The Best Bits of CherriiPOP – Wedding stories

There have been a lot of wedding stories covered on the show this year; they were quite popular stories on the show because I got a lot of comments about it. Here is a recap:




A few weeks ago I mentioned an interesting story about a Taiwanese woman marrying herself. She herself decided to put a ring on it. A wedding planner was hired and she invited her close friends and family to her wedding. I really admire that story because she is sending out a strong message to other 30 year old women that you don’t have to follow tradition and you should love yourself. Legally her marriage isn’t recognised, so in the future when she meets Prince Charming she can marry him without divorcing herself. It’s inspirational that she’s living life to her own rules!




On the date 10-10-10 this year, many couples around the world said ‘I do’, so venues were booked out in advanced. Why did so many couples choose this date? Well because it is an auspicious date since the day, month and year are the same. In Asia, people believe that when you get married on this date you will live a happy life together. In the past, the dates 08-08-08 and 09-09-09 were highly popular for weddings for the same reason. If you are planning to get married in the near future, then you might consider these auspicious dates 11-11-11 and 12-12-12.




The Last story is: A lot of adult Japanese men who have no luck in the love department have resorted to loving anime cartoon characters. These virtual girlfriends are printed images on pillowcases and these men will take their ‘girlfriends’ on dates to the movies, restaurants or special getaways. The men feel a lot of happiness in the relationship and feel that it is true love. Some men love their virtual girlfriends so much that they will marry them and have the whole wedding celebration as well. It’s a very interesting story and people who have an obsession with manga or anime characters are called ‘otaku’ in Japan.

ITASHA! Pimp out your car with Anime

Last week on the show I was talking about Otaku, the obsession with Anime, Manga and video game characters. Just a recap, in serious cases of Otaku, men love their anime printed pillow cases so much that they marry it.

Itasha is a form of Otaku, this is when fans emblazon their cars with anime and manga images or stickers. This is their way of pimping out their car. The images are usually cute female characters! Japan is a Kawaii (Cute) Nation. Of course, they wouldn’t want to drive around with an ugly character on their car. It very different to Australia and USA, guys from here like to deck out their cars with body kits, huge spoilers, neon or xenon lights, they make their car more manly. So it gets you thinking… do you think cars with girl anime characters all over it, makes the car girly? I don’t think an Itasha car would be good at picking up girls.

Itasha means ‘painmobile’ in Japanese, this can be interpreted as ‘painfully embarrassing’ or ‘painful for the wallet’ due to the high costs people fork out to pimp their ride. Itasha is also a pun for Italian cars in Japanese. Itasha is a young phenomenon, the earliest known report of an Itasha car was around 5 years ago. The first Itasha based convention ‘Autosalone’ was held in 2007!

The Itasha phenomenon has also filtered through to motorsport events. The number of itasha cars competing in amateur and pro events are on the rise. These cars receive a lot of media attention in events. Looking at the photos, these cars are quite snazzy and eye-catching. I wouldn’t mind it my car was Itasha too. I would like to put Rock Lee, Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi on it. Yup all boy anime characters LOL.

If you are still wrapping you heard around Itasha cars, get a hold of yourself because lots of supercars that cost hundreds-of-thousands of dollars been converted to ITASHA cars. Supercars are already striking cars, and when they have wide eyed teen girls wearing short skirts painted it looks, the expensive car looks like a novelty/show car. The anime pictures are so bright and colourful that all your focus is drawn to that and you don’t really notice the supercar until someone points out that, that car is a Lamborghini. I wonder what the Top Gear host, Jeremy Clarkson would think of these Itasha supercars… I have a feeling he will think they are an abomination!

Would you like to itasha your car? Which character would you put on it?

ITASHA has invaded TOP GEAR!!!! Hope you guys like my vid =)



I would love to drive around the pikachu car around Melb!


REFERENCE: wired.com

Virtual girlfriends, Men who love the 2D manga characters

It is hard finding true love… People try many things to find love, online dating, dating agencies, blind dates…There is another alternative, falling in love with a manga character. This may sound weird, in fact it is a bit weird but it has become increasingly more common in Japan where lonely men resort to dating virtual girlfriends.

These men find happiness dating their virtual girlfriends. They would take her out on dates to the beach or theme park, they go on road trips and even on romantic getaways. You may ask, how can they go on real dates when she’s virtual? The virtual girlfriend is actually a stuffed pillow case with the cute manga character printed on it. The virtual girlfriends are usually characters from popular manga, anime or video games.

Nisan, a 37 year old Japanese man considers his love for his pillow girlfriend the real deal. “Of course she’s my girlfriend, I have real feelings for her” he said. His love is, Nemu, a character from the PC video game ‘Da Capo’. Nemu is a teenager and she wears a tiny blue bikini and she has gold ribbons in her hair.

He takes Nemu around with him everywhere, to restaurants, karaoke… Just like any other dating couple. He is a complete gentleman to her, holding her gently when he carries her around, carefully places her in the restaurant booth. He is aware that other people find his behaviour rather odd “Some people don’t find this funny and it also takes up a lot of room” he said. Nisan has a total of 7 Nemu pillow covers, he buys them online or at conventions. They retail for $70 dollars. He loves Nemu so much that he could never part with her.

Loving a 2D character is called ‘otaku’ – the obsessive fandom of anima, manga and video games. There are different levels of otaku, in extreme cases like Nisan, they believe the characters are their girlfriends. In minor cases they might just have some romantic feelings for the characters but they do not go far as to date them. The rise in 2D love has been attributed in part to the tough time young people have in finding love in the real world. They simply give up searching for love in the 3D world and find love and happiness in the 2D world. Toru Honda, a 40 year old man, author and advocate for 2D love wrote “As long as long as you train your imagination, a 2D relationship is more passionate than a 3D one”. I guess that is true, the person has complete control of the relationship and can do whatever they want. Honda believes that “pure love is completely gone in the real world”. He goes on to say that for some people, they still have a chance of finding love in the 3D world. “I’m not saying that everyone should throw away hopes of real romance right away. I am simply saying that guys like me who have gotten to a point of no return can be happy living in 2D.”

There are a few things that need to be considered when choosing a pillow girlfriend, first the image quality then the type of material it is made out of. Of course, most importantly choosing the character you will fall in love with. Japanese men seem to like young anime school girls, is that a bit disturbing? These men find love in the 2D world so appealing because they are in control; they make all the rules in the relationship, which they can’t do in the real world. Some men like to go out with different characters during the week.

Interesting isn’t it? Is it healthy to live in the fantasy world like that? Life is full of ups and downs, if we could remove all the downs then life would be quite carefree but that isn’t reality. I wonder how the men would cope if they are faced with tough times, would they retreat in to the fantasy world even more and just cut off from the real world?

Well I hope all of the CherriiPOP listeners find true love in the 3D world!

SOURCE; The New York Times