Earthquakes? In Japan?

It's true. I've been through earthquakes since I came to Tokyo. Not major, life-threatening earthquakes, or even lesser property-damaging earthqaukes, but minor vibrations in the ground, which I tend to notice while lying in bed.

Anyway. . . Much has been happening, and many photos have been taken, but I haven't been uploading them because the process is so tedious, eg. to upload a four minute YouTube video takes about three hours. Plus, I only have so much space available on my hard drive for photos and raw & edited movies. Sure, Akihabara is only a few kilometers away, but I still have trouble going to the damn convinience store, and buying something as simple as an overpriced alarm clock in Ginza* was a Byzantine liguistic experience. I can only imagine how hard it would be to buy an external hard drive.

Nonetheless, I do have a few updates. Here are a few pictures of Tabata neighborhood, where I live.

My house, at the very end:



A typical back street:



Meiji Street, near my house:



The sidewalk near Tabata station:



Finally, the tracks, my link to the rest of Tokyo:



I've done my fair share of sightseeing in Tokyo recently, but the pictures have yet to make it to my computer. The videos below were taken during one of my most recent trips, to Meiji Shrine. It was too much of a hassile to make one large video, so I broke it up into parts. Enjoy:







Finally, if anyone still cares, I'll be putting up a new Sailor Moon post pretty soon, mostly about how my experiences in Japan so far have caused me to rethink various aspects of the script. 'Til then!


*"Overpriced in Ginza" is likely redundant.

I Paid 4000 Yen to go to a Women's Department Store and Watch a Play Written for Five Year Old Girls, and it Made me Feel Like a Man.

I realized for the first time today that Brother's Grimm stories may be the only stories in existence where the main character is actually a MacGuffin.

Take Snow White. What real purpose does Snow White herself serve to the story? She doesn't really develop as a character. . . hell, she barely even acts as a character. The entire plot consists of the vaiorus reactions different people have to her existence-- the Queen, the Hunter, the Prince, the Dwarves-- without the character herself having to be at all active or interesting in any way. In other words, a MacGuffin.

So what brought on this little insight?

It starts with my insecurity about my Japanese language ability. I've been getting gradually better at picking apart the various sentences I hear from the various people I have encountered in Japan, but to a still fairly large extent I've sounded and acted like the typical dumb Gaijin. My anxieties came to a head yesterday. I decided to see if I could find the location where the musical play Snow White was being performed-- why I wanted to see the play, I'll get to in a moment. I found the location easily, but upon arriving, I realized that I might have some difficulty in obtaining tickets, due to my lingual deficiencies. So, I left, despondent.

That night, I felt terrible. I worried that I might have blown my only chance to reserve tickets to this play. I beleived, at the time, that this play might be the only chance I get to see Miyuu Sawai in person. That's right, Miyuu Sawai, former live action Sailor Moon, had the lead role in a stage adaptation of Snow White, one whose run just happened to correspond with my arrival in Japan. I decided that night that I must at least try to get tickets; melodramatic as it sounds, this was about more than meeting a former pseudo-Sentai star. . . it was about self-resepct.

So I went again today, this time (mostly) prepared: I brought a hairbrush (so that I would look presentable to ticket booth lady) and my Japanese books, so I could figure out how to ask for a reservation. I travelled to the famous Mistukoshi department store in Nihonbashi, the officially protected historical site wherein the theatre was located. I cracked open my books, took down notes, considered every possibile contingency-- the tickets are sold somewhere else, the tickets are sold out for the day, the tickets are sold out period-- and, fully prepared, went to the front desk to reserve my ticket.

In all, it took about two minutes. I paid 4000 yen for a ticket that very day. I spent the next hour and a half or so bombing around the department store and buying a 500 yen prepackaged nigiri lunch. . . which, as it will turn, was not the wisest use of my time, but more on that later. At 2 o'clock, I took my seat. Between then and beginning overture, the seats swelled with three-to-five year old girls and their mothers, along with a few older girls and boys. I was the only foreigner in the whole theatre. . . though interestingly, I was not the only adult male not accompanying children. At 2:30, the show began. . .

. . . Miyuu Sawai, centre stage, dancing with two professional ballerinas. A nice touch. . .

. . . The Queen. This actress, who appears to have operatic voice training, was so deliciously over-the-top that I thought she was going to steal the show. The ballerinas are now her evil minions. . .

. . . I kid you not, the voice of the magic mirror is a dead fucking for Zordon from Power Rangers. The octave, the voice enhancement effect-- it was dead on. I half expected the mirror to order Alpha to summon five teenagers with attitude. . .

. . . Miyuu Sawai and the Prince start singing. If you don't know already, Miyuu Sawai, as her character Usagi Tsukino, released two "character singles" to help promote Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. Her singing in the play was quite a notch better. . .

. . .The Queen, spurned by the prince and consumed with jealosy, casts a spell on him which causes him to act like an instructor at the William Shatner school of stage fighting. . .

. . . I haven't really mentioned Sawai's performance yet, so I may as well now. Apart from the fact that she plays the least interesting "lead" character ever written, Sawai is, well, Sawai. That is, she displays a lot of the rather irritatingly forced mannerisms (unsubtle in all the wrong ways) while at the same time offering numerous glimpses of what she's truly capable of as an actress. . .

. . . JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THE DWARVES JUST BURST THORUGH THE SIDE DOOR AND NOW THEY'RE MARCHING THROUGH THE AISLES SINGING LOUDLY!! But seriously, it's The Fucking Dwarves who steal the show. Consisting of two men and five women, they are the comedic heart and soul of this play, mugging and pratfalling flawlessly. . .

. . . And thirty minute intermission. . .

. . . It turns out this "musical" consists of one song being repeated over and over again, and it's not a catchy song. . .

. . . Turns out princess can't cook worth a shit. I actually really liked that part. Must be the anti-royalist lefty in me, though the reaction from the always kickass dwarves really sold it. . .

. . . So we're an hour and a half in and Snow White still hasn't been poisoned. . .

. . . Oh, wait, Snow white was poisoned, Prince was broken out of prison, Prince somehow found Snow White in the middle of the woods, Queen somehow found him in the middle of the woods, big fight, Queen was killed when Prince fired Hunter's bow, kiss, wake up, lovey love love, but wait, Snow White can't leave the dwarves behind but the Prince understands. . . all in about the last ten minutes of the play. . .

That's curtain. Miyuu Sawai and the Prince bow, then the Dwarves bow, then the Queen and Hunter and others all bow, and show's over.

OR IS IT?

. . . Before I go on, there's something I have to confess. You're gonna hate me for it, nearly as much as I hate myself for it.

I didn't bring my camera.

It would be one thing if I simply forgot. But no, I made a deliberate decision not to bring my camera. I wasn't even sure that I would get to see the play at all, let alone that very day. And I was certain that whenever I did get to see the play, I wouldn't be allowed to take photos, nor would there be any photography of the actors taking place. So, I decided that it wouldn't be worth the hassle to bring the camera.

By the end of the play, this seemed like it had been a wise decision. The curtain down, the lights came on, and everybody filed out the door. But, as the audience made their way down the main hall, we were stopped by one of the theatre employees.

"Oh no," I thought. "You're not. . . Don't tell me. . . No, no, you short bald Japanese man, don't do this to me! Don't--"

And then it happened. Miyuu Sawai, the prince, and five of the seven dwarves all filed out of the same exit the audience had taken and lined up against the wall to pose for photos. Children lined up all the way back into the fucking theatre, waiting for their chance to pose with the characters of the play, while I stood just across from them, not ten feet away from the live action Sailor Moon herself.

Fuck me.

I seriously debated whether or not to stay. The line up, mostly kids and moms with a few scattered teenage girls and adult men, was pretty damn long. Plus, I was not, shall we say, exactly the target demographic of this enterprise. Eventually, sheer economic considerations won out-- I paid 4000 yen for this, I may as well get the whole experience, camera or not.

Thus, when the last of this kids passed through, I walked up to the first dwarf. She stood up (they had all been kneeling down for the kids up till this point) took my hand, and said "Arigato Gozaimasu". . . followed by "Ooki!", i.e. "Big!" I replied with my own "Arigato Gozaimasu", nodded at the mention of my size, and moved on to the next dwarf, who smiled, took my hand, thanked me, and also remarked at my size. This pattern was repeated as I made my way through the dwarves, with one of the actresses having the courtesy to break the monotony by saying "thank you very much" in English. . . followed by another remark at my size. Then came the prince. He stood up, shook my hand, thanked me in a very deep voice and then, despite being probably a good six feet tall himself, also said "ooki!" Honestly, I can't really sure whether they were shocked at how tall I was or, given the notorious ambiguity of the Japanese language, they were very politely asking what the hell someone of my age was doing at a play like this.

Up until this point I had been avoiding eye contact with Miyuu Sawai, so as not to weird her out. In retrospect, this may have actually been a mistake, given how our meeting went. After the dwarves, and the prince, finally, I came to Miyuu Sawai. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of me-- being incredibly vain, I like to imagine that she was pleasantly surprised at the sight of a gaijin fan, especially one possessing the novelty of hugeness. She took my hand, like all the others, and thanked me for coming, and I thanked her in return. I made no mention whatsoever of Sailor Moon, thinking that it might be inappropriate for this particular venue. This is about Snow White damn it, not a role Miyuu Sawai stopped playing back in 2005. Again, in retrospect this might have been a mistake. In trying to play it as cool as I could, I worry that I may have given the impression that I had no clue who Miyuu Sawai was. To her, I was probably just some Gaijin out for a really childish day of entertainment, who had no idea at all with whom he was shaking hands.

So, after a few simple words, I parted hands with Miyuu Sawai and made my way into the crowd that awaited their chance to take yet more photos of the cast. I stood just outside the crowd, taking one last look. As the crowd broke into one last burst of applause, Miyuu Sawai caught one last glimpse of me and waved. If you've ever seen me give my dorky wave. . . well, that's the wave I gave her back, out of pure instinct. The actors retreated back into the theatre, and the crowd dispersed. I walked off, with a mixture of satisfaction, a strange lack of excitement, and extreme regret at not having brought my camera. A regret which would later be joined by a further regret at not saying, "hey, I really like you in Sailor Moon."

But, there are always second chances. It turns out that the same theatre company behind this production of "Snow White" is at work producing another play, called "Imagine 9/11". . . I could not think of more diametrically opposite subject matter. And indeed, Miyuu Sawai is slated to star in this new play. Whether or not I get the chance to meet Sawai again, I am interested in seeing this play. But I will bring the damn camera this time.

I'm still uploading stuff from when I was staying at the hostel. . .

Sensoji Shrine, a famous Buddhist shrine and market in Asakusa:



The Edo-Tokyo Museum:



Tokyo Tower-- why go up to the observation deck of the Metropolitan Government Building for free when you can get the same view for 1200 800 yen? Actually, there are two levels to Tokyo Tower, but to access the second level, you have to pay about 1200 yen:

Another Milestone Met. . .

Today, I saw my first black van. In fact, I saw a whole mini-convoy of Uyoku Dantai propoganda wagons circling the National Diet building. Uyoku Dantai is the term used for Japanese ultra right-wing groups, of which there are estimated to be about 100,000. Many of these groups are believed to be fronts for the Yakuza. I've known about these groups for years, and today, I finally saw one of them in action:



Somehow, that terrible song they were playing reminds me of this:

I'm Home! (So to speak. . .)

Yesterday, I moved into my new place. It's a guest house, owned by the Sakura House company, located in Tabata neighborhood. Showers, bathrooms, kitchen, and living room are all shared, but I get my own air conditioned bedroom where I can keep all my stuff. Take a look:



As I imagined it would be, it was absolutely horrendous to move my stuff from Asakusabashi to Tabata, esspecially since I had to go to Shinjuku in between in order to sign the lease agreement.

The day started on a weird note. The night before I left, a rather strange man who (I think) could only speak very little Japanese checked in to the hostel. This man decided, on his own, that he and I were friends, and proceeded to pester me all the next morning, from looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing on my laptop to following me on his bicycle all the way to the damn subway station! At one point, I actually tried to lose him by going into a store (he followed me, of course) and then darting out when he wasn't looking and running into a back alley. He found me, of course, and for the next ten or so minutes he followed me until I reached my station. I was really getting worried that he would try to ride my train, but fortunately he just said goodbye and continued on his way. I'm sure he thought he was trying to be friendly. . . but there was something very strange about him, like he was constanly drunk. I don't know whether he has a mental illness or whether he really was just drunk, but I was glad to be rid of him.

Getting to Shinjuku was alright. . . getting from Shinjuku to Tabata was hell. The station I went to was clearly not designed for people with heavy bags-- or at least, not the part of the station I found myself in. I had to haul my bags down sets of stairs, and then UP sets of stairs, about three separate times. Then, when I finally DID make it to the line I was to take to Tabata, I found that the only escalator I could find took me up to a train that was headed in the complete opposite direction of where I needed to go. By that point, I decided I would take the train anyway-- it was on a loop, so it would take me to Tabata, just in a longer amount of time. I arrived, haulded my stuff though a few blocks to tight streets, and, well, here I am.

Anyway, I've been cooped up here long enough. I need to get out, get something to eat, and see the sights. I have a whole bunch of video of Tokyo Tower and a huge shrine in Asakusa. . . come to think of it, there's a whole bunch of video that I've already uploaded, but haven't put on the blog yet. I'll get right on that!

My trip to Shinjuku (an earlier trip, not the one I took on my way to the guest house):



A trip to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building:

Proof that "Statistical Analysis" is Just Another Buzzword

When writing about Tuxedo Kamen and How Sailor Moon is like The Breakfast Club:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When writing about Ami Mizuno:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

(which is kinda creepy if you think about it. . .)

When writing about a fateful wrong turn and how bad I thought the new Star Trek movie was gonna be:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When writing about how bad it actually did turn about to be:

I write like
Douglas Adams

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When writing about America:

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When writing about SCIENCE!:

I write like
Edgar Allan Poe

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When writing about Dr. Tomoe, Rei, Makoto, and extremely dated political satire:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

For comparison, an excerpt from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft. I'll let you make up your own mind:

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far, forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetick to the eager sound of lutes and song; unclosing faery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence, he felt the bondage of dream’s tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal flights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.

Link.

So Yesterday, I saw Tokyo Sky Tree, Learned About Tokyo's Tragic Past, and Made Jet Lag my Bitch. . . Plus, my first ever emoticon!

Hi everyone,

I've now finished my second full day in Tokyo. Unfortunately, I only remembered to bring my camera with me for the first day. . . :(

Fortunately, I didn't really do anything interesting on the second day. Really, the most important thing I did today was to get some food; on my first full day here, I actually forgot to eat. Okay, not really. . . I grabbed a plate of microwave spaghetti and meatsauce from Seven-Eleven, and for what it was, it was pretty damn tasty. But still, most of my sustanance came in the form of strange, undoubtably unhealthy drinks available at vending machines placed on every third block or so. There were green teas, tea colas, Welche's grape juice, coconut colas (I think), orange juice/tea mixes. . . AND THIS!



A 500 ml can of Coke! And you what's really sick? When I went to the Seven-Eleven, I saw 500ml cans of Coke being sold with a "bonus" 125ml, like 500ml cans are somehow insufficient!

Kiss those dreams of me losing weight goodbye!

Anyway, the other good news is that I saw plenty of interesting things on that first day, some of which I'll share with you today. I say "some of which" because, frankly, there are so many pictures that I can't hope to upload all of them to the blog. So instead, I'm gonna try uploading everything to an online photo album, so I can clear off my hard drive without losing anything.

The day's events can be grouped into various highlights. Highlight #1: Tokyo Sky Tree.

Tokyo Sky Tree

I walked out of the hostel not really knwoing what to expect. I went down the road, made a right turn, and headed to the Sumidagawa river. That's when I saw it:



The Tokyo Sky Tree. When it's completed in 2011, it will be the tallest man made structure outside the Middle East, at a height of ~630m. I saw it, briefly, on the train ride into Tokyo, but I had no idea I would be THIS close to it when I arrived. Once I saw it, I knew that one way or another, I would get to it and see it up close. And that's exactly what I did:



It was a gruesome walk of ~3km through some of the muggiest weather I've ever encountered-- imagine summertime Denver with about 700% humidity-- but I made it.

Yokoamicho Park



On the way to Tokyo Sky Tree, I happened to pass by Yokoamicho Park, essentially a very beautiful monument to Tokyo's misery. In addition to a garden, there were monuments and buildings dedicated to both the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1925 and the Tokyo fire bombings of WWII. At the centre of it all was a massive shrine:



There was also a monument dedicated to "children sufferers":



Sadly, the monument dedicated to the victims of the fire bombings was kind of disaster itself:



A much more effective memorial to the fire bombings lay jusy fifty feet away: actual items molten down by the fires:



Here's a video I put together:



Yokoami-cho Garden

After making my way to Tokyo Sky Tree, I started to walk back toward the hostel. Unfortunately, I passed the street that I was supposed to take back to get to Asakusabashi, and after a series of misadventures that took me to an eight story tall shopping mall, I eventually made my way to the so-called "Old Yokoami-cho Garden", not far from the Yokoamicho garden I visited earlier that day. No videos here, just pictures:









Next time: Shinjuku!