Japan 2007: The Final Two Days

On Friday, we spent the morning in our hotel room. The typhoon had blown through Tokyo in the early morning hours, leaving both clear skies and a wild wind whipping through the city streets. But because of reports that rail service had been disrupted, we opted to spend our last full day in Ikebukuro.

The effects of the winds (shown in one of my previous posts) were evident on the buildings around our hotel. The first "a" on the "animate" building sign was clearly damaged.



Amy explored "Kinkado By Hand," a crafts store that included quilting patterns and supplies. I, meanwhile, set off for some of the remaining anime/manga stores in the neighborhood (of which there are several) that we hadn't yet visited.

Both Ikebukuro and Akihibara have tons of anime and manga stores. The primary demarcation, according to our guide from Tuesday's tour, is that Akiba mainly appeals to boys, and Ikebukuro to girls. That was evident when I visited Mandarake in Ikebukuro.



Mandarake specializes in doujinshi. Doujinshi are creator-published comics. Some feature original characters; some are based on Western properties, such as Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings; but most are unauthorized manga versions of copyrighted anime and manga characters. Further, many (not all) of them envision romances between the characters. Now, such fan-created fiction also exists in the US, and has flourished on the Internet. But doujinshi are sold for profit. Indeed, some creators make a living from selling them. And they are not sold quietly. Mandarake had racks and racks of them, organized by subject matter; and was stuffed with female fans buying and reselling them by the bushel. Further, Comic Market -- a twice-yearly event in Japan -- is attended by hundreds of thousands of folks who come principally to buy and sell doujinshi. The idea of an unlicensed, fan-produced, adults-only X-Men, Batman, or Star Wars comic book being sold openly in the US, in numbers high enough to be profitable, beggars the imagination. Yet in Japan, it's reality.

As noted, the customers at the Ikebukuro Mandarake were almost entirely female; and the doujinshi tended primarily (according to the covers I saw) toward stuff appealing to those customers. On the other hand, one of the many storefronts of K-Books, a block away, featured doujinshi aimed almost entirely at male customers.

Other K-Books storefronts had tons of remaindered and used anime dvds and premium goods. In one of them, I scored my favorite acquisition of this trip: A complete set of dvds of the first season of CAT'S EYE, packaged with a memo pad set, a mouse pad, and the first part of a paper version of the larcenous ladies' coffee shop. (One apparently gets the second part by buying the second season box set.) As the photos show, the paper coffee shop's interior is quite detailed; they include all of the house's bathrooms.





I got the box for less than half of the retail price. I may never open the box, or put together the paper house; but having it is cool enough.

On Saturday morning, the sky was the clearest it had been during our trip.



We checked out and stored our baggage with the hotel. We then set out on our last Tokyo field trip. We had heard that on weekends (primarily Sundays) teenagers in costumes flocked to Harajuku. We therefore hopped a train over there. Although it was Saturday (with some schools in session), and blazing hot, we managed to find a few dedicated cosplayers in front of the Meiji shrine.





We then took the train back. Our last trip through Ikebukuro confirmed that the Japanese merchandising industry was putting its full, awesome strength behind the Evangelion franchise. Not only did a pachinko parlor, across the street from the theater playing the Evangelion movie, blast the TV series opening theme into the street over and over again (I'm sure the workers there are thoroughly sick of it), but department stores had opened "Evangelion Stores" where they sold models, t-shirts, plastic figures, designer ties, yukatas with Eva prints, and, yes, Evangelion Doritos, coffee and cookies.






After we got back to our hotel, we took the limousine bus to the airport, and winged our way back to the states. As usual, the long flight passed surprisingly fast. I watched the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie (which, on a tiny screen, was probably far less impressive than it was meant to be), read half of a GHOST IN THE SHELL manga collection which I had purchased during our last trip to Japan, and edited a chapter of the law book manuscript I'm working on.

We managed to slog our way back to our house, using a hard-of-hearing cabbie. (I told him as we left the airport that I was going to pay by credit card. When we got to our house, and I pulled out the card, he yelled at me, "Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning?") At that point, although we had left Japan at 5:25 pm Saturday, it was 12:30 pm Saturday. We had traveled back in time. We took the extra hours given us to sleep.

Tokyo Day 4: Harajuku is Full of Crepes

This morning we slept in, relieved of any deadlines or obligations for the day. After hitting the Sunshine City mall for brunch (curry), we boarded the train for Harajuku, the fashion capital of Tokyo.

On the way, we exited at Shinjuku station, so I could take pictures of the train station. The station is renowned among fans of the CITY HUNTER manga and anime series as the means of contacting the title character. There used to be a message chalkboard in the station; and someone who wanted to hire City Hunter would write the code "XYZ" -- meaning the last resort -- on the board. The recent sequel series, ANGEL HEART, pointed out that because of cell phones, the chalkboard had been phased out. And, to my disappointment, I discovered that another landmark of the series, the huge sign on the station's east side reading "MY CITY" (the name of the mall in which the station is located) was no more. The name of the mall was changed to "Lumiere Est." (I found this out from a barista at the nearby Starbucks, after we walked around the station trying to find the sign.)




We got back on the train, got off at Shinjuku station, then walked down Takeshita Street, a collection of funky clothing shops (lots of rock, punk, "gothic lolita" and similar young folks stuff), fast food restaurants, and lots and lots of crepe stands. (The crepe seems to be the food of choice of young Tokyo fashionistas.)










We then walked a block over to Omotesando, the other side of the fashion equation. It was chock-full of high-end fashion shops, reminiscent of Beverly Hills. It also featured Kiddyland, a terrific multi-story toy store with a great collection of Disney, Peanuts, and anime merchandise.

My one clothing purchase was a motorman's cap. We glimpsed the open door of a hat shop, and walked down the stairs of the shop. The stairway turned out to be the entire shop; the display shelves lined the stairs, and at the bottom the floor was only large enough for the sales counter and one customer. I picked up several hats, then finally found a dark flannel -wool blend hat, made by Kangol, and placed it on my head. I turned to the young sales woman behind the counter. She glanced at the hat on my head, and gave me a thumbs up. That was all I needed.

After dinner at a steak fast-food chain outlet on Takeshita, we took the train to Shibuya. I was intent on walking around the station to see the sights.






Unfortunately, the rain and wind grew heavier and heavier as we strolled. Eventually we got the hint. We took the train back to Ikebukuro. On the way, the screens in the train indicated that some Japan Railway lines (including the Chuou line, which we took yesterday) were suspended due to "typhoon." When we got back to the Ikebukuro station, the rain was cascading down. We swam back to our hotel.

Tomorrow -- hopefully -- Tokyo Tower.

Our latest photos can be found here.

Tokyo 2007: "Bye-bye, Robot-san!"

Yesterday's weather in Tokyo was quite Hawaii-like -- apparently typical of the monsoon season. The sun was out as we walked to Cafe Momonga for breakfast. As we sat savoring our thick toast, the rain started. And started getting heavy. And then started sheeting off the sidewalk and rising in a mist of smashed raindrops. And then lightened. And then stopped. Within the space of about an hour. We just ordered extra cups of tea and waited out the weather.







That day, we took the train to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka -- a must-visit for any anime fan; and a heavily-visited one, judging from the capacity crowds we saw on a Wednesday afternoon.

This trip, like the previous day's visit to Akihibara, was partially designed to redress an injustice during our 2004 Japanese vacation: When we visited the museum that time, the tour guide gave us just one hour to look at the museum -- the result of both the traffic jams encountered driving through Tokyo, and of three members of the tour who wanted to go to a concert later that evening. (They eventually decided not to go to the concert.) This time, we arranged the trip ourselves; and we were able to devote four hours to the museum, enough to sample all of the delights there.



Even better, because we took the train over (which we managed with only one problem -- a train that left Shinjuku apparently for Mitaka, but then reversed itself just past Nakano) and walked the 1.2 kilometers from the train station to the museum, we were treated to an environment that seemed ripped from a Hayao Miyazaki movie: We strolled along a stream covered with foliage, cicadas shirring in the heavy September air, past apartment houses and narrow streets with a mixed European and Japanese look.







The museum was terrific. Along with some of the stuff we saw last time (such as the mockup of Miyazaki's study, and the room explaining the process of making animation -- now updated with materials from the Ghibli movies SPIRITED AWAY, HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, and TALES OF EARTHSEA), there were new exhibits -- such as a mockup of the Three Bears' house, from an illustrated children's book; and a gallery of art from a French animation director's film PRINCES AND PRINCESSES. As usual, the theatre at the museum showed a short subject. This one was called GORO NO DAI SENPO. It featured the simplest of stories -- a little girl's dog, Goro, runs out of her front yard, and runs around the neighborhood -- but was rich with details of everyday Japanese life. Further, it made no attempt to anthropomorphosize Goro; he was recognizable as a not-to0-bright but enthusiastic puppy.







The museum was filled with delighted children. Thus, the capper to our visit: As we left the museum, a Japanese child gazed up at the rooftop -- where one of the robots from LAPUTA stood patiently, always prepared to pose for photos -- and called up, "Bye-bye, Robot-san!"



After a dinner in Mitaka, and a train ride back (which got crowded when we boarded the train at Shinjuku for Ikebukuro), we ended the evening by experiencing an anime movie in its native habitat. Specifically, we went to the Sunshine Cinema to see the just-premiered movie version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, titled "Evangelion 1.0: You are (Not) Alone." Evangelion was the science fiction anime series of the mid-nineties which turned the whole giant robot genre on its ear; it featured giant armored biological constructs that could only be piloted by teenagers with various emotional problems. The kids would be put into bio-plugs and injected into the Evas. The movie apparently exists as a vehicle to sell even more Evangelion merchandise to the Japanese fans, besides getting them into theatres and having them pay 1,800 yen to see what their older siblings saw for free on TV. Indeed, the movie copied numerous scenes from the TV series nearly verbatim -- albeit with better animation, and rampant product placement (particularly of UCC Coffee and Doritos, both of which issued packages of their products with Eva characters on them). The movie even featured a TV like episode title card (although it wasn't shown until an hour into the movie); and a preview of the next installment of the movie series, designed to look just like the "next episode" clip at the end of each episode of the TV series -- complete with the voice-over from the Misato character.

Despite these disparaging words, the movie was tremendously exciting. There's a reason Evangelion has remained popular on both sides of the Pacific for over a decade. Amy enjoyed it too, even though she had not seen the original series, and the movie was entirely in Japanese without subtitles. And the film must be doing well, since it filled the theatre on a Wednesday evening.

Nippon 2007: Last Two Days; On to Tokyo

Sunday and Monday, the last two days of the Worldcon in Japan, were activity-packed for the two of us. On Sunday morning, we blew off most of the con programming, and walked around downtown Yokohama. The weather cooperated; the sun showed itself for the first time during our vacation, and the temperature wasn't too hot. During the walk, we noted the cicadas' song. In anime shows set in Japan during the summer, you will inevitably hear the cicadas chirping in the background. It's one thing to hear it in a fictional, animated show; and quite another to hear it in person.







After we got back, we hied ourselves down to the convention center for the masquerade. This was billed as the first westsrn-style convention masquerade ever held in Japan; but in reality the one at AX Tokyo takes that honor.





We scored places in the photographer's area, where we and a few others took pictures of the costumes as they came off stage. Although there were only 15 entries in the masquerade, the costumes showed an impressive amount of variety and ingenuity.







Unfortunately, one of the masquerade contestants was a visibly inebriated British man in a Japanese schoolgirl's outfit. The stage manager of the masquerade and another man escorted the cross-dressed gent into the photography area, apparently with the idea that taking a few photos of him would keep him mollified. Alas, he took the opportunity to swig booze and make obscene commments about a female contestant. (Fortunately, she only spoke Japanese -- or at least acted like she did.)

After the photos, we headed out to a pier for Donburo-con, a dinner cruise on Yokohama Bay for con goers. Our embarkation was delayed by a medical emergency (fortunately not ours), but after that we had a pleasant moonlit cruise around the harbor, sailing under numerous bridges. I stood on the aft observation deck next to artist guest of honor Yoshitaka Amano as seagulls frantically kept pace with the ship, perhaps sensing the food scraps that would soon be theirs.



And after that, we headed over to the Cosmo World amusement park next to the convention center, and rode the humongous Cosmo Clock 21 ferris wheel
, probably one of the biggest in the world. The wheel turns so slowly that it does not stop to take on passengers; folks just step in and out of the moving gondolas. The ride was smooth, and the view spectacular.







Among the other rides we noticed at the park was a shooting ride, where the passengers shot light beams at targets. The poster showed folks riding by a mermaid -- and shooting at her, as she apparently shoots back. ("Wow, look! A mermaid!" "Oh no! She's packin'! Waste her!")

On Monday, we packed up our goodies, checked out of the hotel, grabbed a soba-noodle breakfast at the nearby train station, visited a 100-yen discount store, and hit Worldcon in time for the very emotional closing ceremonies. Then we boarded a bus and headed over to Tokyo. More specifically, our destination was the Prince Hotel in Ikebukuro -- the same place we stayed during our 2004 visit to Tokyo. As soon as we had checked in and dropped our bags off at our room, we grabbed lunch at the same corner cafe where we ate breakfast on our first morning in Japan, over three years ago; and then hit one of the Meccas of anime shopping, the nine-story Animate shop across the street from the hotel. Several hours later, and several yen poorer, we struggled back to the hotel with our heavy bags; grabbed an Italian dinner at the mall attached to the hotel; and then turned in. Whew.

Once again, photos can be found here.