Toss these into a campaign from an NPC who’s travelling/stationed/knows a guy in Japan, or just have them turn up like the “Royale with Cheese” conversation in Pulp Fiction… Some stuff for all levels.
You know all those cutesy mascot characters? Hello Kitty, Pukka, all that. Knew a guy who had to get the hell out of town for a while, ended up in the Navy at Okinawa. He says there’s another one of those mascot things, it’s these two pigs, Monokuro Boo. I started paying real attention when he said that somehow, the creator’s personified perfectly the yin and yang of the universe. White Pig is everything pure and good about humanity, all its hopes, aspirations and dreams, all the noble impulses and kindness you can muster. Black pig is the darkest parts of the human conciousness, hatred, deceit, unwholesome lust, and all the rest besides. Anyway, my friend tells me that he’s seen a pattern throughout all the official art of the two together. The subtle nuances of how they interact supposedly predict the future as new merchandise comes out. Gave me just enough proof to have me scared.
One thing that really gets me, though, is that the two of them LOVE EACH OTHER. Everything that happens is just a result of our dark and light sides romancing each other through the cosmos.
The other? Black pig is much, much more popular. Says a lot about humanity in general, I guess.
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So, Japan’s got a huge boner for vending machines. Yeah, yeah, all the usual BS about used girls underwear, the hell with that. More importantly, they take something away from the element of transaction, they remove the human side. You know where your money’s going, sure, but you don’t really know /who/ gets it. I didn’t really twig what was happening until I realised that you can even eat at restaurants without having to speak to or see a single person, you can just hit the buttons on a machine, pay for the ticket, and it comes to you through a hole in the wall, or by a freakin’ miniature TRAIN (no kidding, cheap sushi places do this for real). Your bills? You can pay them all at Post Office ATMs. Even shit like rent, if you’ve got the right agreement. I know a couple o’ Misers (who don’t know I know the other) who have differing views on the matter. One avoids the hell out of them, saying it’s screwing with his mojo because his money goes into some symbolic pit, never seeing another living soul or whatever. The other guy thinks that if he works out how to get it to work for him, he can spin it into a source of juice by never giving money to another actual person, while he keeps /getting/ money from other people…
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People have some weird opinions of Japan, without ever having visited… Most of this is to blame on Tokyo. Most of the shit people write snarky editorials or stick up “hillarious” photo-blog entries about are from Tokyo. Ask anyone who’s ever visited, it’s almost like another country compared to the rest of Japan. Tokyo gets 1Gigabyte Internet? Half the rest of the country is stuck on dial-up. Oxygen bars? In Kansai you can’t eat anything that’s not freaking deep-fried.
The question is why? Why is it so different? Kyoto used to be the nation’s capital till a few hundred years ago, until the emperor decided to move it. When you consider the symbolic link with the inverted name (though one of the kanji is different), there could have been something there… If you think about how magically (and culturally) dead Kyoto is these days, was there something powerful they wanted to subvert or put down with Tokyo’s weirdness an after-effect of the change? Or was there something in Tokyo that made it worth doing and continues to make the whole city better than the rest of the country in most quantitative ways…?
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Japan’s strict drug laws mean that there aren’t many Narquis around. On the other hand, the ones that have managed to keep going have become VERY powerful… When the local Yaks have their hands mixed up in drugs, be careful of working any Mojo in case it catches their attention.
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Bodybags can always catch a small jolt of juice from eating enough Fugu. Catch is, doesn’t matter if it’s prepared by a master chef or almost-certain-death homemade sashimi, you only get a minor each time, and word is you have to eat a fair amount of it, too.
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24-Hour Machine-Vended booze sounds great for Dipsos, right? Weird thing is, you almost never see any drunks at all outside of Tokyo, even the bums. Hell, now I think about it, I’ve never met a Japanese Boozehound. Can’t believe they don’t exist, so where the hell are they hiding?
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Some of Japan’s most famous manga authors belong to this one weird religious group. A bunch of surprisingly rich people who’re weird enough that at least SOME of them are adepts, that’s got the makings of a powerful cabal. Though I don’t want to know what the hell kind of Mojo Masamune Shirow and Akira Toriyama would sling around if the stuff of their imaginations is anything to go by.
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On a related note, a bunch of guys with their fingers on the pulse say that Osamu Tezuka battled Walt Disney for Godwalker of “The Childrens’ Entertainer” but lost, which is why Disney ripped off a bunch of his movies as a symbolic act. Hayao Miyazaki tried to do the same thing more recently, but no-one’s sure of what the Disney-Ghibli agreements are a sign of, since Miyazaki’s still alive for sure…
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2ch is the homegrown Japanese equivalent of the Maks. Both groups know each other, and sometimes trade info and rituals, but for some reason they both HATE 4chan with a passion. Why do you think the Japanese Anti-Scientology protests were so tiny?
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There’s a rumour that “The Maid” is an up and comer to challenge the traditional archetype of “The Faithful Servant” thanks to the massive amount of Maid Cafés now floating around, and the fairly recent boom in maid-based anime and manga. It’s only thanks to the Internet that enough people are aware of the archetype for it to become a big-leaguer, however… And what the hell kind of powers does someone attuned with that archetype have, anyway?
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There have been no living avatars of “The Masterless Man” in Japan after the current Godwalker assumed the role. Word on 2ch is that the recent violent attacks by social outcasts who “finally snapped” are to do with someone’s plans to replace the archetype with a version of “The NEET”. Conversely, Nevada-Tan was a childish failure at forcing “The Creepy Young Girl” into power.
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Before Kanji were adopted from the Chinese, ancient Japanese people were terrified of written language as writing one’s name supposedly gave others the power to steal your soul. There’s an oldschool form of mojo that works off of this, playing with the way Kanji are used in names and drawing power from the symbolism of the words. Good news is, not only is it rare as all hell and dying out, but if you’ve got a name in almost any other language you’re totally safe. Shame if you’re Chinese…
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Shinto is BS. All of it. But for some reason, no mojo will work on the site of a Shinto temple, or against people there. Way I heard it, a guy who knows a guy in the ‘States had a proxy, his bastard son. Kid goes on a sightseeing trip to Japan, all of a sudden the bond’s just gone, vanished for hours at a time. Of course, if it’s true, it’s useful as all hell, but a pain in the ass if travelling’s a problem for you, or money’s tight.
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Ever played “Fatal Frame”? Whole goddamned game’s true. I swear I saw the camera for sale at a meet.
Nah, just the first one. Though I hear there’s a core of truth in the prequel…
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I fucking hate Vidiots out here. 2ch is crawling with them, obviously, and the anime ones are even weirder. The upside is, I never heard of anyone getting any big mojo from those for some reason. The downside is, the really famous ones get made live-action, when things get scary. I heard a guy managed to build up enough juice from being onscreen so much in dramas as a recurring extra that he made a whole host of screwed-up artifacts. I wouldn’t be so scared, except that I hear he was offed by his own Death Note…
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Someone told me there was a minor school out here based on making Gundam models. No, stop laughing, I mean it. Supposedly these guys got really pissed when guys from the other Asian countries started winning model contests in Japan, and they started slinging offensive mojo for the first time.
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Supposedly, it’s impossible to gain a charge off Geisha with any kind of Sex magic. Worse, Miko actually DRAIN your mojo down whatever freaking magic-vacuum the entire Shinto religion’s connected to, unless you use a rubber. Soapland whores are all game, however.
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Never drink canned corn soup. Just trust me on this.
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There’s a trend for remote-controlled fighting robots about the size of dolls that’s been getting bigger and bigger as the parts have become cheaper. I hear that a bunch of Gearheads have taken it upon themselves to win one of the national competitions with Clockworks as a matter of pride…
Nice. Japan is getting weirder and weirder every damn week. Thank GOD these aren’t true, right? RIGHT?
I just tried to put a little UA spin on odd stuff I’ve noticed while living here. The grain of truth in each of them is scary enough, leave it at that.
Drinking three of those horrible Japanese canned coffee drinks has strange effects on Personamancers who weren’t born in Japan.
I heard that one could wield a sword forged from cold iron that only had to land the smallest of hits on his opponent before the poor fool would EXPLODE. And I mean, EXPLODE, like, he was just ripped apart from the inside-out, blood like a geyser and limbs flying everywhere, even if he just cut him lightly on the cheek. Nasty.
After living there for two years…
Yes. I believe Japan IS that weird.
There was a cult just a few buildings away from our apartment complex. At night, on my walk home from the local bar/cafe where I would smoke my cigars and get free drinks from the other patrons (sometimes being a QUIET foreigner has some perks, including downright interesting conversation), they could be heard chanting to the beat of a drum. A strange guard with a yellow armband sat facing out of the door whenever there was chanting.
As far as the “only people from Tokyo get drunk” thing though, I can say that in my small town (and many others) Japanese are the hardest drinking people in the world… for about five minutes. Seriously. Zero to fall-down-the-stairs drunk in five minutes. I would wager some of the fastest charging Dipsomancers live there, though I’m sure they blow their loads rather quickly (read into that as much as you’d like).
Finally, my wife loved that corn soup. She only got it in powder form, though…
After living there for two years…
Yes. I believe Japan IS that weird.
There was a cult just a few buildings away from our apartment complex. At night, on my walk home from the local bar/cafe where I would smoke my cigars and get free drinks from the other patrons (sometimes being a QUIET foreigner has some perks, including downright interesting conversation), they could be heard chanting to the beat of a drum. A strange guard with a yellow armband sat facing out of the door whenever there was chanting.
As far as the “only people from Tokyo get drunk” thing though, I can say that in my small town (and many others) Japanese are the hardest drinking people in the world… for about five minutes. Seriously. Zero to fall-down-the-stairs drunk in five minutes. I would wager some of the fastest charging Dipsomancers live there, though I’m sure they blow their loads rather quickly (read into that as much as you’d like).
Finally, my wife loved that corn soup. She only got it in powder form, though…
Well, crud. Double post…
Weirdly enough, I saw my first Japanese drunk in Kobe at the weekend, being slowly but carefully walked away from a public place by some police… Made me realise that he’s the only one I’ve seen so far, and that was the middle of the day, too. I guess J-Dipsos must be manic-depressive with their Mojo…
I also love that corn soup.
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You heard about the S&M love hotel in Osaka? The one with the Hello Kitty room, you must have seen pics on the internet… The thing is, the silly themes like that are there to distract you from what else is going on. Now, you get “normal” dungeons and all that crap, but the ones to worry about are the ones done up to be like part of a Highschool classroom, or a section of subway train… 9 out of 10 customers use them for kinky sex or whatever, but word I’ve heard is that some people use them as proxy locations for working mojo. The scarier J-Rats can even pull people from a real location into one of these rooms, I heard, and then have their way with them… whatever way you want to take that.
‘Course, other people say you should stay away since it’s run by a bunch of Urbs who wanted to sniff out rivals…
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The reason the Japanese conviction rate is so high isn’t because they force false confessions, it’s because they get people from alternate universes where the defendant DID commit the crime to confess and sign it. The whole court system knows about it, which is why when people try and argue the confessions that they never made the judges always say it’s inadmissible or whatever…
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Tokyo has more “secret” subway tunnels that aren’t part of the public networks than anywhere else. They go to places under the Emperor’s palace, nuclear bunkers, and the like.
Thing is, not even the J-Rats will go near them. And every Duke I know who went to check them out never came back.
…you busy Saturday?
Split because of the 2500 character limit;
I heard there was a nutso Clockworker in Akihabara, wasn’t quite right in the head (even by their standards), and a buddy of his asked him for something that could “Gattai” with anything else mechanical and try and take it over, like a certain recent anime that reminded them of all the stuff they’d loved as kids. To give it the juice, the Gearhead gave up all his childhood memories of mecha anime, and didn’t deal with it so well. Developed a pathological fear of humanoid robots, which meant his friend found him curled up in a gibbering mess surrounded by his creations having suffered a total breakdown. Way it was told to me, his buddy took him to hospital, then ran off with all clockworks he could carry… including the newest one, which is about the size of a human head, and can convert any piece of machinery with enough raw materials into a steampunk-looking mechanical body for itself…
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The new vending machines which need to scan your ID card to buy booze and cigs are all just a plan by the tobacco companies to replace you with duplicates!
…no, I don’t know why. But it’s true!
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In case of emergency, the artificial islands created for KIX Kansai International Airport can separate and combine into a self-sufficient arcology. None of the ones in Tokyo do though, since that’s not where the REAL power in Japan lives.
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Kyoto’s got the most convenience stores per-capita than anywhere else in Japan, or the world. More than it should be possible to support. Guy I know tried to study what was going on, I found him with a pair of cheap combini chopsticks shoved in his eyes in front of a map with a pattern drawn between all the stores. I don’t understand what he saw, and I don’t want to, either.
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Someone said that all Ainu have the potential for magical power. ALL of them. It’s why they’ve been systematically pushed into extinction by the Japanese government. Someone else told me it’s because of their language, nothing to do with genetics or anything. I wanna find out for myself, but do you know how goddamned hard it is to find anyone to teach you?
Ever since the Aztecs went belly-up, don’t you wonder who’s been feeding the sun?
See everyone says that Shinto is just this massive power vacuum but they haven’t been to the New Year celebration at this little place somewhere in Yamanashi. (Well, I heard it might be in Shizuoka but a friend of mine said that a friend of his, who’s totally trustworthy said he actually saw this somewhere in Yamanashi)
See there’s this tiny little wizened man who’s supposedly the museum curator at the temple, and why in a mountain temple would you have your museum in the basement? Anyway, he gets wheeled out at New Year and somehow he sucks all the power out of shinto into himself.
No one knows what he uses it for, but he’s really old looking…and you don’t get old-looking in Japan until you’ve passed 200…
If you don’t get old-looking in Japan until you’re in your second century, then I’m never going back to Kyoto. Age of the average household in my old neighbourhood would be about a millennium, and I don’t want to be around a bunch of people that powerful who’ve not rubbed each other out yet.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/pork_your_pork_6934
What. The. Hell.
If you’ve lived there, you’re not as shocked.
Shocked that it exists, yes, but not shocked it’s in Japan.
“yin and yang of the universe … everything pure and good about humanity, all its hopes, aspirations and dreams, all the noble impulses and kindness you can muster … darkest parts of the human conciousness, hatred, deceit, unwholesome lust”
Yin and yang are about balances between raging passion/calculating cool, white fire/black water etc, not good or bad. Worse, juxtaposing western Judaic religious ideas about good or bad (kindness, nobility, lust, deciet) on something Japanese is a crass declaration of cultural ignorance. Keep your Christian moral values the hell away from my nihilistic postmodern fantasy.
“Catch is, doesn’t matter if it’s prepared by a master chef or almost-certain-death homemade sashimi, you only get a minor each time”
That actively violates a Bodybag’s charging structure, as well as being symbolic horseshit.
“Weird thing is, you almost never see any drunks at all outside of Tokyo, even the bums.”
You can tell you’ve never been to Japan. You really can.
“2ch is the homegrown Japanese equivalent of the Maks. Both groups know each other, and sometimes trade info and rituals, but for some reason they both HATE 4chan with a passion.”
2ch does not hate 4chan, as anyone with remote experience of either website will already know. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but that’s just plain retarded.
“Before Kanji were adopted from the Chinese, ancient Japanese people were terrified of written language as writing one’s name supposedly gave others the power to steal your soul.”
Why? Why would you make something this stupid up?
“Shinto is BS. All of it.”
Shinto’s probably the very closest thing you can compare UA Demons et al with religiously. Also, to say the least, claiming no-one in Japan has ever become a ghost, ever, and therefore the ancestor worship rituals and shrines to nature spirits have never had any symbolic merit? Did you think any of this through at all?
“Ever played “Fatal Frame”? Whole goddamned game’s true.”
Fatal Frame, the game based on Shinto superstitions and ghost lore. All of which is bullshit. Hmm.
“Supposedly, it’s impossible to gain a charge off Geisha with any kind of Sex magic.”
Handily, in Japan an actual Geisha is specifically an escort who does *not* provide sexual services. And there is absolutely nil religious element to being a Giesha. Which you would know if you were not just a weeaboo and actually knew goddamned anything about Japan.
W T, do you have any idea what this game is about?
These aren’t real world “facts,” but rumors from the western-centric occult underground for use in the game.
Remember, in this game truth is subjective.
Ease up, man.
When different rumours in the OU don’t contradict one another, worry. 😉
You also seem to have missed the point of the “Rumours” section, W T. Ars hit the nail on the head. gb2/b and all that jazz.
As an aside, for anyone else who’s curious, most of them are /meant/ to be western-centric BS, inspired by real things that I saw/thought about while living in Japan. I really didn’t see a single drunk within my first 6 months out there, the fugu thing came from me remembering (after I’d eaten some) that I was terrified by the concept of eating it when I was a child, the drugs thing from when I wanted nasal decongestant for a bad cold and couldn’t find any, and things like the Tokyo secret subway and the name writing superstition are based on real rumours I heard while out there (http://www.nhk.or.jp/shiruraku/200704/thurseday.html was an NHK program someone told me about, for example, which is where the name thing came from. Long story short, before Prince Shotaro pushed Buddhism in ancient Japan, there really was a weirdly strong belief in the power of language, which is the source of some traditions which still exist, the whole okaeri/tadaima thing etc. Supposedly it’s one of the superstitions he quashed and replaced with terrible Chinese superstitions instead).
Now back to the entertaining game-fodder already. 😛
Ugh. ^ Prince Shotaku. Smoooth.