A cross-cultural blogger who makes sociology pop

Every culture has certain rituals that may seem quirky to outsiders. In Japan, for example, shoppers have been known to wait in three-hour lines for the release of “A Bathing Ape” T-shirts. (But before casting any stones, think about those U.S. parents who queue up at 5 a.m. to begin the Christmas shopping season at Toys R Us.)

These seemingly idiosyncratic customs -- of both Japan and the U.S. -- are captured in writer-musician W. David Marx’s blog at www.neomarxisme.com, where the former Floridian now living in Tokyo muses on what he calls “the pop sociology of pop.”

Marx, 26, first became enamored of Japan’s pop culture during a high school summer vacation. “With pop culture, everyone was taking from the U.S., but [Japan] had an isolated pop culture world,” he says.

His entries are uneven, but patient readers will find interesting nuggets about the differences between Japanese and U.S. culture.

Marx is at the top of his blogging game when he describes found objects, everyday occurrences or creative English translations in signs and ads. A mid-March entry examines an ad campaign that asked folks to finish the sentence: “If I could speak English, I would ...” Some answers -- “I would live in a house where I could wake up and dive right into the pool” -- are enlightening whether written by copywriters or provided by real people in the street.

In other posts, Marx examines some of the sexually inappropriate songs of the mid-’80s pop girl group Onyanko Club. “Many Japanese are puzzled why no one complained at the time, seeing that the public culture was much more sexually repressed than it is now,” he writes. The group’s “Stop It, Teacher” recounts an illicit relationship between a failing math student and her middle-aged teacher. Hmm. Seems reminiscent of another ‘80s hit: the Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”

Maybe the cultures aren’t so different after all.