Tokyo Blog

Summer Sonic takes place this year in Tokyo, and on the bill is none other than my childhood hero Aphex Twin. I still think he’s one of the most enigmatic and uncompromising creatives in modern history. He never made anything for his fans or critics, only for himself, and thus his sound is pretty inaccessible, but I listen to it from time to time. Helps me think.

Tickets are a rip-off as usual, but if you want to see a truly rare performance from an artist responsible for shaping electronic music as we know it, break out your wallet.

This is almost too cool to even think about: Bandai Namco are building a LIFE-SIZE Gundam robot in Shiokaze park, Odaba to celebrate the 30th aniversary of the anime franchise! It stands at a huge 59 feet tall, emits light from various points on its body, moves its head, etc. They’re done working on the legs, and now the torso and arms are being added ready for the beginning of July. It will stand for two months before it’s taken down again, but then what are they going to do with it? The robot is the original RX-78-2 Gundam from the first anime series, aired in 1979.

It looks a little bit like a Shinkansen train, but it’s not quite as fast. It will do 99mph and get you to Narita airport from Tokyo in just 36 minutes. And when the Japanese say 36 minutes, they mean 36 minutes. Exactly. You won’t be able to ride it until sometime in 2010, but it’s going to make a lot of people’s lives a lot easier. The train is designed by Kansai Yamamoto, a leading Japanese fashion designer. See the videos and download the wallpaper at the official site. Information courtesy of Shibuya246’s tweet.

6955 // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

This musical interlude is from an old 6955 (Jason DeGroot of Polytron) performance. It’s a remixed version of the title theme for the long-awaited indy game title Fez. Jason used to be based in Tokyo and here he’s wearing a King of Games hoodie he must have picked up here - featuring Zelda.

A long time ago toilets in Japan were very different to how they are today. I went into Lawsons convenience store in Yokohama once, and used one of the traditional style toilets, now something of a rarity. It was as if someone had embedded a urinal in the floor instead of mounting it on the wall. This is probably not as bad as it sounds if you’re wearing a yukata, but if you’re wearing trousers, it’s just not a good system. Before you know it your keys and mobile phone are out of your pocket and on the floor (if you’re lucky). I struggled through OK by hanging onto the pipe in front of me. Things have since improved though. Driven by the Japanese love for labour-saving devices and technological mod-cons, and possibly an obsession with hygiene, toilets made a quantum leap to what they commonly are today. Now, urinals know when they’re in use, and flush themselves after you’ve finished. Toilet seats are heated, and there are lots of additional features. Sometimes, the toilet will have a small extractor fan somewhere under the seat, and you can make use of a wash feature followed by a dry feature, with a second wash option especially designed for women called bidet. All that remains to do now is to pluck up the courage to actually use these additional features.

The Japanese beer series continues with a new Sapporo breweries offering that I picked up from the local 7/11. It had been a busy day working on a hot, humid day, so I wanted something refreshing and beer-based to take the edge off the wired feeling that comes from excessive hours in front of a computer display. Once the raster burn had faded from my retinas I checked the catch copy on the front of the can, and what a beauty!

“The superb aroma of Sapporo Baisen is created by a unique malt roasting process. This roasted malt is blended with pale malt for a flavor experience so thrilling it even smells delicious.”

Genius strap-lines aside, the flavour is pretty much what you’d expect from any Japanese beer. It’s strong, at 5%, and crisp, much like usual lager beer. I couldn’t taste any distinctive differences to usual Sapporo beer, except it was possibly more bitter than usual, and lacked the usual sweetness I’m accustomed to when drinking lager. I couldn’t decide the whole time whether this was a good thing or not.

Threadless have been making amazing T-Shirts for ages now. I even had a go at designing one myself, but it didn’t get printed! Now they’ve teamed up with Twitter to create a new line, in which people’s tweets get printed onto T-Shirts based on the number of votes they get from users. This news coincides with my own decision to finally join Twitter. I was totally against it for the longest time but pressure from peers has made me buckle. You can follow me: Tokyo Blog on Twitter. This blog is where the real meat will be found, but if you care about what I’m having for lunch or what trainers I’m wearing on that particular day…

Witness the pure genius which is the Japanese Smoking Manners sign campaign. Littering with cigarette butts is a real no-no here, and so it should be. Smoking whilst walking down the street is prohibited in Japan, as you will see from the gallery, courtesy of combinibento. What a find. Thanks to Mike. The picture above is a super rare one, taken at Marines Stadium, home of Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team.

Gashapon are small toys or novelties dispensed from vending machines here in Japan. They usually pop out in plastic ‘eggs’ and it’s completely random as to which one you’ll end up getting. Me and Mike piled numerous yen into a Gasha in Akihabara in order to get our hands on these mario trinkets. We got blocks, ghosts and shells in abundance, but didn’t get any power-up mushrooms or drain pipes. There’s no Mario in the collection by the way, which I thought was weird, but I’m happy just to get these to use as ornaments. They also double up as mini money boxes - useful for all the un-spendable ¥5’s and ¥1’s cluttering up my jeans.

When in Shinjuku the other day, I spotted this turtle climbing the wall of a building. I thought it was so well painted that I should get a picture of it. The kanji character on the turtle’s back says 勝 (katsu) which means win. If you look closely, there are other, smaller turtles scaling the building, as if climbing a hill. So I think the meaning of the character relates to some determination to achieve - possibly that of the company housed in the building.

I picked up these two beauties the other day. The orange one is the Sobu Line watch and the other is for the Yamanote Line. They only cost ¥500 each, and show a list of the station names along the length of the strap. They’re pretty bad quality as they’re so cheap, but I’ve been looking for a brightly coloured plastic watch for ages and being able to check the stations on the JR lines and see the time simultaneously can’t be bad.

I’ve seen these all over Tokyo. Shibuya, Akihabara, Harajuku, Naka-Meguro and now this one, in a grungy underpass in the heart of Shinjuku. I’d heard about the mystery of BNE, but had never bothered to look into it properly, so I did a little research. It seems that the phenomenon is indeed worldwide, and the artist, whoever he/she maybe has great taste in cities. So far these stickers, and other BNE works, have been spotted in Hong Kong, San Fransisco, New York, Kuala-Lumpur and of course Tokyo and more besides (including London, no doubt - in fact I think I saw some on my last visit home on New Year’s). Authorities are furious, but mostly everyone else is plain curious: who is the mystery bomber? A news article from ABC investigates.

A printing company somewhere on the planet, responsible for running these off, must know the answer? Leave your own insights in the thread.

If you don’t want to die from ramen abuse, I suggest switching to soba. This place in Ginza is one of my regular haunts. It’s cheap, fast and actually tastes pretty good. The buckwheat noodles are served in a soy-based soup with spring onions and Japanese pickles. In winter the soup is hot, and I add lots tougarashi shichimi (7 flavour chilli seasoning), eat the noodles then drink the soup. Now that the weather has become hot and humid, I usually get them cold, with less soup, and add lots of wasabi. It’s a healthy lunch, and you can get a dinner set for around ¥500.

The Blue Hearts bursting out of the Shinjuku live houses and onto prime time TV in the 1980’s. I especially like the VHS tape glitches before they play.

These monks walk very slowly, exercising, or showcasing, their mastery of the zen principle of self control. Every next step is preceded by a quiet sounding of the small bell they carry in their right hand, the bowl in which they collect contributions gripped in their left. I’ve never seen anyone actually give a contribution to these buddhist monks. When I saw this one, I wanted to give him some money, but as so often in Tokyo, I found myself worrying about misunderstanding something and causing offense (how much do you give a takahatsu begging monk anyway?).

Intelligence: 8
Stamina: 7
Speed: 1
Resistance to Alcohol: 1
Sleeping Ability: 6
Combat Skill: 1
Voice Volume: 1
Magic Points: 9
Gold: 2