Specifically, I want to talk about the raining Gundams which your average Japanese person has to contend with for much of the spring and summer.
But I suppose that I should take a step back and quickly discuss what a Gundam is, considering that there are people reading this who have enough trouble as it is dissecting my Japanese-infused Eigo. Such folks probably know what a Gundam is already conceptually without having a name for it. Nonetheless, Gundams are your archetypal giant Japanese robots, originating in 1970s era anime. They're designed to be humanoid in shape and are generally used to wage battle in any terrain; even outer space. There's a mythology associated with it, but I don't think there's anybody remotely sane who can actually understand it and dissect it for us laymen. So, let's just leave this explanation with a picture of one such Gundam and move on to how they affect Japanese weather patterns. Ironically enough, there'll be a life size version which will actually be standing up this summer. I think the Japanese are doing it on purpose just to remind myself of my apathy towards their giant robots.
But I digress. Gundams. They rain in Japan. It's a real god damned problem. Seriously.
Surprisingly enough, for its prevalence, the problem is almost never mentioned in tourist travel books. I myself once thought it was a joke and it in fact became a running punch-line amongst several comrades in the Japanese class. I'd adopt the nerdy American voice who pretentious pretends to know everything about Japan at random and I'd chime in about how it rained Gundams in Japan. It was awesome.
Except it turned out to be real. You can't tell from any of the tourist photos ever taken of Japan since these things immediately go invisible upon detecting flash photography, but the raining Gundams are a serious threat to property damage over there, since these things are pretty damn huge, with a height around 150-ish feet, I believe. I mean, you have one belly flop on some small town in the middle of nowhere and it's usually big enough to take out the entire shopping district.
Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention that belly flopping is the only method by which these Gundams rain down from the sky. Never head or feet first; their whole damn body has to hit the ground. Why that is, I'm not certain, but it's not because I find the imagery of a belly flopping Gundam to be humorous at this hour.
But anyway, these Gundams are pretty huge and gravity does a good job of making sure their impact causes quite a bit of devastation. Oh, and it's not like they rain one at a time when it's the season, either. No, it's a whole mob of them. It's not unusual for them to come in the thousands all at once, sometimes hitting many different Japanese cities simultaneously. Granted, given their sheer size, sometimes you have multiple Gundams land on top of each other. As you can imagine, that's an interesting sight to behold in and of itself. But they still have a general aversion to flash photography, so alas, there's no visual context to provide. Suffice it to say that they cause a lot of wreckage.
Oh, did I mention that it tends to happen daily?
Now, you might be thinking to yourselves, "Tom must be bullshitting us all because there's no way Japan could still be a thriving a country with that sort of consistent threat. I mean, it all sounds pretty plausible since the bible does a really great job at preparing people for unorthodox disasters, but even the Christian kami-sama let up on the acts every once and a while." In response, I say that I'm ashamed that you'd ever think of me that way. I thought we knew each other better than that.
Seriously.
What the hell?
I've done so much for you.
I even let my only kid marry you because I trusted you so much. I didn't object to the age issue at all; I thought my kid would be in good hands since it was you I handed them off to.
Yet this is the treatment I get.
God damn.
Bloody Americans. If this were Turkmenistan, this wouldn't be a problem at all.
Ugh.
I'll forgive you just this one time, but don't doubt me again dammit.
Still, to address your concerns, the reason why Japan is still such a successful country, especially economically, is that much of their prosperity comes from the clean-up efforts revolving around these raining Gundams. That's right; there's an entire industry devoted to removing them from the land after they miraculously, yet very consistently, fall from the sky. The Gundams themselves are never operational even while they're shooting down towards the earth, so there's no use in keeping them around. The clean-up process itself is simple. They just get those trucks that are normally used to move houses and then dump the Gundam corpses into the Pacific Ocean. It's worked out quite nicely. Naturally, there's no environmental damage and even if there was, the rest of the world is too busy still ragging on Japan's whaling practices to notice that there are shit tons of Gundams swimming with the fishes.
Wait, that's a mafia expression. I don't really know the yakuza equivalent. I imagine it's not that, though. They don't seem like the type that would take inspiration from The Godfather.
Oh, fun trivia: When the American government initially found out about these raining Gundams, they tried to send Transformers over to help out with the disposal efforts. Maybe they didn't know about the culture war that's always raged between Gundams and Transformers, but suffice it to say that their very short presence in Japan wasn't received especially well. It triggered a civil war and stuff.
You know, the things that usually happen when you try to send giant gaijin robots for diplomatic purposes. You've all read the history books, so you don't need any more examples.
But you're still cynical as all hell, aren't you? Now I know you're about to ask what causes these raining Gundams. Surely, you're thinking, there are pressure systems of some sort which indicate why this happens, much like any other weather pattern. You know what I say to that? Hell if I know. The Japanese people themselves don't even openly acknowledge that it happens at all.
Seriously.
Try asking them, 「昨日、ガンダム雨が降りましたか?」and they'll just be like, 「うそう!」while hopping on one leg and pointing a very damning finger at you. I should know since it's customary. I also know that people who haven't even had a day of formal education in the language can at least read and speak that much, so that isn't an issue. But still, you're bound to get a denial that it ever happens in the first place.
They're very delusional like that.
The ones that actually might talk will probably say how the Gundam gods, how are very, very real, are generally displeased with how many other giant robot shows have arrived to dwindle their prominence and as such use the Gundam rain to exact their vengeance upon the people. But really, I can't say for certain.
Wait, you still have one more question?
Why is it that I'm so presumptuous about your thoughts while writing this?
Oh, wait that wasn't it. It was about why I still want to go to Japan learning full well that I may be walking into a death trap, right?
Well, like all Americans, I'm a masochist. I figure that if I get into an accident involving a raining Gundam (ie: I get completely crushed by one) and I still survive to tell the tale, I can write my own inspirational book about how I survived the ordeal by asking for help in Korean, which is actually the language they speak in Japan. Not Japanese. Oh, and then I can sell the rights to have an even more inspirational movie created.
Starring Sean Connery of course.
That man is the only one worthy of depicting such harrowing ordeals and getting out of it all badass-like.
Yep.
I'm gonna end this entry on that note, too. Because it's just awesome to stop writing right after you get to the topic of Sean Connery. Really, after that point, it all just goes downhill very quickly.
So I'm going to pay my respects to him and leave it at that.
It rains Gundams in Japan. It sucks for you because you're not the ones going there in the hopes of having an accident happen and making a massive profit off of it.
Yayz.
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