The segmentation
The first segment is praised by a lot of people, I see.
But it's hare-brained, pointless and superficial. It's just two airhead bimbos, each expressing a 'role' instead of themselves (I mean the characters, not the actors), and a woman typically trying to change a man they chose (why choose a man if you want to change him - why not choose the kind of man you already like?).
Because this segment features nudity of a young woman, and nipples, kissing and a controlling woman manipulating a man as her slave/servant (always having to obey the woman with the lighter and all), audiences are somehow mesmerized by it.
I just realized I understood pretty much everything they said in japanese (I have started to hate subtitles, because they are so often so wrong and full of misunderstandings and mistakes - friggin' incompetent wannabe-subbers should be forced to live in an immigrant-filled building until they learn to research and understand the culture they are trying to talk about), which actually only served to show me exactly how paper-thin the 'plot' was.
They didn't say anything interesting or meaningful, they didn't talk about anything that would interest anyone, except some Elvis/Memphis-fanatics. A materialistic, superficial, 'cutesy'-bimbo with a boring, monotone, expressionless, bored-looking, wannabe-'kakkotsuke-japanese badboy' (yep, that style mimics the 'rockabilly' crap), fighting about whether Carl Perkins is better than Elvis or vice versa.
How can anyone really and truly find this interesting?
If it wasn't for the japanese language, I wouldn't even have this movie. And if it wasn't for Steve Buscemi, I probably wouldn't have watched it as many times as I have (probably altogether three times now).
Remove those two elements from the movie, and what is left? A plotless boredom-fest with moronic teens doing typical, moronic teen-stuff in a very lackluster way (even the sex scenes seemed to lack energy), with some depressing stories that serve no purpose and go exactly nowhere. In the end, I didn't even care whether Steve's character's leg will heal or not.
Why do people of this planet enjoy boredom so much? That's something I can not understand.
Sadly, the first segment is indeed the best one - as ridiculous, juvenile and boring and as it is, and as bad as the japanese woman is in speaking 'engrish' (she seems to be able to speak it amidst japanese language, but not, when she's supposed to speak english - I suppose she has conditioned herself to pronounce words too 'correctly', so she can't go back to when she unintentionally pronounced them in the 'japanese way', and this kills the immersion. It's hard to believe these two came straight from Yokohama, when she pronounces the street name in such a perfect 'american english' that her character would certainly not be able to express), the rest of the segments are even worse.
To sum it up; the first segment is the best, but not because it's so good - it's only because the rest of the segments are even worse. At least the first segment is not as depressing as the other ones (though it is a bit).