Ai think you’re cute. Ai think I love you. Ai’m very proud of the work they did, can you give me their card?

If you’ve watched some Japanese TV you might’ve seen this girl on a program. Since Japanese TV isn’t really seen by anyone except those that live inside the country, huge nerds that go to dannychoo.com and the creeps that reside at sankakucomplex. So if you manage to see her on the tube you’ll probably think that she ran her vocal chords through a grinder. While this might be true there is something else that you should know about her.

How did she copy herself like that?

She’s 37. I bet you didn’t expect that, huh? If you go on her site it has some details about herself in her profile. Ai Haruna isn’t her real name, (no biggie, that happens a lot), but if you know anything about Japanese names you know that Kenji isn’t a name that is unisex; this name is only for boys. What you’re looking at is someone that was born looking quite different than they do now. I bet you weren’t expecting that; don’t worry, no one here would know if it wasn’t for the fact that they tell you. What they call it here is ニューハーフ (New Half, Japanese for “I hate my body so I got a new one”).

Einhorn is a man

(If you want to see what she looked like when she was younger there’s two videos that can enlighten you: a performance she did in 1989 and a timeline from birth to age 20.)

I didn’t really know the meaning of ニューハーフ until recently since it’s not something that one searches for. So last Friday during class one of my students were talking in Japanese and they said ニューハーフ. I asked them what that meant and they really couldn’t tell me in English so they gave me an example, Ai Haruna.
I actually had no idea that she originally didn’t look like she does now (I didn’t see the shows I’ve linked to) so it was quite a surprise when the student gave her as an example.

So she’s gone from a strange looking guy into this. To me this looks like a change for the better but, since Japanese are still cut from the same cloth as everyone else, there are always the dumb and the assholish. At least here they don’t have any religion to hide their ignorance behind so they look like even larger assholes; and if you’ve been browsing the internet for some time you probably know how big assholes can be. Luckily, those people aren’t the majority and they will die at some point (maybe even Superman!).

So if you really hate being a man maybe you too can get a sex change and do stuff like this.