| JAPAN By David Imber (Reproduced by permission of author from 1hml) I have written here [1 hml] many times about how crazy in love with hamsters Japan is, and that hasn't changed in intensity, but it has in style. This has both positive and negative aspects. The positive is that it's still commonplace to see references to hamsters everywhere you look -- hamster cookies and cakes, clothing patterns, etc. They also come up in conversation on TV and whatnot (example: I'm watching a tv show and in it a little girl is talking to her friend on the phone in the background "did you see her new hamster? It's white and fluffy...so cute..."). The negative is that the nation seems to have OD'd somewhat on hamster-themed goods, and so in this most consumer-oriented of societies it's only a matter of time before hamsters give way to ferrets or whatever the "next big thing" might be. Already it appears that the hamster daily calendars we've been using in our home for years seem to have gone out of print. The animated hamster hero of afternoon TV, Hamutaro, is still going strong, but as I remarked to my wife, he's become a franchise, like Starbucks, and is just everywhere. One of the local fast food concerns, Lotteria, is presently doing a Hamutaro promotion, giving away Hamutaro lunchboxes and so forth. Hamutaro still has a daily calendar, by the way, but he's animated, so it's just not the same. He seems no more like a hamster than Garfield is a cat. |
