I think I first read about this "fad" about a week ago on Boing Boing. Search Google for "shiny mud balls" in English and you get 186,000 hits. Search for the same term in Japanese (光る泥団子） and you get 413 hits. The latest fad taking Japan by storm? I think not.
For what it's worth, I asked the expert this morning (Tony, 8yrs old) and he had never heard of them. Maybe they're all the rage in another part of the country. Some place where people don't use the Internet much, I guess.
Update: Siuyee, our resident Quality Control expert, notes that if you remove "shiny" from the search term you get 19,700 hits. So it's quite possible that I'm totally wrong, and my kid's a nerd. Maybe all his classmates are mass-producing shiny mud balls and hiding them when he comes around. What I do know for sure is that I'm at work eight hours a day and I've never seen any of my Japanese colleagues make one…
While we're at it, let's also tackle the myth about Japanese being in love with their robotic dogs and manservants. Sony recently stopped production of the Aibo and Qrio to return their focus to products they can actually sell. For a profit.
5 responses so far ↓
1 siuyee
// Jan 31, 2006 at 10:55 am
I think sometimes they just call it dorodango. Google gives you more results if you leave out "光る". It looks tedious to make.
2 Lon
// Feb 1, 2006 at 11:20 am
hmmm, first thing that comes up in google for me (searching for "shiny mud balls")…
http://web-japan.org/trends01/article/011005sci_r.html
3 Rich Pav
// Feb 1, 2006 at 11:25 am
I'm sure there are kids somewhere who make shiny mud balls, but to say that schoolchildren nationwide are ga-ga about them doesn't seem true to me. Playstation, yes. Trading cards, yes. Mud balls, no.
4 Lon
// Feb 1, 2006 at 11:29 am
Well, I think you have a more adult phenomenon (as mentioned in the article) that the psychology research transplanted to school kids in order to study playing behavior.
5 missbhavens
// Jul 13, 2006 at 5:56 am
Shiny mud balls…soon to go the way of the Pogs.