Metapost: Turning Japanese
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I probably won’t get to new comics until late-ish tonigh, so to tide you over, here are some fab photos from the Land of the Rising Sun! Faithful reader CrabbyGenes, who is a resident of Japan, recently met up with a visitor:
I met SecretMargo in Tokyo today, and we had a great time eating lunch, coffee-shop hopping, buying a book or two, and talking about anything and everything under the sun — including Comics Curmudgeon, of course!
We couldn’t find anything really famous or recognizable in the part of Tokyo we were in to use as a background for the photo. So we just found something that looked Japanese-y. We asked the guy who was handing out the free fans we are holding to take two of the pictures for us. The background and fans are “manga”-ish, but I think they’re just the advertising gimmick for the pachinko parlour we’re posing in front of — the name of which is “Green Peas Pachislo Tower.” You can see it printed in English on the carpet in one of the photos. (Great name!)
![](/images/07/07/secret.jpg)
![](/images/07/07/crabbysecret.jpg)
![](/images/07/07/crabby.jpg)
SecretMargo is of course sporting his Molly the Bear shirt. Such surrealist shirt slogan/logo combos are of course par for the course in Japanese fashion, so presumably he didn’t raise any eyebrows with it. However, if this photo from the always-amusing Engrish.com is any indication, Japan is already on the ironic comics t-shirt bandwagon:
![](/images/07/07/enjoydoing-clambake.jpg)
(Thanks to faithful reader Dan the Wis for the tip!)