Tokyo Blog, Tokyo Story

The Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line is due to start June 14 this year, and the advertising campaign to alert underground passengers in Tokyo has started. The posters I’ve seen so far have been pretty minimal, and inspiration definitely seems to have come from the London Underground identity. More info on the line here. Is it just me though, or is there something rude looking about the combination of iconography, typography and colour in the top left corner of the above poster?

Now that the weather is improving (15 deg C today), and because of the Shibuya allnighters I’ve been doing, and partly due to the nature of the work I do (a lot of sitting and not much else), I’ve decided to buy some trainers and go running in Ueno Park. I really struggled to get trainers in my size (I’m only a 10, but sizes rarely go up as far as a UK 9 over here), and so I ended up buying the more expensive ones at about ¥8800. They do look pretty cool though! And also, check out the free blue trainer bag I got with them in the pic.

I’ve probably only ridden my bike about a dozen times, but I’ve been stopped by the police twice already in the space of about 2 weeks! They pull you over and talk politely before radioing in your bicycle’s registration number (most bikes have registration marks over here, just like cars do). Both times I was stopped by a policeman on foot, they carry their radio equipment around their necks. To begin with I thought this was due to a prejudice towards foreigners, stemming from an alledged culture of belief in Japan that they are responsible for much of the crime in the country, but having thought about it, the first time I was stopped I don’t think the policeman had had a very good look at me, because he addressed me very much like a native with a torrent of polite but colloquial Japanese. I suppose with my dark hair which has grown pretty long now, I can kind of blend in. From a distance. At night. If I’m kneeling down.

I was riding my bike to Asakusa the other day, when I passed the Japanese super-hero Ultraman and a large-scale Knocking Frog by Bandai on the side of the street. Needless to say, I pulled over and took a picture. I still don’t know what they were doing there.

I’ve been indoors working a lot recently, so I decided I would take time out to visit another of the places on my list: the shopping and art complex, Tokyo Midtown. I’d already heard about the place before, so I kind of knew what to expect. The idea behind Tokyo Midtown seems to be sophisticated shopping with an emphasis on art and design. The art and design angle is represented throughout the site, but mainly by 21_21 Design Sight, and the Suntory Museum of Art. I visited 21_21 Design Sight which is an amazing building designed by architect Tadao Ando. I put some photos up to look at on flickr for Tokyo Midtown and just a few for 21_21 Design Sight (photography was not allowed in the building, and although I tried to shoot a few sneaky ones, they came out all blurred).

I was gutted that the Playstation 3 seemed to be doing so badly, and that few developers where inclined to develop games for the system. For this reason, I was pretty sure I wasn’t ever going to buy one. I had my heart set on a Nintendo Wii. They’re cheaper, and it would be cool to have one round the flat for people to mess around on. It seems like a console that best fits the style of game found in Tokyo Video Arcades; lots of mini games with quirky graphics, focussed on group gameplay.

Tonight I saw an advert on TV that showed a new game just out in Japan: ‘Yakuza: Kenzan!’, and it looks like the kind of game I used to love playing on the Playstation 2. I used to have ‘Sword of the Samurai’ (UK title), known as ‘Kengo 2: Legacy of the Blade’ in Japan, which was totally sweet. This new game looks to be much the same, although I understood little of the voice over. It seems like a Samurai simulator with lots of head to head battles, but now taking advantage of the PS3′s advanced graphics capabilities. I won’t be getting a PS3 until they come down in price a bit more, but for my friends who already have one (Adam, you listening?), keep your eyes peeled for the UK release!

This has been all over Tokyo TV recently – it’s the new bullet train by JR rail called ‘Nozomi’. The advertisement only mentions the route between Tokyo and Osaka, but maybe it runs on other routes as well. Whatever, it looks cool.

I’ve found something new that Tokyo is good for: hair cuts. I got a cut yesterday in up-market Ginza at a Tony & Guy owned salon, and I was blown away by what the guy did for my barnet. Normally, it’s a bit uncontrollable, and so heavily doused in hair gunk, but after Torisu-san finished sorting it out for me, it was totally different to how it had ever been before. All the haircuts I’ve ever had in the UK have been no good, and I always thought it was because my hair was naturally bad and hard to cut, but it was just because they were crap at hairdressing! Nice one, Torisu.

This is bound to be a total disappointment when it finally comes out in 2009, but Warner Brothers have made it official; They will make a live action version of Akira, and they’re going to adapt it from the original manga graphic novel, not from the anime. Actually they’re going to span the story over two films, but production starts right away. The reason I’m not as positive as I could be about this news is the appointment of a fledgeling filmmaker and a debuting screenwriter. The director will be Ruairi Robinson who’s most recent short film you can watch on YouTube or on his website. Personally, I wasn’t keen on the short film. I’m measuring it by the Chris Cunningham yardstick, so this may be a harsh review, but see for yourself. The other very worrying rumour that’s flying about, is that the film might be set in America in a so-called ‘New Manhattan’ instead of the infinitely cooler ‘Neo-Tokyo’. Say it aint so! I hope the film proves me wrong because it would be a great thing to see at the cinema in 2009.

If you want to drink any beer you can think of, watch English Premiership Football, and spend all your yen, get down to the world’s most stocked, and most expensive beer bar. It’s in Ebisu, opposite the Yoshinoya outside the metro station in the direction of Daikanyama. I had a great laugh with a Japanese couple in there, and met some guy from Bristol, with whom I went down the road to Unit, to catch N-dub and High Contrast live sets at Drum n’ Bass Dubstep Wars. This is a new series of music events I think, with more to come from DJ Die and some other dubstep selector next month. Won’t be going to that one though, I’m all spent out for this months r’n'r budget.

This is a photo of a new building in my neighbourhood, that some construction workers have been building. It’s taken them about a month to finish it. The whole thing. It’s awesome how fast they just built it. It looks pretty standard for Tokyo, as far as I can tell. I’m just glad they’ve finished it, they were making a load of noise on site, from about 6am onwards!

I came to Laforet once before and the place was filled with teenagers rifling through the racks of clothes and the place was in a frenzy. Shop employees were stood outside their respective stores on soapboxes shouting through megaphones or rolled up magazines “Irashiaimaseeeee!”, which means ‘welcome’, roughly. They wore baggy smocks over their ordinary clothes, sporting Japanese prints and emblems, kanji and patterns. The place was mostly school girls, actually, dressed in the classic sailor school uniform and doing the most damage at the tables of clothing in the womens clothes shops.

I didn’t have my camera with me last time, so I came again hoping to shoot some video of a typical afternoon at Laforet, but it was totally different this time. No shouting, no chaos, and not many shoppers, even. But I came across these paintings in the ground floor lobby (referred to as the 1st floor in Japan), by an artist called Dominique Dubien. They mostly consisted of small paintings on canvas of dogs, faces, small characters with iconography of hearts, planets and the like, all rendered in vivid colours. So, it’s sounding pretty ‘pop’ from the outset. I took some photos, one of which you can see in this post. I looked on Dominique Dubien’s website, and most of his work is pretty good, I liked the paintings.

I can’t say that I’m that keen on this series, or this piece of work (if it is supposed to stand as one piece of work in it’s own right, I couldn’t read the Japanese on the plaque next to the exhibit). Not because it’s not enjoyable to look at, it is pretty cool, but it reminds of how much bullshit creative work there is in Tokyo. Some rave about it in blogs or in articles on the city. I cannot stand the conceited behaviour of the artists or their plaudits. There’s definitely a self-satisfied cross section of the Tokyo hipster fraternity who hang out at certain spots in town, and visit all the galleries (of which there are many in Tokyo). Some of the work is good, some falls into the category of self-promotion, or a fake kind of artwork, about which everyone feels obliged to make absurd allusions about the intentions of the artist. It’s the same in countries all over the world, but right now I’m in Tokyo, so that’s all I can really report on right now, first hand.

I intend to go to galleries (especially the graphic design ones), and I expect to have to pass through many an event space or screening room in order to complete my tour, but I will always be honest about my feelings on the work there, if I happen to write them on the pages of this website.

This is an e-commerce site I starting building freelance about a year ago, but it was put on hold for a time. It’s now up and running, so if you want, go and have a look at Kelly’s Crystal Shop. I thought I’d put a link on here because it saves me having to submit it to all the search engines (the spiders will find the site from the link on this page). It sells incense, oils, crystals, fossils and many different types of gifts. Perhaps if this is your thing, you could buy something from the shop? You can pay using PayPal or major credit cards.

Japan has some funny names for confectionery and soft drinks. I’m sure for people who have been over here for any amount of time, the novelty has worn off. Not for me.

A: I’m shooting down the combini, want anything getting?
B: Yeh, actually. Get me some ‘Country Ma’am’, ‘Crunky Pop Joy’, and a bottle of ‘Calpis’.
A: They don’t have ‘Calpis’ at this one.
B: Dammit. OK, get me a bottle of ‘Sweat’.

Doosh! Found Super Potato as planned. It’s amazing, but if you want to pick up some archaic silicon, you’d better be packing a full wallet (Japan, being a cash culture, is a place where shops don’t often accept credit cards). That said, you can just as easily treat it like a museum. They have every console I can remember with a seemingly hand-picked selection of all the best and rarest games for them. They also stock a massive range of game soundtracks, including 8-bit, that they play in the shop, and broadcast outside the shop to guide you in. My new favourite hangout though is up on the top floor. A smokey room full of arcade machines, cocktail tables, a life-sized model of Snake from Metal Gear Solid, and some one-armed bandits. The machines are by Tecmo, and alow you to select any game from the extensive library stored within. A bit like MAME, I guess. Thinking about it, they probably are using MAME; I can’t see how else those machines could work. It was also funny how the natives watched my screen out of the corners of their eyes as I started to play X-Men vs Street Fighter, and were shocked when I started stringing combos up. Didn’t they know we imported this stuff into England since the 70′s? As I remember it, Cornwall was where I played the most arcade machines. Back then I didn’t realise that all the good stuff came from Japan.