{"id":400,"date":"2007-03-23T13:07:58","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T04:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-03-23\/400"},"modified":"2007-03-23T18:35:38","modified_gmt":"2007-03-23T09:35:38","slug":"feces-of-financial-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-03-23\/400","title":{"rendered":"Golden Poo: Feces of Financial Fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<p>The Japan Times (the major English daily in Japan) has an amusing article this week....<\/p>\n\n<div class='ic'><a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2007\/03\/20\/reference\/gold-poop\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/i\/JapanTimesPoop.png\" width=\"691\" height=\"553\"\nalt='SO, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Gold poop By ALICE GORDENKER Dear Alice,\n     Gold poop While browsing through the souvenir shops on a recent layover at\n     Narita Airport, I came across a very curious Japanese good-luck charm. It\n     featured -- I kid you not -- a gold poop which, by the way, looked\n     disturbingly like soft ice cream! Why poop? Why gold poop? Personally, I\n     can not see anything felicitous in feces. Please tell me what the heck I am\n     missing. What you are missing is a pleasing piece of word play. The product\n     you saw is called Kin no Unko (The Golden Poo), a name that plays on the\n     fact that the Japanese word for poop (unko) starts with the same \"oon\"\n     sound as a completely unrelated word that means \"luck.\" Japanese enjoy this\n     kind of pun -- traditional storytelling is full of them -- which may help\n     explain why more than 2.5 million of the lucky little loads have been sold\n     in the last seven years.'\nborder=\"0\"\nclass=\"raw\"\nid=\"iJapanTimesPoop\"\nindexhint=\"right\"\ntitle='SO, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Gold poop By ALICE GORDENKER Dear Alice, Gold\n     poop While browsing through the souvenir shops on a recent layover at\n     Narita Airport, I came across a very curious Japanese good-luck charm. It\n     featured -- I kid you not -- a gold poop which, by the way, looked\n     disturbingly like soft ice cream! Why poop? Why gold poop? Personally, I\n     can not see anything felicitous in feces. Please tell me what the heck I am\n     missing. What you are missing is a pleasing piece of word play. The product\n     you saw is called Kin no Unko (The Golden Poo), a name that plays on the\n     fact that the Japanese word for poop (unko) starts with the same \"oon\"\n     sound as a completely unrelated word that means \"luck.\" Japanese enjoy this\n     kind of pun -- traditional storytelling is full of them -- which may help\n     explain why more than 2.5 million of the lucky little loads have been sold\n     in the last seven years.'\/><\/a><\/div>\n\n<p>The <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2007\/03\/20\/reference\/gold-poop\/\">full\narticle<\/a> at the Japan-Times website goes on to explain in detail.<\/p>\n\n<p>The article is by <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/author\/int-alice_gordenker\/\">Alice\nGordenker<\/a>, whose writings <span class='nobr'>I always<\/span> enjoy, especially her &#8220;What the heck\nis that?&#8221; column. <span class='nobr'>She can dive<\/span> quite deeply into the most obscure little\nthings, and you come away from one of her articles really feeling you have\nthe complete poop on whatever subject is at hand.<\/p>\n\n<p>In this case, she talks about <span class='nobr'>a good<\/span> luck charm,\n<b>\u91d1\u306e\u3046\u3093\u3053<\/b>,\n\nwhich can be translated in any number of amusing ways, although I'll stick\nwith &#8220;golden poo.&#8221; I've seen these around, and as with so many\nthings that <span class='nobr'>I instinctively<\/span> know that <span class='nobr'>I just<\/span> &#8220;don't get,&#8221; <span class='nobr'>I\nrolled<\/span> my eyes and didn't really give it <span class='nobr'>a second<\/span> though. So it's\nsurprising to find out that they're just <span class='nobr'>a play<\/span> on words, with no deep\ncultural background behind them, and that they started only in 1999, and\nnot hundreds or thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n\n<p>They're made of porcelain and coated with 24-karat gold, but are\nrelatively cheap. <span class='nobr'>To quote<\/span> the article, they retail for &#8220;just 105 yen\nfor the mini poo to 2,100 yen for the big dump, which sits proudly on <span class='nobr'>a\nsilky<\/span> red cushion&#8221; (that's <span class='nobr'>a bit<\/span> less than <span class='nobr'>a dollar<\/span> for the petite\npoop, and about $18 for the tremendous turd).<\/p>\n\n<div style='float:right; text-align:center'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/i\/GoldenPooStickers.gif\" width=\"215\" height=\"238\"\nid=\"iGoldenPooStickers\"\/><br\/><b>Golden-Poo Stickers<\/b><\/div>\n\n<p>Of course, by now there are many copycat caca around, and with <span class='nobr'>a quick<\/span>\nweb search <span class='nobr'>I found<\/span> ones made of <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.kyoto-yoimonoya.jp\/goods\/unko\/index.htm\">clear glass with\nembedded gold sprinkles<\/a>, little <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.takenomise.com\/shopkomono.htm\">poops nested in baseball\nmits<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/sampleshop.jp\/kinun\/\">tiny turd cell-phone\ncharms<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then there's the golden poop that doubles as a <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/store.yahoo.co.jp\/atomplan\/19-138.html\">rubber stamp<\/a>\n(stamping &#8220;good fortune&#8221;), and sheets of <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp\/horiman\/item-p2-img1039514186.html\">golden-poo\nstickers<\/a> complete with little smiley faces. Now really, who couldn't\nlove these cheery cute little craps?\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThe stickers with the non-anthropomorphic piles have labels that indicate\ngood fortune in general, and good fortune with finances, the latter being\nthe common phrase that &#8220;golden poo&#8221; is <span class='nobr'>a wordplay<\/span> from (which\nmeans that &#8220;Feces of Financial Fortune&#8221; is probably <span class='nobr'>a more<\/span>\naccurate translation of the true spirit of the Golden Poo).\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nGee, now that I think about it, <span class='nobr'>I should<\/span> have gotten one for Anthony when\nhe made is first <a href=\"\/blog\/2005-09-23\/76\">poop in the\ntoilet<\/a>.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Japan Times (the major English daily in Japan) has an amusing article this week....<\/p> <p>The full article at the Japan-Times website goes on to explain in detail.<\/p> <p>The article is by Alice Gordenker, whose writings I always enjoy, especially her \"What the heck is that?\" column. She can dive quite deeply into the most obscure little things, and you come away from one of her articles really feeling you have the complete poop on whatever subject is at hand.<\/p> <p>In this case, she talks about a good luck charm, <b>\u91d1\u306e\u3046\u3093\u3053<\/b>, which can be translated in any number of amusing [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}