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Found this clip of Cornelius playing "Count Five or Six" on the Nick Jr. TV show, Yo Gabba Gabba! Appropriate, because it's pretty much a lesson of how to count. In English, yet!
Even better, he does it live with his band, complete with synced movie in the background. Kids go suitably nuts.
Now can we see Halcali on Sesame Street?
My friend Noah told me about Halcali today and I can't believe I've never heard of them before. I mean, look at this:
Apparently they're a project from Rip Slyme m-flo, a group I've never been impressed with, but Halcali is just so nuts I can't help but fall in love. Move over, Puffy, I have a new crush.
For my birthday last year a friend of mine got me an issue of National Geographic from 1964. The lead story was about Tokyo and its getting ready for the olympics. There was lots of facts about how big Tokyo was, how it's growing fantastically, and so on. Of course, being National Geographic, it's full of some amazing pictures. Like this one, of the recently completed Tokyo Tower. Look at all the empty land around it!
Now take a look at this picture I took from the top of Tokyo Tower in 2004, 40 years later. It's all been built up. Where Tokyo Tower once dwarfed the land around it, now it's just another tall weed in a field of spiky grass.
Pretty soon, the tower (333 meters) will look absolutely quaint when compared to the 610-meter-tall New Tokyo Tower when it's completed in 2011.
Ah, progress.
Slim's
November 15, 2007
San Francisco
A few years back my tinnitus got really bad. I pretty much quit DJing and stopped going to shows. However, I will make the occasional exception for bands I really like. I made the exception for Boredoms, and I just this week made the exception for Puffy.
Originally scheduled to play the famous Fillmore, Puffy were moved to the much smaller Slim's, a great place to see a show because it's so small. I was literally 10 feet from Ami and Yumi, a proximity I imagine I shall never be able to replicate, given their popularity. This is one of the biggest groups in the world and to see them in a (in the parlance of Japan) live house was something else. I didn't jump on stage like I threatened to do but I was close enough to seriously fall in love with Yumi, and Ami as well. 愛してるよ.
I'm much more of a fan of the old songs than the new, as I like their traditional '60s and '70s pop styles better than the Avril Lavigne-influenced pop punk they're putting out these days. Puffy were created by Tamio Okuda of Unicorn fame, and he wrote and produced a lot of their earlier work. This is the stuff I like. When he gets back together with them, like for "Mole-like" and "Oriental Diamond," well, the effect is pretty magical, and it's enough to keep me buying their albums. I was damn happy to hear both of those Tamio-penned songs get played. I've been playing "Oriental Diamond" over and over pretty much non-stop since I got the album, so it's no surprise that my eyes teared up when that Chuck Berry guitar line kicked in.
And speaking of guitars, Puffy's backing band were unbelievably tight. I guess it makes sense: Puffy is on a major label in Japan so they can pretty much get the best musicians to play with them. Two guitarists, bass, keyboards and drummer—all were stellar. And they all looked like they were having an amazing time. Whenever the guitarist would stop forward for a solo, he had the most sincere smile on his face. How could we not go crazy in response? Their having fun made the experience that much more enjoyable.
I came out of that show so energized, it took me forever to get to sleep. And my ears weren't even buzzing that badly afterward. Put me down for a ticket for their next visit.
Set List (as best as I can remember, and in no particular order):
Asia no Jushin
Joining a Fan Club
Kimi to Motorbike
Oriental Diamond
Yokai Puffy
Kuchiburu Motion
Boom Boom Beat
Electric Beach Fever
Jet Police
Red Swing
Teen Titans
Hi Hi
Tokyo I'm on My Way
Mole-Like
Basket Case (Green Day cover)
Wild Girls on Circuit (ska-punk version, also the encore)
A while back, there was a flurry of posts on the Internets about Kohei Yoshiyuki's recently unearthed exhibition of photos called "The Park," a series of night-vision shots of couples copulating in parks at night while a throng of on-lookers approach. The New York Times took the press release at face value and posited on the reasons for the public sex, while Japundit pointed out that Yoshiyuki was known in the '70s for his yarase ("staged") photos.
There's no denying the power of the images, but what about their "legitimacy"? I would be very surprised that any member of a culture so concerned about the differences between public and private would have sex in a park and not know that people were watching. I mean, there are more love hotels in Japan than seemingly normal hotels! As a teenager I had to have sex in public places (well, my car, but it was parked in a public place) but that's because there was nowhere else to go. These couples have a place to go.
So, if it's not staged, then what is it? Donald Richie, in his The Japan Journals, offers an answer. Given to taking walks through parks at night, Richie comes across a hentai fufu, a "perverted couple." They engage in oral sex in front of him, watching him while he watches them. When he reaches out a hand to, erm, "assist," they leave. やっぱり! Exhibitionists.
I highly recommend The Japan Journals, by the way, and for more reasons than that just mentioned. Lots of anecdotes about hanging out with Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Juzo Itami, Toshiro Mifune, and Yukio Mishima.
Was reading on Metropolis about haikyo, abandoned places in Japan that attract a certain type of tourist. According to the site, the term originally referred to the bombed-out buildings left after WWII, but today the term is applied to any abandoned building or place. And, it would seem, there are quite a lot of them in Japan.
This is surprising to me, as indeed it must be to a lot of those outside Japan.
Photographs of a Japan in decay shock foreign audiences because they don’t fit with the standard Tokyo-vs.-Kyoto image of the country. And, apparently, these pictures of ruins don’t look like Japan to Japanese photographers themselves, who say that the sites give them the feeling of being in a foreign country. Kobayashi even uses the loan word gosto taun to describe the atmosphere.
Japan is thought of as a place where real estate is at a premium, where any and all space is occupied, exploited. But in a country where the majority of its population is packed in urban areas, and what population there is is shrinking due to a low birth rate, the existence of haikyo suddenly doesn't seem so surprising.
Photographers have taken to capturing haikyo and releasing the images in books, which has caused something of a haikyo tourist boom. It is just the kind of thing I would be into. Abandoned places have a certain strange energy to them, a sadness that speaks of unrealized dreams and lost time.
Photographer Hiroyuki Tsuzuki has tons of photos of haikyo on his website, Haikyo Deflation Spiral. Amazing stuff. The photos of the abandoned amusement parks are especially poignant.
There's an interesting article at The Japan Times about a day in the life of the Shibuya Hachiko koban, or police box.
Much of the day is spent giving directions.
The officer hardly had time to get through explaining his list of regular jobs before a purposeful-looking, middle-aged man strode up."Where's the nearest post office?"
"Under the train tracks, up the hill on the left."
"Thank you."
There's also the occasional suspicious youth (not surprising given that it's Shibuya).
Judging from what I was seeing, the police at Shibuya Station Koban are less interested in whether you look drugged out than whether or not you're a man, your pockets are bulging and your eyebrows are plucked.OK, so maybe the plucked eyebrows part is a coincidence. You see, men with plucked eyebrows in Shibuya often also have red- or yellow-dyed asymmetrical crew cuts, gold jewelry, sunglasses and either pajama-like tracksuits or half-open floral shirts. By my reckoning such people have about an 80 percent chance of being approached if they do so much as glance at the Shibuya Station Koban.
Suspicious-looking people are often stopped on probable cause, but they may only be searched if they give their consent, although almost everybody does.
"Saying no is likely to make the officer think there's some reason you don't want to have your possessions checked," explained Kamei."And in that case the officers will persistently endeavor to persuade you."
Foreigners, however, don't have to look suspicious for an officer to ask to see their registration card. I myself was stopped in Shinjuku Station and smilingly asked to hand over my papers. I smilingly did as I was told.
So, the next time you're in Japan and get lost, just ask the helpful police at the local koban. Just be sure and have your passport ready.
Mmm, double chocolate collon. And in case you're wondering the katakana really does say "colon."
It's impacted with goodness!
Japan's vertically integrated media system ensures that every possible way to sell an idol will be exploited. We're used to this for idols: picture books, DVDs, appearances on TV variety shows, J-pop records. This same system is used for A/V idols, like Ran Monbu here.
I have to confess that I've never seen Ran Monbu "in action," and after watching this music video I don't think I want to.
Now that's bad.
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