hahahaha yessss Maru-chan. i love watching him periodically.
i know a lot of cats are ridiculous. but this is a particularly ridiculous cat. like, everything about him is silly. he’s so round. it’s even better that “Maru” means “round” in Japanese.
whaddayamean: When I saw this for the first time yesterday, I couldn’t believe it had been uploaded in November and viewed by 5 million+ people… NOT INCLUDING ME.
Extremely weird coincidence: when I read your explanation of “Maru,” it made me think of some (vaguely?) Japanese(ish?) proper noun I could swear I remember hearing about a lot in the news, or a non-fiction article. Something. I thought the word might be the name of a big ship — an oil tanker, maybe — and I thought it might be “Tokomaru.”
So I just did a search on that word. Google discarded it, assuming I mean “Topomaru” (with a p instead of a k) instead. The top search result was a Wikipedia page, where I learned:
Tokomaru is a small town in the district of Horowhenua, in the southwestern North Island of New Zealand.
So far so good.
Where the Twilight Zone theme kicks in: the name (according to the article) of the mayor of Topomaru, Mathew “Batty” Round.
marta: Which in fact I already had. (Forgotten it, I mean.) I didn’t remember it from earlier in the Star Trek mythology, but when I read up on it on Wikipedia just now I remembered it from the J.J. Abrams film of a couple years ago.
That article explains:
The name is Japanese: Kobayashi means “small grove” and is a common family name; Maru is a common suffix for Japanese ship names meaning “round” as in “to return.”
P.S. And that led me to remember what I almost certainly was thinking of: an episode from the great Season 3 of The X-Files: “Piper Maru.” That’s the name of a ship, too.
marta says
My kiddo and I like Maru and the boxes. I provided commentary which sent the kiddo into fits of laughter. :) And he is asking for more Maru videos.
whaddayamean says
hahahaha yessss Maru-chan. i love watching him periodically.
i know a lot of cats are ridiculous. but this is a particularly ridiculous cat. like, everything about him is silly. he’s so round. it’s even better that “Maru” means “round” in Japanese.
John says
marta: The only thing surprising about funny cat videos, common though they are, is how few of them must be online. Cats are infinitely watchable!
John says
whaddayamean: When I saw this for the first time yesterday, I couldn’t believe it had been uploaded in November and viewed by 5 million+ people… NOT INCLUDING ME.
Extremely weird coincidence: when I read your explanation of “Maru,” it made me think of some (vaguely?) Japanese(ish?) proper noun I could swear I remember hearing about a lot in the news, or a non-fiction article. Something. I thought the word might be the name of a big ship — an oil tanker, maybe — and I thought it might be “Tokomaru.”
So I just did a search on that word. Google discarded it, assuming I mean “Topomaru” (with a p instead of a k) instead. The top search result was a Wikipedia page, where I learned:
So far so good.
Where the Twilight Zone theme kicks in: the name (according to the article) of the mayor of Topomaru, Mathew “Batty” Round.
marta says
And don’t forget the Kobayashi Maru.
John says
marta: Which in fact I already had. (Forgotten it, I mean.) I didn’t remember it from earlier in the Star Trek mythology, but when I read up on it on Wikipedia just now I remembered it from the J.J. Abrams film of a couple years ago.
That article explains:
Oh. :)
John says
P.S. And that led me to remember what I almost certainly was thinking of: an episode from the great Season 3 of The X-Files: “Piper Maru.” That’s the name of a ship, too.
marta says
@John – Well, I watched Star Trek, but I didn’t watch The X-Files.
Miriam Forster says
I love Maru! And this is one of my favorite ones. :)
I like his expression when he gives up on climbing into the flat box and just lays on it. He’s like “What? I’m totally INSIDE THE BOX. Shut up.”