Things I've learned from watching Samurai movies

[ol][li]The Japanese developed one of the most advanced, sophisticated cultures the world has ever seen, all without inventing furniture. Or pants. Plus, they did it all wearing nothing but bathrobes and flipflops.[/li][li]A samurai walks in great loping strides . . . but he runs in tiny little steps.[/li][li]Black and white film is capable of capturing images of greater beauty than color film is.[/li][li]The only plants anyone ever needs to survive—for food, shelter, and defense—are bamboo and rice. You could colonize a barren planet with just those two plants.[/li][li]R2D2 and C3PO are much more entertaining as Japanese peasants than as robots.[/li][li]Samurais had a weird sense of tonsorial style.[/li][li]Toshiro Mifune was hot, even when he was acting like a monkey. (And even hotter in a business suit and horn-rimmed glasses.)[/li][li]Japanese music sucks.[/li][li]If you are running in the mud, you *will fall on your face.[/li][li]The traditional Japanese acting style can be very annoying.[/li][li]The horizontal wipe is the only editing device.[/li][li]Kyuzo is the coolest cat on the planet. In his shadow, Steve McQueen is as Urkel.[/li][li]A gungho young samurai-wannabe is a dangerous animal. But not as dangerous as a farmer with a stick.[/li][li]Apparently, you can make a raincoat out of hay.[/li][li]Suicide is cool, especially if it hurts a lot.[/li][]It sucks to be a chick.[/ol]

  1. Ronin are way cooler than employed samurai, even though (or is that because?) they never know where their next meal is coming from.
  1. Look out for the blind guy!

Toshiro is NEVER not hot. NEVER.

  1. You know you’ve lost your honor because dirt begins to stick to you.

Bwah! So true.

Swords beat guns. Or at least thrown knives beat revolvers…

Heh. I learned that from Sonny Chiba movies.

  1. The main method of conversations among heros in Japan involve either grunts or short contemptuous gestures. If Toshiro Mifune grunts and makes a contemptuous gesture it either means that he secretly likes you and your loser samurai-wannabe friends or that he’s about to open up his own sushi restaurant with the rice garden in the backyard and your aorta.

  2. On that note, if a samurai’s sentence lasts for more than three seconds, you can be sure he’s pissed off. He probably won’t kill whomever he had the conversation with, though, because apparently film stock is too valuable to waste on conversations with characters who are just going to die anyway.

  3. The exception to (20) is talking with the main villain. Three-second-plus lines of dialogue are considered to be a sign of respect for your adversary. So is taking more than a nanosecond to brutally chop him in half.

  4. A samurai will finish killing fifteen bad guys with his katana and a pair of chopsticks and will then be abashed, because some old lady mildly rebukes him. This is because a samurai will wither and die without a dose of comic relief every fifteen minutes.

  5. Samurai don’t have many hobbies, unless meditation and getting killed by ninjas count.

Never ever ,ever fuck with someone who appears to be a peasant if they are are wearing a broad brimmed hat that covers their eyes ,they are always psycho grand masters who will kill you like a fly and then happily return to planting rice .

  1. The one thing every samurai dreams about doing is committing seppuku. They’ll do it at the drop of a hat, and they’re constantly bugging their masters about how they’ve failed him by dropping the tea all over the tatami or something, and asking if they can commit ritual suicide, just this once. Occasionally, you’ll get some teenaged samurai talking shit in the locker room about how he committed seppuku five times over the weekend in every room of his parent’s house. The veteran samurai smile and nod, but they can tell he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. (OK, I didn’t learn that last part from movies.)

  2. When you’re committing seppuku, you should choose a musical soundtrack involving that annoying little one-string twangy thing and maybe some chimes. Sometimes people add a mournful flute, but you know what? Play it safe and stick to the twangy thing and chimes.

Whatever you do, do not commit seppuku with Slayer’s “Eyes of the Insane” blaring in the background. Oh sure, kid, it sure sounds fun, but it marks you as a total n00b, and you will definitely hear about it on your samurai monthly review. (OK, I didn’t learn this either.)

A victim struck by a katana will gush forth an improbable amount of blood with great force.
Marc

So, so true. Just watched Harakiri: knock on the door (how do you knock on a paper door?), sliding it open to reveal a huge hat on a bowed head, which slowly came up to reveal–badass samurai!

Before you pick up any hot-looking geisha by the side of the road, do a careful mental inventory of any husbands and/or fathers you may have murdered, 'cause otherwise you might end up with your throat (or worse :eek: ) slit.

  1. The average pressure of blood in the human body is about 5000 psi.
  1. Mutual suicide by slow dismemberment is the ultimate form of sexual expression.