JAPAN IS STRANGE. SOMETIMES. A LOT OF THE TIME.

When you are on the outside of a culture looking in, there are often things you find strange.  Not in a "How peculiar, you drive on a different side of the road" kind of way, or even in a "I don't get that joke" way.  There are simply fundamental differences in what some people consider comprehensible, compared to the rest of the world.  Below are a few Japanese examples of this discrepancy.  They are by no means an exhaustive representation of everything that is out there.  However, they all made me shake my head and say, "What?"

Kikkoman Soy Sauce Ad

The Diarrhea Song- lots of great gestures, as well as some perplexing subtitles. 

Scary Japanese "mannequins." 

This video I call "Nice Peace." There are many things I appreciate about this video: the costumes, the lyricality of the music, the unwitting offense that is given when this guy starts giving the two-fingered salute instead of the peace sign.  The song is fairly catchy, too.  

Standing outside an Osaka subway station last year, I watched as a man in blue coveralls walked by with this cat on his shoulder.  My friend and I were in the middle of having a coffee, which we hurriedly abandoned to follow this feline Pied Piper and find out what was going on.  The man placed the cat on this pole so that people could take photos, and then walked off again.  I like to think of this cat as a more dapper Grumpy Cat.

In another example of cat power, behold, Sir Tama.  Sir Tama is the super station master of Kishi Station in the neighboring prefecture, Wakayama.  Sir Tama (who is actually a lady) is regularly trotted out in ceremonial garb for special occasions.  Many of the stores in Wakayama feature Sir Tama memorabilia, and she has brought in over a billion yen in merchandise and tourism. According to Wikipedia, Sir Tama "is 'the only female in a managerial position' in the [rail] company" that owns the line on which Kishi Station is located. 

This man in Tokyo can sing any national anthem you can name.  We should have told him we were from Norway; instead, he serenaded us with The Star-Spangled Banner.  No clue how the tiger heads fit in to his shtick.