6 posts tagged “anime”
I came across Bike Works! which is a non-profit helping Seattle kids earn free bicycles through bicycle repair programs (among other things). There was a link from their web site to a video that the local public broadcasting station KCTS put together describing their programs. Their link was broken and so I surfed on over to the actual KCTS web site and took a look at their streaming video selection, specifically for KCTS Connects.
For the curious, here's the video of Bike Works which I have downloaded and uploaded again. (To download I was forced to upgrade Real Player. Which even post update at version 11 is still a piece of shit: The audio often cuts out and video playback causes my screen to blank out a couple of times.)
... upload failed, all I have is a link.
Paging down through about 800+ clips to find clip 435, I noticed a familiar name in the list: John Keister. He used to host Almost Live! before it was canceled in 1999. Almost Live! was a local Seattle comedy show preceding Saturday Night Live, which I ended up watching, actually I most often taped the program, using the VCR for at my Dad's place, and watched it the following day. Anyway, John Keister's still out there on T.V., on PBS. From the numerous clips I've watched he offers personal commentary on local and national political issues in sometimes a humorous vein. And though obviously still his bald self he looks a bit pudgy and haggard; he's obviously older than last time I saw him.
In some ways I hate the way media's gone totally international. Where's the local television personalities I used to see? I'm to blame, watching more anime, movies, and even YouTube than network television.
I came across a web page for Bike Works!, a non-profit helping Seattle kids earn free bicycles through bicycle repair programs (among other things). There was a link from their web site to a video that the local public broadcasting station KCTS put together describing their programs. Their link was broken and so I surfed on over to the actual KCTS web site and took a look at their streaming video selection, specifically for KCTS Connects.
For the curious, here's the video of Bike Works which I have downloaded and uploaded again. (To download I was forced to upgrade Real Player. Which even post update at version 11 is still a piece of shit: The audio often cuts out and video playback causes my screen to blank out a couple of times.)
... upload failed, all I have is a link.
Paging down through about 800+ clips to find clip 435, I noticed a familiar name in the list: John Keister. He used to host Almost Live! before it was canceled in 1999. Almost Live! was a local Seattle comedy show preceding Saturday Night Live, which I ended up watching, actually I most often taped the program, using the VCR for at my Dad's place, and watched it the following day. Anyway, John Keister's still out there on T.V., on PBS. From the numerous clips I've watched he offers personal commentary on local and national political issues in sometimes a humorous vein. And though obviously still his bald self he looks a bit pudgy and haggard; he's obviously older than last time I saw him.
In some ways I hate the way media's gone totally international. Where's the local television personalities I used to see? I'm to blame, watching more anime, movies, and even YouTube than network television.
I used to read and buy (occasionally) the Japanese Newtype magazine more than about ten years ago and I bought it mostly to enjoy the pictures of the new shows. I also liked seeing the ads, and some of the composite pictures of a particular "anime girl" or mecha against a real photographs. There were also interesting photographs of models and figurines, etc.
I think what happened, when I started to subscribe to the Newtype USA magazine, that I just started to feel overwhelmed with the volume of content, as not only did I look at the pretty pictures but try to read everything. Then, I realized I would never, ever be able to see, or try watching, most of the shows in there anyway. Unfortunately as an "older" fan you have more money than time.
But I still enjoyed the columnists, mostly the English-speaking ones, as often the Japanese column/interview translations were fairly unpolished sounding. And, maybe because I was too busy or not interested, I never could bring myself to watch many of the DVDs. I eventually felt it a waste to buy such a lavish magazine which I did not fully enjoyed and ended my subscription about a year ago.
To me as an older fan, I find myself now mostly interested in about content analysis and the culture. For instance, the anime show reviews, were really at the T.V. Guide level, not professional film critic level. Or at least some of the time they could have sounded, well, college-level. But perhaps this doesn't represent what the Newtype brand really is, which is really visual impact. I can already figure out -- based solely on pictures! -- what a show is 90% of the time anyway, so whatever words they added seemed superfluous.
In the USA version, I was sad that many columnists from the Japanese Newtype never made it in. A few more pages of translated columns would have been nice, for this fan anyway.
In Japan, there's 大人アニメ (Adults' Anime) magazine, which Hitomi occasionally buys. And according to Newtype's Wiki Page, they at least used to publish a magazine of essays.
We subscribe now to Otaku USA. It's better at explaining shows, and other pop-culture trends, at an adult-level. And it has a more holistic view of all kinds of Japanese pop culture and a written, not visual, focus. Giant Robot is also good, though I'm not altogether interested in Asian-American fringe culture, I like a their perspective on what's going on in Asia that's (pop) culturally interesting.
I hope Newtype USA's replacement picks a better direction than Newtype, and can distinguish itself visually and content-wise from its competition.
To me, if I were to publish a Newtype-like, visually-focused magazine, I would do it more in the flavor of National Geographic. Something with a define photographic focus, on very glossy, high-quality paper. It'd look like a coffee-table book, not in size, but in content. Everyone could enjoy it for just the pretty pictures, but then if you could also read more in depth from the accompanying article surrounding each photo spread. Each new anime show would have 10-15 pages to highlight the show's significant content, be it scenes, original illustrations, character art, etc. I'd leave out reviews, columnists, trends, etc., and focus really just on the visual side. And there would not be just shows, there'd also be cultural photojournalism, pictures of studios, bios of creators, etc. What would National Geographic publish about Sundays in Akihabara? Studio Ghibli? Voice actors at work?
Last week was another visit to San Rafael. I went through San Francisco airport this time, hoping it'd be easier for Hitomi to make it into town by BART (transit), compared to Oakland. And this time I went with the car rental company Enterprise, though will not do that again, as I ended up with a car that was heavily scented to cover up cigarette smell. The masking scent made me drive with the windows down, despite the rain outside.
San Rafael stayed rainy the entire week. Either it was rainy or the roads were wet enough to keep me off of them. I had my bicycle set up and inside the hotel room the entire week and I was unable to use it.
In terms of development, I figured out a whole lot of stuff with Maven and Hibernate, so I was a happy developer. JBoss Cache, which we use with Hibernate, had some weird internal stuff which I attempted to rectify. I came up with a high-level change-tracking data structure. It took a few attempts to integrate it, though I did not commit it, since there are several test cases that come with JBoss Cache which intentionally fail, so it's difficult to determine if my changes have caused any regressions
People, on the whole, treated me fairly well. I'm sort of the "innovator" for the next project, and I hope to not get too carried away and get shut down.
Friday night, Hitomi came in fairly late. I walked around San Francisco waiting for her to arrive, scouting out various shops and restaurants in the vicinity. I was walking through a neighborhood reminiscent of Bell Town complete with the drunken mayhem and smokers chatting on sidewalks outside of bars. Hitomi eventually arrived after 10PM, and I was ready for bed.
Waking up hungry put aside plans for a bike ride through town, though it was the first nice day since I came. Hitomi and I headed to the North End district, where she last had coffee -- Italian style? -- in a bowl. Then, we headed off to the Cartoon Art Museum in the Financial district, where their current exhibit was basically a collection of international political cartoons illustrating (literally) the worldwide contempt for George Bush and his cronies. In the Golden Age section were original newspaper strips, often signed by the original artist and addressed to the owner of the strip, e.g. "To Joe Smith", along with some comic book pages and other memorabilia. Absent were Japanese comics, though there were a number of Asian-American artists. I'm surprised, though, in a town with Viz Media, probably the largest importer of manga, there would be none of it.
Hitomi and I were treated by Boon and his girlfriend for lunch at the dim-sum restaurant, Yank Sing, where the final bill for four was $120, where ordinarily such a meal would be $30. Obviously, it was a step up from the usual, but we didn't even order drinks. We discussed the possibility of moving to San Francisco, but I wouldn't move for the weather: I don't hate Seattle's weather, and I don't mind it usually.
We walked back to the hotel, stopping at the ferry terminal for omiyage, walking along the waterfront back to Fishermen's Wharf. I hadn't noticed the sea lions at Pier 39 before, perhaps because of the season, but there were hundreds of them socializing and bouncing on the floating docks. I hadn't seen so many since last summer in Oregon.
The evening we had plans to visit Hidehiro and his wife and baby in the South Bay. Hidehiro was a staff member at Sakura-con and had moved to the Bay Area to work as an intern at Viz Media, in their legal department. His daughter, about three, has been subjected to Japanese idol music, to encourage her to develop into an idol herself, and apparently knows the words to many such songs. We had dinner and rice, and oddly no rice, chatted (in Japanese) about this and that. Hidehiro's wife, not too much into anime herself, wasn't part of much of the discussion. She did mention how afraid people were of losing their children at day care to kidnappers and some other interesting stories about kids in the area.
It was an interesting thought, that Hitomi just picked up on, to have children just so you have an opportunity to relieve, vicariously and directly, things from your childhood, such as holidays, play time, and kids shows. Still, there are many things Hitomi still wants to do before children, and so the years continue to go by. (For example: Mr. Nomoto, who stayed a few years ago in our old house, is planning another kayaking trip on the West Coast, this time someplace in the Queen Charlotte Islands as a private tour we were invited to attend.)
Sunday we had a bagel breakfast, followed by lunch with a fellow who staffed some of the first anime conventions in the Bay Area, Kent. Hitomi and I met Kent at Anime Expo, who happened to be a long time fan of Momoi Halko, and attending the same concert with us. He happens to know many people the game industry, but somehow has found himself at a small company making $12 an hour, which in the Bay Area is effectively poverty wages. We talked for about three hours about game companies, anime conventions, fandom, etc. He really wants to go to Halko's 30th birthday event in Tokyo, but his evil boss won't give him the time off. Again, the thought occurred, why not quit and find a better job through any of his well-connected friends?
Before the flight back, we went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. My favorite (and Hitomi's) exhibit was of this Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson, who builds interesting installations of glass, steel, mirrors, lights, water, and ice. The exhibition artifacts resembled a cross between carnival Funhouse ideas, Buckminster Fuller geometric design, and somewhat the installation style of Yayoi Kusama, though with a sterile, geometric aesthetic sensibility.
The flight back we took separate planes, finally getting home and to bed around 1AM.
Kumori-con ("Cloudy convention") was so named since it takes place in rainy Oregon. Though, every convention since 2003 first has been quite warm and sunny, since the date changed from a weekend in November to September.
Hitomi got in touch with the Momoi fan group wanted to prepare an introduction and call book for her performance in Kassel, Germany at Connichi. (Nice picture of her here.) Hitomi took a crack at translating some song lyrics (for about three songs) and I went in and edited them to make a little more sense. There were also a few paragraphs in Japanese (not sure who put these together) explaining what the songs were about. I took a crack at them. Apparently, even cute girls in Japan get teased and outcast if they don't have normal interests. Momoi wrote about how she managed to meet friends through an online network (which, at that time, was not Internet) who were like her.
I'm a little surprised that she wasn't able to meet people at her school that were into, well, fairly common geek activities. Maybe there were none female? I haven't watched her drama, or finished her book, which I suppose explains the loneliness she felt.
The translation work done, Hitomi and I headed off to Portland at around 11:30AM. I was hot without air conditioning, and traffic was almost as bad as rush hour. After not finding a place to eat around a mall in Olympia -- every lot and I suppose restaurant packed -- we headed off to some Korean-owned teriyaki restaurant in a new mall in Tumwater. Which was better expected, though I could have used some kim-chi with my kal-bi. Alas they did not serve with it, probably to hide their Koreanness.
I use the F word more than I ordinarily do when driving in a hot car stuck in traffic, which upsets Hitomi. Having a new car with air conditioning would certainly help my morale.
Finally, we arrived. Vancouver, Washington actually turned out be a bit nicer than I had though. They managed to preserve what looks like a walkable downtown. There appeared to be a lot of renewal and high-rise construction efforts underway, somewhat mimicking Portland across the bay. The main hotel (sold out) for Kumori-con was a recently built Hilton, next to a very nice park, Esther Short Park. In this very park, the people of the city and local businesses were celebrating Vancouver's 150th Anniversary ... along with numerous otaku dressed in costumes of ninjas, school girls, samurai, etc., milling about their clock tower.
Hitomi and I got free cake (from sponsors Costco) and sat down on a bench, and were entertained by the spectacle.
The crowd of cosplayers developed into a circle of spin-the-bottle glomping girls and boys. They initially used a PET bottle, and later days, I noticed Ramune bottles and multiple circles formed. Apparently on Sunday, there was a spanking circle as well.
Kumori-con, still a fraction the size of Sakua-con, doesn't get any Japanese guests and doesn't draw many big names or performers. But as a small convention, they do things most conventions don't, such as show fan subtitled anime. They also have a dedicated music video room, which is a bit surprising considering how unpopular it has been over the years. So, Hitomi and I use this convention as an opportunity to "catch up" on new anime and J-Pop artists.
After a few hours inside watching videos, we went back out in search of dinner. There's a few restaurants around Esther Short park. One's a Laotian/Thai place, which was unusually packed. We got a table at the bar in the back and ordered some food. Our food took about an hour to get, but I had a nice chat to a cute woman dressed as a video game character: dressed as a sexy Red Riding Hood, she had (plastic) guns in a basket. (Not her, but similar dress.) She also happened to be a bartender and chatted with the actual bartender. I helpfully explained that I was used to waiting for service during conventions, but I got a little impatient waiting another 30-40 minutes to get our dessert.
We walked back to the Shilo Inn, passing a number of bars with smokers milling outside. Aside from a few places, the rest of the town seemed asleep.
Sunday morning we headed back to the park and picked up a number of goodies at the farmer's market. Peach season is reason enough for happiness, but I couldn't have imagined munching on juicy fruit in a dark theater, so we got some fresh baked goods instead. We spent the morning of the convention watching various fansubs. I'm not a supporter of piracy, but I do like that shows with little to no market potential do manage to be available, at least online. One show I've been interested in seeing, called Over Drive, was about a high school bicycle race club and actually turned out to be quite good. Somehow I feel compelled to download it and share it with Larry at Perfect Wheels, but it's funny enough to entertain non-bicyclists. Incidentally, the main supporting female character was voiced by Kaori Nazuka, who was at Sakura-con this year. Hitomi pointed this out, and I felt a little embarrassed I had not noticed.
We watched about three more shows. One show was about a yakuza (gangster) mermaid family, whose daughter (who is in mermaid junior high) got engaged to some human boy. The jealous father does not want to see his daughter go, and tries -- unsuccessfully -- to put a hit on said boy. It's a comedy. The opening theme and mermaid girl is voiced by Hitomi's favorite Momoi Halko. Another show we saw was about a boy, in debt to (human) yakuza, runs away, and tries to kidnap a rich girl for ransom who mistakes his kidnapper for a boy in love with her -- another comedy. The last show, based on a four-panel gag strip, called Lucky Star, was about high school friends' various observations. There was no real plot, just a series of conversations and events of daily life.
By myself, I watched Soukou no Strain, a show was mostly your typical all-girl-academy-in-space story, whose main character is trying to find her older brother and kill him for siding with the enemy, while less talented mean girls try to bring her down. I'm a sucker for tragic female characters, myself.
After dinner at a fairly fancy Hawaiian place, we (again) were in the music video room most of the night. There was a "Con-Chair's Favorite Hentai Anime Video" showing after 12PM, but Hitomi wasn't interested. To walk her back to the hotel, I abandoned plans. And to be honest, after experiencing the day's accumulated funk of some overweight otaku in the front of the room, felt like it my viewing pleasure would be limited.
I've been thinking of running an ero-manga panel next year, probably at Kumori-con. It would be a pouppori of various artists, themes, recurring situations, vocabulary, fetishes, etc. accompanied by scans and translations by yours truly. I might make it seem scholarly, but really I'd be there to talk about things I like. There's really a limited number of titles available in the U.S., due to concerns about violent or underage sexual depictions, and though the material is readily imported, it's rarely published domestically. It'd probably be attended by a few "serious" enthusiasts, and the rest random perverts looking for after-midnight entertainment...but so be it.
Our last day, we tried to get in some non-video events, such as the A-key-kyo concert. The concert: In addition to bad mixing and audio equipment, the performers got sidetracked into some pretty stupid stage antics between songs. Hitomi and I got bored and left. We took a look at the dealer's area, which turned out to be some area partitioned off from the parking garage. Next year they're moving back to Downtown Portland, so they'll have a proper place.
Overall, we had a good time. Staff were nice, things were organized -- always better than AX with its 35,000 attendees.
I took a vacation with my wife Hitomi for a few weeks in Thailand on an organized tour with the Intrepid Travel company. This was an "active" trip and you can find more about it from the web site. I would highly recommend this sort of trip to people interested in both active and responsible tourism. It involved very little anime or otaku culture.
However, there were a couple of anime-related things we discovered in Thailand. We visited the Karen hill tribe near Chiang Mai, and were asked to sing with the children as part of their weekly routine. Hitomi is Japanese and I suggested she sing the theme from Doraemon. All the children apparently knew the song for Doraemon, though in Thai. They weren't really able to follow along with the lyrics, but did their best by clapping along. Many Karen people still live in wood huts with woven leaf roofs and bamboo flooring, although there are TVs in the village which receive their electricy from solar cells or generators.
Some of the toys we gave the children had manga-style illustrations on the packaging or printing. I assume some of them were copied from Japanese illustrations (unlicenced) and some were original Thai works. One manga character Hitomi and I saw most of all (besides Doraemon) was Ultraman, often depicted in (what seems like) a Thai-original variation, often as super-deformed. You can find Ultraman everywhere on Tee-shirts, car decals, watches, etc. Crayon Shin-chan's main character Shin-chan we found drawn minus pants, pointing to his exposed "elephant", and usually had something in Thai in a word balloon above.
One thing I noticed visiting temples and sites are the decorated tour buses. There are often decorated with large illustrations, airbrushed on the side. The designs often incorporate Disney characters, colorful tropical scenery, mythological beings, but sometimes include anime or manga characters (with a rainbow of hair colors). The airbrushed art is hand drawn, and I assume some artist (similar perhaps to a tatoo artist) uniquely decorates each one. The lines of the characters are done in a Thai style, with the same sort of curly lines that might be found in traditional Thai design. I saw buses with the cast of One Piece and Bleach, and some with characters from classic anime shows, such as Doraemon.
When staying at some of the resorts, we often watched television to relax. All the animation we saw was dubbed-in-Thai anime. I didn't see any Thai original animation. As for the quality, I don't know Thai, so I can't say how good it was, but it seemed like voices matched the characters age and attitude pretty well.
The last day of the trip we spent in Bangkok. Before our trip to Thailand, Hitomi found on the Internet that there was actually a Maid Cafe in Bangkok. It was near the modern (tourist) downtown area, and so we made a quick trip to the cafe. We actually went into what was really just an anime store with a few tables in a sectioned-off area, serviced by a few Thai women dressed in maid outfits. We didn't really feel like sitting down in that area, as it was empty and without windows.
While purusing the store, and constantly bumping in people, Hitomi and I noticed that Thai otaku are fairly similar looking to both Japanese and American otaku. That is, awkwardly dressed in baggy clothing and if not runtish, slightly overweight or tall and stooped over. Actually aside from the extreme cases, many normal customers were there as well, though these were mostly teenagers in school uniforms. It was New Year holidays, but I guess Thai students (like the Japanese) like to hang out with their friends dressed in their school's outfit.
What the store sold was similar to what you might find at Animate in Japan, though the printing for the (licenced?) goods seemed a bit cheap, with color bleeding obvious. I suppose Thai buyers aren't used to high quality Japanese printing, but to me it was bootleg quality, assuming they weren't bootlegs to begin with. (Let's hope one of the few anime stores in the biggest city in Thailand does not sell bootlegs.) I didn't write down prices, but I'm guessing DVDs sold at about 400-600 baht, the equivalent of about $12 for a set of episodes. These were licenced, by a company that claimed (in English) they were the "biggest" in Thailand.
The day after our visit to Bangkok downtown, we flew on to Japan, and then took the train to Tokyo then Akihabara. It was about two years for me since visiting the area. Last time I came, the Akihabara station remodel work was just underway, and now it was mostly complete. In addition, a couple of very new buildings were recently built, including the new Yodobashi Camera store east of the station and a restaurant and office complex to the north. Akihabara is looking a lot nicer, and a bit less sleazy around the station; although fear not, plenty of slease was still for sale.
In Akihabara, the general trend is less computer and electronics shopping, and more manga and anime goods. Especially Doujinshi, which seem to be even more popular than ever. Personal computers aren't that special anymore and the market has mostly consolidated, margins are less, etc. You can still by these things, but by and large it is more of a cultural rather than purely commercial district.
We stayed at a very reasonably priced business hotel called Dormy Inn, which features a partially exposed rooftop spa. For less than $100 for a couple (more for a double), it's a fairly inexpensive way to enjoy a (fake) onsen, and still be in convenient distance to all of Akihabara and Tokyo. You don't get to see the city from the outdoor hot pool, since there is a roof perimeter wall, but it was fun to relax under the winter sky and listen to JR trains coming and going. Take pictures when you're in the tub and fool your family into thinking you're experiencing traditional Japanese culture. (Pictures inside are forbidden, but you might get away with a few if nobody's looking.) Incidentally, there were laundry and dryer machines available.
And I know this is starting to sound like an advertisement, but the hotel was actually much better than any of the other (admittedly cheap) places I've been to in Tokyo. there's free Internet and and a flat screen, HDTV and satellite channels in the rooms. I also noticed subtitles (in Japanese) are available for some anime programs. I noticed video in ports, so bring your own DVD player or game console if you like. The toliets are very nice as well; I would like to get a washlet myself at home if I could.
Just about a minute from the hotel is a 7-11 and also a maid-run beauty parlor. Hitomi wanted a hair cut actually, but they were quite busy during the weekend and was unable to get an appointment early the next day. I'm not really sure why she would spend an extra 1000 yen over normal hair cut prices to get her hair cut by a maid. She might actually like them more than me.
The agenda for our first full day was: Mister Donut for breakfast, some shopping, a visit to the Animation Museum in Akihabara, and to meet some Sakura-con guest relation staff (Japanese) around 1PM. Later, we would go to the Suginami Animation Museum and meet Akitaro Daiichi, a friend of the Sakura-con convention staff, and meet some of his friends.
For those new to Japan, it is interesting to see how Japanese take American foods and expand the concept to fit the Japanese taste. For instance, Mister Donut sells curry filled pasteries and soups. Thus, it is an entirely satisfactory place for a balanced meal. I also spent countless evenings in 1998 with my girlfriend (now wife) at a Mister Donuts near the Sendai station. We would almost always stay until midnight, when the store closed, drinking free refill coffee.
After finishing coffee the predicament was where to each start our shopping. First of all, I wanted to see some of the unusual shops. In particular, there was an Elemetry and Middle School idol shop nearby called "Junior Idol". Although I had a pretty good idea from various Internet sites, I wanted to see the real thing.
Junior Idol was decorated to make it look like an elemetary school room, with blackboard and desks. A class number (like they have in Japan) also is over the entrance. The very professionally made goods (picture albums, DVDs, image CDs) are arranged all around, although I didn't tell if by age or some other factor. The girls (pictured) often wore normal athletic wear but many are in bikinis, some dripping wet and a bit lewd I would say for their (sometimes) pre-teen age. Some of the girls donated or more likely sold their own Shikishi (sign boards) to the store. And although the professional pictures in many respects made the girls look somewhat mature, the handwriting and drawings made the girls seem very much like children. The customers I saw were mostly older men (20s), but I noticed some 40s or 50s men purusing the store. I don't recall any male who looked like an actual teenager in there.
I don't know if I feel that sorry for the children and parents, as they signed up and are getting paid. Let's hope the kids aren't getting stalked.
The new Akihabara UDX building houses the Tokyo Anime Center and an anime-only theater. It is free admission to go to in museum, and about a minute from the station, so it is worth a look, even though it is really mostly a museum store and promotional events area. The museum had some computers and information on older shows, but mostly it showed trailers and information on upcoming and current anime films and shows. Still, there are supposedly some cool events that take place here, voice actors visit, etc. It was around New Year's holiday so not much was taking place.
The anime theater was showing Blood: The Last Vampire and a new Pokemon 3D short film. We wanted to see the Pokemon film, which was preceeded by an older (2002?) 15 minute Christmas-themed Pokemon cartoon. To watch the 3D show required polarized glasses, which were sized a bit too small for adults. The audience was (except for us) families with children. Hitomi enjoys Pokemon, although the Pokemon company itself gives her the most grief at Nintendo when she's working on their packaging.
Splitting up, I headed out alone for shopping for ero manga and videos. Hitomi went out for CDs and books. I ended up at Tachibana Shoten, which has a limited but current selection of ero manga titles and AVs. They allow for credit card purchases, though I brought plenty of cash. (Speaking of cash, I would recommend to all the foreigners to skip any and all currency exchange services, and instead get cash in Narita from the Post Office ATM. I got 10,000 yen without any hassle.) For saving yourself from embarassment, the person at the counter is screened so he doesn't see you and you don't see him. Usually, as a foreigner the embarassment is often the other way around, as the clerks wonder why somebody like myself is looking at Japanese porn.
Back to the hotel: The Sakura-con guest relation person, Masaki, and his girlfriend Michiru (her cosplay name) were late. Masaki I have known since helping with the convention, and his girlfriend has come in the past few years. Michiru is an avid cosplayer, and actually pretty well known in the Japanese cosplay community. I feel a little sorry for Masaki since he said his little Tokyo apartment is packed full of the many costumes she has to wear. In addition, the costumes, accessories, and wigs themselves are not cheap. On the other hand, assuming Masaki has a particular fetish for women in costume, it's of course a cost he just has to bear.
Lunch we had a maid cafe called Mai-lish (Mai pronounced "May" as in "Maid"). The last maid cafe I went to was a few years ago, called Little BSD, but this was in October and the maids were dressed up in Halloween outfits, and thus weren't really maids. This particular Saturday there was a special birthday event for one of the maid staff and the line to get in was quite long. Some U.S. friends from Sakura-con happened to be in Tokyo on a combined vacation and merchadise acquisition trip. One of them owns a business that sells at anime conventions, the other was there to help and as part of a vacation. They said they only spent a few hours in Kyoto, which is a shame, before heading back to Tokyo. They had called Masaki earlier, and later joined us in line. The wait in line was about 30 minutes, it was raining outside, but luckily the line was mostly covered, but it still was quite cold in Tokyo that day.
Inside, there were a variety of male customers, though also a few women. I noticed at one table a group of about six men dressed in suits and drinking champagne, obviously there that day to celebrate the maid's birthday. I believe when I saw them in line, they were holding bouquets of roses. There was a special menu for the occasion, the waitress also brought over an English menu. The waitresses (maids) were actually not all in the same outfits, one wore a tight short skirt, others mostly wore various girly long dresses with different collars and headbands, all in a Victorian - not French - style. I wouldn't say they were exceptionally beautiful or sexy women, but the proper costume and attitude is most important. The pay at these places, according to Michiru, was not very good. Working at a hostess bar might pay a bit more, though I imagine dealing with drunken business men and the constant sexual harassment might be annoying. The customers in maid cafes are never rude, I would guess.
Michiru actually was recognized by one of the maids at the cafe. Actually, a maid cafe is probably a fun place for a young cosplayer to work.
I can't say the food was exceptional, but that really wasn't the point of going.
We all six took a walk to the Kanda train station. We went to the Suginami Animation Museum, which requires a taxi ride or bus ride from the Suginami train station. It is free to enter. There are materials in English as well as Japanese, and English subtitles for some videos, but most everything is in Japanese. As part of the year-end events, they were giving away calendars and merchandise to lucky raffle winners. Hitomi won a Bleach 2007 calendar.
The first part of the museum lists the major movie and TV works by year since animation began in Japan in the early 1920s or so. Along the timeline, they included some correspondly old TV models as well, showing opening animations or excerpts of shows of the era. There was also a section in the museum on how anime is created, from concept and storyboards to photographing the painted cells. Like the Ghibli museum, they showed an example animator (key frame animator's) desks and had interview videos going of various anime staff. As a particular example, the films discussed how Jin-Roh was put together, and had some special mention of the effects and also some of the layering techniques used in one shot. There was also some computers showing how digital animation tools work and a simple workshop area where animation or effects or 3D elements are combined. Upstairs was an exhibit on 50 years of Toei anime. There was an anime theater, showing various old anime including Galaxy Express 999. I had recently seen "Taiyou no Ooji, Horusu no Daiboken" and recognized it playing outside the theater on a TV.
After the museum closed, we headed back to the JR station. We went to a suburb called "Asagaya" where Daiichi has his own (small) studio called "Tahiti", which is basically a studio in a large apartment room. A women was there finishing up some dubbing work on an English horror movie, it looked like some sort of a B-movie, which she described as close to Blair Witch Project. The place seemed more a collection of "stuff" than an studio, though as a director I imagine it's mostly used by him as a meeting place. Hitomi and I were pleased to find, though, that our metal cutout of Tohru we gave him a few years ago was mounted on the wall in his washroom. There is actually another cut-out of Jyuubei he keeps somewhere. Lots of videos, CDs, and various things were around the room, including some from some U.S. conventions.
Even though it was Saturday night, Daiichi was just finishing up on some work. Nagahama-san, the director of Mushishi and the assistant director with Daiichi in the past, was busy that evening with Mr. Nakano (VA of Ginko) and notified us by phone he was unable to come to dinner.
Dinner was at an American hamburger restaurant in walking distance of the studio. It purported to be authentic and did indeed have an American pub-like atmosphere. I mostly listened in on the discussion, most of which happened down the table from me. Daiichi had just finished up the TV anime Bokura ga Ita and was tired. (It was Saturday just after New Year's and I thought it a bit sad.) He says he doesn't want to work on directing any more Shojo anime series and would like to work on a live action project next. He said there were also plans for him and some others to go to Las Vegas this coming year.
After parting ways around 8PM, the six of us took the train to Don Quijote outside of Shinjuku. If there's only one store you get to visit while in Japan, this is the one you want to go to. It's essentially a discount grocery, gift, clothing, home improvement, car care, electronics, media, toy, costume, and porn shop combined into one building. Yes, the toys are kept right next to the vibrators and personal lubricants. Masaki bought socks for his work, my wife Hitomi bought food and bottled tea. I looked at the electronics and of course porn videos but it was a fairly limited selection of both.
On the way to the main Shinjuku station, we passed by a love hotel area, with some women (prositutes) waiting around with their cell phones. They actually didn't look at all like your average prostitute. On the way was a series of sex shops, one selling of a variety of costumes. Inside, I found a Doraemon vibrator, which looks fairly similar to the Hello Kitty one discontinued some years ago. We passed up on it.
Parting ways with the group, Hitomi and I returned to Akihabara and had a quick bite at Mos Burger. It was late and they were on the verge of closing, but I got a "Fresh Burger" and shake, which was more like chunky ice cream, and she had one of their new sausage-foccata sandwichs. (Incidentally this trip, we noticed McDonald's in Thailand had recently begun selling a rice burger, which Mos Burger was selling back in 1987.) Their menu seems to expand and contract every so often. They also follow the common trend of restaurants in Japan in offering seasonal-only and location-specific foods. Their soups and desserts, for instance, are seasonal choices. You do see this happen with many fancy restuarants in the West, but how many fast food places do this?
The last day of our short trip to Japan was focused on shopping. First stop for us was a used music and games store. Used, as it turns out, does not dramtically reduce the price of many goods such as video games or popular CDs.
Just a few stories under the store, Hitomi and I ventured into art gallery exhibit featuring well-known CG (and ero-Doujinshi artist) "Tony" at Jeuness. One of the staff spent about 20 minutes talking to us about Tony and how the art is printed using a new digital process that's superior to Lithography. Mostly, what is on display are "Moe" art works. Incidentally, they are all printed works, though in limited edition. As part of the process often sparkles (of different colors) are added to elements to give them more depth. The going price for many of the works is about 300,000 yen. (Compare this to Range Murata's prints at GoFA which sell for are 40-80,000). Through artfully framed and matted and behind nice glass, still I wonder if those prices are reasonable.
I thought of having a few signed prints up in my living room or to replace the simple posters I have now. The problem though, was to both convince my wife (who liked some of the works but of course not the same ones) and convince myself to part with the money. There is also the thought of buying essentially "cheesecake" versus fine art. And as for content, Hitomi likes the very girly and innocent illustrations, while I of course prefer the saucier one.
Hitomi went to hunt down a Futon drier (unavailable in the U.S.) and I headed to Tora-no-ana and Animate. First of all, I wanted to see if there were any nice art books, which are usually sold at 50-100% mark up at U.S. anime conventions. And I wanted a look at the ero manga section and 3 or so floors of doujinshi. This Sunday around noon appeared to be the busiest day of the week and I had a hard time moving, let alone shopping. The ero manga area had a lot of people standing around reading. I've come to learn why manga in stores is wrapped, not just because the store wants to protect the material, but to keep those useless customers who read and not buy. Luckily had titles organized by author so I didn't need to crawl around. The doujinshi section had everything wrapped, but was ten times worst than the ero manga area in the basement. It was like being at a rock concert or in the mosh pit.
I haven't been following the doujinshi scene. Actually, it turns out to make quite a large amount of money for people. For instance, according to the Jeuness art gallery staff, "Tony" made enough from his sales to buy a pretty nice mansion for himself. Certainly, selling without a formal editor or publisher seems to work well for many. However, from a sampling at Comike, I found that work tends to be fairly inconsistent (short, unfinished, full of filler), if only because making a complete manga is actually quite hard. Doujinshi also tend to be self-referential of the community they are borne from, which in part comes from the fact they are "same character stories". And even within the same circle (group of artists) there are often half-baked works. If I came prepared that day, I might have tried to swim through the crowd of otaku and bought something, but instead retreated.
Incidentally, Hitomi made Doujinshi in a manga club in high school. She didn't keep her works and it's likely her mom tossed them out. Which is a shame, since I would have liked to have seen them. I would think she'd still be into the scene, but recently has developed a strong aversion to pornography and not a boy love fan, which comprises roughly 80% of the male and female comic markets respectively. She does read a lot of manga, just no doujinshi.
I went to the "AV Factory" (http://www.avf.co.jp/) store, which I assumed was one of the largest AV stores in Akihabara. I've really enjoyed the "Indie" makers more than the mainstream titles and this place had a couple of floors of the latest and best selling titles. The entire store comprises about 4-5 floors of AVs, divided roughly into mainstream, indy, fetish, and used titles. Indie was divided further into studios, which in addition to just different packaging, have their own presentation styles and stars. Sometimes titles are divided by AV star, sometimes not. With probably a thousand or so titles a year, it's rather hopeless to keep up with the times. Luckily, the staff provide recommendations and indicate best sellers. The only hope is that their tastes match yours.
And so, with a stack of AVs and manga, we headed back to Tokyo station and then Narita, then home. The only remaining thing I worried about was getting passed the customs agents.
