Tokyo Blog

5 O’clock Chimes of Kotobuki from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

Since I previously showed you the 5 o’clock chimes of Takanawa in all their ambient glory, I thought I’d show you the more oriental, and slightly spiritual sounds of the 5 o’clock chimes of Kotobuki, my new area in Tokyo. I think this will be a recurring feature: whenever I move to a new neighbourhood, I’ll upload a recording of the 5 o’clock chimes every time. Tokyo is pretty musical like that. Did you know that the JR line stations in Tokyo each have their own distinctive jingle to subliminally inform their passengers when it’s time to wake up / get off?

The 5 O’clock Chimes of Takanawa from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

I shot this footage from the balcony of my apartment so I could capture the strange music I’ve been hearing every evening at 5 o’clock. When I’ve been walking in my neighbourhood, I’ve been looking up under the eaves of public buildings and at the pylons and powerlines, trying to work out where it comes from, but I can’t find the source. So everyday at the same time, you get this haunting melody drifting through the cold night air. Today it chimes out my last evening in the neighbourhood of Takanawa, Shinagawa before I move on to Kuramae near Asakusa tomorrow.

Japanese Salaryman - Virtuoso Performance in the Key of Awesome from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

A Japanese Salaryman, wound up and overworked, unleashes a fireball of musical self-expression on a Friday night in Tokyo. I came to the conclusion that he is by far the coolest salaryman I’ve ever seen: he fell asleep on his keyboard during the interlude.

If you are on facebook, allow me to direct you to the group Nobody Sleeps Like the Japanese Do. For foreigners in Tokyo, it’s common knowledge the Japanese people can and do sleep anywhere and everywhere. Here is photographic proof of just how awesome the Japanese ability to kip actually is. I was amazed when I first arrived here. I came to the conclusion that they don’t get enough sleep during the night due to work or staying up late after work, and so they supplement their sleep with power-naps throughout the day. It should be noted that in some cases, the people in these photos are just drunk.

Here you can see the jewel-encrusted items on sale at Shibuya 109, a large department store consisting of several floors of fashion and accessories aimed at ‘Shibuya boys’ and ‘Shibuya girls’. I can’t remember how much the bike cost, but it was A LOT. Ker-ching.

Here we have a shot of a sign taken in Tokyo, incouraging commuters to take part in the Japanese tradition of bumping into each other. There are many examples of the bad use of English in warning signs and public information blurbs in Japan, all of which seem hilarious to English speakers! I feel a series coming on!

Picture taken by my good friend Trent McBride. Thanks Trent!

It wasn’t so long ago now that I went against my own morals in the pursuit of expanding my horizons. I ate horse. Raw.

I feel bad about it, because I thought humans and horses had come to some sort of an arrangement, “I’ll let you ride me, and I’ll pull stuff around for you, providing you don’t eat me”. In Japan, they call a dish consisting of raw horsemeat, ‘Basashii’. Actually, I’d already eaten canned horse when I was in Kusatsu in Gunma prefecture, but eating it raw turned my stomach a bit. The flavour was OK, a little bit gamey with a taste of iron, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it was I was eating. The thing that made me eat it was the prospect of being able to say I’d eaten raw horse to my friends and family back home. I don’t think it’s widely known that the Japanese eat horses. Next time someone offers it to me, I’m going to have to say “nay”.

Finally, I’ve uploaded the videos of the Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri (Fireworks Festival). I had forgotten about them and left them languishing in iPhoto. These should give folks a good idea of what it’s like at the Summer festivals in Tokyo. Really enjoyable. You can still check out the photoset at flickr too, if you haven’t already.

I’ll embed the vids here too, so it’s easier for everyone.

Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

One thing I didn’t know about before coming to Japan, was just how many appliances, cars etc. are Japan only. The coolest of the bunch has to be the elongated bikes the bosouzoku wannabes and cool couples roll around on. I’ve managed to get a few pictures of bikes like these over the last few weeks.

You often see tiny girls in Shibuya tearing down side streets on bikes like this. It’s pretty amazing the way they handle them.

They’re definitely much larger than anything of this kind in the UK, and they’re often very loud, and sound maybe like some of them are extremely powerful, with a deep, slow-revving engine noise. Of course, people supe them up to no end, attching neons, mirrors and additional speakers, etc.

Actually, I really want one. I don’t have a Japanese driving license at the moment, but once I’ve been here a little longer, I’ve got to make it happen!

I mean, how cool is this red one, with someone’s tag scrawled on the front wing? Slightly reminiscent of Akira I would say. The whole fashion surrounding these bikes relates to the impression I get that somehow, Tokyo and motorbikes are inextricably linked.

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.)

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.

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.

When I arrived in Tokyo, not so long ago, one of the things I noticed were whole shops dedicated to the sale of small bottles, the contents of which I wasn’t sure about. Whilst watching TV, I noticed the ads that were showing this stuff, and realised that they’re somewhere between a herbal remedy and an energy drink. The bottles they come in are often made of brown glass, which gives them the appearance of a bottle of medicine (which I’m sure is intentional). They are targeted mainly at the salaryman, banking on the fact that these guys will be burned out, stressed out and in need of something to give them a ‘boost’, or just keep them alive for one more working day. They normally contain a mix of vitamins and traditional chinese herbal supplements, but also sometimes contain such things as viper tincture or other exotic extracts believed to increase virility. You can get one variety that’s a massive hit of garlic, and another which is supposed to enable you to consume more alcohol. I can’t read everything written on the bottles, but I fully intend to buy some for experimentation. I’ve never tried having 4000 times the RDA of a vitamin before, and really want to see what happens.

This is possibly akin to the local police department’s tendency to have cute manga-styled creatures as their mascots, but I absolutely love any country where this is possible. In a nutshell, a cat named Tama that hung around the station a lot was appointed stationmaster of Kishi Station in Wakayama Prefecture. After a period of loyal service the railway rewarded the cat with a new office, complete with a ventilation fan and a toilet, and promoted the cat to division chief-level. In a statement, the railway said it recognised the efforts (their words) of the 8-year-old feline and promptly moved the cat up the ranks.

I’m starting to believe that I too can get a job over here now. After all, mine and Tama’s Japanese comprehension are probably on a similar level.

Via Metropolis Mag

I didn’t realise! Tokyo has it’s own statue of liberty! It doesn’t seem to be part of any ‘world in miniature’ kind of installation, which makes it’s existence on a raised platform in Odaiba especially weird. Talking about Odaiba, did you know the manmade island of Odaiba is built on a mountain of Tokyo household rubbish?