The Foreigner And The Taiko Drummer

[Mulboyne]

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David Pavlina blogs in both English and Japanese about his life in Tokyo using the name Mondaiji. He also makes his own videos, like the one above, under the same name. Recently, however, one clip caused a minor internet storm. Pavlina lives next door to a shrine and explained that he is regularly woken up at 6:00am by someone practising taiko drumming. He decided to go to the shrine and made a video of the encounter showing himself posing with a toy gun beforehand. He met the priest and intercut this scene with shots of himself singing a song making fun of the situation. Japanese commenters were quick to find fault with Pavlina, writing that he should respect Japanese culture or go home. Others wondered whether he would have the same problem with church bells ringing. Realizing that many people did not see the funny side of his clip, Pavlina removed both the video and his blog entry. Separately, someone had copied his video and uploaded it to the Nico Nico Douga service where it continued to draw criticism but this has now also been removed An entry on the Uratan site has a few screenshots of the original pages along with an account of the incident.

[kusai Jijii]

Fucking dork.

[adamukun]

OK just read through that Uratan piece... more offensive than any failure to understand Japanese culture, this guy comes off as just spectacularly unfunny and tasteless. Like so many foreigners here he seems to think Japan is his playground, but since he took down the video so quickly I guess he learned a lesson in boundaries.

[GuyJean]

Where have I seen that helmut before?....

GJ

[Greji]

Where have I seen that helmut before?....

GJ

It has of course, been conspicuosly been absent for some time, hasn't it?

[Iraira]

While dude is clearly a dork, what if the person complaining about the noise had been an old baba? What would of happened then?