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August
2002| anpanman
Well, Tiny
Dog recently found herself in Japan again-- she is not sure how
she got there, what precisely she was there for, or even anything
about the incredibly humid resort town, Miyazaki, in which she
ended up. The only thing that can be confirmed is that she found
something very strange in the Miyazaki airport called ANPANMAN,
which she purchased straightaway.
What is
Anpanman?
Firstly it
must be noted that there appears to be a large market in Japan
for little tiny cartoon characters that you can clip to cell phones.
Cell phones in Japan are a great marvel of modern technology featuring
full color screens, wireless web browsing and stereo sound, and
also contain little rings to attach cartoon characters to.
It is senseless
for any visiting American to purchase these clip ons, because
our American cell phones not only feature tuneless Atari 2600
ring tones and only four lines of black and white text, but also
smooth cases with nowhere to attach anything.
Nonplussed,
tiny dog snatched this ANPANMAN clip on from the airport gift
store rack, knowing that, since it was explained entirely in Japanese
on the package, there was no hope of understanding much more about
it, aside from the fact that it would never be attached to a cell
phone in the states.
But wait!
Enter the Web.
 ANPANMAN,
as the Web informed me, is a Japanese superhero who is a living
bread man born in a bakery, who flies around feeding parts of
his head to the starving as a public service. The creature at
far left --the clip on I purchased-- alas, is not ANPANMAN at
all, but rather one of his sidekicks, Dokinchan, a kindly female
germ. To the near left is actually pictured our bread-headed friend.
To sort out this and other ANPANMAN issues, visit this
informative fan site (but beware of a loud MIDI song!)
 To
learn about Cheese the dog, Shokupanman, whose "head is a
slice of white bread and he is the patron superman of school lunches"
and others, see the ANPANMAN
FAQ.
It aint easy
to catch any information about ANPANMAN online, unless you read
Japanese, but you can catch some
of his comics here.
ANPANMAN
is no trifling matter in Japan. He
has his own museum which seems "Peanuts"-like in
magnitude. This raises the question of why he is not better known
in the states. The original fan site I linked to had this to say
on the subject of ANPAN's international appeal:
"To
a non-Japanese person, the concept of a living bread superman
who fights giant germs and feeds the hungry with pieces of his
head may seem bizarre."
Indeed. But
not as bizarre as the sad state of cell phone technology in the
USA. For now, I'll clip Dokinchan to my computer bag...
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