Tokyo Blog

I was watching TV last night, and I saw an advert for a new Nintendo DS RPG set in Tokyo. It’s great because the locations seem to be accurate. I recognised the Tokyu Hands store in Shibuya in one of the sections, plus you’ve got combinis in there, etc. Plus, of course, the artwork looks nice. It features regular Tokyoites taking on demons and monsters in the streets of Tokyo – looks like it might be a good game. I’m buying my DSi on Monday. More to follow…

UPDATE: I still haven’t committed to buying my DSi. I spent a fortune in Harajuku and Ginza on Monday, so I’m reluctant to fork out for one.

Last night I went to a sushi and sashimi restaurant under the guidance of my fish expert friend Take-san. Whilst there I further expanded my experience of strange and unusual raw things: raw fugu (blowfish – which if you prepare incorrectly causes asphyxiation then death), raw whale meat, raw horse (again), and a fish caught from a huge fish tank that I was sitting right next to, sliced and served so quickly that it was still moving when it reached our table. Now that’s what you call fresh!

This is the first in a series of ‘programmes’ on Tokyo Story that will feature at irregular intervals from now on. The series will explore the many different types of people who live in the city. This, in addition to the series also recently started on Japanese Beer!

So, the first character I’ll introduce is a guy (or girl) who advertises their shop by standing outside and shouting about it. I’ve decided to call this person a Shop Shouter. Their shifts can last a long time, but they continue to yell at the passing public in the hope of drawing attention to a special offer, or campaign as the Japanese call it – or just to the shop in general, and it works. After checking out this guy, I clocked a pair of newly released Nike Terminator hi-tops and had to take a closer inspection! I’ve seen Shop Shouters in almost every major shopping district in Tokyo. The shouters of Harajuku are particularly noteworthy as they tend to wear traditional Japanese Happi (I guess you’d call it a smock, or like a loose jacket of thin material) with vibrant designs. These guys are professionals. Sometimes they have megaphones, sometimes not, but they compete to outdo each other, welcoming customers before they’ve even entered the shop with drawn-out screams of irasshaimase (welcome). Sometimes, if it’s late in the day, their voices are completely worn out and it’s painful to hear them trying to continue on shouting. If you look, the guys in this picture are balancing on stepladders with impressive stability.

Intelligence: 4
Stamina: 7
Speed: 5
Resistance to Alcohol: 4
Sleeping Ability: 4
Combat Skill: 3
Voice Volume: 8
Magic Points: 2
Gold: 2

I’ve been walking past this place for months and I wanted to take a picture of it. It’s a very small, old bookstore, based in one of the oldest buildings in the area. An old woman clad in kimono tends the shop which is open onto the street. A small oil burner keeps the place from getting too cold in the winter months and if you do go inside you can find piles of books everywhere you look. They all look old or used, and in places the shelves have broken and the rows have collapsed down on one another. I can’t read the books at all, but I like going in and looking at the retro covers with the funny typefaces – much to the bemusement of the woman who watches me from the back. I should buy a load just to use to decorate my bookshelves, you can get one for as cheap as ¥100 (about 70p or $1).

I’ve been building these paper birds recently. Thought I’d share the link. The idea was thought up by Tokyo-based illustrator and designer, Josh McKible. The idea is that other designers and artists are invited to design onto the nani? bird template, the results of which are then distributed via the website for you to cut, fold and glue for free. Why not decorate your workspace/bedroom/dojo with a few?!

This is what it looks like as you exit Inaricho Sta. at around 5.30am after staying up all night in Shibuya. I’d forgotten I’d taken this picture. I just found it in my camera. The wind is pretty strong in Tokyo at the moment, and it blows into the entrances and exits of the metro stations. As your walking out feeling delicate after not sleeping, or having just woken up after half-an-hour’s sleep on the train, it chills you to the bone. I’ve done a lot of not-sleeping recently, and I’ve also got into the habit of sleeping on trains in the early hours of the morning and riding past my station, out into the suburbs and beyond.

Something you designers might find useful is the Colour Lovers site, full of colour schemes and patterns. I use it a lot for inspiration, but the actual site is pretty well formed in itself. The pattern you can see in the picture is Subtraction by annajak.

There’s a special place in my heart for the old Macs – I used to use Apple computers throughout university, back in 1996, and the boxes were still beige and the logo multi-coloured even then. Well, Macs have come a long way since, but the retro Apple look is ever popular – so one enthusiast (or team of enthusiasts, I’m not sure) has created this! It looks antiquated but it’s running Mac OS X Tiger! That must have been tricky.

I love these business cards offered by Nintendo here in japan. You get your Mii printed alongside your personal details including your friend code, and a 1UP mushroom, from looking at the picture! This service is offered as part of Nintendo’s new Digital Camera Print Channel bought about through a collaboration with Fujifilm.

If this is another thing that gets you down because it’s only available in Japan, don’t worry! Although it hasn’t been officially announced, the service should be coming to the United States and Europe sometime very soon. Look out for it on a Wii near you.

Van Man’s Song from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

This is a recording of the song the driver of this small van sings as he slowly crawls around my neighbourhood. I think he’s selling hot Japanese potatoes, but I’m not sure. I can’t understand the lyrics.

OK, another beer review now. This time I’m drinking a can of Kirin Strong Seven, a newly released beer from one of Japan’s biggest brewers. It gets its name from the fact that the alcohol percentage by volume for this beer is, predictably, 7%. The taste is quite unusual. I was expecting it to be sweet, like strong beer usually is, but it wasn’t. It tasted a bit artificial to be honest so I didn’t particularly rate this beer very highly compared to the other great beer available in Japan. The advertising for this beer features Hideaki Ito, a fairly rugged and macho individual frowning a lot and looking pissed off, which will no doubt appeal to the overworked salaryman and the twenty-something down-and-outers alike. The beautifully worded catch copy on the front of the can reads, ‘This hard and clear taste brings you the great feeling’. Actually, I have the feeling that this isn’t real beer at all but rather, beer’s evil Japanese impersonator ‘happoshu’. More about that stuff later…

I was beside myself with joy today when I stumbled across the PixelJam site. They make games that are ‘neo-retro’. A term that well describes their aesthetic sensibilities. The game I played just now was Gama Bros. and it’s superb! The sound FX and background music are especially 8-bit and some of the ideas they’ve put into the games are so good. They have other games on there, and also one of the guys from PixelJam had the idea of photographing the results of incorrectly inserting Atari 2600 cartridges and posted them to a microsite called sub2600.

The cool Japanese car manufacturer Scion has teamed-up with Giant Robot and Japanese paper artist Shin Tanaka to create these awesome paper models. If you can grab yourself a copy of Giant Robot magazine, you can make one of your own with scissors / scalpel and glue. I’m on the hunt for one!

If any fellow Tokyoites know where we can grab a copy of Giant Robot magazine, let everybody know in the comments thread!

Did you know there was such thing as a U.F.O Catcher expert? Well, apparently there is, and in these videos via Japan Probe, they show some special techniques in acquiring prizes from these usually frustrating video arcade attractions! I thought it would be relevant as I mentioned the U.F.O. catchers in my recent post about my hunt for Street Fighter IV in the game centres of Akihabara.

A musical interlude for you now. Usually Mùm videos aren’t much chop, and this one is no exception, but stop and listen to this song for a minute. I’ve been listening to the album Finally We Are No One on my headphones whilst moving around Tokyo. It’s a good soundtrack for winter.