My Japanese Name Isn’t Carlos Tevez…

Hairi Ballsishiwa

What's your Japanese Name?

If it's not bad enough that I get 100 emails a day from Japan asking me if I'd like to upgrade my genitals to a larger model (they never mention supplying the Samsonite suitcase I’d have to carry it in), it turns out that my name when translated into Japanese is Hairi Ballsishiwa. Hattip to Ian at ‘Shades of Grey’ for directing my attention to this meme that’s doing the rounds but I think it goes to show that you can't totally believe the things you read on the web.

Is there any reason why I’d want to know what my name would have been should I have been born Japanese? More pressing is the question: is there a man now living in Japan who is struggling to live up to the name Hairi Ballsishiwa and who wonders what life would be like if he’d been smooth shaved Welshman called Chip Dale? If so, email me Hairi. We might have lots in common. Or not, as the case may be…

Yet I suppose the reason we play these games is that the web makes it easy to be somebody else, though rarely does it make it possible to be somebody better than we already are. Even when we’re trying to be somebody else, we’re really only playing ourselves. Of course some people go even further and play out the fantasy of being themselves, though a more fashionable and exiting version than their everyday life probably allows. MySpace is a seething pit of vanity and ego; barely a person on it looks to have considered why they deserve our acclaim. I know you might level the same accusations at the Chipster but there is Wales’ largest thong collection to my name, as well as two Golden Thong awards…

The MySpace Generation are a odd lot. I see them every day: lads with the Take That haircuts, the fashionably bad clothes, and the aspirations to be on X Factor while they temporarily live out the less fantastic lifestyle of the plaster and decorator in Dagenham. The girls are generally orange. They are constantly taking their own photo with their mobile phone; those head titled smiles displaying big teeth, bigger hair, and a roll or two of fashionable binge-drinking flab peering out from beneath t-shirts adorned with the fashionably pithy sayings declaring their general availability. I'm a man who takes his clothes off for a living and even I don't find 'Bitch in Heat' an attractive pitch.

Their delusions will continue well into adulthood with the inevitable breakdown at some point when, for the men, the hair gel no longer sticks their falling locks to their heads. Then it’s a life of toupees or a ‘different look’ when they decide to shave off what's left of their hair and consider themselves more in the style of Ronan Keating. For the women, the decline is more severe. At some point they will abandon the bottle of fake tan and begin to see the appeal of zip up fur lined boots, wearing woollen hats before roaring fires in the middle of summer and wearing overcoats with the less pithy promise of a 'Bitch With Central Heating' written across the front...

Identity has come to this. We play these games without really considering how important being ourselves is to our self-esteem. It seems faintly ludicrous to have to make the following statement yet it would appear that we have forgotten that we are who we are and we’re not what we’re not.

I’ve been meaning to mention Carlos Tevez for a while now. He’s the heavily scarred striker that has both saved and (possibly) condemned West Ham United from (or to) relegation. Tevez suffered an accident with boiling water when a child. It has left his terribly scarred on his face and upper body. Naturally, in such an image led culture as that which surrounds professional football, he’s been offered plastic surgery to rid him of the terrible scars. He’s refused, claiming that his scars make him who he is.

Tevez is one of the few men in professional sport who I hold up as a man of true insight. He appreciates something about the world that a man of greater literary gifts might turn into a heavyweight classic.

Which leads me to ‘The Bicycle Thieves’. I watched it for the first time. I’ve been meaning to see it for a very long time but I had been waiting for the right moment. It was as stunning as I’d hoped but in ways I didn’t expect. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend that you do so immediately. I think it would be hard not to be moved by Vittorio De Sica's film, which is full of so much warmth between the actors, both amateurs, who play the father and son searching post-war Rome for a stolen bicycle. Yet what struck me most forcibly about this example of neo-realism is that it did not pander to the delusions of fiction we delight in. This was a film about what we are and who we are. The ending hit me physically, as though a certain Romanian had gone at my kneecaps again with her lump hammer. Like Tevez and his scars, it made me despise the notion that I could by anything other than the man sitting here typing out this brief essay wearing only my thong. I won’t pander to fiction. I shall be who I am and nobody else.

All of which is a long way of saying that my Japanese name isn’t Carlos Tevez. Nor do I want to be known as Hairi Ballsishiwa.

I am Chip Dale and you are you.

The Chipster’s Film Review: 'Pom Poko'

Gabby got back from Birmingham last night so we settled down the for the night and watched a DVD I’ve had sitting under my TV for months. It made for the most surreal night of film viewing I’ve experienced in a long time. It also made me realise what a odd world we live in. An odd and sometimes woefully thongless world.

The film was called ‘Pom Poko’ and, as you might imagine from its title, it doesn’t come from any Hollywood studio. It’s actually a Japanese animated feature by Studio Ghibli, whose films I’ve been collecting for a number of years.

I’m quite the fan of Hayao Miyazaki or Mister Miyazaki as I insist he’s called in this house. Miyazaki was the mind behind ‘Spirited Away’, the film that won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars in 2003. Many claim that ‘Spirited Away’ is his greatest film, though it’s really only the work that brought him worldwide acclaim. His most recent feature is 'Howl's Moving Castle', but if, like me, you’ve had an interest in Japanese cinema stretched back before that time, then you’re likely to have great affection for his earlier films. ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ is just about perfect. It’s a small film, with the briefest of stories, but has an simple emotional depth that’s hard to convey. Also recommended are those films where Mister Mizazaki’s love of exotic flying machines come to the fore; with ‘Porco Rosso’ and ‘Castle in the Sky’ two of my favourites. And if you want a film perfect for the children, there’s ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’, the everyday story of a child witch.

At some thematic level, all these films share Mister Miyazaki’s obsession with nature. It’s also to be found at the heart of his two most environmentally aware films: ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds’ and ‘Princess Mononoke’. It was also at the centre of last night’s film.

‘Pom Poko’ isn’t actually a Hayao Miyazaki film. It’s directed and written by Isao Takahata, who made the monumentally depressing film, ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, set in World War 2 Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear strikes. ‘Pom Poko’ is based on an idea by Miyazaki and is another film that sets nature against man.

It tells the story of a super cute troop of raccoons whose habitat is being destroyed by developers building an extension to Tokyo. The raccoons have a magical ability that allows them to shape shift and become any person or object they wish to be. It's a power they find useful when it comes to disrupting the building work, which makes this the perfect Miyazaki fare, with nature fighting back against human industry.

I imported most of my Ghibli DVDs from Japan, which means they lose the Hollywood soundtrack, though this is never a problem. I only watch them in Japanese with an English subtitles anyway. One of the few I’ve not imported was ‘Pom Poko’, which is perhaps a reason it’s taken me so long to get around to watching it. Another reason is the film’s cuteness, which always reminds me of The Care Bears Movie. How much more wrong could I be…


Only, five minutes into the film, Gabby turned to me and asked rather quizzically: ‘Chippy, is it me, or do all these raccoons have bollocks?’

You have to forgive her the odd vulgar phrase but I can’t deny how perceptive she is. I hadn’t noticed but it was true: every one of the male raccoons was blessed with, how shall I say, a couple of generously sized love orbs. This picture really doesn't do them any justice and after half an hour of watching, I began to think the film really needed an emergency supply of thongs. Only much later, after the film had finished, did I discover all about Tanuki folklore and its unusual emphasis on testicles.


It might have more useful to know a bit about this before I sat through two hours of film with my jaw sitting in my lap. It might have been helpful to understand what was happening when a group of raccoons sat down on a large rug before the grand master teaching them the ancient are of turning their bodies into other objects. He asked them, ‘what do you think you’re sitting on?’ To which he quickly and impressively answered: ‘my testicles!’ He had, you see, shape-shifted his testicles into a large square rug. Now, I've watched my fair share of films involving shape-shifting, including X Men and Star Trek, but I've never seen testicles turned into Axminster before. It makes 'Pom Poko', in my opinion, much more impressive.

Indeed, testicles played a very large part in the next two hours as the raccoons went to war with the developers. Waves of raccoons surged forward, swinging their magically swollen testicles around their heads like maces. Then they were flying through the sky, using their testicles as parachutes, before dropping onto the developers, their hugely grotesque undercarriage now the size of boulders. It really was the oddest children’s film I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching and I can’t recommend it more highly.


A final word about how you choose to watch this film. I'd go for the Japanese audio track and the English subtitles. At the end, I rewound in order to listen to how the dour American narrator described the action. To be honest, it was quite a disappointment. The translation lost all the colour of the Japanese, with one line changed from:

Master Tazaburo Hage, last surviving witness of the battle of Yashima, was 999 years old. But now he had seen enough, and we decided to big the world farewell. With a song of triumph, the raccoons stretched his vast testicles into a fabulous treasure ship with fittings of lacquer and gold.

Had become

Master Tazaburo Hage, the last surviving witness of the age of the samurai, was 999 years old. Over the years he had earned many honours and seen many fascinating sights. But now he had seen enough and decided to bid the world farewell. With a song of triumph, the raccoons stretched Master Hage’s pouch to the limit and into a fabulous treasure ship.


I’m searched everywhere but I can’t confirm that raccoons even have pouches. I'd really like to know, because if you ask this old gyrator, it's a bit of a liberty that ruins an otherwise enormously fun film for all the family. I’d recommend you go out and rent or buy this film immediately. There are far too few films in which raccoons get to play conkers with their magical love sacks.