There’s this little “hamburg” joint in Shinjuku called Gold Rush. See, in Japan, they have something called a hamburg, which is different from a hamburger in that it doesn’t come on a bun. They bring it out on a sizzling griddle and you have to hold up your napkin defensively while they pour the gravyish sauce on your burgs. Andy and I have taken a liking to this place, and when his wife came up from Hamamatsu we went here for lunch. For some reason the last time we were there I found this upper corner of the store interesting. It’s not just the Pepsi sign, either.
I find this little bit of text to be pretty charming. If for some reason you haven’t yet visited [engrish.com][1], now is the time. [1]: http://www.engrish.com
This little kid was leaning on the green webbing and staring at all the passersby for a really long time.
Some people have asked what kind of camera I use. It’s just this dinky little one, but I really like it. I found its buttonless interface to be pleasantly Mac-like.
This was taken during my Japanese Women’s History class. Maybe I shouldn’t be taking photos during class, but you can’t tell me this isn’t pretty.
Check out Japanese money. Weird, eh? Actually US money seems really weird to me now. I haven’t seen any of it since coming here, except for a small pile that Kiyoshi has on top of his TV. US Quarter, Dime, Nickel, and Penny; Japanese 50-, 10-, 5-, and 1-Yen coins.
Maybe you’ve heard about juku, or “cram schools”. Basically they’re schools that you go to after school, in order to study for extremely difficult entrance exams and such. They’re a pretty good example of how Japanese people are ridiculously hard workers. Well, Kiyoshi’s sister, Mii-san, goes to one, and we got to come inside while she picked up her stuff one day. Here’s what the classroom looks like. In retrospect, I wish I’d gotten a shot of the one that actually had people studying inside.
Kiyoshi, being the cool hombre that he is, invited me back for his school festival in Mishima. During the same weekend, though, the Daidogei World Cup was being held in Shizuoka City. It’s a big festival of street performances and such from around the world. Kiyoshi, his sister Mitsue (Mii-san), and I went to check it out. The most spectacular of the performances that we saw was this woman Jane from England who did a fine trapeze act.
You asked for it. Photo credit goes out to Andy.
In order to calm fears about Mad Cow Disease and other such bovine ailments, McDonald’s has a lot of propaganda about how safe their Aussie Beef is. They used to have this tray liner where some kids go to the farm and talk to the farmer about where the meat comes from, but I guess people wanted to hear it straight from the meat itself. So here’s Meat-Patty-kun, telling us all about how it’s oh kay to eat him. I had to go to McDonald’s like five times before getting this tray liner again so that I could take a picture, so I hope you enjoy it. Andy, a dude from my Japanese Women’s History class who has become a good friend of mine in a matter of like three days, has promised to translate the whole thing for us. What creeps me out is that at the end of this little explanation, we get a picture of Meat-Patty-kun about to eat a hamburger.
Tom came down from Sendai to hang out with Leah, Shannon, Kendric, and me. While the three of us guys were waiting to meet up with the girls, we did the proper geeky thing and found an arcade. Down in the basement is where they kept the music games, and this dude was playing Dance Dance Revolution with his coat on the dang screen! He even had it set up for a routine that makes use of both players’ dance pads, just for himself. This is what we like to call “awesome”. Tom has a theory that there’s some greater scheme behind Dance Dance Revolution and other “bemani” type games. He thinks that Konami forsees a need for people with particular physical skills such as stomping on things in sequence or hitting things with sticks in a particular pattern, and that someday those who have mastered the ever-increasingly-difficult DDR and DrumMania type series will be called forth to save (or conquer) the Earth. Or something.
Tets came home one night and dropped a vaguely squishy spheroid, in a bag, into my hands, and said, “You can take care of this”. Turns out Yoppii-san from Photo Club took a little trip to Korea and brought back some kimchi for Tets and me, and the way they store kimchi out there is to wrap it in this Saran-Wrap-like stuff until it has taken on a disturbingly organ-like shape and behavior. We puzzled about how to open it for a while, until Tets finally just started stabbing it with a knife, to which it responded by squirting out red kimchi juice and dripping a lot. I then had to squeeze the singular mass of kimchi out of the hole Tets had made, thus bearing it into this world. Heh. Now our apartment stinks.
I’ve got to hand it to Japan for their continuing disregard for release dates. [Clammbon][1]’s id is the third CD I’ve bought before its official release. This CD came with a postcard with which I can win a chance to see Clammbon play a special private show a few weeks from now. I’ve got my fingers crossed. The displays that stores build for new releases are very impressive. Pretty much every CD that comes out has this little shrine built for it, and these are scattered throughout the store showing off the new CD, the band’s previous CDs, magazines that include interviews with the band, flyers for upcoming shows, a set of headphones for you to hear the whole album, and sometimes a TV playing the band’s videos. Even older CDs often have a little hand-written placard hanging from the shelf, or a card-insert stuck to the packaging, describing the band and letting you know whether you might like them. Neat! [1]: http://www.clammbon.com
This girl was in a trio of really cool-looking goths, but when I asked, the other two kind of looked startled and escaped while I got her photo. I can never tell if people are really flattered or really annoyed.
This weekend I went with Kendric, Shannon, and Leah, three anime-geek-friends of mine, to Harajuku. We even got a little dressed up, ourselves, but sadly the rain scared away most of the cool weirdos. Here’s a couple of brave weirdos that stuck around for a while.
Well, here’s what a Kernel Panic looks like in [Mac OS X][1]. If you’re a Windows user, this is the equivalent to your Blue Screen of Death. It’s annoying that this happened when I was almost done encoding a [movie][2] into DivX, a six-hour process. On the other hand, it’s reassuring that this was the first crash I’ve had since OS X was officially released 19 months ago. [1]: http://www.apple.com/macosx [2]: http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/suicclub.shtml
Twice a week I have Tokyo Urbanism class here in room K-3. On the first day, it took me a good while to find out where K-3 even is; there’s a tiny building out behind the main building, and I didn’t even know it existed. This building has three floors, each with one room. For the 3 hours or so before my class starts, both the room and I are free. That means I get to sneak in here and chill out for a couple of hours while other students have to put up with studying in the bewilderingly noisy library or the sub-appealing cafeteria. Having free time in the middle of the day and a quiet place to hang out means getting work done is no problem.
I don’t know why but I’ve always liked this view from the platform at Yotsuya Station. This is the station to which I ride every day to get to school. This semester my first class is at 09:15, and my classes end around 17:00 three days out of the week, which means I’m on the Marunouchi subway for at least one rush hour each day. It is not fun or cool in any sense of either word. Imagine that you are on a crowded train. Let’s say it’s crowded enough that you pretty much can’t avoid physical contact with the two or people nearest to you. Okay, that’s a little uncomfortable, but you can still kind of phase out and maybe hold up a book right in front of your face and get some reading done. Now the train stops, and some more people get on. Actually, a good number of people get on. You’re a little squished, and you start to fear that something in your bag might be breaking. You’re kind of pressed up to the dude next to you, who’s kind of sweaty, and the other dude behind you has teamed up with the lady in front of you to crush your arm so that you can’t grab on to anything, and when the train moves you’re doomed to kind of fall onto the people behind you while the combined weight of everyone in front of you, likewise, falls onto you. It’s bad, but at least you know that it can’t get any worse from here. There’s no way they could fit any more people into the car, so it’ll probably either stay like this until you get to where you need to go, or it might even start to thin out. But no. Shinjuku Station is next, and as the train comes to a stop you see the crowd of people waiting to get onto the train. Your train. Your car. Here they come; you are introduced to the intricacies of the standard Japanese businessman’s comb-over, commonly known as “barcode-head”, as you are literally crushed into him by the half dozen human bodies around you. You really find out exactly what other people smell like. You are very lucky if you actually have enough floor real estate in which to put your feet. Any surviving contents of your bag no longer stand a chance. You are done for.
Matsuya is a chain of gyuudon(“beef bowl”) restaurants in Japan. It’s the closest thing I can think of to “Japanese fast food”. There are a few key factors that make Matsuya one of my main sources of nutrition: 1. **Food:** You get a lot of food, and it is tasty. You can go with the standard gyuudon (a bowl of rice with strips of beef and onions on top) and miso soup, or you can opt for the curry. If you’re especially hungry, there are bigger sets with salad and raw eggs in little dishes and such. It’s all, as they say, good. Also, Matsuya offers kimchi, unlike other gyuudon shops. Dumping the kimchi on top of the gyuudon makes for an especially delicious meal. There are also pitchers of water on the table so you don’t have to keep asking for more. 2. **Price:** You can fill up for 290 yen. As of 6/30/2002, that comes to US$2.42. In expensive-as-heck Tokyo, that’s a downright miracle. 3. **Service:** Your order is placed by buying tickets out of a vending machine. This means your order will never get messed up. The folks that work there are friendly, and their “irasshaimase!”s and “arigatou gozaimashita!”s and “mata goriyou kudasaimase!”s sound pretty genuine. 4. **Convenience:** The speed is nice; you can walk in, order, eat, and leave in a matter of 15 minutes. There are Matsuyas pretty much everywhere, and they are easy to spot by their bright yellow signage and distinctive circular logo. Finally, and this is a big one, every Matsuya I know of is open 24 hours. This means that when it’s the middle of the night and you need a hearty meal, your two options are Matsuya and Origin Bentou. I’ll get to Origin in another post; that’s a whole other story.
I went to get a printer cartridge for Tets, and came across this apparently very popular conveyor-belt sushi joint. The lineup was impressive.
Sometimes I wish I had a better camera.
Just a couple more goth-lolis, mostly for Sean.
If you come to Geos English conversation school, you too can have a big, long, poorly Photochopped nose and big sparkly eyes just like Western barbarian!
I took the Shinkansen down to Mishima to see Kiyoshi over the weekend. Kiyoshi was my roommate during my 2nd and 3rd years at SNC, and now he’s back in Japan living with his sister and finishing up at Nihon University. We watched four movies in three days; for some reason that’s one of our favorite pastimes. It was really good to see Kiyoshi and to meet his family; he’s such a nift hombre, and his family is appropriately nift. His sister stays in all the time studying and caring for these little tiny botanical projects she has set up, and for some reason that’s really cool to me. The real highlight of the weekend was our trip out to Fujikyuu Highland with Kiyoshi, his sister Mitsue (I love Japanese names ending in “e”), and an Ayako from SNC. They have what’s supposedly the world’s tallest roller coaster (they have the certificate from Guinness there and everything), and also another coaster that’s supposed to be the world’s fastest. It was all terribly fun, and I can’t think of any other time in my life that I more regretted forgetting my camera. Sorry. I’ve been invited back, though, so sit tight, as they say. Er, anyway, this is a picture of some people practicing Kyuudou. It’s really, really precise what with all the specific motions you have to go through before shooting an arrow. It takes like five minutes just to shoot once. I hope they didn’t use this form in battle, or anything.
I’ve become a major worldwide distributor for this book. @_@
Here’s the view from a landing on the stairs leading up to the Gamers in East Shinjuku. This is one of the main streets people walk along in this infamously shady part of town. I had a short anti-Japan fugue today in which I found myself annoyed by the crowds and noise around. A few minutes of looking down from here and watching the people go by made me feel better, like I could distance myself from the bustle and just watch the humans do their thing. People are easier to deal with when you can look at them as ants scrambling around, bumping into each other, tracing pheremone trails, trying to pass out flyers for night clubs… Well, whatever.
Ewan McGregor really wants you to come to Aeon english conversation school.
Check it out; I have a friend now! This is Kendric; he came with us to the Tokyo Game Show, and since he lives reasonably close, we arranged to meet the other night in Shibuya. I’d kind of forgotten how I don’t really like Shibuya so much; it’s too hip and happening for me to deal with sometimes. Anyway, we went and had good ramen, and I read some of his fine original fiction. He’s good at that stuff. Here he is talking on the phone to a friend who’s out in the middle of Kyuushuu with nothing to do.
After going to school to figure out my classes for this semester, I stopped by Shinjuku Station to get a monthly subway pass. Outside the East Exit they had this big professional stage set up, with this group LaLaLu performing. It’s pretty obvious that they’re a Morning Musume clone, but they did a good job. They’re better singers than MoMusu, for sure. Part of MoMusu’s charm, though, is their crappy singing and really original, dynamic songs. LaLaLu is good, but they just might be _too_ good to be genuine. There were lots of people with big ‘brellas and cameras and such up in front, so out of the thirty(!) photos I took, this is about the only one that come out decently with all eight members visible. Some dudes were yelling really obnoxiously throughout the whole show, and I couldn’t tell if they really _liked_ LaLaLu, or really _hated_ them. Personally, I’m partial to Asuka-san (second from the right). Today was a jackpot for free stuff: in addition to the usual tissue packs that one would expect to get while walking around Tokyo, I also got a nice pen, a clear file, and a little washcloth thingie with cute characters on it. Bonus! I also got two packages today: one from my sister Katy and one from Craig. Katy’s package had actually been trying to get delivered for over a week, but I kept not being there when it showed up. Katy sent over yet another strange and esoteric shirt for my “freak out the Japanese” wardrobe. It’s got the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and his bloody stumps, saying, “It’s just a flesh wound…”. Classic. Craig sent over some Cheez-It and Ovaltine, which is terribly nice to see when you’ve got about an ounce of Cheez-It and four ounces of Ovaltine left. Craig also included some photos from his visit here, so I might scan some up and put them here. Jumbo thanks go out to Katy and Craig both. Who’s your favorite LaLaLu member? Left to right: Ikue, Sayaka, Fuuko, Hinano, Sara, Mae, Asuka, Noa.
Hiroko flies back and forth between the USA and Japan a lot. She earned enough crazy bonus points to get a bunch of free stuff, and her family asked if there was anything in the All Nippon Airlines catalog I wanted. I said that if they really couldn’t think of anything else they wanted, I wouldn’t mind taking the bike for riding to the station every day. They ordered it, and it came. It is very, very small. Tiny. But it’s a lot of fun. I put Rush’s Presto on the iPod and took it for a ride out to some place I’d never been for a couple of hours. Now I’m riding it around town every day listening to the new [Peter Gabriel][1] album (his first in over ten years). Having a bike makes Tokyo really fun. [1]: http://www.petergabriel.com
This is all the free stuff I got at the show. I missed out on demo discs, phone straps, and such. Still a hefty amount of loot. IRC people let me know if you want any of this stuff.
Now, I don’t like Gundam, but _look_ at this costume!
There was a really great Tifa by the drink machines. You can’t really see her very well, but I think it’s funny to see other characters getting something to drink.
This chaos was just walking around in the crowd, and she seemed pretty happy that I stopped her to ask for a picture. Her costume is superb, too. She might be my favorite all-around Xeno cosplayer of the day, in terms of costume and attitude.
Someone was brave enough to attempt playing KOS-MOS. It’s a fine effort, but I wish I could show you the other group that we found shortly after taking this photo. I saw them lined up by the wall: Shion, KOS-MOS, and M.O.M.O., with no overlapping cosplayers with the group I’d already gotten. They were all very well done, with the best Xeno costumes I’d seen all day. Just as we went up to get a picture, they were packing up to leave. Lawrence got a picture of them just standing around talking, so we’ll see if that turned out at all. I really, really wish I could have gotten those three posing, though. Well, here’s another KOS-MOS, anyway. The guy in front of me took no less than twenty photos of her. Some players were saying, “three shots each”, and I can really, really understand that. I would only take one, and then another if the first had been blurry.
It took us a minute to figure out why this guy had an exclamation point above his head. If you’ve played MGS, you might recognize this guy as a surprised guard (in the game, when guards notice you, they get an exclamation point above their heads). This was one of our favorite costumes once we figured it out. Brilliant.
I really wish this photo had turned out. I’m hoping Lawrence will have a decent version of it that I can use to replace this one.
When the Zen Black and Ocean Blue PS2s came out, I was a little disappointed. Sony has the best, most popular video game console in the world, and when it was time to make a Special Edition, the best thing they could think of was to make it out of translucent plastic. This is something that, since Apple did it in 1998, has come and gone as a design trend. When Microsoft offered a Special Edition XBox for Japan that was made out of translucent plastic, it was kind of stupid. Translucent plastics were getting old even for staplers at this point, and unlike Apple, nobody else actually designed their product to look _good_ when translucent; they just filled their normal mold with a different kind of plastic that hardens clear. Anyway, It was even dumber to see Sony do this with their PlayStation 2 a year later. I thought a ghostly or iridescent white would have been much, much nicer and more original. Well, here’s a compromise: a translucent white PS2. It looks pretty neat, but the black buttons and cables, and the ugliness of the PS2’s visible guts aren’t helping much. It is my favorite PS2 design so far, though.
Here I am trying out Silent Hill 3. It wasn’t so good. We also played the new Contra, which is pretty fun. Capcom had a Devil May Cry 2 playable demo as well, but the line was long so we just watched. That game looks *really* fun.
Nice work by this GGXX group. Baiken, Millia, Axl, Dizzy, I-No, Anji Mito, Chipp, May, Bridget, Jam.
Chii might have been the most respresented single character. She’s very cute and easy to play as, because all you need to do is put on something frilly and a set of ears that can be bought at any geeky shop in the country. I’m not a Chobits fan, but this group of four Chiis was too cute to pass up.
There was a M.O.M.O. posing down at the end of the cosplay courtyard, and just as I got in line, she decided that she needed a break, and cut off the pictures starting with me. I walked away, disappointed, and saw two Shions walk past me going the other away, followed by an Albedo. I trailed them, and found that they’d set up a little Xenosaga group, along with two other characters. So here are Wilhelm, Albedo, Jin Uzuki, Shion, M.O.M.O., and Shion. All my photos of this group have Jam from GGXX posing in the background. XD
I like this picture a lot.
Here’s I-No. A lot of these pictures didn’t turn out to well, as my camera is far from pro-quality. Lawrence has agreed to send me copies of his photos, and hopefully they’ll be much better than mine.
GGXX was very well represented among the cosplayers. It was probably the single most common game cosplayed.
Discreetly taken Dizzy pic, in her GGXX outfit.
I actually don’t know who this is; I thought she was someone else.
Here’s Bridget, my character of choice in Guilty Gear XX. I kicked some butt with her later at the game shop where they had a GGXX machine.
This shot, like many others, was taken discreetly while in line for a different cosplayer. Shhhh.
One of the main reasons I came to TGS2002 was to find a Shion cosplayer. Well, here she is. She was amused by the Shion button I had put on my bag for the occasion.
The best part of the show for me was the cosplay. I only photographed characters I knew, because there were long lines for most of them. Yes, in Japan, you line up to take photos of cosplayers. Some guys have multiple professional cameras and take like twenty photos. Whatever.
A certain ILoveAi from the [GameFAQs][1] message boards was going to come out here and go to Tokyo Game Show 2002 with me, but as it turned out he couldn’t make it. I didn’t want to go alone, as I’m not even really into games enough to enjoy it without others with whom to hang out. A night before the show started, I got a call from Wyrd (Tom) up in Sendai, another GameFAQs person, who wanted to know if I’d like to go to the show with a group he was getting together. I said, “yeah”. So the next night, we all met at Shakey’s Pizza on Omote Sando. Tom, his friends from school back in the USA, Shannon and Leah, two other JET dudes from Sendai, Aaron and Lawrence, and a random dude who has a mutual friend with them, Kendrick, were all in attendance. We enjoyed pizza and I enjoyed pretty much the first extended social encounter I’ve had in English in quite a while. The next day I came to meet them all at the Game Show in Chiba (not in Tokyo as the name suggests). Here’s a very tiny fraction of the line to get in. In true Japanese fashion, complete order and politeness were preserved without even having stretch barriers set up for much of the line. People just filed back and forth across the designated area. [1]: http://www.gamefaqs.com
I went on a little trip to Akihabara, and on the way back I got this picture of my favorite building in Shinjuku. I also went to a kaiten sushi joint, which is where the sushi comes around on a little conveyor belt and you just grab what you like. Pretty good. I’m kind of getting back into a bad sleeping schedule, which I need to break. I have about ten more days of summer vacation in Tokyo and I’ll be danged if I’m going to sleep them all away. I really wish I actually knew some people here; I go days and days without actually speaking to anyone. I’m kinda surprised there weren’t more geeky people I could have befriended at school and hung out with during the summer. Being by myself all day every day means I get a lot of reading and computer projects done, but blast if it isn’t depressing.
This dude was just sitting there in Shinjuku Station with his little guinea pig all set up next to him; it was neat.
They had some neat music and dance performances down at the shrine all through the evening.
While everyone was watching the mikoshi go by, there was a covert Pokemon trade going on.
Hiroko’s family invited me to come over and check out the matsuri (festival) that was going on in their town. The procession of three mikoshi (the portable golden god-holder thingo) passes right in front of their house twice, so we just stayed in and played Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2, Vib Ribbon, and SSX Tricky until we heard the ruckus, then came out to watch. The folks carrying the mikoshi were pretty enthusiastic, whooping and freaking out and stuff.
Pretty standard Japan photo, right here.
I’m not sure what these guys were on about but they sure did say “America” a lot.
This is the fun internationals-message-board at the international supermarket. I heard from a certain Ayako that there’s an international supermarket in Hiroo. There aren’t a lot of food items that I absolutely must have; in fact I’m pretty proud of how well I’m doing without most of my typical USAmerican luxuries, but Cheez-It is another story. I’m sure I could exist without it (in contrast to, say, Ovaltine), but I don’t want to imagine what that would be like. My It reserves had run more or less empty, and I took a little trip to Hiroo to test fate herself and see whether It existed there. I found the snack section, found the cracker section within the snack section, and scanned the shelves. No friendly red box, there. It was sad, but what could one expect? The cheese cracker is something of a niche market even in its native culture. At least they didn’t stock some lame knock-off like Cheese Nips. Gimme a break. As I moved away from the snack section, defeated, there it was: a special section all its own near the checkout lanes, with featured snack products. Right there on the middle shelf where three glimmering red boxes of It. I bought them all. This photo is actually from my second trip to Hiroo, after finishing the original three boxes. I picked up three more boxes, along with some Wild Cherry Pepsi, Pepsi Twist, Campbell’s Soup, Orangina (named Exploding Potion by my Diablo-II-playing brother-in-law Thom), and Johnsonville Bratwurst. That’s my USA-products stockpile for the next few weeks. Don’t worry; I’m eating sushi and stuff, too. I also picked up three more volumes of Hitsuji no Uta on the way home; it’s this pretty obscure manga about vampires. I just realized the other night that I’ve read through like a dozen whole manga volumes in Japanese. I don’t know just when it happened, but somewhere between the night I thought to myself “hey, it would be fun to learn Japanese” and now, I’ve actually gotten to the point where I can understand a whole dang manga book. It’s blowing my mind.
This is my street. Right now I’m working on moving the [UCM][1] over to its own subdomain, and while all the huge numbers of files are [flying through thin air][2] and my ceiling is doing its leaking thing, I went outside to get a Pepsi. Outside my building there’s a shirtless young guy talking cheerfully into a phone, and as I walked by I noticed that right now our environs smell a lot like 611 Marsh Street, the house wherein a large number of fond memories were created during my freshman year at [St. Norbert College][3]. Ryou from Japan, Philipp from Germany, Benoit from France, and, ah, a Spanish guy all lived at 611, and we used to have huge international-parties at which over a dozen nationalities would often be represented. I was known for always having a Pepsi in hand rather than partaking in the abundant reserve of beer. Tets and I also used to go over there every Friday night to play mah-jongg with Ryou and Eri, and that was pretty much my first exposure to real Japanese culture. We’d play for hours straight, and I’d do my best to decipher the weird foreign language I’d never really heard much of before. We’d make Japanese meals and I’d try to brave all the weird foreign food I’d never tried before. One night this girl Hiroko showed up, but that is an entirely different story. *^_^* So those memories, the laughing guy on the phone, and the perfect weather all came together in about one instant and just felt really dang good. I’m in Japan, it’s summer, everything’s cool. My biggest immediate worries are how I’m going to move all of my sites over to CSS and have them conform to HTML 4.0, and how I’ll find enough time to read all my manga and play all my video games. I’m doin’ all right. [1]: http://ucm.metalbat.com [2]: http://www.apple.com/airport/ [3]: http://www.snc.edu
Right next to the game that encourages you to “TAKE IT ALL OFF!” and then reconciles itself with “THIS GAME ISN’T TOTALLY PERVERTED!”, is the entrance to the bathroom. For some reason the “men” icon is this well-dressed monster.
This sculpture was above the staircase leading down into a questionable establishment. Near this establishment, we ran into another JET on her way out of “Shaft”, a popular bar. A conversation about which bar to attend next ensued: _Girl:_ Do you want to go over to “Hide And Seek”? _Me:_ Actually, we were thinking about going to an arcade… _Girl:_ Oh, “Arcade”? Where’s that? _Tom:_ No, you see, we’re nerds…
I’m into the game [Xenosaga][1]. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Well, I was looking for the now very rare Xenosaga LE box, and an acquaintance of mine over at the [GameFAQs][2] message board mentioned that he had seen one at a used game shop in Sendai, where he lives. He offered to pick it up for me, and I saw it as an opportunity to make a little something more of my summer vacation. We made some arrangements and I went up to Sendai for the weekend. Tom turned out to be a neat guy; just the kind of stranger who you’d want to pick up rare, expensive video games on your behalf and whose apartment you’d want to crash on short notice. We had fun, spending a good amount of time in Sendai’s fine arcades. While Tom, some of his JET (Japanese English Teacher) friends, and I were trying to get into a supposedly excellent pizza place whose staff would rather fix a ceiling for two whole days in a row than serve eager customers like us, we came across this mural on a wall. The reflective sign at the bottom says, “DANGER”. [1]: http://jetfuel.metalbat.com/madness.html [2]: http://www.gamefaqs.com
After the concert I found some ramen and headed home. On the way, though, I came across this oddly dressed girl setting up her little stage, and decided to stick around to see what she was up to. Turns out she’s another of those human statue/robot/doll deals, and she was particularly good at the act. I was the first one there and the first to put money in her basket. I stayed to watch for a while, and before I knew it, she beckoned me over to have a look at my Timex, and then she stopped; I’d stayed there for the whole performance. You’d think that it’d be easy to get a clear photo of a person whose job is to stand really, really still, but, well, it wasn’t. By the way, when I got home, there was a note from the ceiling repair dude saying that I wasn’t here and he’d stop by in the morning. The water’s stopped, though, at least for now.
I’ve been enchanted by the band [Clammbon][1] since I saw a commercial for their newest single while in Japan two summers ago. Today was the first chance I’ve had to see them live, and I’d been looking forward to it for some time. Thing is, the ceiling repair dude kept calling me and saying how he was going to be a bit later than he expected. He did this all day, until it was time to go to the concert, and he hadn’t showed up. I called Tets’s mom and she told me to go ahead to the show. I did, and made it just in time to pay a freaking ridiculous amount of money (plus mandatory drink charge) and catch a few Clammbon songs. They were brilliant, and bassist Mito-san announced that they’ve got a new album coming out in two months! That’s dang good news. This is not a photo of Clammbon, though. I wasn’t sure of the photo policy, and didn’t see anyone taking photos until after Clammbon was done. So this is a photo of the headlining act of the night, Rovo. They’re considered “trance-rock”, and they seemed to me like a young, Japanese, instrumental King Crimson. That’s a very, very good thing. I came right out and bought their CD. I also got myself a Clammbon shirt, which doesn’t say Clammbon on it anywhere. I can’t wait to start explaining it to people who ask. The event was held at Liquid Room, pretty much the premier concert venue in the area. It’s on the 7th floor of this ramshackle building in what’s just about the shadiest area you’ll find anywhere in Japan; you go up this staircase that’s literally saturated with graffiti, and there’s this whole full-fledged venue up there. It’s neat. The event was to celebrate the Liquid Room’s 8th anniversary, so they’ve got all sorts of relatively big time acts going this week. I saw a flyer for some show with DJ Aphex Twin, which is _very_ suspicious. [1]: http://www.clammbon.com
I went out to a Mexican place called El Borracho (The Drunk) with Tets and some of his friends from school. There, I ate the spiciest thing I’ve ever tasted in my life: these “Tacos del Puerco” that seriously left my mouth hurting for a whole day. Yum. Anyway, I came home to find a huge puddle of water in the middle of the floor. It turns out that water had been pouring out of the ceiling for several hours. It had to happen the day before Tets left for his month in Burma. I called his mom, who happens to be the landlady, and she came to check it out. She called a repair dude and asked me to just wait until he showed up in the morning.
After 18 years of service, the Happy Mac that appeared upon startup of any Macintosh is gone. Instead we get an Apple logo. Because it’s obvious that an Apple logo better expresses the idea of a properly functioning machine than a smiling computer does. Jeez, guys. It was probably the same guy who decided that a spinning rainbow sphere represents “wait” better than a watch does. Thanks.
After buying 10.2, you could bring your receipt to this table where you had a chance to win an iBook, an iPod, a bike, a shirt, etc. This guy and I won the same thing: a pen.
Maybe you’ve heard of the new version of Mac OS X that was recently released. Apple Stores all over the USA held big release parties for Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar”, with some going so far as to rent a live jaguar for the day. Apple fans in Japan are nothing if not enthusiastic, so some shops here got into the act as well. Our electronics store of choice is the Yodobashi Camera Shinjuku Nishiguchi Honten, and they had a sizable release event as well. When I arrived, about half an hour after the doors opened, there were already several hundred people lined up. While I waited in line, a dude came by and told us that we could go up to the third floor and get the product much more quickly. For some reason almost nobody moved, as if it was too good to be true, and they didn’t want to give up their spots in line. I was already way to the back anyway, so I went up there and in less than two minutes found myself with 10.2 in hand. Heh; not only did I get it before all those chumps in the Western world, but I even beat those suckers waiting downstairs.
I had so many crazy dang final projects this semester that I told myself that if I could finish them all on time and satisfactorily (something with which I tend to have trouble), I’d get myself an iPod. Well, here it is, but I’m never again taking so many 400-level classes simultaneously.
This Coke cost 350 yen. Note my big freakin’ head for size reference.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHH!!!
This dog was chained up to a doghouse in the middle of nowhere. It was really weird.
Otaru is a historical port town near Sapporo, with lots of neat little old warehouses and such. The Western influence is very apparent. One major specialty of Otaru is glass, and this glass factory in particular allows visitors to make their own glass thingies. Hiroko reserved a time and we went to make a glass. Don’t think of this picture as blurry; think of it as expressing the action of frantically trying to understand people instructing you in a foreign language about how to use your mouth and hands to shape a molten hot glowing piece of goo.
This five pointed star, for some reason, is the symbol of Sapporo, and thus is the symbol of Sapporo Beer. This was Japan’s first beer brewery, and is supposed to be one of the major tourist attractions in Sapporo, but there didn’t seem to be much in there except for souvenir shops and a restaurant. The educational, historical material was quite minimal. This window was pretty much the coolest thing.
This looks like a regular street to you, but to me, it’s a delicious reminder of home. Tokyo streets are ridiculous; they rarely go in the same direction for very long, and they rarely cross at right angles. Also, Tokyo’s buildings are packed together so tightly that you’d never have much of a view as to how the streets are laid out anyway. The young city of Sapporo, however, was designed with the help of USAmericans who really knew how to get their grid on. The cool, windy weather also helped to make me feel like I was right at home in Chicago. Sapporo is in Hokkaidou, Japan’s northernmost and most recently civilized island. Hiroko and I went up there for a few days before she had to go back to the USA. It’s very scenic, and its history as an international trading hub makes walking around looking at the old ports and warehouses quite interesting.
“May we take your picture?” “Uh….. yeah.”
Kreg was especially impressed at Japanese fashion, Harajuku goth-loli fashion in particular. These girls seemed pretty flattered that we wanted a photo, and were very enthusiastic. They locked arms with Kreg for his photo, which was pretty neat. I feel like a clown for always cutting off people’s feet in photos, though. Dang it!
Another band playing on the bridge on Sunday in Harajuku. It’s certainly the time and place for up-and-coming bands; there were no less than five groups playing within ten meters of one another when Kreg and I went. Kreg is a friend of mine from way back in fifth grade or so; I used to spend weeks at a time sleeping over at his house. When I came to Japan, I pretty much invited everyone I knew to come stay with me, and Kreg was the first to come. The ten days he spent here felt like maybe three; I think it was so fun because showing someone something cool is like being able to see it again for the first time yourself.
Where to begin. Smap is an idol group. This means that they are singers, and actors, and comedians, and spokesmen, and whatever else they need to be to promote themselves. The thing is that they’re not particularly good at any of these things; they’re just cute. So these five guys have their own comedy show, their own band, their own drama shows, their own solo projects and such, and they show up advertising stuff and making guest appearances all over the place. Now, they have their own drink. I guess that’s the logical progression for a group that has already saturated pretty much every entertainment medium. I’m particularly fond of Kusanagi-san, who recently released a single with a bunch of Korean in it and went to Korea to sing it in the street to a bunch of confused pedestrians. The drink is kind of reminiscent of classic Japanese energy drinks like Lipovitan D and Oronamin C, which means it’s not particularly tasty, but it’s worth buying just for the psychological value of walking around town thinking to yourself, “Hey! I’m drinkin’ Smap!”.
This happens about every two minutes at the intersection just outside of Shibuya station. You should really see it in person.
I’m not sure exactly what service this company provides but I hope I never, ever have to call them.
This Coke cost 400 yen. Note the little Tabasco bottle for size reference.
Soft serve ice cream is a big deal in Japan. Here are most of the people on our Photo Club trip, eating it. Several of them are carrying really expensive and/or vintage cameras. I felt pretty brave trying to take good photos with my cute little consumer digicam around these folks.
This year, the Sophia University Photo Club took a trip to… Heck! Not really. We went up to Tets’s cabin in Nagano. I guess the idea was that there’s lots of interesting stuff to photograph up there, and that the ten out of eleven of us that are actually in Photo Club would get all sorts of excellent photos. However, we mostly hung around the cabin and grilled things outside over the fire. When everyone was all gathered around a table or something, it was hard to keep up; sometimes you feel like the people you’re with are part of some kind of exclusive club, but in this case, they actually _were_ part of some kind of exclusive club. It also didn’t help that they were speaking a dang foreign language and that I’m plain shy. However, sitting by the fire with one or two other people was quite fun, and I got to know some people pretty well. Ueki-san in particular was fun to talk to; he’s into rap and had me explain some of the more obscure terms and expressions in his A Tribe Called Quest collection. Ueki-san was also the designated fire maintenance guy; he was happy to keep it blazing all night. This photo is of one of the little ventilation holes on the side of our brick fire-pit.
Across the street from where Sunny’s was playing, there was this doo-wop group called Soul Smash. They were pretty good and quite funny. I only got to catch one song, which was about traditional Japanese festivals, since that night was one of the bigger summer festivals in the area. I got to walk around by myself and look at all the couples all dressed up in yukata and having a good time. Bleh.
These guys were out in front of Shinjuku Station with their tiny little setup. They were really nice, and after their set I bought a CD. Inside the case was a photo of them playing outside Shinjuku Station. I guess that’s their main thing. They’re actually quite a bit better live. Sunny’s is their name, if you’re interested. Well, I guess it’s their name even if you’re not interested.
These people are always handing out job-finder magazines by the tunnel.
Yesterday’s traffic accidents (inside city) Deaths: 1 Injuries: 284
I was sitting around Harajuku working on my Lit final when this punk band came out of nowhere, set up their kwipment, and started playing on this foot bridge. This is by no means an unusual occurence in Tokyo; walking around for a weekend will find you passing several free shows by small-time bands hoping to make it big some day. These guys were pretty energetic, and the crowd they drew was equally so. The fans all seemed to be wearing shirts that read “Fungus”, and they would chant “Fungus, Fungus, Fungus” between songs, so I imagine that is the band’s name.
“The CUT IT OUT ingredient activates when you spray it!”
My final paper for linguistics was about new forms of communication unique to real-time text-based communication over the internet, and my presentation focused on emoticons like O_o. Everyone else covered really lame, boring topics like “Semantics: Polysemy and Homophony; Lexical Ambiguity”. Bleh.
This is the photo that [Emotion Eric][1] took of the same angel on Sunday. [1]: http://www.emotioneric.com
I’ve been thinking about getting a really good photo of some wacked out goth-loli in Harajuku and then making it into a CD cover for [Shattered Angel][1]. [Emotion Eric][2], some other folks, and I all met for dinner one Sunday night; Sunday is the day that people get all dressed up so I took ’em to the “Freak Bridge” in Harajuku to see if we couldn’t find some good photo material. There was this angel just sitting there, and she was really nice about having her picture taken. I tinkered around with this picture in [Fireworks][3] and ended up with a [Shattered Angel desktop image][4]. [1]: http://www.shatteredangel.com [2]: http://www.emotioneric.com [3]: http://www.macromedia.com [4]: http://jetfuel.metalbat.com/blah/intothedarkdesktop.jpg
Sega Joypolis is a three-floor indoor amusement park and arcade. On the top floor they have a number of haunted-house type thingies, some of which are redone every now and then to fit current promotional themes. Right now there’s a Men In Black II one set up, and it was one of the most fun things we did there. It was a pretty slow day, so when we arrived the two attendants were just standing around, and the guy started doing acrobatics for us while we waited. Then the girl started to guide us through. We assured her that we knew enough Japanese, but she went through most of it in a **very** melodramatic Japanese/English hybrid. I’m not sure if we got special treatment for being gaijin, but she really went over the top and we played along, screaming in horror at the lame rubber aliens.
The guy who sits next to me in Philosophical Approaches to Buddhism noticed that I’ve got a [PowerBook][1]. It turns out he’s got one too, and that in the USA he works at the [Apple Store][2]. It also turns out that he was planning to go out to the huge Sega arcade in Odaiba with the guy from my Japanese Religions presentation group. They invited me, and we went out to beautiful Odaiba, where I was surprised to find that they have their own Statue of Liberty. They call her “Jiyuu no Megami”, or “Goddess of Freedom”. The story goes that France gave Japan their own Liberty, who usually stands by the Seine, for one year, but Japan liked her so much that when France took her back they also built Japan their own copy. And here she is. [1]: http://www.apple.com/powerbook [2]: http://www.apple.com/retail
