“This is an art project; we are not taking our stuffed animals on an outing to the zoo,” Tod & I agreed as we left our building with the Zous in hand.
It really did feel like performance art.
It’s pretty amazing the reactions you get with a stroller full of stuffed elephants. Adults were generally enchanted. They smiled and pointed. “Kawaiiiiii!” Older men and women were more likely to talk to us. Security guards cracked smiles. Middle-aged matrons laughed aloud. The whisper of a trendy young woman to her friends got them all to turn their heads subtly to peek. Mothers with children sometimes saw us before the kids did, and directed their kids to look. One very brave, stylishly dressed college boy petted Zousama even though his girlfriend disapproved.
Little kids had mixed reactions. Some were a little scared and clutched at their parents’ legs; some warmed up to the idea after a few seconds and snuck another look and a smile. Others came toddling over to play with the Zous right away. Sometimes the Zous were a more interesting attraction than the animals in the cages.
Some people saw the Zous, but not us, then glanced up to see who was holding the stroller. Whether they stopped smiling because we were watching them watch us, or because we were foreigners and they were surprised by that, I don’t know.
Tod estimated that the bemused to amused ratio was about 30:70.
The Zous have their own version of the day at the zoo on their blog and in pictures.
Now you’ve done it! You’ve got a reaction out of the staid Japanese. Like your hair too.
Posted by: Pete on December 23, 2002 08:23 PMThat sounds HILARIOUS! But next time, remember to write the URL to your website on a poster board so you can advertise them, too.
Posted by: Alex on December 24, 2002 03:17 AMI had their meishi with me, but I didn’t hand any of them out…
Posted by: kuri on December 24, 2002 01:50 PMKuri-san,
FYI: Regarding trackback - the way it works isn’t that you “a href” link back to the trackback url in the html, like you did in this post. Instead, you would link the usual permalink in your text. When you go to save your MT entry, in the “URLS to ping” section, you put the trackback url. That will ping the trackback url and get everything going.
Hope this helps!
-Jason
Posted by: Jason Cha on December 25, 2002 05:13 PMThanks for the pointer, Jason. Trackback has confused me for months; thought I’d give it a go here. I’ve fixed the link and the Zous are happy to see a trackback on their site now. :-)
Posted by: kuri on December 26, 2002 03:18 PM