Ita-sha – painful cars from Japan
I was prompted to translate this survey by Mari’s recent mention of such cars. Ita-sha, literally painful cars (to look at, or from the point of view of the car?), painted up with anime characters of the so-called moe kind, which usually means infeasibly large-breasted schoolgirls. This recent survey published by iShare on the topic of car customisation found almost one in three willing, to use the vernacular, to rice up their cars.
Demographics
Between the 25th and 27th of October 2008 424 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private online questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 49.3% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, and 8.7% in their teens or fifty or older. The sample is a bit small to draw conclusions from, but the topic is quite fun so it would be a shame not to translate this one.
I’ve never seen a manga-adorned car myself, although there is no shortage of be-spoilered and be-skirted mini-vans farting around town with their after-market exhausts which certainly qualify as ita-sha in terms of my own eyes and ears.
Read the rest of this entry »
Subscribe to feed