I saw a story on Kotaku about an offensive ad for a bread maker highlighted by someone who appears to be an activist, so I have heard. This activist, it appears, had already taught Toshiba a lesson by, err, batting his eyelids. (BTW, is it just me, but since I always see that expression in the negative sense, it sounds to me like a synonym for "fluttering one’s eyelids")
Also, this activist used the G word four times in the article. Someone might like to have a word with him about that.
In other news, I did a search:
Check the bottom-right. I think someone should have a word with Mr Googles’ employer about this! 
FFS, what were Toshiba thinking? That thing costs ¥22,000!
Yawn. Kenny apologising for Toshiba’s stupidity. Good on you, shorty.
I like the way he rounds it off with the smoking gun, that shows that this kind of advertising is a central part of Toshiba’s advertising strategy…
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/csr/jp/policy/soc.htm#SOC01_14
– um, wait a minute….
So, someone phoned them on Thursday evening and the ad was taken down by Friday morning: – Not to shabby for AGM week! I would not be surprised to see a formal apology early next week.
(I would suspect that this was outsourced work, never approved by anyone higher than a bucho, with no budget left (given the timing this was probably approved last Fiscal Year) to do it over. Annoying and insulting, yes, but institutionalised racism? In a multinational company with stated obligations to its investors? (See 10.3) – I don’t think so. )
@Sixth Sense: Now, now, that does sound a bit like apologising…
@Ken Y-N: Um, sorry?
Mr Googles gave me a bit of advice on SEO:
Mr Googles also helped me with Japanese:
Googles. That reminds me of something.
Google ‘Glass Explorers’ doesn’t sound nerdy at all
Guy in nightclub: Hey, how you doing?
Girl: Okay. What are you wearing over you eye?
Guy: It’s Google Glass. I’m a Glass Explorer.
Girl: [Immediately marries any other guy close to her simply to ensure this conversation comes to an end.]
@Greg: That’s excellent!
While the Debito theater of the absurd plugs for ‘master bakers’ to presumably teach us the fine art of ‘master baking’ I am reminded of a time when the activist was active in chasing down the more wayward owners of bars who refused to let the noble gaijin imbibe of their nectars.
He sat with a bar owner in a tiny counter bar debating the merits of discriminating against non-jalapeño customers on the merits of ‘causing trouble and bringing a ruckus’
Debito’s suggestion was white and pure. He beseeched the noble bar man to hire a ‘bouncer’ to keep away the riff-raff. Such an obvious solution, given the cost of employing at least 2 bouncermen on rotating shifts would only run at around an extra 600,000 yen dollars a month, a cost easily absorbed by a one-man bar counter snack operation. The bouncers would be happy as well as they would only be needed once in a blue moon, their bulk existing solely to deter those foreigners who went over their daily ration of whiskey and water.
Ah Debito the realist. Himself almost certainly a ‘master baker’ of the highest order.
Brian Ashcraft is no activist. He’s just a good old-fashioned clickwhore in classic Gawker style. He’s lost interest in video games so now he basically just writes wacky/”oh you” Japan articles so that he doesn’t have to get a job. Nothing drums up clicks quite like a little “look how backwards this country is towards our glorious American race” controversy, especially since his bosses are curbing the gratuitous cheesecake stories these days.
Stupid commercial, but this is the kind of stuff growing up Asian in America (as I did) that you encounter nearly every day, and not just on TV. Of course, when accused of racism, the majority response is, “hey, it’s just a joke!”. And we in America don’t have the luxury of having job openings available to us solely on the basis of our skin color or native language.
It’s the less-commented-on insidious side of Debito and his hordes. Downplaying the racism that Asians face in the US. Debito more than once has stated that the slightest slight against any perceived Asian would result in extreme and powerful backlash from powerful and mysterious Asian societies. He doesn’t just hate The Japanese in Japan. He also hates women in general and Asians in America. How long before you people recognize the true extent of the evil you are up against? Debito is Babylon made flesh.
@iLikedolphins: Liking this new direction…
It’s freaking carnage out there — Toshiba have already “lost” almost two customers because of this!
And Debito cast out Joe, bane of FightBack, scourge of Marcus, and nemesis of Di Griz. And the horde did mock him, rendering unto him the names Troll, Apologist, Japanophile, and Newb.
And the fallen Joe wept and cursed his name as he was cast into the burning pits of Japologia along with the many who had incurred the Demi-God’s wrath. And so be unto his name. Debito the provider, the shepherd who watcheth over, the holiest of Kings and the thunder of Asgard, the sweet lamb’s bread and he of the moist and tender belly of all that is good. Praise be unto him and may misfortune fall on the questioners and scriveners of the heavily-tinted glasses of rosé.
Defiler! Out damn spot!
Short Version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13tLdKUVac
12″ Dub Remix:
@iLikedolphins:
Well said. My favorite comment snippet from that post:
Careful there, “Markus”. You’re hitting a little too close for comfort among many of the denizens of debito.org.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse… Now I know the end is nigh:
Tokyo American Club lowers entrance fees.
What sort of riff raff will they be letting in now to dally with the trailing spouses or network with the internationally minded Japanese business people?
@ILD – Loving this new direction, can’t say it enough. Now that you’ve sloughed off the hyper-masculine, you’re born again! Praise the Deblord!
@iago: I wouldn’t want to belong to a any club that would have those people as members.
@Greg: Hey, if you didn’t get through the interview, don’t be bitter, just chalk it up to experience. Not everyone qualifies to hand over 1.2 million for the opportunity to borrow a whole season of “Lost” on DVD.
@iago: Membership takes you to the head of the line.
If there’s such a thing as something I like less than gaijins, it’s ‘inter’nationally minded Japanese business people.
I meet some in my younger days at an expats wives party in Rokurokuso. Mr Ken knows the score here. I swear they huddled into a corner and formed a clatch. We are the Japanese that are international their body language wanted to scream but didn’t. I think Jim Di Griz parodied them in a piece about P+G employees disparaging his status as a Professor of Englishness. (Seriously, what do English professors do? Discover new adjectives? Go out into the field and tame wild grammar?) I’m thinking VK in a fedora with a lisp and a gammy leg. Starring Sean Connery as a grizzled and bear-like Mr Ken, fresh from the pit wielding the sepulchre of the torque wrench with the head of Dave the Baptist bloodied, on a plate.
@iLikedolphins: I must say I am impressed that Mr Arudou appears to have spent more time outing Joe than chasing up Toshiba for their dodgy advert.
@iLikedolphins:
I post, you obsess over me. I don’t post, you obsess over me. I feel like I’m on some list of conquests not yet done.
@Ken Y-N:
Does Toshiba have an English complaints line?
@VK: Toshiba US would, of course, and it’s even presumably freedial.
@Ken Y-N:
Of course
I keep forgetting where he is.
Alas still walking in the shadow of Mr Googles, VK could not verily call it a comeback.
In related news, while stalking Debito online I came across this mouldy gem. Buried deep within his CJ-esque LinkedIn profile was his one and only actual job that paid the bills, lest anyone forget he was always just a shitty Eikaiwa schmuck like so many others too scared to pick up a hammer and make a go of it.
Tenured Associate Professor
Hokkaido Information University, Faculty of Business and Information Science
April 1993 – July 2011 (18 years 4 months) Ebetsu, Hokkaido, Japan
At this university in Hokkaido specializing in computers and information science, I taught Debate, Business Writing, Expository Writing, and Business English (in Japanese) to computer specialists and non-majors largely uninterested in (if not outright traumatized by) English. After one year, I managed to get them debating, writing business letters, and doing oral job interviews in both English and Japanese. My student evaluations were always far above the average, and my students still contact me years later to say how much they appreciate no longer being terrified of a fax in English.
Now maybe I’ve been spoiled by having a real job, but this doesn’t seem anywhere near professional to me. More like an application for Nova or to be a JET in 1993. Is the reason so many of you “old hands” come down so hard on poor little Debsy got to do with the fact he reminds you of yourselves at an awkward time, a living, breathing snapshot of your dorky, ignorant, I love/hate Japan past, when you both desperately wanted to fit in and change the world and the same time?
Is he really just……….embarrassing?
Charlie rose spends 22 minutes on Japan, Shinzo and China relations with Richard McGregor of the Financial Times, Kurt Campbell of the Asia Group, Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group and Martin Fackler, the bureau chief for The New York Times.
Most likely nothing you don’t already know but it was refreshing when coming from adults as opposed to the Japanese experts I know.
charlierose.com
How did these Olympus clowns get suspended sentences? They had no problem throwing Takafumi Horie in the can for a lot less.
@Greg: The Olympus guys weren’t threatening to go into politics.
@sublight: It’s pointless getting worked up isn’t it?
@Greg: Probably. I’m not sure how much impact their actions had on the welfare of the general public (and I don’t count “eroding public trust” as a serious crime. Considering how little trust the public has in most corporate boards, I’d put that on par with petty larceny), especially compared with companies like TEPCO.
If it makes anyone feel better, an investment manager in China was sentenced to death for fraud a couple of months ago. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/21/world/chinese-gets-death-for-investor-loan-fraud/#.UdU0E5ytiM0
The latest entry has them all in drama queen mode. Some professor of Asian studies from a Japanese uni (btw why would one need to learn about Asian studies from an aging white guy whilst one is living in Asia? Couldn’t they leave the campus and chat to one of the 127 million conviently placed Asian people?) has had his written on the back of a cig packet notes scanned and all of a sudden it appears we’ll get the order to be jackbooting our way through Seoul and Beijing any day soon.
@COYP: We won’t. We’ll be rounded up and put into internment while they warm the ovens up.
Apparently.
Baudrillard.
Nearly 50 years old.
In Japan the requisite 20 years.
Fluent Japanese speaker.
Challenges the patriachs in their own tongue.
In “Mejijigumae”
x2
Just don’t even know where to start.
Nosy old men on a power trip = warriors protecting the fascist state at the zone between NJ and pseudo-modern facade of Japan.
Really? Or are they just bored old men. Fight the power Baudri-chan, fight that power.
And seriously, Baudrillard? The world has moved a long way since the early 90s…
“Mejijigumae”
Well he did correct himself the second time,so it was just a typo, I suppose:
“Meijijigu”
Let’s all dance the Meijijigu!
“after reading Patrick Smith’s “Japan – A reinterpretation””
Oh FFS.
Just to be clear, he did not ‘correct himself’ the ‘second time’. Please don’t come in here and start trolling.
Guess I’m just slow. The outdated postmodernist was a heroic “English” “Teacher” back in the day.
http://www.debito.org/?p=11592#comment-420945
Wish I had more time to go through time to figure out his (character’s) age.
10 years teaching English in Japan. Been “home” for how long. Could he be in his forties? Pushing 50? Or is this all just Baudrillian excess, a spectacle to throw us off the scent? The character, the writer, the fiction, the fantasy: wow, so deep man.
@KT88: Yet the façade cannot hide the familiar disdain and bigotry aimed at any and all Japanese. That particular, permeating hatred that dooms any activism for change, as if that wasn’t itself a post-modern façade, to a spectacle of failure…
I think I was rather pointing out he was wrong in two places twice.
If you are looking to butt heads with trolls, try trip-trapping on someone else’s bridge.