Category Archives: Japan

Goddamn it, Japan, you’re doing it wrong. GODDAMN IT, JAPAN! YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

Goddamn It, Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong: Shakey’s Pizza

Posted on January 16, 2019 | 4 comments

“Wait how could it be worse than The Pizza Little Party Pizzeria? Oh shit, it’s a BUFFET? Goddamn it, Japan.”

~AFFotD’s Food Critic

shakeys

Pizza is a lot like sex. When it’s good it’s REALLY good. And when Japan does it, um, you’re about to experience something definitely weird and probably unsettling.

Speaking of Japan, while it’s been a few years since we’ve had to complain about the culinary choices of Japan (especially when they attempt to serve American-style food), we do have a rich history of asking Japan what, exactly, do they think they’re doing. So naturally, it is our solemn duty to inform you of another classic American institution that’s been co-opted and warped in terrifying ways by our friends in the East. Yes, it’s pizza again. But this time…it’s Shakey’s pizza.

We literally haven’t thought about a Shakey’s pizza since that one South Park episode where Cartman makes one out of stem cells, but after seeing Japan’s version of Shakey’s, we could remain silent no longer. So let’s take a deep breath and shout to the heavens…

Goddamn It, Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong: Shakey’s Pizza

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Goddamn It…France? You’re Doing It Wrong: The France Five Mini-Series

Posted on February 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

“Wait, it’s a weird low budget version of Power Rangers and it’s NOT made by Japan? Oh, but they air it in Japan, okay that makes sense at least.”

~AFFotD’s Television Critic

 france five

We talk about Japan a lot on this site. The simple truth of the matter is, we fear what we don’t understand, and we don’t understand raw horse meat ice cream.

So when we did bath salts with one of those homeless people that sells bootleg DVDs off an old rug in Chinatown and we woke up to find the Wikipedia page for Shin Kenjushi France Five on our tabs, we were frankly shocked that this was not an instance of “Goddamn it, Japan.”

Because the show is French and it is mindfuckingly insane.

It’s technically a mini-series of six episodes but, in what is frankly only middle-of-the-road in terms of the insanity behind this project, it was aired over the course of 13 years.

That’s right, they had a single episode a year in 2000, 2001, and 2002 before taking a year off until 2004 and releasing the last two in 2012 and 2013, because clearly the French public was clamoring for a French Five Power Rangers spoof revival. There’s so much to take on here, and we don’t even trust ourselves to give you every delicious morsel of insanity, but we’ll do our best. Here goes nothing.

Goddamn It…France?  You’re Doing It Wrong:  The France Five Mini-Series

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, France, Insulting Foreigners, Japan

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Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: Japanese McDonald’s

Posted on April 14, 2015 | 2 comments

“It’s not the worst we’ve seen…in fact it’s the best.  That’s why it’s so troubling.”

~Internal Memo to AFFotD’s ‘Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong’ Staff

Its actually from Richie Rich guys, trust us on this one okay

We’re going to be honest here.  When we decided to do our latest “Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong” segment on McDonald’s in Japan, we were really worried.  Hell, we’ve already told you about McDonald’s in Japan was only so happy to follow Burger King off into the “black-burger-buns” abyss last year, so we anticipated a lot of terrifying concoctions.  Google’s translation of the official Japanese McDonald’s website didn’t do much more to instill any confidence in us.

what

Um.  What?

And we went through the menu items, and the limited time items, and all that Japan McDonald’s has to offer, and what we found was…strangely not as terrifying as we feared.  The Cheese Tsukimi Burger is a chicken patty, which is boring but whatever, with two slices of bacon, a fried egg, cheddar cheese, and a ketchup/mayo sauce that we’d actually eat!  Japan manage to avoid every bad impulse they had to put pineapple on their Hawaiian Burger, and instead went with a ¼ pound burger with egg, bacon, cheese, and a bun topped with grated cheese, which sounds kind of great!  In fact, Japanese McDonald’s manages to create a surprisingly varied menu where most items look pretty tasty, and with most only going into “sorta weird, but not gross weird” territories of like, a hamburger with pastrami on it, or a savory version of the apple pie filled with bacon and potato.  We’d try those out of hesitant curiosity, as opposed to what we normally cover in our articles on Japan, which is foods we’d try out of masochistic fear.

But this is Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong, goddamn it.  And we have a reputation to maintain.  So yes, McDonald’s in Japan is largely interesting, and seems to be slightly more upscale than what we’re used to here in America, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have terrifying, horrific duds in their expansive menu.

Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong:  Japanese McDonald’s

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The (Terrifying) Black-Bun Burgers of the World

Posted on March 19, 2015 | 3 comments

“Nope nope nope nope nope nope.”

~AFFotD Food Critic, John Goodman

black burgers oh no

Depending on what non-affotd corners of the internet you choose to spend your free time perusing, you might have heard recently about Burger King ramping up the gross factor on their food by offering a black bun, black cheese burger called the Kuro, or Black burger.  This burger re-issue (yes, they tried it before, more on that later) used squid ink and bamboo charcoal to create an all-black burger.  Black cheese, black ketchup, black soul are combined for fast food connoisseurs in Japan (because of course this is happening in Japan), leading to a whole slew of internet chatter of “lol, Japan is crazy” (which, duh) and “ew, this looks gross so I tried it oh by the way I’m also a white 24-year-old living in Japan currently while maintaining a blog about my travels.”

What we find most surprising about this burger has nothing to do with its mere existence.  When talking about Japan, nothing surprises us anymore.  No, upon doing some digging, we discovered that Japan’s Burger King does not have a monopoly on this particular brand of culinary insanity.  So, get ready to see a lot of unappetizing pictures of a type of food you once loved, because we’re going to delve into…

The (Terrifying) Black-Bun Burgers of the World

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Posted in China, Japan, Strange Foods, The Rest of Them

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Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: Japanese Ice Cream Flavors

Posted on November 13, 2014 | 1 comment

“I Scream, you scream, we all scream, NO.  NO, STOP IT.  STOP IT JAPAN.  JUST, NO!”

oh ice cream faces i get it that's cute

One of our longest running segments on this site has been “Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong,” where we look at classic American products and foods that Japan has gone, well, batshit insane with.  Not to break the fourth wall or let you in on our writing process here (it involves, just, so much alcohol, and just a hint of xenophobia that’s probably going to age really horribly over the next five years) but we love writing these posts.  We get to talk about American foods we love (like Doritos, or Kit Kats), we get to talk about flavors of these things that we love that are so abhorrent and disgusting that we take on a tone of unearned righteous indignation, and finally, we get comments from the kind of people who get really upset when a website whose banner has a grizzly bear holding a shotgun in front of an American Flag talks shit about Japan.  We cannot stress enough how much we love it when this happens.  People get so mad, and we’re not saying that the only people who feel this way are white men who have visited Japan and “got into the culture a bit too much” ifyouknowwhatwe’resaying, but we’re totally saying that.

People write fucking novels, and we typically respond with a shrug.

affotd comment

Our favorite part of this is the “well, I’ve only been to Japan for three weeks, BUT!”

So yes, this is us basically fucking daring you guys to get offended at this segment, which might defeat the purpose, but that’s beside the point.  We’re going to talk about how Japan fucks up ice cream, and oh God, do they know how to fuck up ice cream.

Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong:  Japanese Ice Cream Flavors

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Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: The Pizza Little Party Pizzeria

Posted on November 14, 2013 | 6 comments

“Pizza Little Party?  Oh man, let’s try to avoid jokes calling Pizza Little Party a Japanese pizza establishment, I’d be so rac…oh God, it’s real, isn’t it?”

~Johnny Roosevelt, Editor-in-Chief of AFFotD

let's summer pizza party

Before we get started, let’s take a deep breath and look at that screenshot.  Just, really soak it in.  Let it wash over you like a cool stream.  This is a thing that exists, that happened in real life, that is currently happening in real life.  Don’t let yourself forget that.                                                                       

For a website that dedicates itself to the Americanness of being American, we sure do seem to talk about Japan a lot.  You might wonder, “Why?  Why are there more articles about Japanese Doritos on this site than ones about Ben Franklin?”  Well, for starters, if you ever tried to write about Ben Franklin’s life, you immediately would come down with a severe case of 18th century syphilis, and we’ve yet to find a writer to volunteer for that (though, come to think of it, we might have a perfect candidate).  But secondly, Japan takes American ideals but then warps them in fascinating, terrifying ways, and we hope that maybe, just maybe, by showing them the craziness of their ways they might take things down a notch and start embracing a more normally (read as, “less tentacles”) American way of life.

You’re right.  It’s futile.  They’re too far gone to be saved.  Just look at how they do pizza chains.

Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong:  The Pizza Little Party Pizzeria

 pizza little party

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Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: Cheetos

Posted on October 2, 2013 | 1 comment

“No…no….NOOOO!!!!”

~AFFotD Food Critic John Goodman

hot sauce cheetos

As we’ve established on numerous occasions, Japan approaches American-based junk food and beverages the same way Lennie approaches puppies in Of Mice and Men.  We’ve even let you know about the terrible, unspeakable things that Japan likes to do to our potato chips.  Of course, that’s just the beginning.  Japanese food sort of adheres to a subset of Rule 34.  By that we mean to say, we could type some random combination of disgusting words and it’ll exist in Japan, and be terrifying.  Don’t believe us?  Let’s see…uh, octopus soda.

…Oh dear God, what have we done?

So with that in mind, it’s time for us to take our periscope of terrifying food abominations towards Japan’s interpretation of the delicious Takis rival, Cheetos.  Which, as always, leads us to exclaim…

Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: Cheetos

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Goddamn It Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong: Japanese Wendy’s

Posted on December 5, 2012 | 2 comments

“No, we can’t write about Wendy’s!  THEY’LL FIND US!”

~Johnny Roosevelt, AFFotD Editor-in-Chief

dooom

As some of our more intrepid readers might remember, AFFotD has a dark history with one particular American fast food establishment.  Yes, for a period of time every spicy chicken sandwich you ate directly helped feed the AFFotD gambling debts coffers, but it came at the cost of our souls.  Also at the cost of a few of our weaker family members, and one of our staffers house cat. Eventually, we were able to free ourselves from the corporate shilling curse, and continue to be independently drunk and American.

Of course, Wendy’s knew we couldn’t keep from talking about them forever.  And after a few hard hitting exposés about Japan’s attempts at subverting American fast food, we  discovered that Japan treated Wendy’s the same way they treat just about every goddamn fast food chain, so we figured we’d be safe of Wendy’s Necronomical influences if we talked about it, given that they were received so meekly in Japan that in 2009 they closed all 71 of their Japanese locations.  Unfortunately, this lasted less than two years, and now Wendy’s has again opened its doors to Japanese terror culture.  As of now, there are only two restaurants in the entire country, but that of course hasn’t stopped them from making nightmarish culinary creations that, despite our misgivings, force us to exclaim…

Goddamn It Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong:  Japanese Wendy’s

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Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong: Japanese Doritos

Posted on September 5, 2012 | 19 comments

“What…what is…happening?”

~An American Stoner in Japan

Japan is terrifying.  We’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Japan is terrifying.  Japan is like that one friend you have that goes out of his way to say things that will gross everyone out, only that friend is really good at it, and he does a lot of stuff with poop.  We’ll admit that Japan admires American culture, in the sense that they see our products like Pepsi and Kit Kats and decide to just get weird with them.

AFFotD has made it a point to keep you, the public, informed of such terrifying food antics by the nation of Japan, which is why we’re here to continue our look inside Japanese junk food with…

Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong:  Japanese Doritos

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Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong: Japan’s Strangest Pepsi Flavors

Posted on July 24, 2012 | 4 comments

“Ha ha, you fools!  You foolish fools!”

~Coca-Cola Executives

Pepsi, which you might know as, “Huh, really?  This Taco Bell doesn’t serve Coke?” is the  second most popular soft drink manufacturer in America.  Created in 1898 in North Carolina as “Brad’s Drink” (which we are on the record as thinking is the best name, by the way), it eventually was renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1903, and has been known as just Pepsi ever since 1961.

Throughout its history, it has consistently been less popular than Coca-Cola, a situation which it attempted to remedy with fairly awesome and insane marketing strategies and slogans.  Seriously, some early slogans for Pepsi included, “More Bounce to the Ounce,” “Don’t be a Tramp, Buy a Can”, and “Twice as Much for a Nickel” (that last one was their official slogan for eleven years).  And sure, they miiight have set Michael Jackson on fire and started his lifetime dependence on painkillers that eventually took his life, but, uh…hey, it’s the choice of a new Generation!

Either way, America knows that to get people drinking Pepsi, all they have to do is stage taste tests, get musicians to endorse it, or we guess call people tramps (you fucking tramps).  However, when Japan gets their hands on it, they try to drum up interest by doing shit like this…

This is Pepsiman.  He is the mascot of Pepsi in Japan.  He now lives exclusively in your nightmares, every time you close your eyes.

Yup, that’s right America, it’s time for another installation of our critically acclaimed (?  Okay, sure) segment-

Goddamn it Japan, You’re Doing it Wrong:  Japan’s Strangest Pepsi Flavors

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