Count on the Japanese to come up with this one. Uber-tipster bzr pointed us towards a new trend in Japan; it’s referred to as “Dajiban”, which is really just a Japanese-ification of “Dodge Van”. Dead serious, that’s what it is. I might have had a little chuckle at the cleverness of that one.

According to some of the advertisements and delightfully-Engrish literature, these vans represent the epitome of “The American Lifestyle” to the outsider Japanese viewpoint. Apparently the typical American spends his day driving around trying to convince little girls to accept free candy or pet his free kitten. Except in Japan, he does it very quickly! Probably still without any pants. There is so much wrong, and so much right, with this whole concept, I just can’t even try and wrap my head around it. So have a browse through the photos, dear reader, and see if you think this whole “American Lifestyle” trend could possibly catch on over in America. Count on the Japanese to show us how to do American with style. I’ve captured all the photos I could find and re-hosted them here to avoid you the mental trauma of having to wade through VWVortex. It seems to have declined from its former glory as one of the best automotive forums on the internet. Feel free to trek over there to take a look, but I take no responsibility if some 80-lb 14-year-old questions your sexual orientation if you like something that he does not. [Special thanks to SixSylinder for stopping by to provide us with the original sources for all this madness; it’s possible someone beat him to the punch as well, but since my source copy-n-pasted from him, we’ll happily give him the nod as the original madman to document this for us! See his original articles HERE and HERE. Thanks again!]