Tokyo Blog

This is horrible, but just check out Nigo’s pink Bugatti Veyron (Nigo is the head-honcho at Japanese clothing label, Bape). Worst custom paint job ever! (Actually, or should we say thankfully, the car has not been repainted, but just covered in a vinyl wrap - phew.)

A food post was long overdue, I thought, and on that topic I have something to talk about. Having been in Tokyo for 7 months now, I was definitely beginning to tire of eating ramen, tenpura, donburi, etc. People abroad sometimes share the notion that everything you can eat in Japan is good for you. This is true to an extent, but most of the cheap, fast food, while better than a Mickey-D’s or a KFC, is still going to shorten your life if you eat it too often. Really good, healthy traditional Japanese dishes, you can make at home, or treat yourself to at one of Tokyo’s more expensive, formal eateries.

Unless of course you go to my new favourite restaurant chain, Ootoya. The food is excellent and cheap. What’s more it’s healthy! I usually go in of a weekend, normally on a Sunday to unwind. The interiors are laid back and tasteful (at least they are at the Okachimachi retaurant where I tend to go), and they play some cool jazz music. Water is free, like most places, and you get a complementary cup of tea for after your meal.

I tend to go for the yaki saba (grilled mackerel) and it’s as good as you could get anywhere. In fact, it’s the best cooked mackerel I’ve ever had, full stop. I also had another yaki sakana dish in the past, although I’m not sure what variety it was, but again, it was really good. I normally get the teishoku format (set meal), which you get on a tray accompanied by a bowl of rice, tsukemono (japanese pickles), and a bowl of miso soup. It has to be said, the miso is one of the best I’ve had in Japan, and I love miso soup, so that keeps me going back.

Finally they’re up. Head over to my flickr for a look at what the annual Hanabi in Asakusa was like this year. High points for me were the beautiful Kimonos and cool traditional outfits being sported by the locals, the choatic atmosphere, and the hugely spectacular hour-and-a-half long firework display.

I find myself in Ikebukuro a lot more now that I live out on the Seibu line, so everyday on my way from the train I see this advert on the station platform and it makes me smile. On the one side of this ad, you have the guys, suited and ready for action in what appears to be an aircraft hangar. Then, on the other side of the same ad you have the girls, in cheerleader outfits. I’m not saying anything.

I made it down to Ginza Graphic Gallery on Saturday afternoon and it was a real treat. Although there were a few pieces that I felt didn’t warrant being there (specifically a few photographic ads for Shiseido and one for Jack Daniels which was just a photo of Mickey Rourke and little else), there was some really original stuff on display along with some stunning Japanese package design. On the way out I pondered buying a set of 3 prints by a Japanese designer I forget the name of now. They would have looked great on my wall, but since I move out in T-minus 3 days, I want to assess my new living space before I start decking it out (actually I’m staying somewhere on a temporary basis for a month before renting another apartment - pics will follow).

Also, I’m snowed at the moment, but I’ll soon be uploading some photos of the annual fireworks display in Asakusa from Saturday night which were awesome. I was dog-tired after Saturday though: tramping around Ginza, then doing the same in Asakusa. Strictly standing room only and no mistake.

TIME magazine’s blog has a post right now, that allows you to submit questions for a forthcoming Haruki Murakami interview. Readers send in their questions, and Murakami will pick 10 from the list to answer. This is part of TIME.com’s famous “10 Questions” feature. The problem is thinking of a question good enough to put to the man himself. If I can come up with one, I’ll do it myself too.

After welching on the ‘World in Miniature’ exhibition and regretting it, I don’t want to miss the 2008 ADC Exhibition. Looks like it will be a good way to get a broad overview of the last 12 months in Japan’s world of visual communication, and there’s bound to be some inspiring graphics to oogle. Catch it at Ginza Graphic Gallery until the end of the month. Via TAB

I have to admit, I don’t understand everything (anything) on the Japanese Television News. I also don’t find many of the stories very relevant. When it comes to keeping abreast of developments in science, technology and the media I always get it on my desktop. Due to the existence of the internet, I find buying newspapers a bit wasteful, both in terms of money and trees. So, when I want to read up on Apple, or recent developments on the web, I open up msnbc.com’s Spectra Visual Newsreader. I’m no fan of the msnbc network, but I can’t help liking the Spectra Newsreader. It looks beautiful, feels futuristic, and is fun to interact with, and you learn stuff to boot. It’s now the first thing I do in the morning when I switch on my laptop.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

Last night I finally got around to watching perhaps the only film by Hayao Miyazaki I haven’t seen: Lupin III, Castle of Cagliostro. Whilst I was watching it I found lots of similarities to the amazing PSX game by IGA and his team at KCET, ‘Castlevania: The Symphony of the Night’.

Both my heroes in their own right, Miyazaki and IGA seem to have cross-pollenated. Seeing as the anime film was made in 1979 and the castlevania game in 1997, it’s obvious who borrowed from who.

The first of the similarities I noticed was the Castle of Cagliostro itself. It looks almost identical to the castle in the opening sequence of the Castlevania game, especially the tall tower with the connecting bridge and the four turrets on it’s corners. I thought this was likely to be a coincidence, but then later the film culminated in a scene where a gold and silver ring had to be taken to a clock tower in order for a secret passageway to a hidden treasure to be revealed.

This exact scenario takes place in the Castlevania game also! Both clocks also feature a goat’s head and strike 13 when the rings are used to activate the mechanism. In both the film and the game the hands of the clock come into alignment when the rings are used (in the film the Count of Cagliostro is crushed between the hour and the minute hands).

Just an interesting little known fact, I thought. I Googled it, but couldn’t find any articles about it on the web. If anyone else knows of any other similarities, please put them in the thread.

I finally found an English version of a Haruki Murakami book here in Tokyo. I was meaning to read this back when I was in the UK, but I’m glad I’ve only started now. It’s set in Tokyo (amongst other locations), so it’s nice to read a little bit about the city. So far, I’m really enjoying it. I like Murakami’s style of writing, but wonder what was lost in the translation. I’m sure Jay Rubin did an awesome job of rendering the book into English text, but an ambition of mine would be to read the original Japanese text one day.

I don’t want to destroy the planet, but I can’t cope without air-conditioning any longer. I woke up really early today, because it was so hot in my apartment. The weather widget on my computer says it’s hovering around the 30° C mark, but it feels way hotter because of the humidity (it climbed as high as 93% recently).

I heard stories about the Tokyo summers so I tried to prepare myself for the worst, but it’s still so hard to get a days work done. I asked my friend the other day if it was particularly bad at the moment due to the fact that it is the rainy season, but they told me, in fact, it would get much, much worse!

Every now and again, I do something ‘touristy’ in Tokyo. I certainly didn’t get round to see everything when I was here in 2003, and I’ve still got loads of stuff to see. So, on a steaming hot Saturday afternoon armed with a bento and my camera, I went to somewhere I’ve been wanting to go for ages: Korakuen.

A Japanese guy I know has a leopard skin handbag. Except in the west we don’t call them handbags (although that’s what they are), we call them ‘manbags’. The amazing thing is, he pulls it off. The other amazing thing is that, in Tokyo, it’s common to see a guy carrying this kind of bag, usually with both straps slung around the one shoulder.

What isn’t quite so common to see on the streets of the metropolis, is a man IN a bag being carried by another man, but when I was in Kichijouji the other Friday night, I actually saw this happen.

We came around past the entrance to the station, and there was a girl crouched over a guy who seemed to be injured or maybe even dead. There were 4 policemen stood around scouring the far side of the street in anticipation of something. More people gathered and the girl seemed like she was sobbing. Then, from behind us came another policeman carrying something made of rubber or plastic. When he arrived at the scene, the policemen tried lifting the guy off the floor by his arms, but he started freaking out, and screaming at the top of his voice. We guessed he was another casualty of over-drinking. The police were all around him and a few of the people from the crowd had started to close in to get a better view. I could only see from the shoulders up on the guy on the floor, but I saw the bag go over, get pulled up and then zipped up, so that just his head protruded from the end. Everyone stepped back, and the four policemen, followed by the fifth, carried the guy (still screaming) from the front of the station, to their police car, place him on the back seat, then drive away, sirens blaring.

The Japanese: Lords of invention.

This shot was taken as we pulled out of Shinjuku station at 12.39 on Saturday night. As you can see, it’s sea of suits, and as the train lurches they slosh up against the sides of the train and you get caught in the current. Suprisingly, it’s not annoying at all. It’s pretty hilarious, actually. The train is so ridiculously full that you can’t help but laugh (and take pictures).

FireFox 3.0 has been released, but the mozilla site has been inundated and is now down (as of the morning of Tue 1st July 2008). You can still get it from various mirrors though. I got mine from Mac Update. Get yours today, it’s well worth it. Gone now are all the things that used to irritate me about older versions. Mainly the UI and the awful form controls (buttons, radios, checkboxes, etc.). The new UI is a little twee in my opinion, but a major improvement on the old one, and the new features make it my new browser of choice over Safari. It loads pages really quickly, and the Netscape legacy image loading placeholders are finally done away with.