"Turning Japanese" is the most popular song released by the English band The Vapors from their album New Clear Days, and the song for which they are best known. The song's lyrics mainly consist of the singer talking about pictures of his love. Musically, the song features an Oriental Riff played on guitar.
The song was believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.[1] In a VH1 True Spin special the band denied this. Songwriter David Fenton explained: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to."[2]
The band knew they had a hit with "Turning Japanese", so much so that they waited until their second single before releasing it, fearing that if they released it as their first they would become one-hit wonders, but they never matched its success.
The song enjoyed some sales in the Japanese charts on the back of its huge success in Australia, where it spent two weeks at Number One in June 1980.
- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My recollection of the joke is that "if you keep doin' it, you'll go blind" so he answers that he'll just do it until he "turns Japanese" i.e. his eyes get squinty. Hey, it's not my racist joke, I'm just tryin' to explain the joke behind the tune.
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