Underground Culture of Baby Shitting Sweeping Japan

I remember his story like it was just yesterday because it was yesterday…

Yasu didn’t want to help his family. He was a young man, full of the kind of boundless energy that makes young men think they can headbutt bullets for breakfast.

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, this is Japan. Twenty five year old men tell me they’ve given up blue jeans and invested in khaki pants because they’ve become old.

But, that wasn’t Yasu (real name changed, though not far from the real one because I’m lazy and lack creativity), the weight of familial obligation weighing down upon his very soul. It was because of this obligation that he had his first encounter with a new phenomenon sweeping Japan and threatening to shift beyond underground subculture and into mainstream society.

I remember his first days in my class, a bright student, but reluctantly shy. I could only imagine some deep-seeded darkness at the very root of his soul, causing his constant inward reflection and shunning of my overtures toward conversation.

I’d asked him how his weekend had been. He hesitated at the time, obviously uncomfortable with the acts he’d witnessed and partaken in his previous weekend.

He slowly leaned forward, as if the very mentioned of the words weighed his soul down further. It was an effort for him to get them past his lips.

“Baby shitting…” he mumbled, the exhaustion of his revelation taking a noticeable toll upon him.

It was then that I had my first encounter with this Japanese subculture, this new underground world of baby shitting.

I couldn’t believe my ears. It was as if my whole world had come crashing down around me, my white, upper middle class upbringing suddenly irrevocably shattered by the strange habits of a culture far distant from my own. With a bewildered stare, I asked him to repeat himself, my mind remaining firmly boggled and unwilling to accept this new revelation.

“Baby shitting…” he uttered, this time somewhat louder than the first, as if defiantly trying to cast off the shackles of his transgressions.

I’m tried to maintain my open mind, tried to be an innocent bystander in all this. Whether it be genital mutilation, underwear vending machines, or wild gay sex, I’m but an observer in this rock we call earth. I shouldn’t seek to judge based on my upper middle class, Anglo western values.

But how can I maintain my neutrality, the boy so obviously burdened by his weekends spent ‘baby shitting!’

I had to get to the bottom of his plight. I gulped down my reactive spirit and kept on…

“Where did you go baby shitting?” I asked, pressing forward, not ready and willing to venture forth into this undiscovered new world, but in desperate need of answers.

He still hesitated to give me more. At first I thought it might be because of his lack of English ability, but it had to be more than that, I was sure of it.

“Niihama…”

He had given me a town name from one of the most conservative areas in Japan. If baby shitting was taking place here, there was no doubt in my mind that it had already moved beyond a subculture.

It had gone national.

It was hard to get much more out of him, and I mean that on two literal levels (the man had shit babies for christsakes), but I had to get to the bottom of it all. I had to talk to others.

I spoke to more students throughout the next day. They’d had their encounters with baby shitting too. At first, I linked it as a possible result of a flailing economy, but as I dug deeper, the ugly truth became more and more apparent.

I met Yuki in a dark corner of a Starbucks. I was sure she’d picked such an out of the way area not because of the more comfortable chairs, or because the other sections of the coffee shop were full, but because she was ready to unleash the details of her dark world upon me.

Yuki told me she’d done it too. She said she’d been baby shitting often lately, to help her mother’s sister. I asked her if perhaps her parents had forced her into it. In horror, she dictated to me how she hadn’t been forced into it by her parents, but felt it was something she’d needed to do to help them out.

When I asked if she’d done it for money, she shook her head. It all related back to her feelings of obligation.

I talked to more students that day and  I heard stories from at least half who’d relayed bits and pieces of their encounters with baby shitting  to me. From this, it appears that among Japanese people of ages 18-34, at least half of them are currently involved in baby shitting activities. You can take that fact to the bank.

But what is this baby shitting, exactly? Yasu and Yuki were coy with their answers, as were the others. From what I gathered, babies are involved, as well as shitting them. It appears that sometimes children partake in this phenomenon as well, as both of them stated they’d been watching over younger children in their family when they were forced into their dire acts.

It’s not clear where the babies are coming from and how exactly they’re being forced to shit them, but it’s obviously apparent that this is now sweeping Japan and threatening the very fabric of their culture and way of being.

I caution readers not to judge baby shitting enthusiasts so hastily. They’re people like you and I, sucked into this world because of deep-seeded obligations that we often cannot hope to comprehend.

But yes, these are acts of both shock and awe.

It is my hope to shine some light on this rapidly growing phenomenon, so that more may learn of this underground world of baby shitting, perhaps bringing more world attention to the issue and the plight of baby shitters throughout Japan.

If it Bleeds, We Can Kill it (Although I hope it stays alive so we can suck it dry some more)

It's not a downward shift really, more of a horizontal shift. I'm just picking a new head.

I’ve renounced my candidacy for leading Japan.

It’s become apparent to me that whoever ends up in the tops spot justs get shit on. As such, I’ve decided to refocus my campaign on the micro-level.

I’m running for mayor of Takamatsu.

When you’re at the top of this multi-headed hydra, you have to manage a zillion ravenous, begging dogs, all jumping at the slightest hint of a handout.

But as a mayor, I get to over-inflate budgets and carve away bits and pieces of cash on endless projects, pocketing a bit of extra change for myself.

So here’s the platform:

1) I’d fire the people that are occasionally hired to sit at intersections all day and push switches, I’m not sure what the hell they do, but it doesn’t seem like anything has improved. Go home and turn the light on and off.

2) Unicycles are the future. Every elementary school kid learns to use one, and yet my city is still over-cluttered with traditional two-wheeled bikes. Meanwhile, unicycles are compact enough to take into the office with you. Companies short on cash could stop investing in chairs and instead advocate a unicycle policy. They could say it’s part of their campaign to stamp out metabo. With less health care to dish out, we can reduce those costs too, minus unicycle accidents.

3) I’m gonna have a little talk with JR about their employment system in my city’s station. They used to have traditional human ticket stampers. They were recently replaced by machines. Unfortunately, they weren’t fired. Now they just stand around nervously staring at people and trying to thank everyone. Meanwhile, this somehow hasn’t left them any extra time to actually figure out how to do their job. They still completely break down whenever asked a question about anything that doesn’t involve stamping.

4) There will no longer be 10 city workers doing road construction when one would do. I suppose we do this in America too, but the key is that we’re only paying one of them. The other 9 are Mexicans. Here we’re paying 10 people to stand next to arrow signs and assure that people realize there’s a blinking arrow sign there. Go wave flags at home.

5) Those barrier construction frogs? How did those meetings even pan out?

City Worker #1: So, it looks like we’re all set on the budget for this year’s road construction and maintenance.

City Worker #2: Wait, we forgot the frog and kangaroo construction barricades!

City Worker #1: Good Call! Tack on another 20,000,000 yen!

Not only do they use these silly things, but they use about a thousand more than needed.  It’s fucking construction. It doesn’t have to look nice, and drunk foreign people keep trying to steal them anyway.

6) The economy’s in the tank. There are thousands of drunk salarymen wandering around on a Friday night that can’t get more money out of the ATM to hit up the snacks and soaplands. 24 hour-ATMs can save the economy. People will mindlessly pull money out and recklessly spend it like wildfire at 4am, just like they do everywhere else in the world. I’d also consider keeping pachinko parlors open, but that’d just support North Korea. You don’t need to give people gov cash to get them to spend it. Just get them to make poor judgement decisions with epic wads of cash while under the influence. That’s a surefire way to save the economy!

7) I’m scrapping the bus system. Two people in this city use buses. Taxis shouldn’t cost more when I step into one than traveling around for an hour in Seoul. With no buses, taxis will become cheaper.

8) I’m cutting back the putrid, soulless festivals put on near the train station at Sunport. The evening news often shows a sea of old spectators with bored, sad looks in their eyes that somehow felt obligated to attend these weekly debacles even though it’s obviously killing them. These events include attempts by amateurs to do extremely complicated and traditional Japanese arts and other mind-numbing ideas. It’s kind of like getting sucked into someones travel photo presentation. It’s obviously killing the residents of this city to watch Bunraku done by local 85 year olds that picked up the hobby last week or having a culturelogue on Italy by a lady who went there once 40 years ago.

9) In my neighborhood, some ‘neighborhood events organizer’ comes around and takes cash from every household so that they can fund various  events and activities. Good Idea. I’m going to be going door to door asking for direct funds from time to time too. It’s great, cause it’s under the table, so you don’t have to report it to anyone and I won’t tax it or anything. If this ATM thing doesn’t pan out, expect to see me occasionally at around 3 am. We’ll call it “community connecting” time.

10) I’m putting a stop to those damn Lion Dances. Dudes come by my house at 5am and dance around and then want money. If this was America at 5am, I’d be fucking shooting at you for stepping on my property and waking me up at 5am. Yall complain about having to do the dance for an entire weekend, then take the money and just have a party. How about no hard dance to waste your weekend, no taking of my money, and no party? It’s like a happy middle ground.

11) I’d aquire a few predator drones with acoustic equipment for finding vans blaring out advertisments for nationalism, sweet potatoes, 2nd hand goods, or political competition. They’ll be missile equipped. This would have the added benefit of silencing my rivals, since the only way they know how to campaign is through noise pollution.

12) I’d change that thing where you have to visit about 30 different people at your local immigration office to pay for stuff and get stamps and bribe people and waste hours up hours of your life just to get a sticker to leave the country and return. This isn’t fucking Soviet Communist Russia, we shouldn’t have to create such archaic systems just to employ people and waste the rest of the world’s time.

13) I’d pocket all the money saved in the above ideas, which would leave me about on par with anyone else currently leading.

Boggling the Mind with Verbs that Sometimes MoonLight as Nouns! (Hope! Change! Fuck!)

Who gives a fuck about Japan? This Guy!

While I sit here being heckled at by men and women standing on vans, screaming out how they will change Japan without ever actually offering any tangible plans, I figure that I’m as good as anyone to really lead Japan.

Here is my platform:

1) I won’t stand on a van and heckle you, ever. I’ll be sure to get out there and shake babies and kiss women in a civil and educated manner. I’m not Asian, but where I come from, when Asians speak through loudspeakers, people bug out and grab rifles. Even I have war flashbacks when I hear them screaming, and I’ve only been to wars in Asia via movies.

2) I’ll sell all the stockpiled whale to either a country that’s really hungry or some Nordic country that actually likes eating the shit. Cause right now there’s just a bunch of frozen whale sitting around and I think I might be the only one eating it. We could even send it to North Korea, so they’d get even stupider on Mercury poisoning.

3) Ever time North Korea raises a missile, I’ll blow it up, claim self defense, and then egg them on about that awesome brown water navy they possess, then watch as Kim Il-Jong flips out and sends his millions swimming across the Sea of Japan.

4) I’ll fire all politicians above 60. You ever see an American NFL football coach? Those guys put in about 18 hours a day of work during the season. At about 65, their skills suddenly wane. This goes for Generals too (I’m looking at you MacArthur). Why? Because old people need to sleep a lot and take little naps all the time. I want people who are burning the midnight oil to get shit done. Japan needs some fresh thinking, not someone who goes to bed at 7:00 and falls asleep during meetings.

5) I hate washing out containers and cutting juice boxes. I shouldn’t have to worry about that shit. From now on, all trash goes into one bin and it goes to jail, where prisoners sort it out in some wacky jail factory combo thing. You can also send bad junior high school children there until they shape up.

6) I’ll put TV Talents in (Hand Quotes) “Talent Camps” where they’d be reeducated on the exact concept of talent….they might also be put to death.

7) I’ll have traps installed in the vending machines that dispense the “salary man failure” items that men bring home to their wives after spending all night with snack ladies and in a love hotel with their mistress, coming home to a wife with a box of chocolates and some flowers he got by putting some coins in a slot. They will now chop off his hands, cause he’s a useless douche.

8) I’ll change cool biz so that people can wear comfortable clothes in the summer AND use the AC at a normal fucking temperature. Fuck it man, there are other ways to save the environment and work productivity takes a dive when everyone is casually dressed and hot. It takes the average Japanese person about 3 hours to complain about the weather and this nation doesn’t need anymore wasted productivity.

9) New Code: An even number of bows means I’m sincere in my apology, an odd number of bows mean I really don’t give a fuck. Here’s a hint: My lucky number is 7.

10) The Seto Naikai area is famous for its legends of pirates, plundering, striking fear, and hiding out in the thousands of islands of the inland sea. Japanese pirates plying the coasts, towns and vaginas of Korea is also part of a very rich Japanese history. Under my administration, we’ll get back to our pirating roots.

11) Sports festivals will no longer consist of events lacking entirely of sports. We’ll now do things obviously recognized by the world community as tangible and actual sports, not just a bunch of weird shit we made up. There will be no oddly coordinated, semi-homosexual dance routines either, unless your kid goes to a school for semi-homosexuals.

12) People will be allowed to express their actual opinions. When I tell someone that I went to a tea ceremony this weekend, they won’t have to say “Sugoi!” anymore, they can just say “Awe, I bet that sucked ass.” When they eat a piece of food they don’t like, they will no longer have to scream out “Oishii!” They will be allowed to say “This tastes like dog feces, but slimier.”

13) I’ll change the Japanese word for Octopus from Taco to something else. I get really pissed off when I go to a Japanese Mexican restaurants and see ‘tacos’ on the menu and order only to find that I get one lonely, sad and depressing, fucking taco. Don’t do me like that, Japan. Tacos should mean a plethora of Mexican delight, not one.

Mom Was Right

The battle lines were drawn eons ago.

One army stood spotless and gleaming with perfection, orderly arranged and with well laid battle plans.

The other army, disheveled and disorganized, but with a chaos and fire sure to give their aggressors a brutal fight.

As the two armies dug in across the battlefield, heated stares and words were thrown back and forth in equal measure, constantly parried back upon their hated enemy.

The first volley from the pristine ranks stopped the chaos army dead in their tracks.

“Are you going outside without a coat on?”

But chaos, undeterred, stood again and soldiered forward, spewing forth their own barrage of death.

“Yeah…”

The shining army of righteousness received their first casualties, their bright armor taking its first battering. But they too rose again.

“But you’ll catch a cold…”

This barrage cut across the entire line of the disorderly ranks, but was returned in full.

“No I won’t.”

The sloppy and threadbare ranks had now taken their swords out, their cavalry cutting into the beacons of Order. But Order doesn’t fall so easily.

“Yes you will, it’s cold outside.”

But chaos is wily too, and they’re never felled so easily.

“Colds are viruses, it doesn’t matter what temperature it is outside…”

And so the battle between sons and mother raged on.

And it continues to rage on to this very day…

…except in Japan.

I’m not sure how it happened, but moms won the battle here.  While I spent my entire life outright rebelling against nearly everything my mother suggested, Men here seem to follow their mothers’ ever whim and wish.

Let’s take a look:

1) Winter: Mom used to tell me to put on a coat, wear a scare, gloves, hat, and about a million other things like that. I never did any of that. Oddly enough, I don’t get sick often either. Meanwhile, in Japan, I live in a place with a climate similar to the American South and I see people freaking out about the cold and dressing like a winter Gap ad. People are wearing thermal underwear, stomach girdles, and Haramaki. I didn’t know stomach warmers existed until I came here.

2) Bacteria and Cleanliness: Mom’s worked up the entire nation into a fervor of extreme bacterial fear. Even when there’s no swine flue, people are wildly panicked about wearing masks and avoiding dirt. I’ve never seen people wash so thoroughly. Remember when mom told you to wash behind your ears and you were just kind of “whatever” about it? Well, people go nuts with the back of their ears here. Showers take forever to get up to Mom’s standards.

3) Swimming: Mom always told you not to go swimming after you’d just eaten and then you went and dove in the ocean anyway and found that nothing happened and you didn’t die? Perhaps mothers lost this initial battle, so now when mothers wants their children to stay out of the water, they just tell them that the dead (especially here on the Seto Nai Kai) or Kappa will drag them down to the bottom and drown them.

4) Whistling: My mom wasn’t against whistling. She was pissed at her mom for always telling her to stop whistling (because it was bad for a lady to do). So I got a pass. In Japan though, it’s too imposing to go around whistling, as it might offend others. As such, mothers tell their sons that snakes will come and crawl down your throat while they sleep.

5) Summer: Mom doesn’t want you getting all burned out there on the beach anyway. Not only should you not swim, but you should also shield yourself from the sun. This is why you’ll find people wearing the same amount of clothes when it’s boiling outside as when it’s winter. While everyone is out in the sun and sand this weekend in America, the neighborhoods in Japan will be silent as everyone hides inside or goes shopping in a highly AC-ed mall.

6) Air Conditioners: But Mom wants you to know that AC is dangerous. You might catch a chill when you move from cold rooms to hot rooms or vice versa. The air is also unnatural and will dry you out if you sleep all night with it on. With all the chills and dry air, you’ll get yourself sick! I’ve had far to many people here tell me about the dangers of AC here. It hasn’t killed me yet.

7) Cool Fall/Spring Breezes: But no worries, Mom can’t be so crazy during the nice, temperate Falls and Springs.  Oh yes she can… That refreshing night breeze coming through your window?  That can give you chills too! Better close the windows and put on a stomach girdle!

8) Dependency: In Japan, you never said “I can do this myself, dammit!” Instead, you just stayed with mom, let her cook all your meals, let her do your laundry, let her clean your room, and let her wipe your ass. Until you’re married, you continue on living with mom. Eventually, you’ve become so cluelessly dependent on mom, you can’t actually exist without her unless you find a suitable wife to do the same thing. But watch out, Mom is over your shoulder like worm-tongue, with a heavy say in what girl you’re going to end up with too. Should you go unmarried and should something unfortunate happen to your mom, you’re as good as dead. You can’t even make eggs.

9) Mom Over Wife: Guys here always fall back on their mom. If an issue comes up between their wife and their mother. The mother wins. In days past, it was basically the mother’s job to make her son’s wife a living hell. It was also the son’s job to just sit back there and let his wife take the punishment. Perhaps there’s a karmic thing where the wife is just waiting to have a son of her own someday so he can get married and then she can treat his wife like garbage. I’m not sure how a man can stand around and let anyone berate his wife though.

10) PayBack: So they’ve lost the war, listening to ever whim and fancy throughout their lives. The son’s poor wife has done back flips to deal with her mother-in-law, to no avail. What happens next?  In her old age, mother moves in with them. Now mother can better manage the son through his middle age and (with Japan’s long lifespan) into his senior years…aka: forever!!!

Japan, you’ve won this battle, but you haven’t won the war!

Zombie of my Nightmares, Sultry and Corpselike

I’m deathly afraid of zombies.

I didn’t used to be. I used to love catching zombie movies and laughing at them.

After all, when you create a movie with a zombie fighting a shark, you can’t help but laugh at the awesomeness of it all:

But I can’t watch zombie movies anymore. Something in Japan changed me. I suppose maybe it’s the threat of a very conformist and socialized culture.

I came here knowing the famous idiom about ‘the nail that sticks out getting hammered down,” but as a foreigner, with our weird wacky ways, sometimes there’s an immense pressure to join the horde, do things their way.

“Join us!” they say, “join us!”

Just like that roving mass of zombies clamouring after you. One bite and you’re just like them. I’ve had a number of friends already bitten. They bristle when even the most minor of ‘Japanese’ social norms is broken.

“You didn’t sit in the proper alignment in a restaurant when you brought a guest out to dinner!!!!”

Yeah, so in Japan, I often have extremely vivid zombie nightmares of being torn apart by masses of punctual and precise flesh-eating monsters due to the pressures of trying to be myself (the fucked up nail).

I can’t stand to watch the movies anymore. They’ll keep me awake all night, wondering and formulating my plan for survival against the conformist hordes of brain eaters.

But as I see it, Japan might come out as a pretty good place to survive the apocalypse.

We’ll start with the Good:

Baseball bats, Bad-ass Swords, Sharp Knives

If it cuts through a tin can, it'll cut through a spinal cord too!

Baseball’s the national sport, so there will be plenty of zombie smashing devices all over the place. There’s also a plethora of katana swords to be found. On top of that, many Japanese knife makers are considered some of the best in the world, assuring your zombie killing blades will never dull in the face of oncoming hordes of brain chewing salarymen. You’ve seen the commercials man, Ginsu knives cut through tin cans and you can throw tomatoes in the air and slice them in half.

Intense Paranoia

When they all become zombies, it'll be like they all have muzzles on

I live in the safest country on earth and the house I live in is barred on all the first floor windows and walled off like a cultist compound. I feel pretty damn safe here.  All storefronts have pull-down metal guards to block off the entrances like we live in Mogadishu.

It’s a good thing everyone is so damn afraid of everything here. They’ve planned well for future zombie invasions. Of course it’s always those ‘safest’ places that the zombies are always able to get into somehow.

Also, everyone is always wearing masks. I’m not saying this will stop the spread of infection with zombies trying to bite you, but if you find a zombie with a mask still on their face trying to get at you, it might give you that extra layer of protection for a moment or two that might save your ass.

Elderly People

How fast you think this guy's going to be coming after you?

In 2020 the elderly population of Japan is set to reach nearly 25%. This means that there will be tons of really old zombies out there. Even in one of those ‘fast zombie’ outbreaks, your going to be encountering a lot of really, really slow zombies. Many of them won’t even have teeth.

Beware of strange forms of transportation though, as in remembering small bits of their past life, they may chase after you in wheelchairs, walkers, or perhaps even motorized wheelchairs. They’ll also still probably mutter ‘gaijin’ under their breathe.

When I go to a mall on a weekday, there are so many shambling people, sometimes I think the outbreak has already begun.

The Conbini

This food will last until aliens visit earth in 5,000 years

There are convenience stores on every corner of every street in every town throughout Japan (sorry Taketomi-jima, you’re fucked). This leaves literal food depots throughout your entire area of travel. Added to this fact, even the foods they throw out after one day has enough preservatives in them to keep fresh for about the next 500 years. None of the food in those places is ever going bad. You don’t have to worry about finding food here. Hell, the preservatives might even repel zombie viruses.

The Bad:

Not Enough Guns

Bad people and Zombie Killers, you moron!

Unfortunately, it’s a country seriously lacking in the gun department. In America, I know about 20 places where I could quickly get my hands on a gun. This is a bit more problematic here in Japan, where the majority of the ‘guns’ are just replicas owned by war obsessed otaku. This would be a major problem in the event of zombie attack.

Still, it’s not impossible to own a gun in Japan, and there are many hunters on this island in the countryside that own guns. Also, in America, we’d probably all just mistakenly shoot each other.

Tight Alleyways, Rugged Terrain

Yeah, there's a conbini just down at the end of this extremely narrow and dark alleyway!

There aren’t a lot of wide open spaces in Japan. This would make it easy for Zombie attackers to approach at close range. Traveling through both countryside and cities would be a bitch. Getting to some high ground to defend yourself would require some rugged travel, unless of course, you could get the rope ways, gondolas, funiculars, or various other machines that dot the landscape of nearly any mountain up and running. Then you can just cruise to the top in under 7 minutes while the tourist audio tells you all the best spots on the mountain.

Intense Paranoia

"Can we come in to your awesomely defended home, mam?" "No, hell no"

The intense paranoia that initially helped stop the spread of infection might also work against humanity in the long run. In the beginning, as people took overly cautious steps to avoid contamination and locked themselves away in their fortress homes, it might slow infection. Unfortunately, as things degrade, there’d be a serious lack of trust and paranoia among survivors, who might be too paranoid to lend a hand.

In America, we’d have that problem of wanting to help each other, always letting in some guy who was bitten, who’d then proceed to become a zombie and fuck everything up.

In Japan, you’d just be locked outside and fucked really.

Paper Doors

‘Nuff said really….

In the end, I suppose I feel pretty good here about my chances in a zombie holocaust.

What do yall think? Any more tips or tricks for getting by in Japan when the ‘big one’ occurs?