yakihito

Japan-Related Search Engine

The good folks at Nipponster contacted me to let me know about their site, a search engine that keeps results to Japan-related content. Sometimes I wish my brain was like that!

The site also has a blog. Check it out!

Yamanote Loop

I love the Yamanote line, the JR loop that encircles and defines central Tokyo. I never rode it all the way around but I estimated once that it would take about 2 hours.

Now you can do it in 4 minutes:

Unfortunately the video doesn't have all of the station melodies, which are why I love the Yamanote so much.

Spotted at Pink Tentacle.

In The Pink

I still have never seen an episode of Pink Lady…And Jeff, the short-lived (six weeks!) American TV variety show starring Japan's biggest duo of the time, Pink Lady. The show aired in 1980 and featured musical numbers from the duo, plus guests like Blondie, Alice Cooper and Roy Orbison. The "Jeff" of the title is comedian Jeff Altman, best known for playing Boss Hogg's nephew Hughie on The Dukes of Hazzard.

Most of the musical numbers that Pink Lady performed were in English, but here's "UFO," a big hit in Japan that probably really confused the few people in America who were watching:

Of course, things were different back home, where Pink Lady was a massive hit. Check out this video of "Southpaw."

All six episodes of Pink Lady…And Jeff are available on DVD.

Fiction: Killing Time

It's weird how a dream can leave you almost right away, even one that you're excited about when you first wake up, or it can stay with you for hours, days even. It shades your whole existence, like seeing a movie in the middle of a work day. You go about whatever you're supposed to do after the matinee but it's all viewed through a kind of filter.

It's a miracle I had a dream at all, what with the jet lag and the fitful sleep. No matter what I try to do before catching a flight to Tokyo, staying up all night and partying, getting a lot of sleep, taking a melatonin, whatever, the jet lag is always killer on arrival and a piece of cake on the way back. Usually I don't even dream. But not this time.

I get off the subway at Meiji-jingumei station and walk the block to Takeshita-dori, the pedestrian artery through Harajuku. It's 3 pm, just after school, and the street is jammed with school kids in uniforms, all sailor suits, naval jackets and oversized socks. Although I'm almost twice these kids' age, I love coming here. The energy is exhilarating, like plunging down the first drop on a rollercoaster. I'm sure they don't see it like that. For them it's probably like I remember the teenage years being: occasionally confusing, painful.

I leave the confines of Takeshita-dori and work my way into Omotesando, stopping at a Lawson's convenient store for a can of Asahi beer. I sit on the winding metal bar that doubles as a bench along the main thoroughfare and sip my beer, watching the high school- and college-age kids walk by.

A flash of red lightening.

I'm at the house where I grew up. A good third of my dreams take place here. That's down from half only a few years ago. I take that as a sign of growing up. I'm in the back yard, talking to some people I don't recognize from waking life, although I obviously know them in the dream. We're anxious. I glance at the sky; there's a storm on the way.

I take a sip of beer and watch a particularly cute girl walk by. I consider giving her a flyer for tonight's gig but decide against it. It's such an obvious move, and anyway, my Japanese is only good enough to be cute. When it's time for a real conversation it has to move into the realm of English. Once I sat down at a table with two girls after a gig and tried to impress them with my Japanese. I sounded like a five-year old, my Japanese friend, who had been standing nearby, remarked later. Who wants to sleep with a five-year old?

A commotion breaks out, we're trying to get back in the house. Panic. The sky is becoming more dark. It begins to undulate like in "Poltergeist." The effect of glue in water. I suppose it makes sense that the special effects of my dreams are directly influenced by the movies I've seen, but really, in the infinite possibilities of my mind, why does it have to be glue in water? It's terrifying. Something is happening.

Distended columns drip down from the cloud ceiling, which has now covered the entire horizon. I watch one in the distance and then notice there's one much closer to me. This is the immediate threat. They're like inverted, slow-motion drops. I sense there's a purpose to this, some malevolence. And then the lightening starts.

Finished with my beer, I stand up. There are four garbage cans in front of the convenient store. One marked paper trash, one marked for plastic, one for food waste and one for cans and glass bottles. I throw my can in the paper bin. Whatever. A Lawson's employee sees me and then shrugs his shoulders, assuming I can't read the Japanese. But I can. I can read that much.

I go back inside and buy another, and a packet of rice crackers. I take my seat back on the railing. Three college kids have settled down nearby, drinking canned coffee and talking loudly. I know they're college age because they're not wearing school uniforms. Japanese people wear uniforms from the moment they start school until they graduate high school, and then again when they enter the work force. The four years of college are all they get for creative fashion freedom. And they go nuts. Especially the women. It's like they've decided they're going to catch up for all they've missed, and they wear a month's worth of clothing in layers every day, until they enter the workforce, put on the requisite office lady outfit, and file away their twenties. God bless them, I think, as I crack open the beer.

I'm getting a little bored with Omotesando by the time I've finished my beer and, I have to admit, a little groggy. I make one last trip into the Lawson's before I go, this time for a genki drink. The three people behind the counter eye me suspiciously as I wander around the store, slightly buzzed. Why does every Japanese business need so many employees? Three to do the work of one. And they're all young. A hipster in a fedora and three different kinds of sweat bands rings up my drink. When he says the requisite "Gozaimashita," I reply, "Douitashimashite," which freaks him out a little. No one ever says, "You're welcome," when he says, "Thank you." They don't even hear him saying it. People say "thank you" to you in Japan a hundred times a day.

I unscrew the top of the genki drink and down it in one go. It's packed with caffeine and vitamins, plus nicotine. You've got to hand it to the Japanese. They sell soda with nicotine in it. The chemicals move right in and shove the beer buzz aside, saying, take a walk to Shibuya. So that's what I do.

Red lightening flashes down from the inverted drops, determined to cover the surface of the earth like a statically charged mesh blanket. I try to run but the bolts knock me flat. I'm prone on the ground, kicking and bucking through the surge of red electricity. Somewhere above the cloud cover, an unseen intelligence. I'm saturated with electricity, enveloped in a lattice of criss-crossing bolts. I can feel it, the current kicking through me; changing me. It's changing the sleeping me. The real sleeping me. How do I know this?

Passing by a park, I watch a crow dive on a trio of salarymen. They raise their briefcases like shields above their heads, running from the shrieking menace. I'm terrified of birds but can't help laughing at them. I should have shielded myself from the red lightening like they did the crows. But I had no shield, not in my dream, not now. I become annoyed with their terror, and stop watching, focusing my attention on the group of school girls walking ahead of me. Some of them have their skirts rolled up high, exposing lots of leg. After a few minutes of staring I feel ashamed and duck into the next convenient store I pass to buy another beer.

It hurts. The red lightening. But it doesn't kill me. It was supposed to kill me, supposed to kill everybody. I don't know if everyone else died. But I didn't. I survived.

I sit on a bench, a proper bench, and watch the cars and motorcycles drive by. There are a lot of motorcycles in Tokyo. Actually, there are a lot of scooters made up to look like motorcycles in Tokyo. Kicked back with lots of plastic, beefed up. The pose is made complete by leather jacket, cool helmet and a big pipe on the exhaust to exaggerate and amplify the noise. I take a huge swig and stretch out, lying my head back to look up at the sky. Tokyo sky is a vague wash, the color of watered-down beer, faded paint and smoke mingling on the walls of an empty office. I'm taken back to the dream. It's changed now.

The walls of the room reveal the cheapness of the place. Hastily painted drywall. An industrial park of the barest kind, for fly-by-night establishments and businesses with no hope of surviving the fiscal year. File cabinets are stacked against the back wall, half open, all empty. Outside, through the window, I can see featureless wetlands stretching on until they meet the bay. Weren't there supposed to be more buildings out here? I distinctly remember more buildings, riding my bike through here. I try to look across to the other side of the bay. The distance is hazy. I'm with a girl.

I drain the can, walk back to the convenient store and throw it in the bin marked "food." A girl sees me and giggles. "Nani?" I ask her. "What?" She's visibly surprised, because I'm speaking to her, speaking in Japanese. "Simasen," she murmurs. "Sorry."

"Ii yo," I reply. "Daijoubu." I smile. "It's nothing."

She returns the smile. Her teeth are slightly crooked. Cute.

"Kawaii, ne," I say. "You're cute." It's the beer talking. That, and the confidence one gets from being alone in a foreign country.

"Ne?" she asks, laughing embarrassedly. "Really?"

"Honto da. Namae desuka?" I flash my best smile. "Really. What's your name?"

"Yuki." She looks down as she says it. She was caught off guard. Japanese men aren't nearly so forward. Or rarely so forward. They can be though. Just like any man. I've seen it. One night in Shinjuku I watched a guy hit on 10 different women in a bar in the course of the evening. He left with the tenth. Same as anywhere.

"Yuki-chan, hajimemashite." I make sure to meet her eyes. "Nice to meet you." I use the familiar, "chan." It's disarming, to hear a foreigner use this word, yet endearing, like being referred to by a childhood nickname. Where am I going with this?

The skies are still cloudy and dark but there's no trace of lightening. The girl is blonde and petite, cute but not beautiful. It seems natural that I'm there with her, the most natural thing in the world. She lays out a mat on the floor of the office, between two desks. I look at the mat and realize how tired I am. She spreads out a thick blanket for the two of us and we get down on the floor together.

I can feel her warmth next to me. We're fully clothed. I kiss her lips. "We have to leave tomorrow," she whispers.

"Where are we going?" I ask. "Tomorrow?" I don't want to go anywhere. I want to stay here, with her.

She rolls over, doesn't answer. Everything begins to shift. I don't want it to shift. I want to hold her longer. It feels good to hold her, there under that warm blanket, on the floor between the desks in that office on the edge of the bay.

Yuki looks down at the flyer I've handed her. "Konban," I assure her. "Tonight." She smiles but I can't tell if it's a genuine smile, or a polite smile. There's no way of knowing, really. There's no way of ever knowing in Japan.

Her phone rings. I watch her answer. She says a lot of things beyond my comprehension. Occasionally she looks at the flyer and then glances up at me, and I smile. She laughs a few times. I laugh too, although I have no idea what I'm laughing at. This seems to make her laugh more. Finally she gets off the phone. I'm ready.

"Konban wa Yuki-chan ga aitai ne," I say, playfully but forcefully, as I had practiced it in my head while she talked on the phone. "I'd like to see you tonight."

She looks down evasively at the flyer. "Ano… Chotto ne." A half smile.

"OK," I say, in English. I know well enough what "chotto" means. Literally, it translates as, "little," but the colloquial meaning is, "I'm a little tired." It's the all-purpose excuse.

I'm a little tired as well, I realize. I watch her walk down the street. She's already on the phone again, telling whomever's on the other end about the foreigner who just hit on her. The funny thing is, I might see her at the show tonight. It's happened before.

I have a coffee at the Hachiko Starbucks, across the street from Shibuya station, and then head back to the hotel for a nap before the gig. On the way back, on the train, I try to read the advertisements lining the walls but my dream keeps getting in the way. Red lightening and the blonde girl, our kiss in the office on mats on the floor. Why is this so fresh in my mind, when I can't even remember what I did yesterday? It's no surprise though. It's not like the world ended yesterday.

Your Favorite New Band

Your favorite new band is Versailles, the latest visual kei group to don lolita dresses and colored contacts.

The proof is "Revenant Choir," their debut single/movie/thing:

Hmm, not-so-subtle marketing ploy to sell more loli dresses?

Read all of the clever things these girls boys say at Metropolis.

Rockabilly Constancy

The rockabillies that dance in Yoyogi Park every Sunday are something of an anomaly, in that they've been doing it for going on 25 years. Impervious to the changing fashion, they still grease their hair, don leather, and twist away the weekend just like they've always done.

But at one time they were the height of fashion. It's true. Even while the takenoko-zoku were still hand-dancing in the park, while the new romantic sound was eating up the charts in England and while America was renewing its commitment to defeating Communist Russia, Reagan's Evil Empire, the Tokyo rockabillies were leading the pack.

Check out Wim Wenders' excellent docu-essay, Tokyo-Ga. Like Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, Tokyo-Ga also features takenoko-zoku, but it dedicates more time to the then-burgeoning rockabilly fashion of early '80s Tokyo.

But I already knew about this. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had known that Tokyo had a rockabilly boom in the '80s. This I had known since the '80s. How was this possible? It wasn't until the early '90s that I began following Japan and its fashions.

How indeed:

The funny thing about this clip from The Karate Kid, Part II, from 1986, is that the fashions are much closer to what the Tokyo kids actually wore than to what the rockabillies don today. The now look is bit more punk, a bit more biker. The kids from back in the day really wore poodle skirts and jean jackets, white socks and button-up shirts with rolled sleeves. But this was still the '80s, so the jean jackets were made by Guess and the hair was terrible.

But back to my original point: that the rockabillies still get gussied up like they do 25 years later, when all around them fashion has changed more times than I've said I'll give up drinking, well, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Sake Tasting at Takara Brewery

I like Japan. I like booze. So sake is pretty much a given. And yet I know little about it, or even what kinds I should buy. It's frustratingly elusive, this rice wine. But why curse the darkness when I can light a candle? Off to Berkeley, CA's Takara Brewery.

Takara, brewer of Sho Chiku Bai sake, has been in Berkeley since 1982 (Ozeki has been in the US the longest, in Hollister, CA since 1979). I've known about Takara for going on 10 years, when a friend told me the free museum and sake tasting made for a great date. I didn't have a date with me when I finally made the trek on BART to Berkeley but I'm happy to report that it's still free.

I had the museum and tasting room to myself, it being 3 in the afternoon on a Wednesday. I perused the museum, which had a nice selection of early-20th-century sake tools and barrels. I still had no idea what any of it was for. Even with the signs (yes, in English) I was having trouble putting it all together. Apparently others had too: one of the motooke barrels had money and expired BART tickets at the bottom.

I was shown a video about sake but found it hard to concentrate as the TV was old and the image kept pulsing. I complained to the attendant and she said it made you feel like you were drunk. True that.

And speaking of drunk, the time had arrived to do a little tasting. We started with a warm junmai Sho Chiku Bai, the standard sushi bar sake. A bit of a bite, but filled me with a nice warmth. Made me want hamachi nigiri. I should mention that the attendant put out a bowl for me to dump out whatever I didn't want to drink. It was still bone dry at the end of the session.

Next up was the Sho Chiku Bai Organic Nama, an unpasteurized junmai (I'll get to all these terms at the end). It was delightfully dry with just the slightest bite to remind you you're drinking alcohol. I bought it.

This was followed by the Sho Chiku Bai Ginjo, smooth with a fruity aftertaste. Categorized as a junmai gingjo, this comes in a pretty, frosted bottle with a colored image on the back inside of the bottle that shows through the front. Bought it.

I had already tried the unfiltered Sho Chiku Bai Nigori, so I was poured a little of the Crème de Sake Nigori, which is less sweet than the regular nigori. Bought it.

Sake cocktails are still pretty popular I guess, so Takara has started a line of flavored sakes. I tried a cupful of the lychee flavor, which was utterly delicious, and utterly dangerous. I could easily drink a whole bottle, not realizing how much I had imbibed, until it was too late. So I passed. But boy would teenage girls like this.

Lastly I was poured a bit of the Koshu Plum, which is plum-flavored sake. The plum flavor was much stronger and more tart than I expected, not nearly as light as the lychee. It was maybe too flavored, but nice nonetheless. I also passed on this.

The types then. The attendant explained to me that all of the sakes Takara brews in America are junmai, which means they are unfortified. Just water, rice and culture. (The local sakes are made with rice grown in California, and water from the Sierra Nevadas is used.) Basic junmai use rice that has been polished down to 70% of its original size.

Junmai ginjo is like junmai, except it has been polished down to 60%.

Ginjo has been polished down to 60% and has added distilled alcohol (fortified).

Junmai dai ginjo is the good stuff, just water, rice and culture, and polished down to 50%. Why is more polish better? Apparently, it's the interior kernel of the rice that gives the best flavor. The outer part, which is good for eating, is not so good for brewing.

The other types are the nama (unpasteurized), nigori (unfiltered, so it's cloudy), and honjozo, which is like a regular junmai expect it has added distilled alcohol. There are other types too, but I'm getting way beyond what I learned today.

My next stop will be the store True Sake in San Francisco. A lot of the info in this piece is from the True Sake site. Check it out.

My next sake brewery visit will be to Gekkeikan in Folsom, CA. Who knows, I may visit the prison too.

Gay Pride In Tokyo

Everybody deserves to be happy. If you don't think so, then you suck.

Check out these photos from the recent Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park. Great outfits!

Agoraphobics Beware

Tokyo's Summerland indoor water park is impressively popular.

Wait, isn't that the wave pool?

OK, who peed in the wave?

Puffy Gappy

Found this picture of my girls Ami and Yumi in a Gap ad over at Asian Sirens (NSFW—the site, not Puffy). Not that I care about Gap, but I do like me some Puffy.

You'll notice that I don't write, "Puffy AmiYumi." That's because I think their American moniker is just stupid. Like anyone was ever going to confuse two Japanese girls for one megalomaniacal black man. But anyway.

If you only know Puffy's music from the (terrible) cartoon, I highly recommend you dig a little deeper into their back catalog. I like them for a number of reasons, and aside from the obvious (かわいい) they have some really good songs. This is due chiefly to their songwriters, like Tamio Okudo of Unicorn and Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish.

I've also found their music good for learning Japanese.