Archive for the Tokyo Journal Category


Day 11 and Mata Ne

April 22nd, 2005

Our last day in Tokyo.

This has been the most exhausting vacation I have ever had. I long to return to work to relax.

I wanted to go to new and different stores, so we headed out to Shinjuku where we walked a lot and managed to find stores for Donna, Kelli and Serge, but not Erica. Boo hoo. The directions I had were vague and outdated. We found the right area, but all but one store was gone. We ate at an Indian restaurant, which was pretty decent and tried to find any of the stores on my list. It was a total bust.

Random Shinjuku shots:

The one upshot of our fruitless wandering was that I found myself at “Memory Lane,” commonly known as “Piss Alley.” Last time we were in Tokyo Rica took us here for a surreal dinner. Now I know where it is.

Look behind the bus at the whatever-they-ares. I have no doubt that I can learn what they are with a bit if research…but I prefer the mystery:

I crawled back to the hotel for my daily foot rest in defeat, but determined to spend more money.

I took two last pictures of Ikebukuro while wandering around.

The Mona Lisa made of Kanji characters:

This was a sign for a club across the street from Comic Toranoana. Who wouldn’t want to go?

So, for my last night, we headed back into Ikebukuro to launch wopping frodges of money at the vile temptresses of posable gashopon figures and siren call of doujinshi. I am such a sad geek – I hope someone else thinks its funny. ^_^

(The really funny thing is that I never actually looked at anything I bought or read anything, until I got home, because I didn’t have the time.)

Dinner was a subdued affair in the hotel room. P and I wanted different things so we went to Seibu and wandered the food area. I got sushi and we shared a white chestnut and bean rice which was delicious. She ended up with a sandwich, while I cleaned up my email and responded to some of the folks who had attended the event who deserved timely answers.

Sleep never came, for various reasons.

My morning started early. I had a date with Touko_no_doriru, an absolutely LOVELY person. He had come late to the event on Saturday because of work and he made a special trip to the hotel to see me. (He has been posting great comments on this blog for a while, which you should all read! He was the one who turned me on to Hayate Cross Blade.) He came by with a great big bag of gifts which I will review one at a time here so he knows I have actually read each thing. His gifts to me are quite overwhelming, so thank you, thank you Touko_no_doriru-san!

Let me also take a moment to thank Sakuta-san for the PreCure toys and Horai-san, for the awesome doujinshi. I shall share them with everyone at Yuricon.

And thank you Masako-san for the lantern and strap, Sparkle for the t-shirt and Donna and Serge for the calendar!

Hey…I think I like this micro-fame thing. Getting presents is cool. ^_^

For the rest of the morning, we mostly packed and waited for Rica to come by, so we could give her some stuff and she could give us some stuff.

We had a very emotional and tearful exchange in our room. I think that Rica Takashima is quite possibly the most amazing person on the planet. I can say that, because we arm wrestled to see who was more amazing and I won the match (on both arms, thank you) so I get to say that she is the most amazing person ever. I will never be able to thank her enough for all she has done – but I’ll try. I’ll start by making her famous and we’ll see where we go from there.

Now I will finish this blog, and this chapter of history, at the Narita airport. We are about to board the plane to go home, but I think its fair to say that a great deal of my heart will remain here in Tokyo.

One last note: When I arrived in Japan, the cherry trees were blooming. The day I returned to NJ, the cherry trees were blooming. I’d like to pretend that there’s some deep symbolism in that. ^_^





The Day After

April 19th, 2005

What *does* one do on the day after a revolution?

If I was feeling obnoxious, I’d say, “I’m going to Disneyland,” but since there’s NO way I’d do that, the answer is – one takes a day off to recharge and reboot.

We decided that, as it was Sunday, to take in the waves of humanity at Harajuku. The last time I was there, it was New Year’s weekend and while mobbed, had a noticeable lack of youthful color. This time, on a beautiful warm April Sunday the gothlings, punklings, goth-lolitas, fruits and sundry were out in little clusters of twos and threes. No one had the guts to be cool and different by themselves – the majority of the pairs were girls, with the very occasional boy/girl pair where the guy had the distinct look of someone trying desperately to impress a girl. The guys tended to clump in hip-hop or reggae cool, and of course there were gaggles of school uniforms wandering around. Navy blue, can you believe it?

We watched a bench press contest for a while. They weren’t actually bench pressing, but they were dead lifting a fair amount of weight.

Here’s a woman deadlifting what we figured was about 45 lbs:

Here’s a foreigner being interviewed by a TV crew. We don’t know who she is, offhand, but we guess she’s an idol type:

This guy has a unique style of his own:

And this seemed to be the dominant meme, along with Hot Topics-like punk (which I adore, so I was happy.):

Goth Lolita seems to be morphing into a punk that is heavily influenced by The Nightmare Before Christmas. Since one of my best friends dresses like that all the time, she’ll be pleased to be ahead of the curve for a while.

These two girls were done up to the nines:

We wanted desperately to be thin enough to buy clothes in this heavily Takarazuka influenced store:

After a few hours of that, we were frankly wiped. P and my eyes were strobing and we were dizzy from too much visual stimulation. Donna was feeling poorly, too, so we opted to crash back at the hotel before attempting some kind of dinner plans.

There was a wedding at the hotel, below our room:

Now, a very dear friend who I have seen exactly twice in my life, had informed me that she would come to Tokyo to see me. We met four years ago when Ogata Megumi came to New York and I geeked out and joined the tour. Masako-san and I hit it off pretty quickly and we’ve been emailing sporadically since then. What an amazing person she is! Not only did she travel for hours to see someone as unworthy as myself, she graciously allowed all my ducklings to come with us. So it was that 10 of us went out for a nice intimate reunion.

This is what I have come to think of as a “random Ikebukuro moment” and things like this appeared much more often than you’d think:

Lorelei, our youngest Yuricon member and Masako-san hit it off really well:

And they both made friends with this giant panda:

We had been seeing a goofy movie poster over two slacker types on a motorcycle, dressed up in a sort of wacky faux Edo period get-up all over town, and when we hit this window exhibit and the light bulb went off, I coveted the t-shirt mightily:

The deal is, that they are Yaji and Kita, the original wandering comedic pair, only this time, they are doing a x-country on a bike, it seems. I want that shirt!

Masako-san and I discussed very profound things like squid and Marimite – and she confirmed what we all know: Saying Sei is your favorite character is like saying the sky is blue. :-)

Masako-san and myself:

The evening was spent wandering around Ikebukuro and scattering cash over random stores. Too soon Masako-san had to go, and we crawled back to the hotel and slept like the dead.





The Revolution is Nigh…Day 7

April 15th, 2005

And while it may not be televised, it does look like it will be covered by press on both sides of the ocean.

To say that this whole thing has snowballed out of control is a *major* understatement. But I get ahead of myself.

Morning came early, with the child next door slamming doors and stomping around. We slouched around the room, had sandwiches for breakfast and went down to the lobby as usual. Today I wanted to geek out and spend money, so back to Nakano and all the nifty-shifty and slighty seedy stores at the Broadway shopping arcade.

This is a gratuitous “wacky” shot of a palm tree at a gaming place we saw on the Nakano train platform:

We played some games in an arcade – here’s Erin mastering the Taiko game:

And here’s Pattie taking a rest with Ronald McDonald:

P and I both bought doujinshi, I got some manga I would have bought anyway, but this way I saved the shipping, and I got some very nice ROD The TV gashopon. I saw a set for Mai Hime but it was sold and I never saw the separates anywhere else. And no Shizuru. If I can’t have the cool psycho lesbian with the big-ass weapon, then what would the point be?

We had sandwiches for lunch – I still have NO idea what was in mine at all. It gave me a stomachache later, but the wife says it was nerves. Our feet gave up at 3 or so and we crawled back to the hotel to crash. I drank the energy drink Rica made me buy – it tasted gross, so it probably worked just fine.

We met our staff in the lobby and took what *should* in theory be a 30-minute trip, but is, in reality, more like an hour, to Shinjuku 3choume station, which is right around the corner from the Cocolo Cafe.

Staff floated in and, like some kind of stupid joke, *everytime* I tried to do introductions, we were interrupted. It got pretty funny when we were interrupted three times trying to do a kampai.

Eventually we were all in place, dinner was served and we had a really, really nice time. The two hours flew by. The lighting in the restaurant was the worst possible lighting ever for photos, so all these have a weird surreal look, which I quite like. lol

This is a picture of Catherine taking a picture of me taking a picture, so of course, my picture didn’t come out. lol

From the left: Ive, Serge, Donna, Pattie, Kelli, Takami, Rica (waving):

From left to right: Catherine, Sparkle, Trevor:

I LOVE this picture! From the left: Dillon, Mr. Sakuta, Mr. Horai, Bruce. Aren’t they adorable?

The inevitable Takami and Rica eating picture:

And, at last, proof that I was really here and that I really am not photogenic. From the left: Takami, Rica and myself:

I think the energy drink really did work, but since we’re going to have such a long day, we’re back in the room, relaxing and martialing our energy for tomorrow.

Special snaps for Rica Takashima, who has worked *way* too hard on this and is doing an amazing job.

In the last few days, we’ve gotten some new guests, including Mr. Ito Bungaku, who originally coined the phrase yurizoku (“lily tribe”) almost 40 years ago. I think that this event is a tribute to him, and to Yoshiya Nobuko. I’d like to think that she’s with us in spirit.

Don’t expect updates tomorrow, kids – it’ll be a looooong day, ending in hours and hours of karaoke. Maybe I’ll be able to pull myself together for an entry on Sunday, but I promise nothing. ;-)





Yuri Revolution, Day 6, Part 2

April 15th, 2005

Here’s the very few pictures I took yesterday.

This is the entrance to the Hanazono shrine. I’m exeptionally fond of this shrine, as it’s tucked into an amazingly busy corner of Shinjuku, and because it features prominently in my fave girl-gang manga Hana no Asuka-gumi.

Here’s the shrine itself. Frankly, if it comes down to shrines and temples versus anime stuff, I’d take the shrines. One of my favorite things about Japan are the shrine and temple complexes. I like being in a country where Christianity isn’t the dominant meme.

Last night a bunch of us went to Nakano to try and get to Mandarake (a sprawling series of anime stuff stores) but dinner took so long that the stores were closed by the time we got done. P asked me to take this picture of these “charming” candy creatures with the comment, “It’s amazing what you can do with gumdrops these days.”

It’s another beautiful day out, and I’m really in the mood to get geeky, so I think that we will try to get to Mandarake today and make it an all-day-er.

Tonight is the staff dinner at Cocolo Cafe, so I will get to meet all of our Japanese staff for tomorrow! Oh my god…is the event really tomorrow?





Yuri Revolution Day 6, Part 1

April 14th, 2005

At last my internal clock has reset itself correctly! Hurrah! I feel as close to human as possible. And it’s gorgeous out, the Hanazono Shrine is really cool and the meeting with Ichijinsha went really well.

The scoop is, Yuri Shimai will be back, hopefully in July. So, yay for yuri fans everywhere! The editors, Nakamura-san and Umezawa-san, were exceedingly nice people, and the meeting couldn’t have gone better, really. I look forward to developing a relationship with Ichijinsha to bring good yuri manga to the English-speaking world. :-)

I feel like we turned a major corner today. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe that the meeting went so well, but for a short moment, I am no longer nervous about Yuricon on Saturday. The translation issue may be awkward, but we’ll be okay. I believe that. (Partially because I finally gave the Hanazono Shrine the money I promised it.)

There are so many things I haven’t written about at all, because I’ve been so tired and unmotivated. The hotel is packed with a variety of people…everyday the lobby looks like the UN is convening. This is a little strange for Tokyo, although at home I’d hardly notice. (Actually, this time I’ve seen alot more foreigners in Tokyo, everywhere. So obviously, last time it was the holiday – everyone was gone home, wherever that was.) The other morning, two fabric salesmen had emptied their sample cases in the lobby and were re-arranging them. Yesterday, there was a ton of luggage in that space, and this morning it was two tables, with old guys sitting and answering questions. You just never know what you’re going to find.

Pattie and the gang are off hunting kitsune (fox) shrines and taking in Harajuku (goth lolita capital of the world) so I’m just sitting around in the room waiting for them, listening to what sounds awfully like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from my window. It’s probably the yakiimo (baked sweet potato) truck outside. LOL Yes…definitely the yakiimo guy. The wind shifted and I can hear the words now.

In Ikebukuro there are two trucks the ride around with sirens and voices yelling at us. One has a man’s voice – I’m sure it’s some right-wing group exhorting us to expel foreigners or something. The woman’s voice truck keeps repeating a phone number over and over. They are both really annoying. (In fact, as I am typing this, the woman’s voice truck just went by….)

One thing I keep wanting to mention is how REALLY nice and helpful people have been so far. The maps rarely have landmarks I can use (or even *find* half the time) and there’s so little orientation that I’ve been asking alot of metro station guards and koban box policemen for directions – and they’ve all been really nice and helpful. It sounds like a stupid thing, but everytime I’ve ever asked a NYC cop for directions, they’ve acted like I was wasting their time – and then they gave me bad directions to boot, because none of them actually live in the city. So yay for the Metro guys and the Koban policemen! (And no – they don’t speak English, but I can say “Which way is whatever-it-is?” and I know right from left. LOL

And on the way to the Takarazuka theater, some random man stopped and asked in English if we needed help. It just proves once again that that old chestnut about cities being unfriendly is wrong. I know plenty of people are helpful in NYC – I know I help people who are lost there all the time. So, pfft on people who think cities are unfriendly.

Okay…I have a Nero Wolfe novel waiting for me. I’ll catch up again later!