few cans of beer and Ozeki one-cup sake are now going out of business.

More brilliant social engineering by a totally out-of-touch government ...

Oh crap. Wrong thread. I'll stop now ...

[GomiGirl]

Train station, ticket hand punch dudes - those guys used to have such a melodious clicking action. I am really not sure of how to describe them - or even how to find a photo. Can see them from time to time in really rural areas. I used to love the line of them at Tokyo station though. Very very old school - am showing my age.

[Yokohammer]

Train station, ticket hand punch dudes - those guys used to have such a melodious clicking action. I am really not sure of how to describe them - or even how to find a photo. Can see them from time to time in really rural areas. I used to love the line of them at Tokyo station though. Very very old school - am showing my age.

Good one!

Them's were the days. They had different shaped punches for different times of the day even (maybe even different days of the week) to make it easier to identify "kiseru."

[Molokidan]

Good one!

Them's were the days. They had different shaped punches for different times of the day even (maybe even different days of the week) to make it easier to identify "kiseru."

Actually, if you ride the above-ground Eizan railway in nothern Kyoto after-hours, there are guys who still walk around doing that. I'm sure the same is true for other rural parts in Japan too.

[Yokohammer]

Actually, if you ride the above-ground Eizan railway in nothern Kyoto after-hours, there are guys who still walk around doing that. I'm sure the same is true for other rural parts in Japan too.

Now that you mention it, they still punch actual paper tickets on the Entetsu line in Hamamatsu, in parallel with a "Suica" type system.

I hardly noticed ... probably numbed by the totally electronic, impersonal systems in Yokohama and Tokyo.

Whoops no ( ... thinking ... ) I think it's a stamp thingy that just looks like a punch. Whatever, they don't do it with the cool rhythmic clickety-clack accompaniment and occasional punch-spinning flourish that they used to.

[Taro Toporific]

I think it's a stamp thingy that just looks like a punch. Whatever, they don't do it with the cool rhythmic clickety-clack accompaniment and occasional punch-spinning flourish that they used to.

Yeah, I get that self-inking stamp thingy from time to time since I use discounted, non-standard, paper train tickets.
My great failure in my audio life as a sometimes Foley sound man is that I never captured on my DAT recorder the mega-cool rhythmic clickety-clack (or videoed those punch-spinning flourishes).

[Osakadave]

Still heaps of beer machines around here, but yeah, the ticket punch guys are missed.

Surprised sentos haven't come up yet. When I moved down to Osaka, there were two in the 'hood. Both are long gone.

[IkemenTommy]

The sarakin loan shark ads like Takefuji, Promise, Aiful, and Acom.

The ads for new pachinko CR machines, on the other hand..

[Charles]

Yeah, I get that self-inking stamp thingy from time to time since I use discounted, non-standard, paper train tickets.
My great failure in my audio life as a sometimes Foley sound man is that I never captured on my DAT recorder the mega-cool rhythmic clickety-clack (or videoed those punch-spinning flourishes).

How much do you want to bet there's a web site already up that has recordings? You know what Japanese trainspotters are like.

BTW, have you ever seen the short film, "The Foley Artist?" Oh it's hilarious. I think it won the Oscar for best short, but I can't find a trace of it on the web. It has a couple of guys doing live realtime SFX for a fight scene, they basically beat the crap out of each other by accident. I remember one particularly funny bit where they're smacking a side of beef with pipes to get the right breaking-ribs sound, and they get spattered with blood and flying bone fragments. The film they're working on is a real stinker and the SFX action is far more interesting than what's on the screen. Now that's a typical Hollywood-insider self-congratulatory subject. Anyway, catch it if you can (which is unlikely).

[james]

Train station, ticket hand punch dudes - those guys used to have such a melodious clicking action. I am really not sure of how to describe them - or even how to find a photo. Can see them from time to time in really rural areas. I used to love the line of them at Tokyo station though. Very very old school - am showing my age.

standard issue where i'm at!