I’m trying something a little different.

Over at my Flickr, I’ve just posted a walk through Nakano, one of the suburbs of Tokyo. It’s 2 or 3 stops west of Shinjuku, and in addition to being a lovely little area of town, it also houses Nakano Broadway Mall, home to nearly 10 different outlets of the used nerd good chain Mandarake, which I’ve talked about before. You can see my first visit to Nakano Broadway at http://comics212.net/2008/02/06/japan-2007-nakano-broadway-mall/, if you’re curious.

On our 2010 trip, our friend Jocelyne took us to a cute little vegan/vegetarian restaurant a 10 minute walk away from Nakano Broadway and from the JR station, and I decided to catalogue the walk with my new camera.

If you’d like to check it out–and there’s a tiny little bit of comics content in there too–please head over to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157627680799795/.

Best,

- Chris

On our walks through Shinjuku, we’ve already been to the flagship Kinokuniya store, located at the New South Entrance of Shinjuku station. Renown for having more-or-less the best collection of English language books available for sale in Japan, nearly a whole floor devoted to them.

But there is… another.

Perhaps this will be shocking to those of you who’ve grown up in North America, but the Kinokuniya bookstore chain has another massive, multi-floor location on the other side of the train station! It’s busy too, and while there is a dearth of English language books the Japanese manga section is perhaps even larger than the flagship.

I thought it might be fun to visit the Kinokuniya found at the East exit (actually, it’s the North End, but you get to it by the East exit), and take you on a walk through yet another bookstore full of delightful treats that will make you ache to visit Japan the way I do. ;)

Ready?

Walking in through the entrance above, I encountered the incredible display. Apparently it was magazine season, and, better still, each of the magazines also came with their own cloth shopping bag. Apparently reusable shopping bag fever had hit Japan, and so with your Yves St. Laurent magazine/catalogue/lifestyle product, you could also get a rare YSL-branded shopping bag. But it was slightly more illustrated periodicals that I was looking for, and so we headed onwards through the store.

So if you walk into the complex pictured at the top, and then walk through it you will come to an annex to the main book store, and it is called “Forest”, and it’s where the manga and the DVDs and all of that reside. It’s pretty fantastic.

Here’s the floor-guide!

By far the grandest display was for the then-newest volume of Thermae Romae, a collection of short stories about the history of bathing and public bathing in manga form! A surprise hit, the first volume featured a roman fella (a senator I think) being magically transported from ancient Rome to present-day Japan, to draw parallels between both sorts of public bathing!

It seems like a fun series, and I love that the book covers all feature the great statue illustrations. I’m kind of hoping that the series eventually makes its way to North America, but given how uniquely and weirdly Japanese it is, I’m not holding my breath.

Here’s a wide shot of the manga floor, with some after-work shoppers lining up with their purchases. It’s an absolutely sprawling store, with shelf after shelf of manga, art books, manga magazines, and other assorted bits and bobs.  You can see a bunch of different signing boards from visiting mangaka, and it’s cool to see them around. I like that even in a ‘corporate’ store, there are great touches like this.

Zooming in closer we get a look at some of the popular art books of the day, including the two One Piece collections, something called “Blue”, the Gelatin collection (sort of like ‘ROBOT’), and more.

And here we have the shelf that’s present in basically every book store or manga store I’ve visited in Japan–the Tezuka shelf. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the reverence with which Tezuka is held in Japan, nor the ubiquity of his manga.

This shelf featured a selection of classic manga, and what looked to be contemporary classics. I was drawn in by these collections of the Speed Racer manga (called Mach Go Go Go in Japanese), available here in 3 volumes (a 2 volume slipcase in North America), but a lot of the manga on this shelf looked really neat, and I had almost no familiarity with any of it. It’s kind of amazing how much is out there, what a huge and great history of material… and how very little of it we’ll ever see in English.

This was a neat shelf, consisting of the work of Shigeru Mizuki. To me, this looked like the Japanese edition of the recent Drawn & Quarterly release Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, but there are three volumes here. I can only wonder if these are additional volumes? Expanded books? Or perhaps text/novelizations of those books? It’s all there, alongside other famous Mizuki works including Kitaro and his recent autobiographical collections. I could have spent a small fortune here.

Speaking of which, this is actually a novelization of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, published in English by Drawn & Quarterly. It never occurred to me that someone might write a novelization of a manga but I guess they do. That’s kinda neat.

Another shot of one of the many large aisles.

More still!

So one of the cool manga-related happenings is that mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku had been adapted into a live-action period drama. Well, sci-fi period drama. This special edition of the first volume had been released featuring the lead actor and his manga counterpart!

The shop even set up this elaborate display, playing episodes from the tv series! Very cool cross promotion and something I kind of wish I had the budget to enact at our store, in some way. Well, actually, it’s not so much the budget as it is the fact that our store is full floor-to-ceiling with product already, and squeezing in a TV would be next-to-impossible. ;)

And that brings us to the end of the store, the check-out counter. I’m not entirely sure if buying a complete set of One Piece for 32,430 yen (about $400) counts as an “impulse purchase” but beggars and chosers. I ended up buying a surprising amount of stuff at this location despite the fact that it was early in my trip, and I was going to spend the rest of the trip in used/discount stores, which is a testament to just how well-stocked and put together this location is! While it is a little tougher to get to than the store at the Shinjuku JR new south exit, it’s worth it anyway.

- Christopher

All photos by Christopher Butcher, except top photo of Kinokuniya Shoten exterior from http://www.essential-japan-guide.com/.

Shinjuku at night, November 2010

In the lead up to TCAF I was itching to travel. Despite the fact I’d been in Tokyo in October/November 2010, the bug had bit and I wanted to get away from it all for a few weeks. Air Canada was having a last-minute sale on Japan, where I could’ve gone for the first three weeks of may for like $1100, which is a great price if you’re flying Air Canada, and not bad for everyone else.

I didn’t end up going because I realized I might’ve totally fucked TCAF up if I took off for three weeks just a month before the Festival, and then I ended up missing out on the devestating Tohoku Earthquake.

It’s funny, ever since the earthquake my resolve about going back, my interest in returning to a country that has been beset by tragedy and is undergoing some pretty heavy psychological scarring at the moment with radiation fears and continued earthquakes, it hasn’t shaken. I’ve been wondering when the next time I could sneak away…pretty much non-stop. No time in May with TCAF and Anime North, no time in June with the move (ugggggh). I kinda refuse to go in July, August, and September because I’m not built for 40+ degree weather (celcius). And October was looking a little busy.

As soon as the tickets went back on sale (1200!), I booked for the first two weeks of November. I’m very excited.

Shinjuku at night, November 2010

Unexpectedly though, my booking made travelling back real, and reading the news feeds out of Japan right now hit me pretty hard this weekend. Particularly these posts by Danny Choo, detailing the massive devastation and loss of life in Tohoku.

I’ve heard from many friends and writers that while Japan is not yet back to ‘normal’, a ‘new normal’ has taken its place, and people are doing okay… except for the tourism industry, that is. I’ve heard reports from friends that ‘people’ aren’t travelling to Japan at the moment, and within Japan people are staying home a lot and not visiting bars and restaurants, worsening an economic recession that has gripped the country for the past few years.

I’m glad I’m going back, I’m glad that whatever few bucks I can contribute to the economy and to charity will make an impact, and I hope that somehow I can inspires folks like you reading this to do the same.

To that end, I’m going to work very hard to get the rest of my Japan photos up online from my previous trips (I think there are hundreds no one has seen yet), and I’ll try to keep you up to date on my trip planning here on the blog as I get things ready.

Thanks for reading,

- Christopher

Japan: Tradition. Innovation.
May-October 2011. Opens May 20th, 2011.
Canadian Museum of Civilization
100 Laurier Street
Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M8
(Just on the other side of the river from Ottawa)
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/whats-on/event-detail&EventId=302

So, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this on the blog, but one of the coolest things I did last year was act as a special consultant on popular culture to The Canadian Museum of Civilization, for their new exhibit on Japan opening this week. Japan: Tradition. Innovation. is a unique look at the Edo-period origins of contemporary Japanese technology and design. Focusing specifically on consumer goods–things that we interact with every day–the show breaks down 400 years of cultural innovation into five themes; travel, automation, social status, consumer culture, and entertainment. Comparing woodblock prints to manga, contemporary Japanese street-fashion with armour and traditional garb, robots to mechanized dolls–it’s all cool stuff.

I specifically helped acquire materials for the manga and anime collections, including first-editions, cels, and some cool ephermera. I’m excited to see how it’s been placed into the context of the larger collection. It was an amazing opportunity to dig through all kinds of cool old manga and anime at Mandarake during my last visit to Japan (Oct/Nov 2010), divorced from my normal concerns of finding cool stuff to bring back to The Beguiling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have a bunch of first-edition Tezuka manga at the store, but I doubt they’d sell with the expediency that we’d need them too to make any sort of profit. Buying for a museum has a very different set of criteria. Oh, and as a special note, I’d like to thank everyone who helped me identify some of those pieces, it was very cool of you and I really appreciate it. Feel free to ask me for a favour in future.

Oh, and speaking of The Beguiling, the awesome comic and graphic novel store which I manage, we also acted as a sponsor of the exhibit! We’ve donated hundreds of manga to the exhibition’s “reading room”, which is essentially a wall of manga you can hang out and read at. It’s also roughly 50/50 French-language and English-language translations of Japanese material, which means we could include a bunch of stuff not yet available in English. I feel really good about the mix of manga included too, because it covers not only popular and contemporary series, but also classics, “art-oriented” works, and works that seek to explain certain Japanese customs, aspects of the culture, and traditions through manga. Oishinbo is as prominently displayed as Naruto, A Drifiting Life and The Rose of Versailles and Doraemon all getting equal face-time. So exciting!

The exhibit has a special opening this Thursday, May 19th at 6pm, for Museum members and the press only. I’m going to be there to see the public’s reaction to it for the first time, and I’m pretty excited! If anyone from the Ottawa/Montreal area will be there and would like to get-together and talk manga, drop me a line! If you can’t make it this week, don’t worry, the show’s on until October and I’m hoping we can put together some exciting programing at the Museum featuring manga and anime experts and professionals over the course of the summer. I’m also going to try to do a report on the exhibit here on the blog, if I can manage to remember my camera. :)

For more on the exhibit, check out http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/whats-on/event-detail&EventId=302.

- Christopher

–

ARTISTS HELP JAPAN: TORONTO RAISES $20,000
Toronto comic artists and DJs band together for Japanese Quake & Tsunami Relief

Artists Help Japan: Toronto is proud to announce that their 12 hour live art/DJ event on April 17th was an extraordinary success, raising $20,000 towards Tsunami and Quake relief in Japan.

Spearheaded by a consortium of Toronto illustration studios, the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event was the local iteration of a charity movement begun by Dice Tsutsumi at Pixar. The Toronto edition featured live art and DJ music, a silent auction and dozens of artists selling commissioned drawings, which raised about $18,000 over the 12 hour event. Event organizers UDON Entertainment have stepped in with an additional $2000 donation to help bring the final total to $20,000, with all proceeds being donated to the Canadian Red Cross.

The organizers of the event would like to thank all of the talented artists, illustrators, and DJs who donated their time and expertise, and the hundreds of Torontonians that came out in support of this event. The organizers will continue their various fundraising efforts over the weeks and months to come, including a series of special auctions featuring artworks donated by artists at the fundraiser! Look for details on these auctions in the next week.

Some words of thanks from the organizers:

Erik Ko, founder of UDON Entertainment: “I have a lot of friends and colleagues in Japan who were affected by this unfortunate event. I felt a real need to try and lend a helping hand to the people there and I really appreciate so many people supporting us! Thank you so much!”

Bobby Chiu, head of Imaginism studio: “People were incredibly generous with their money that day. It was truly touching to see a city come together to support the people of Japan.”

Alvin Lee, comic artist on Street Fighter and Birds of Prey: “It was awe inspiring to see the outpour of support and compassion from Toronto’s Art and Music scene. To give back to a country that has influenced so many of today’s artists, including myself – I felt like it was the least I could do.”

Krystle Tabujara, Library Services Coordinator for The Beguiling: “Having recently travelled to the Pacific Rim with my partner, I felt an obligation to be a part of such a great cause. It was an honour to be working alongside some of Toronto’s most talented artists.”

Jim Zubkavich, writer/creator of Skullkickers from Image Comics: “All of us involved with this event feel a deep connection to Japan and we’re ecstatic that so many people came out to show their support. To the artists, musicians and donators – Thank you everyone!”

Christopher Butcher, manager of The Beguiling and Director of the Toronto Comics Art Festival: “Japan has been an inspiring, near-mythical presence in my life since I was very young, and their culture and traditions have had a huge influence on my writing and career. Coming together with so many like-minded people to give something back has been similarly inspiring, and I’m humbled by the generosity of our volunteers, artists, DJs, and the hundreds of attendees who came to the event. Thanks everyone and please, if at all possible, don’t stop giving.”

The organizers would also like to thank the many volunteers and supporters who helped make the event a success, including: all of the wonderful artists and publishers who donated art and other items for our silent auction; Jeff at Imaginism; Michael, Akiko, Magda, Marc, Andrew, and Shane who helped out on the day-of; Peter Birkemoe and The Beguiling; Joe Saturnino and the entire staff of Revival.

ABOUT:

Artists Help Japan is a charity movement initiated by Dice Tsutsumi, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, who was also behind 2008 Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest in Japan and Sketchtravel Project, to gather the force of communities of artists and creative minds around the world. We believe artists have special roles to contribute to the society. http://artistshelpjapan.blogspot.com/

Artists Help Japan: Toronto was spearheaded by Imaginism Studios President and illustrator Bobby Chiu, who was contacted by Dice Tsutsumi to run the Toronto event. Working with Illustrator Alvin Lee, UDON Entertainment CEO Erik Ko, writer/artist Jim Zubkavich, and Christopher Butcher of Toronto comic book store The Beguiling and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the team brought together Toronto’s diverse and exciting artistic community to engage the public in an unprecedented fundraising endeavour.

Participating artists at Artists Help Japan: Toronto included: Agnes Garbowska, Alex Milne, Alvin Lee, Bobby Chiu, Brian McLachlan, Chip Zdarsky, Dale Keown, Eric Kim, Eric Vedder, Francis Manapul, Jason Bradshaw, Jeff Lemire, Jim Zub, Joe Ng, Julie Faulkner, Kagan Mcleod, Kalman Andrasofszky, Kei Acedera, Ken Lashley, Marcio Takara, Marcus To, Michael Cho, Ramon Perez, Ray Fawkes, Scott Hepburn, Stuart Immonen, Svetlana Chmakova, and a number of other local artists who showed up on the day of the event to offer their support and assistance!

Participating DJs at Artists Help Japan: Toronto included: Riviera [Perfecto,Myth, Kinetika NYC], Felix & Gani [Milk. Audio], Lazy Ray [Nighttrackin'], Gerrence [Nighttrakkin'], Alvaro G [Kings Of Late Night], Roland Gonzales [Studio+], Carlovega [Studio+], Jason Ulrich [Lab.Our Union],Shingo [Hot Sauce], Uncle Matty & Dutty Maus [The Beacs], and Illscience.

All proceeds from Artists Help Japan: Toronto will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross, specifically earmarked to aid in Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief. http://www.redcross.ca/

SPONSORS:

Revival Bar has been entertaining guests, visitors and fans as a premium event space since 2002. Revival generously donated the use of their main space for the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event, and donated $1 from the cost of every drink towards fundraising efforts. http://www.revivalbar.com/

The Beguiling Books and Art is Canada’s premiere source for comics, comix, and high-art funnybooks. Visit us online at http://beguiling.com.

TORONTO—Toronto’s Illustration and Artistic Community comes together on April 17th in a 12 hour art-event at Revival. The unique event will raise money to aid relief efforts in Japan following the devastating recent earthquake and tsunami there. Spearheaded by a consortium of Toronto illustration studios, the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event is the local iteration of a charity movement begun by Pixar Art Director Dice Tsutsumi. The Toronto edition will feature live art shows, a silent auction, and dozens of artists and illustrators selling commissioned drawings, with all proceeds benefiting the Canadian Red Cross.

“As artists we are tremendously inspired by Japan and Japanese culture,” says Bobby Chiu, the illustrator, teacher and founder of Toronto’s Imaginism studios behind the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event. “We were all personally affected by the quake, tsunami, and resulting damage. It is important to give back for all that Japan has given us, and we can think of no better way to do so than with our art.”

Artists Help Japan: Toronto will feature more than 24 artists and illustrators from the Greater Toronto Area creating original drawings for 12 hours! This is an unprecedented opportunity for the general public to commission an original drawing from a professional artist and watch its creation in process; the artist’s fee will be donated entirely to the Canadian Red Cross.

In addition:
- Dozens more cartoonists will donate original art, books, and other rare items to be featured in a silent-auction on-site at Revival Bar.
- Live art demonstrations from Toronto Illustrators on stage, with the final pieces to be auctioned off live at the event
- $1 from the sale of every drink at Revival Bar will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross.

Admission to the ARTISTS HELP JAPAN: TORONTO event is free, and all ages are welcome. The event will run from 12 Noon to 12 Midnight.

ABOUT:

Artists Help Japan is a charity movement initiated by Dice Tsutsumi, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, who was also behind 2008 Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest in Japan and Sketchtravel Project, to gather the force of communities of artists and creative minds around the world. We believe artists have special roles to contribute to the society. http://artistshelpjapan.blogspot.com/

Artists Help Japan: Toronto is spearheaded by Imaginism Studios President and illustrator Bobby Chiu, who was contacted by Dice Tsutsumi to run the Toronto event. Working with Illustrator Alvin Lee, Udon Entertainment CEO Erik Ko, writer/artist Jim Zubkavich, and Christopher Butcher of Toronto comic book store The Beguiling and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the team hopes to bring together Toronto’s diverse and exciting artistic community to engage the public in an unprecedented fundraising endeavour.

All proceeds from Artists Help Japan: Toronto will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross, specifically earmarked to aid in Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief.http://www.redcross.ca/

SPONSORS:

Revival Bar has been entertaining guests, visitors and fans as a premium event space since 2002. Revival has generously donated the use of their main space for the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event, and will be donating $1 from the cost of every drink to the fundraising efforts.http://www.revivalbar.com/

I’m having a tough time with what’s going on in Japan right now. I never visited Sendai but we did travel through/nearby in 2009, on our way from Nikko to Aomori. It’s further south than I had thought, about half way between the northern tip of Japan’s main island and Tokyo. Travelling by train I saw a lot of the countryside; the news reports from the area matched my memories of travelling which has made the disaster more personal. I still can’t imagine what it’s like for the people who are there though, and my sympathies and condolences go out to everyone affected.

I’ve donated a few dollars and watched the news constantly, and at this point there’s not much else to do. I did want to put up a brief post saying that I hope things get better, and if you’ve ever enjoyed my travelogues or photos of Japan I hope you’ll consider donating a few dollars to the various organizations trying to aid folks in distress.

I recommend: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/, who are the first organization to send people and aid into the hardest-hit areas.

Also the Red Cross is setting up a relief fund. If you text REDCROSS to number 30333 in Canada, or 90999 in the U.S., you can donate $5 or $10 really easily and every little bit helps.

Thanks for anything you can do,

- Chris

In October 2010, we touched down in Japan, settled into our hotel, and then decided to head out into the night to see what the city had on offer. We were in Shinjuku, a bright, big, wonderful area of the city that tends to party hard until dawn, pretty much every night of the week. Granted, your favourite retailer, restaurant, or game center will still close at 9, 11, or 1am, but the bars, karaoke, and other engagements are open all night.

The majority of photos in this entry were taken with the Olympus E-PEN Digital Camera, which turned out some great pictures despite my inexperience–these are basically the first photos I took in Japan! :)

We’re at the south exit of Shinjuku JR station, heading North, and just east of the station here. The street behind Green Peas, if you’re familiar with the area. It’s a densely packed strip, some phenomenally expensive real estate ensures skinny little properties, and buildings 7 or 8 floors tall. Shown just at the entrance to this area is the awesome LAMMTARRA, famous/infamous porn store. Whether you’d like your sinfully delightful images on DVD, in games, or even “book” format, LAMMTARRA has you covered.

Restaurants abound in this area, and even the pickiest eater with the least command of Japanese can usually just pull the restauranteur out onto the street and point at what they think they want to eat. This is a fairly touristy area though, finding a restaurant owner that speaks enough English to get by probably wouldn’t be too hard. This shop offers a bunch of different noodle and rice dishes.

I love Tokyo.

Here’s a look back down the street, towards Takeshimaya Times Square, which you might remember from previous posts. Don’t worry, we’ll visit there again later this post.

To keep reading the rest of this post, click:

Lotteria on one corner, McDonalds down the street, and a massive dirnking establishment called MIXING in the middle there. Seriously, for a place to be that big in this area, they must be doing major business.

Another drinking establishment, LION BEER HALL.

The east side of Shinjuku JR is a fun, and somewhat ‘safer’ place to go out and grab a drink after work, or with a pretty date, which would account for just how many bars there are. It’s a mixed space for men and women of all ages. People who like to drink. Usually if you’re looking for a bit more of an intense good time, or a little bit of trouble, you’d get out at the Kabuki-Cho exit, visit the “Kabuki-cho” neighbourhood, just north east of the station. It’s the red-light district (though like Times Square, not quite what it used to be). That place is a little edgy, a little more male-oriented, and much younger. As a result the crowds where we were walking are generally a little more reserved, and a little bit more business-oriented (lots of group after-work drinking) than in Kabuki-cho.

It also means no one is going to yell at me for waving around a camera, because there’s nothing shady going down.

Oh, on that note, this is like the 20th photo I’d taken with the camera, and I was learning a lot of its features. Apologies for the quality.

Bikes parked everywhere. Love hotel in the background, complete with fairy-tale castle roof.

The main drag, Yasukuni-dori. The buildings are built higher, and even the businesses on each floor start to subdivide, the real estate is so expensive.

Walking through an alley, taking a look at new and old residences side by side. This and the next couple photos with a Fujifilm Finepix.

We went to a game station, and I failed to win this giant stack of KitKats that I really, really wanted. COLA AND LEMON SODA DOUBLE PACK!

I spent Eighteen Dollars failing to win this. -___-;

A little bit of product placement for the folks nice enough to lend me a camera! This is the south side of JR Shinkuku station.

So’s this. Remember this building, Takeshimaya Times Square? It’s got that Tokyu Hands from the Christmas post, and that massive Kinokuniya Books is behind it.  Now, on this particular evening this photo marked the end of our adventure–we’d been out walking for a few hours, grabbed dinner, and decided to walk back. But through the magic of the internet, let’s keep walking around Shinjuku, shall we? First, let’s whip around to the side of the building, to orient you.

There you are! Now let’s pretend we’re walking into the building and coming out the other side.

You end up on a walk way, between Times Square and the Kinokuniya building, looking directly at me! These photos are taken over a week later, in November, on our second last night in Tokyo.

Turning back around, we’re now looking at the other side of the Times Square building. Cabs cue up to carry the army of employees departing and the folks populating the various high end restaurants in that massive building. I thought it might be a fun time to take some pics using the Tilt/Shift function on my camera. So does it look like a scale model to you?

We’re down at ground level where we were just looking, and this side of the building is even ritzier than the other side. Gorgeous trees. Andrew told me what they were but neither of us can remember now.

The leaves on this tree were blowing my mind. They looked photoshopped.

Looking up the street we can see Shinjuku City, off in the distance. I have no idea where that means I’m standing, but then addresses and locations are kind of fuzzy in Tokyo anyway. Note the veritable army of vending machines on the corner, taking up space that couldn’t possible be used as parking spaces in that lot. No wasted space…

Let’s go there.

Looking back down the street at Takeshimaya Times Square. Apparently, that’s Shibuya City. Huh, who knew?

Whu…?

I have no idea what they’re selling, but it must be good.

I imagine those are very expensive apartments.

Walking by, this bar looked amazing. Pop-Punk bar with a cool name and logo. The 1700 yen cover charge didn’t do much for me though.

Neat

Right next door was a private residence with a bunch of old building:

Forever 21 is a massive retailer, and this is a massive Flatiron style building. What I liked in the distance though? That MASSIVE tower, with the cut-aways in the side to show the escalators. That’s a cinema, and that’s what 9 stories looks like cut out the side of a building. The scale here is great.

I think we decided to head down towards it.

We stopped off at Freshness Burger, a MOS Burger knock off that.. well, I might actually enjoy it even more. That’s a lemonade, made with lemons, and a limeade, made with half a lime and some bar lime for good measure. It’s unsweetend, too. So they give you those little packets of sugar syrup that look like dairy creamer, so you can sweeten your drink to your taste.

Here’s the insane burger I ordered. It was amazing, with a slab of onion and a slap of tomato equally as thich as the two patties and cheese. Delicious dinner!

This is the Marui flagship store in Shinjuku, which was at the time home to an exhibit of Tezuka-inspired “Moe” (weirdly called ‘moet’ in the advertising) art. I never did make it to the store while it was open. :-(

There’s an example of some of the art. I would really like to have seen the whole thing, and grabbedthe exhibition catalogue or something. Ah well, only so many hours in the day. :-/

And wherever there’s a temporary exhibit of something, there’s a massive collection of all of the merchandise available even remotely connected to that exhibit. Like all of these Astro Boy goods.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that I already had a lot of Astro Boy stuff, and it wasn’t THAT big a deal that I missed out.

This was a lie, of course.

Luckily, I have the single greatest husband in the world, and he visited the store for me while I was off buying smut for The Beguiling, and got me delightful Astro Boy things, and HID THEM FROM ME, and gave them to me at Christmas. Cute little Astro Boy plates, a book (Japanese language) on the history of Tetsuwan Atom, the mighty Astro Boy!

So much colour art of rare books, so very cool. :D

Thanks honey! Love you!

So that little aside, aside, we ended up walking into Shinjuku Ni-chome, the gay district of Tokyo. One of ‘em anyway, the easy-to-find one :). Since photographing a bunch of folks that don’t necessarily want to be outed isn’t cool, we threw our stuff in a coin locker (yes, including the expensive camera–only in Japan would I do this) and headed out into the evening to have a few drinks.

On the way back, we passed by Shinjuku JR and this little restaurant with some truly, truly amazing English on the outside.

Safety guards keep us from accidentally walking through the fence into the dangerous construction area, replete with lighted nightstick and flashing vest.

Headed down the street towards the hotel, and a wave of people coming up to meet us. It’s just before the last train of the evening, and these folks have likely decided they aren’t heading home this evening… or any time soon. But honestly, I’m happy to be headed back to our cozy hotel room and to sleep.

So long from Shinjuku.

- Christopher

Not every outing in Japan was life-changing, or amazing, or revelatory. In fact, some of them were just nice little walks to explore the neighbourhood we were staying in… in the daylight, for a change.

Above you can see the view from our hotel window–SHINJUKU, the “capital’ of Tokyo, location of the municipal government buildings, and the big dirty red light district, and shopping and… well, what people think of when they think of “Tokyo” can usually be found within a 15 minute walk of Shinjuku station. We were staying a 2 minute walk from that station, a little bit south west, and since none of my plans or itineraries had be going any further south than I was at that moment, I decided to go for a walk one warm May morning before the day really got going.

The first stop, as always, is the local convenience store, or “conbini”. Lawson isn’t my conbini of choice, I’m a 7-11 guy at heart, but I was starving and wasn’t willing to wait. Also with me on this trip is Jim, who is tired, cuz its early and jetlag is never kind to him.

We arrived in Japan during the hysteria for the theatrical release of Evangelion 2.0, and the ‘ultimate’ edition DVD release of Evangelion 1.11, so Eva product was everywhere. Lawson had entered into a special agreement with the Evapeople (Gainax, I assume? I can’t tell who runs that merchandising anymore) and so they had tons of unique and ‘rare’ items. Shown above are cans of coffee, boxed with an action figure on a very full display. You might be giggling to yourself, but that same coffee and action figure was SOLD OUT all over Tokyo by the end of our trip.

Also shown: Evangelion-themed cup noodles.

There were also Evangelion give-aways if you bought specific kinds of snack breads, in specific amounts. Or maybe Evangelion-themed snack breads. It was difficult to tell. Jim helpfully points them out.

Click to keep reading:

The sign outside pimping the DVD release of EVA. The wind wasn’t cooperating that day so I reversed the photo. One of the neat things about convenience stores is that you can get a lot of stuff there that you can’t really get at similar stores here. Event tickets, full meals, DVDs, toys, games. Changes of shirts, socks, and undies for when you’ve stayed out all night karaokeing and smell like a distillery. Sooooo handy.

For me though, it’s all about fried chicken, red bull, and beer. And that is what I bought, and that is what I ate and drank as we walked around.

Fried chicken.Red Bull. Beer. Breakfast. Japan.

I’m going to more-or-less shut up at a certain point and just let the architecture take over, because I find it fascinating. A combination of fire/earthquake readiness and a much milder climate creates situations like this, a massive outdoor fire-escape that adds an exciting visual diagonal to the design of this (somewhat thin) building.

Oh, yeah, you can click on any picture to get a really big version.

We decided to walk through the ‘dead spaces’ between massive office towers, the courtyards created by the vagaries of building codes and fire safety. Old and new, flashy and dull, glass and concrete, all butting up against each other in giant, beautifully maintained, and spotless areas that almost no one ever uses. All of these photos were taken, to the best of my knowledge, at around 10am on a weekday. Love that yellow building in the background.

No idea what is going on with the mushroom-inspired streetlights, but the geometric topiary is phenomenal.

Ah-ha! Garbage! Well, not exactly garbage. More like someone noticed garbage, put it in a plastic bag, and left it for the maintenance guy to pick up.

This is what it looks like when different pedestrian walkways between buildings with different owners collide.

The staff of a Book-Off that we didn’t manage to find on our walk congregate in the otherwise-empty courtyard, going through the morning plan: GANBARU! In the distance, an arch.

You can’t go 100m without hitting a convenience store. It’s some sort of mathematical formula they’ve worked out. Oh, oh the Denny’s. Wait til you see this.

DENNY’S. By the way, Denny’s in Japan is nothing at all like Denny’s in North America, there is no overlap between dishes, and frankly, the food is awful in Japan. It’s awful in America too, but at least you can get bacon and eggs if you really want it.

This Denny’s is floating over a parking lot, for your parking convenience. A model of modern architecture and technology, and actually beautiful in its way. All totally undone by the shitty laser-printer signage in the window…

Anyone who watches anime knows about ground-level train crossings, and man, it’s nostalgic and utterly PRESENT to encounter them. It’s hard to explain, but I love them. Love them.

Also note the sporting area, fenced off on top of the building on the right. Gotta make the most of your outdoor space, roof included.

So this is the space next to the building at the train crossing, and the fence next to the space is about waist high, once you stand in the bushes. Study this picture.

This is the 30+ foot drop between the building and the retaining wall next to it, that is protected by a waist-high fence. This is utterly, utterly terrifying to look at, and completely alien to how we build things in Canada.

Your humble narrator. Funny story, in the time it took to take this picture, the crossing arms went up, the cabs drove through, and then the arms went down again, trapping us on the other side for another 5 minutes.

This is where Jim is pointing out there’s a perfectly serviceable walkway over the crossing, and what the fuck is my problem? My problem is that I’m not going to climb 3 stories of stairs for him or any man when the alternative is waiting 2 minutes, fuck that. Who do you think I am, some douche who climbs stairs? This is JAPAN. Escalator or bust. Stairs are for chumps.

Had to take a picture.

Never did make it back to this toy shop. In my imagination it is fucking awesome.

Mm, this is a thing about Japan. Cafe Lolita is on the first floor, but look! There are 4 or 5 floors in that building, and each one has at least 1-2 businesses in it. The density of retail shops is incredible, you can walk 40m and pass 20 shops. It made progress slow, slow going if stores had particularly interesting signage. :)

Around this point [redacted] was a little worried that we were lost, but the road actually curved back around to drop us off in our neighbourhood, at our hotel. All in all we’d gone out for about 45 minutes and probably not gotten more than a few hundred metres away, but it was really neat seeing the neighbourhood, taking in the architecture, standing at the train crossing.

That is a thin fucking building.

And there we are, back at the hotel… Conveniently located directly adjacent to a Tokyo Metro entrance I should add. This is seriously the greatest hotel, I hope it stays as cheap and classy for my next trip.

A nice day walk in Shinjuku… I never really did go south from our hotel again, and this is the view facing north. Into the crowds, the shopping, the red light district, the JR station, and everything people think about when they think of “Tokyo”.

Next time we’ll see what the night has in store.

- Chris
Edit because my hilarious joke on Jim had run its course. :)

Yes, it’s Tsukiji Fish Market! That mythical destination in Tokyo that is full of giant tuna, terrifying squid, and every other sort of edible sea creature–and on that note there are plenty of restaurants on site where you can taste today’s catch.

Seeing as this has absolutely nothing to do with comics, I decided to limit this entry to just 30 quick images. There’s a full gallery of pictures from this trip to the gallery over at my Flickr. I’ll include a direct link at the end of this message… if you’re still interested after seeing some of the delights on offer.

My thanks to my friends Derek Halliday and Jim Zubkavitch, who graciously shared some of their photos on this trip, and to Andrew Wheeler, whose photos I did not get around to sorting and filing but I was graciously offered his photos nonetheless.

Click to keep reading:

First and foremost: Tsukiji Fish Market is a place of business, and not intended for tourists. You are reminded of this frequently: when you realize there are no transit options to get here, really, and so you must hail a cab; when the whole thing starts at like 5am and is done by 6 or 7; when you get there and it’s a giant grey building, lots of little people on carts zipping to-and-fro at breakneck speeds and close-calls that feel… deliberate; when they sit you in a waiting room for like 45 goddamn minutes where they show you a DVD, in English, that tells you just how little that all involved want you there.

In short, it’s a neat experience, and I recommend it, but it is not for the easily discouraged nor the late-risers.

I am both easily discouraged and a late riser, so it took me three trips to Japan to finally make it to the market.

So after they keep you in the waiting room, standing in queue, for 45 minutes showing you a video about how they hate you, they give you hideous green safety vests and corral you in to see the tuna auction. You are placed in the center of the action, give or take, and the first thing I noticed were the thinly cut slices of tuna coming from the larger fish in the area, showing potential buyers just what’s going on inside the fish they’re buying… for a considerable amount of money.

Then you notice you’re in a cavernous room, filled with fish bigger than you have ever seen, and restauranteurs and/or their agents trying to decide which giant expensive frozen tuna to buy.

Sometimes, they catch fish that are not tuna, but they are still very big and so they go to the auction area.

Then, the man starts ringing the bell signifying that the auction is going to start. It is extremely loud, and honestly startling.

He rings the bell RIGHT NEXT TO HIS EAR. It is LUNACY. The man is either already deaf in that ear, or soon to be. It was loud from where WE were standing, 100 feet away.

The auction is ruthlessly quick, and it occurs while the auctions in the other areas of the auction house are about to start. They move quick. They yell, they bounce in place. Each auction lasts what, 5 seconds? 7?

Did I mention this is all happening at like, 5:30 in the morning?

The fish are painted with the names of the folks who’ve purchased them, after it’s all said and done. It’s truly unique and kind of exciting, but simultaneously mundane at the same time, if that follows. It’s a great experience.

Dudes with dollys or motorized carts come to take them all away. Some of them direct to restaurants, but some of them actually go into the marketplace area, adjacent to the auction. A place that we were told “was a place of business, and too busy for tourists. Don’t go.” Actually, they said we could go after 9am, after it was closed for the day.

Did I mention that by the time this was all done it was 6am, and we didn’t wanna hang around for 3 hours to follow that particular rule? Onward to the marketplace.

So the marketplace, it’s hard to get a feeling for the size of it, but essentially it’s several airplane hangars connected to one another, maybe 5 or 6, all with little stalls selling fresh fish (and produce in one section). It’s amazing, and awesome, and I actually neither felt in the way nor WAS in the way. Maybe it’s just Good Canadian Manners, but the ineffectual prohibition on tourists being in this area was… well, I disagree with it, to be polite.

This place is older, too, and the majority of the ground is made up of these cobblestones. It added a sort of an old-timey-flair to the proceedings, it was neat.

One of the first booths had some of the tuna from the auction, and as they thaw they expand and open… it’s neat too. And what do you use to slice a giant fish?

YOU USE A SWORD. I mean, sure, technically it’s a tuna knife that happens to be a metre long. But it’s a sword. All these dudes were precision carving giant pieces of tuna with swords. Bad. Ass.

As we moved through the space, we saw some of the remnants of butchery, and it was a welcome reminder of just what goes into food preparation. This is a minute or two after they finished–all of the spaces where the people had been done their fishmongering for the day and gone home were spotless, as I imagine this space would soon be.

Actually, on that note? It didn’t really smell fishy at all. Everything was fresh, and kept cold, and the whole place had a sort of an ‘ocean’ smell, but not like some of the markets I’ve been to in Toronto. It just smelled… fresh. It said a lot for their professionalism and ability.

The most thrilling part was the proximity to these creatures, recently (or still!) alive, that were so utterly alien.

Like I said… sometimes they were still alive. It’s freaky when they’re not moving. It’s outright disturbing when they’re moving in ways that don’t make any sense.

This was a GIANT tentacle. 7 inches across.

This was a scallop as big as Derek’s fist. Or a mussel. Or something that would be delicious with white wine and butter. Not the fist, the bivalve.

And at the end of the day, you can even find a bunch of stuff packaged up and ready to take home! $30 for 30 or 40 pieces of top notch salmon? Don’t mind if I do…! Oishiiiii…

And like I mentioned, there are all kinds of sushi restaurants adjacent to the market for you to try that morning’s catch. The best thing about these restaurants is that they add a sort of special sauce brushed onto several of the different pieces of the sushi. I think it’s called Nitsume, a sweetened brown sauce made from conger eel. Apparently it used to be brushed onto fish before serving, but now we mostly use soy sauce for that and so it’s rarely added to sushi, usually only cooked items. Old-Edo style sushi, pretty neat.

While you can get anything you want (the locals are grabbing some maki (rolls)), if you’re a tourist you’re KIND OF expected to get the omakase, or chef’s selection of nigiri sushi (the fish on top of the rice). It is also pricey as hell, but hey, you’re only going to eat sushi for breakfast at 8am once, right?

The first course was fatty tuna and… I forget the white one, with the nitsume. It was easily the best sushi I’ve ever had. Washed down with giant beer, of course.

Then there was egg, and of course the sea urchin. I have never eaten sea urchin. I did not care for the sea urchin, but I ate it. The texture was… disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing surprises: VEGETARIANS! NOTHING IN JAPAN IS VEGETARIAN, EVER. Take for example this miso soup, flavoured with tiny clams! It was delicious, and round-tasting, and awesome.  But filled with tiny clams.

What you see here are two pieces of eel that my buddy Jim ordered, because he loves eel, and the one piece that came with the omakase was the greatest eel he had ever eaten and he needed more. It really was amazingly good, but I had hit my limit for sauced raw fish before 9am. He wolfed that down with enthusiasm though. WOLFED.

Thank you for delicious sushi sir! We greatly enjoyed your establishment and food!

Of course, no place in the country is complete without a random shrine. It really is quite pretty, check out the photos in the full gallery.

Then the traffic cop waved us on our way, and we headed out to find a subway (1.5km walk). We had a great time, but the 4am wake-up was really starting to take it’s toll and I needed a nap before the rest of whatever we thought we were going to do that Friday. Probably go shopping for nerd shit.

Thanks again to Andrew, Jim, and Derek for being such lovely companions and for the loan. It was a thing I’d always wanted to do in Japan, and I’m glad I finally had someone to kick me out of bed and do it.

For a selection of more than 100 photos from this visit to Tsukiji, head over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157625774013276/.

- Chris

If you scroll back through my Japan Travelogues, I think you might remember me saying my favourite store to buy manga, and mostly new/in-print manga in Japan, is the Tsutaya across from the Hachiko crossing in Shibuya. Unfortunately that changed with my trip there in 2010. They’d moved their manga floor from a very spacious basement to a smaller top-floor. It’s still a solid setup, but it’s less big, less hand-curated… Just lesser, unfortunately. Things change, even in the manga industry, even in Japan.

That said, I do still really dig what Tsutaya did with their manga selection, and upon leaving the country during my 2009 trip, I was shocked to come across the best-stocked airport bookstore Of All Time. Seriously, it was amazing, with a great selection of books and magazines, but also a surprisingly big and diverse selection of manga tankoubon, manga periodical magazines, and even a few artbooks too.

This selection of light novels and volumes of the REBORN! manga (waaaaay more popular in Japan than it is here) was just the tip of the iceberg, and it was heartening to know that even if I had (somehow) completely missed manga on my entire trip to Japan, all I needed to do was hit the airport an hour early and I could do a pretty decent shopping trip at the Narita Airport Tsutaya….!

As I mentioned, their wall of manga was nothing to sneeze at, and while it catered heavily to the very popular series it did evidence some of the curation of other Tsutaya manga sections I’d been in. And of course it still had people reading at the racks, looking to kill some time.

Opposite angle.

Bleach, One Piece, Takehiko Inoue, Naoki Urasawa, and more. Plus the then just-release oversized final volume of PLUTO.

Shown dead centre here are some of the English-instruction and English-language manga, including bilingual editions of Nodame Cantabile, Tale of Genji, Division Chief Kosaku Shima, and English volumes of Bleach, Death Note, Naruto, and The Davinci Code (novel of course, not a comic). Incidentally, if you’re in Japan and looking for a great gift to bring back, the bilingual manga editions including Doraemon (bottom left) are great souvenirs, as that manga isn’t available in English!

A close-up on the Doraemon bilingual editions and a few other titles.

Feature display for the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga.

And a great selection of manga magazines (top) and kids books, mooks, and activity books (bottom).

So yeah, if you can spare it, the shopping area at Narita airport is surprisingly amazing, and a great place to pick up last minute gifts for others… and just a few more manga for yourself too. Build the extra time into your trip back, if you can…!

Now this, finally, is my last blog post from my Fall 2009 trip to the great nation of Japan.

I’m gonna be honest, there’s a whole lot of photos from this trip that I couldn’t quite work into a blogpost, but one of the things I wanted to do was get all those photos up online in some form. I think I’ve decided on Twitter, after all, so look forward to that on my Flickr page imminently–maybe even as soon as this blog post goes up! :) Thanks for reading, and sorry it took a year and a half (and I jumped ahead and did some 2010 travelogues in the interim).

Best,

- Chris

Just as a little follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s a look at the Christmas Joy to be found inside the doors at the Takeshimaya Times Square TOKYU HANDS store. I actually got told by a kindly old security guard that I had to stop taking photos (in English!) no less, so this post is a little short. Gomen Nasai.

Takeshimaya Times Square is just behind the FrancFranc store, and being in the Christmas/shopping spirit, we thought we’d go check it out.

It’s a massive department store complex… Massive. Hard to explain without seeing it.

Have a Giftful Christmas, courtesy of Tokyu Hands! Possibly the most out-and-out consumerist, capitalist sentiment I have ever heard expressed about the holiday.

I did love the designs of these banners though, red and blue. Gorgeous.

Scenes of snow and ice, christmas around the world, affixed to the walls.

Edit: Whoops! I forgot I had one photo left, of little Santas! Here it is:

Unfortunately that’s all the Giftful Christmas I have for you this year, but hopefully it got you a little Merry.

Travelogues resume in the new year!

- Chris

It’s no secret that I go shopping in Japan, almost all of my travelogues have been retail oriented. But one of my favourite stores is a little boutique home goods/decor place called FrancFranc, located just outside the Shinjuku JR New South Entrance, the same pedestrian walkway and shopping promenade that housed Tokyo’s first, busiest Krispy Kreme Donuts. Its upscale, a mix of Euro and Japanese sensibilities, a chain of great shops found across Japan and throughout Asia, and I would basically decorate my entire home with this stuff if I lived in Japan.

…and they love Christmas. Seriously, we walked by this place on (I think) the first of November, and it was already splashed out with every manner of Christmas goods. For a Christmasophile like myself, it was like heaven. I wanted to buy everything, but sadly my luggage was reserved almost entirely for otaku-related-goods.

So I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. With that lovely Olympus PEN EL-1 Digital Camera. Incidentally I tried to get this up online before Christmas, but computer troubles tripped me up. Enjoy this late breaking Christmas spirit. :)

Can you believe that these are CHRISTMAS CARDS? They come flat in the envelope, and then you pop them out and decorate them and they’re amazing. I did pick up a couple of these actually, since they packed flat. If anyone knows if/where to get these in Toronto, I’m all over them.

Nicest. Disposable. Silverware. Ever.

Mini Abstract Christmas Trees, Mini Decorations, and everything sparkles.

Click the “Keep Reading” for all the rest of the sparkle….

While not everything at the store is Christmasy, it is all lovely.

They were also launching a whole line of Mickey Mouse related goods, featuring a lot of art by Floyd Gottfredson. It’s not really… me… but it was kinda neat.

Kinda wanted everything.

These were taken with the Olympus Pen’s “Pop Art” setting, that really kicks up the level of the colours and makes everything look as saturated and warm as it felt in the store. Very cool looking pics.

OMG.

JEWELED BOXES.

Fabulous 2011 Calendar!

AIEEEEEE.

OMG REINDEEEEEEEEEER!

Fucking take that shit and make it CHROME. SILVER CHROME. GREEN CHROME. PINK PIG CHROME WITH A FEATHER BOA.

Flocked hot pink, black, and silver bunnies with necklaces.

No, more is more. Loved these clocks, Andrew did too, but sadly we had to pass.

On the way upstairs, we see these toasters that toast messages onto your toast. Perfect Bridal gift!

Once you see the pegasus, you can’t unsee the pegasus.

Fuck man, Now That’s What I Call Christmas. Angry Christmas Pegasus.

Wanted all of this.

Topping the Japanese Christmas charts…

Oh I love that man. I wish we’d bought that ridiculous mirror.

Here’s a wider shot of the various Christmas displays on the first floor. Lots of themed islands, with single display copies up top and overstock underneath. Very Japanese retail.

Okay, okay, so we didn’t leave entirely empty-handed. We had a very modest shopping cart of tiny, mostly-flat, beautiful objects to take home with us. But really, we wanted to take so very, very much more.

So thank you FrancFranc, for sharing the Christmas joy with us all the way back in November. If we lived in Japan we would go broke shopping in you.

For more on FrancFranc, head over to their English Website, http://www.francfranc.com/eng/, which as of writing has their entire 2010 Christmas catalogue on it.

Merry Christmas!

- Christmastopher

Yes, the Japanese have a supermarket called FOO:Dmagazine (Foodie Magazine), an upscale grocery store in the massive SEIYU chain. I’m not going to lie to you: I love grocery stores. When I go I need to visit every aisle, I look at tons of items, I buy way more than I need because I don’t go to grocery stores often, living downtown… and hey, that’s why they’re called “non-perishables” anyway, right?

For more Japanese travelogues, please click here: http://comics212.net/category/japan/

All photos taken with an Olympus PEN EL-1 digital camera.

Just inside the front door is the produce section, which makes it… well, just like home really. Admittedly some of the produce is a little different, and differently priced.

85 yen (about a buck) for an Orange? That’s not too crazy. And $3-$4 for a bag of kiwis? Reasonable enough I guess.

Although the apples range between $1.30 and $4.50 a pop here. Still, not the most expensive apples I’ve saw on this last trip. I think the most expensive single apple was $10. :)

Or an anemic little basket of Strawberries for 12 bucks. Actually, these looked gorgeous, like illustrations of strawberries…

Or a tiny bunch of grapes for about $10 (Green, Seedless) or $8 (Red).

Bread? Not too bad, about 3 times what it would cost at home. But here’s a neat thing! The bread is 88 yen (about a buck-ten) for bread, whether you want to buy 4, 6, or 8 slices. Because the amount of bread is the same, it’s just sliced at different thicknesses!  And yeah, the four-slicers are ridiculously thick pieces of bread.

Click to keep reading:

Speaking of which, in addition to the white bread, this supermarket had a full bakery on site. Everything looks really good, but more often than not they’re bizarre, filled with hot dogs and/or mayonnaise.

These Halloween themed cookies were adorable though…! That’s one of the things I love about Japan, importing western traditions in bizarre ways, like making adorable skull-cookies for children.

Juice!

One of the very cool things about Japanese supermarkets is the ready availability of take-out meals. A lot of supermarkets have started to sort of figure that out here, but the quality of the ready-to-go stuff in North America leaves a hell of a lot to be desired, comparatively. Here you can see a ton of sides and mains, skewers and other goodies.

An assortment of crisp, delicious deep-fried goodies.

This is Chicken Karage on a stick. It is embarassing, but I think this might be my favourite Japanese food–fried chicken on a stick. Gomen nasai!

And of course, sushi. That package of surprisingly fresh and delicious sushi is about $11, marked down by 20% because it was getting to be the end of the day. It looked amazing.

Complete bento boxes were also available, with tonkatsu or fish or stir fry, plus rice and pickles. All for about 5 bucks. I know the idea is that it’s really expensive to eat in Japan, but with a bit of work you can get by on $15 a day. Admittedly that won’t be the absolute healthiest, but it’s better for you than McDonald’s :).

Of course, I probably spent in the neighbourhood of $15 a day just on vending machines…

I can’t stand V8 or any North American vegetable cocktail I’ve tried, but the Ito En veggie cocktails and juice mixes are AWESOME. 2 servings of veggies in a glass and delicious? Don’t mind if I do. I wish it was so easy in Canada…

Speaking of. Canada, represent!

Ah, so here’s the greatest thing ever. No, not Asahi beer.

It’s alcoholism in a bag! A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of soda, and a single glass, in a convenient reinforced plastic bag. For 1280 yen, or about $15. This is quite possibly the greatest thing of all time.

I may duplicate this as a gift for someone for Christmas this year.

From the tragically unhealthy to the extremely healthy (this was on the second-floor of the grocery store, btw. They kept the veggies and fruits on separate floors(!). But anyway, if you wanted to see what everything cost, I uploaded the full (6mb) version of this photo, so click on it to see it insanely large.

MEAT! Near as I could tell, they had everything you might find in a Canadian grocery store, including ground turkey and chicken (which I can NEVER find around here…), steaks, all of it. Not as well stocked as your local butcher, but still heartening to know that if I moved to Japan, I could still make a batch of Hamburger Helper with turkey subbed in, in a pinch.

Ready-sliced beef, all set up for delicious shabu-shabu…

Sashimi? Lots and lots of Tuna Sashimi. For like $7.50. I mean, that’s obscene, and probably the most delicious thing of all time.

Milk!

Stocking the shelves…

Candy!

Noodles!

…! No idea! Seriously, I have no idea what a “Pet Sheet” is. Or why you would need 50 of them at a time? I am not a pet person, but Andrew and I both found this disturbing, for some reason.

It’s my understanding that Breakfast Cereal is a relatively recent thing in Japan? Breakfast as a meal isn’t as big a deal in Japan as it is in North America, and the idea of eating a whole bowl of grains–that aren’t rice–to get your day started? With Milk? Kind of Alien. Still, this is a high-class market, so they’ve got all kinds of cereals.

Like…

Frosted Flakes…! For some reason called “Frosties” in Japan. Probably the difficulty with the FR FL sound? And…

And my favourite, Special K Red Berries! Near as I could tell they didn’t even have _regular_ Special K? Just my favourite cereal of all time!

We turned the corner on the various types of grains, and then headed downstairs…

…and back to the booze area! Wine, beer, spirits and more!

A selection of chilled sparkling wines, Chu-Hi, and beer.

A close up on some cocktails and cocktail mixers. The mixers still have booze in them of course, but they encourage you to add more.

And these are some of the things you mix them with! The juice-carton looking things on the bottom shelf are largely Shochu, a distilled rice liquor, and the glass bottles towards the top are generally sake.

So on the right, that’s the One Cup sake, for when you need to drink on the run. But on the left there, that’s the 1.5 cup sake, when a single cup of sake won’t do.

This is why there are a lot of drunken, vomitting people in Tokyo at night, btw.

If you like light-coloured, crisp beers, then the beer selection was fantastic. If you don’t, then you probably should not move to Japan.

Shochu is a kind of a harsh, burning alcohol, so it’s usually mixed with tea, fruit juice or calpis, and ice. This is called a shochu highball, or a chu-hi (particularly when it’s in a can). These are lovely, refreshing carbonated drinks. My fav is probably the sparkling lemon, but the sweeter fruit-flavoured ones are great too. This Suntory Peach Chu-hi was delicious.

More expensive tastes? They had you covered with a bottle of Moet or Veuve. Speaking of which, if you are ever looking to get me a gift I prefer pink Moet Chandon to the regular.

And a selection of liqueurs and spirits. They didn’t have Tanqueray, which disappointed me, but they did at least have Bombay (just off camera) so I guess I can still make a decent Gin & Tonic. Too bad the limes were like $7 each.

Kidding, they were only $2.

And all that drinking will make you hungry, so why not pick up a delicious snack like CHEESE? Located directly next to the beer.

Boursin is only like a buck more expensive in Japan than it is in Canada. And apparently very, very popular.

Unfortunately most of the cheese available was of the processed variety, though there we a couple of little chunks of different kinds. Actually, the cheese selection was really weak compared to the awesome cheese selection at the specialty-market we visited earlier in the day.

So yeah, you can get good cheese in Japan. It’s just hard to find and crazy expensive.

But you can always buy enough Tuna sashimi to feed a family of 4 for the same price as a Value Meal.

Speaking of snacks, check out the selection of import goods to keep the Aussies and Brits happy! Tim Tam cookies! Weirdo sour candies!

I was really hoping for more interesting Pringles flavours for you, but it’s the same flavours that they’ve had for the last 3 or 4 years since I’ve been visiting. I’m very disappointed in you, Mr. Pringle.

And with that, we made our purchases and stepped out into the rainy grey evening. Actually, it was really dark when I took this picture, the Olympus PEN EL1 digital camera is AMAZING.

Thanks for reading! There’s still one more post that’s a part of this trip to Roppongi, the Mori Art Museum! I’m just doing a bit of research on the artists whose work I saw… and photographed… so I can give you more background info with the post. Hopefully I’ll have another post up really soon!

- Christopher

For my October 2010 trip to Japan, I wanted to go to places I’d never been before, but also explore places I’d been more thoroughly. Really get a rich experience out of this trip. Roppongi is the former–a Tokyo neighbourhood that I’d consciously avoided on past trips. Frankly, the alternative descriptions of Roppongi as a soulless shopping district for the wealthy and a playground for drunken foreigners and the military… dissuaded me. But on a rainy Saturday afternoon, travelling to a massive indoor shopping mall appealed more than being outside (or staying in the hotel), and so off we went.

Oh, and I should mention, all photos in this post taken with my new Olympus Pen E-PL1, which I am learning to use and loving.

We took the subway (rather than the JR trains) to get to Roppongi, because you can’t really get there any other way. The subways are more complicated and intimidating than the JR, but honestly once you get the hand of them they’re phenomenal. Cheaper, they go to far more locations in Tokyo, and best of all the subway companies sign different vending machine contracts than the JR companies, and so there’s all kinds of never-before-seen drinks!

Herb & Relax Lemorea, for example, lists (seriously) CATNIP as an ingredient/selling feature. So we had to buy it. It tastes… Herbacious. And weird. Not unpleasant on the palette, but it seems to be flavoured with artificial sweetener, which leaves an unpleasant viscous feeling on the tongue and has an unfortunate aftertaste. Still, now I can say I’ve had a drink with catnip in it.

I’m sort of convinced we took the long way around, but this is the exit to Roppongi Hills shopping complex that the signage told us to take. It let us out at a bookstore, and a rain-drenched city street.

On the way into the complex, we spotted a little grocery store selling these ridiculously packaged apples. We got the least-expensive of the bunch, just to the right, at 490 yen for 3 apples–or about $5.50.

This is the photo where Andrew remarked “look at all the insane architecture you can build if you don’t have crazy Canadian weather!” It’s hard to explain, but imagine a large underground mall, with this three-or-four-storey escalator coming up out of the middle of it into a covered-but-open-to-the-air dome filled with advertising billboards; breathtaking in its excess.

And that led out into the courtyard of the West Walk and the Mori Tower, basically the main part of the Roppongi Hills complex. Lots of dramatic architecture here as well.

And pouring rain, and gusting winds up to 70km an hour. Did I mention that there was a typhoon off the coast of the country, making for ridiculous rain and wind? There was. Even this short open-air walk was a little gross.

Safely ensconsed inside, you can get an idea of the drama they were going for. Big spaces, lots of verticality and natural light. It’s really impressive.

Clean lines, polished and textured surfaces interacting… Hyper-contemporary. The whole thing felt like a rich-person’s bathroom.

I love this photo because it feels so warm and inviting. That’s more to do wit the camera than the space though.

The center of the space featured this amazing halloween display, simultaneously brilliant with its bent wood and real pumpkins, and kind of crappy by tacking dollar-store decorations all over it. Happy Halloween?

Up from my vantage point I was able to capture… off in the distance…

The Halloween marching band.

A group of costumed children have congregated around the pumpkin… What will happen?!

The band smacks right into the kids! The kids send their princess out as official envoy. One of the band’s assistants dutifully passes out candy to all of the children, before they take up their instruments and continue on, parading through the mall with their halloween songs.

Loved this display of watches, hated the design of the individual watches.

Joel Robuchon has a restaurant and bakery here! OMG! OMG! We had to check it out.

So delicious-looking! Aiee1 Sandwiches with real, fresh, delicious-looking ingredients. Sliced buffalo mozerella and more.

We bought 4 things. The first, a croissant. We devoured almost all of it before I got a picture, it was that good.

Then, a gorgonzola-dolloped bun, but the bun was a hearty bread… Omg so good. Just… just amazing.

Fearing a repeat, I immediately photographed the last two items before we inhaled them as well. On top was a truly amazing four-cheese, honey, and walnut pastry, and on the bottom is the single greatest croque monsieur I’ve ever had. It’s pretty hard to fuck up ham and cheese, but no one has ever gotten it this right before either. It exploded with flavour, and was still warm too.

Actually, here’s the video we took where I was over the moon about our experience:

Basically, the bakery at Atelier by Joel Robochon is amazing, inexpensive, and delicious. Get to it. It might even be worth going back for the actual restaurant, just to see if it’s as awesome.

The marching band played through our seating area.

Oh, on that, you’ll see all the green carpet and flags above, that’s one of the sponsor-spaces for the Tokyo International Film Festival, going on right now and taking place entirely within the Roppongi Hills complex.

Then we went to the Roppongi Hills Art & Design Store, conveniently located at the entrance to the Mori Art Gallery.

So way up on the 52nd floor of the Mori Building is the Mori Art Gallery and the “Sky Deck”. For $20 you get access to the regular gallery, the special exhibition, and the whole skyview thing. Not a bad deal if the art is good and the view is clear. But as I mentioned…

…the typhoon made for some mediocre views. Still, you get a real feeling that 52 stories up is pretty far…!

The skyview area was decorated sporadically with Halloween-related decorations and items, though it really felt kind of sad and awful, honestly. Above you can see a waste of $20–the cost of dressing up your kid in one of the available costumes and having them photographed in front of that scene. Considering it cost at least $5 just to get up to the top of the tower in the first place, you’d think they’d let people take pictures for free but…

The architecture is no less impressive though.

No words.

The classy entranceway into the ritzy 52nd floor bar.

The Mori gift shop…

You’re being subjected to a bit of blogging trickery here, I’m going to put the Mori gallery exhibition into it’s own post, up next. So let’s just pretend 2 hours have passed, and check out the gift shop!

Oooh!

Ahh! Famous art in plastic miniature, distributed via specialized vending machine!

Then we headed to the restaurant floor for a bite to eat. Every public building has a whole floor devoted to restaurants, sometimes 2 or 3. It’s awesome, you’re spoiled for choice.

We almost ate here, but the unmoving crowd of slack-jawed yokels blocking the menu–so we could see what they actually served in addition to just looking fun–prompted us to continue onward. We instead went to a very classy vegetarian shabu-shabu restaurant…

…that none-the-less spared no expense decorating the walls for halloween. :)

A gloomy view on a gloomy day, with Tokyo Tower obscured by the low-cloud-cover in the middle-right.

On the way out, we spotted possibly the greatest Halloween decoration yet. The office reception desk was vacant, save for this lone, unadorned pumpkin, watching over all of us. It summed up my feelings about the Roppongi Hills complex really–it’s all very impressive, imposing, but soulless and not-quite-there… in a way that I don’t think the folks in charge can even _see_. Still it was busy even on a rainy Saturday afternoon, they most be doing something right…

More Japan travelogues to come. :)

- Christopher

So, surprising no one (I guess) I am heading back to Tokyo today for a business trip with as much ‘pleasure’ as I can cram in there as well. Buying more stuff for The Beguiling, hopefully doing a bit of TCAF business, that sort of thing. As always it’s going to be a hoot.

The big change is that all of my photo-taking, and subsequent photo-blogging, will now be done with this beauty of a camera–the Olympus PEN E-PL1–which I am test-driving for the trip. Thanks to various folks for helping me set that one up, I should have some great photos to share this week and next.

Meanwhile, before I had a chance to break out the Olympus (shot with my Fuji Finepix), I spotted this rack at the exceptionally well-stocked-for-graphic-novels airport bookstore. Archie Marries…, Bone and Amulet on the bottom shelf, and… is that?

…yes! This is an airport bookstore that actually stocks Jason Shiga’s MEANWHILE…. That is awesome! I mean, it’s on a shelf with “Herman Classics”, which is less awesome, but still! And just around the corner on the same display…

Scott Pilgrim! Pokemon! And… THE NEW CHARLES BURNS!? This airport bookstore has more copies of these books in-stock and displayed than _most comic book stores_, which is why _most comic book stores_ make me incredibly sad. But wait there’s more!

The staff picks! Since they’re 95% DC, I’m tempted to say that DC’s Cdn distributor bought and paid for this section, but either way, that’s some great, prominent display for these books! That’s pretty incredible and an auspicious start to this trip…

On that note, let me share a couple more pics with you.

These are two pictures that I took of the Taiyo Matsumoto section of my bookshelf, just so they’d be on the camera when I was out shopping and I’d know what I already had!

Top photo (l to r): TekkonKinkreet Animation Book 2-pack, PEN magazine with comic article, 5-issues “Black and WHite” mini-series, Tekkon Kinkreet All-In-One Edition, GoGo Monster, Black & White 1-3, ZERO 1-2, “Brothers of Japan”, a novel Matsumoto did the cover for, Hana-Otoko 1-3 Special box set, Hana-Otoko v1, Blue Spring, Le Samurai Bambou 1-2 (French), Number 5 Omnibus Editions 1-2 & 4, No. 5 v3 (French), No. 5 1-2 (English), No. 5 volume 1 Gift-box edition with figure (Japanese), Cosmic Comix Magazine with Matsumoto interview, 100 & 101 Matsumoto art books, Something(?), French colour comics album.

Bottom photo (l to r): PING PONG Film book box-set edition with Paddle & Rubik’s Cube, Ping Pong 1-2 & 5, Ping Pong Special Edition Oversized version 1-3, and then a bunch of other stuff. Oh, and Bambook Samurai Volume 7 is on the top there, laying on it’s side.

Click for larger!

Alright, I’ve got a plane to catch. Expect lots of blogging this week! Take care!

- Christopher

So I went back to Japan in May of 2010! That was trip #3, and since I’d crossed the vast majority of ohmygodImustdothisthing things off my list, I dug a little harder into what was “going on” while I was in Tokyo, to see if there were any cool events, gallery shows, or comics things that I could visit while I was there. It turns out that Design Festa vol. 31 was all three!

Design Festa is a twice-yearly… Design… Festival… held at Tokyo Big Sight, the massive convention centre on the artifical island floating in the middle of Tokyo Bay (Odaiba) that also houses the world famous Comiket doujinshi convention, also twice yearly. Design Festa was started by Takeshi Murakami and friends in 1994, to give aspiring artists in Tokyo a chance to put their work on display in a commercial context… or as the website says “Making an artistic impact is not easy, regardless of talent but if many people get together and make an art movement, the possibilities expand infinitely!”

The event is comprised of more than 2500 “booths” of artists, with about 8500 individual artists participating in some way. Painting, sculpture, drawing, crafts, performance, commercial products, it’s all sort of smushed together to create one of the most vibrant spaces I’ve ever visited… and I attend comic book conventions for a living.

I think what was most surprising to me was the range of material on display. Though it tended to be very contemporary in scope (and often post-modern), there were still real elements of traditional Japanese arts that tended to come through. It was a pretty amazing thing to do on my first day in Japan, to be dazzled by all of these wonderfully talented young artists. I plan to visit Design Festa Vol. 32 when I go back to Tokyo this fall.

To see the full gallery, without all of my blabbing on, you can check out my Flickr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157625080240231/.

At the entrance to Design Festa, cosplayers, crossplayers, crossdressers, and people who just like to dress up congregated to see and be seen. Artistic events draw out artistic people of all stripes…

Click to keep reading! :)

One of the great things about Japan are the intelligent liquor laws, that don’t mind if you wanna grab a beer at 11 in the morning to walk around seeing the outre underground art. Here my friend Jim shows us his Corona , already in progress.

The festival is an international affair, with the website and applications for the show available in 3 or 4 languages. While the show was primarily about Japanese young artists, it does really appreciate and promote artists worldwide, which is very cool.

And while there is a lot of illustration particularly influenced by manga and comics, there were almost no comics or manga at the event at all…! It seems that the integration of amateur manga (doujin) and aspiring artist are still pretty far apart. I do think if 10 people were at this event selling something approaching narrative, they woulda cleaned up though…!

No caption.

Finally, fetish costumes for my stuffed animals!

Seriously though, this is Gloomy Bear, the creation of a near-homeless young dude which became a huge chara-goods phenomenon, with toys, shirts, charms, and all manner of goods now featuring the character across Japan and across the world. I think it’s pretty amazing that someone has ‘remixed’ the character like this, creating $100 vinyl fetish wear to take the implications of the character to the next level. This sort of appropriation/transformation was really rare at the show btw, with many artists creating wholly original characters, works, and designs.

I liked it, but I didn’t $30 like it.

It’s kind of a Japanese joke, but it also works because babies are lazy.

One of the neat things about Design Festa is that they worked hard to incorporate all different kinds of art, and the live stage was located just outside the second-floor food court. This was a pretty amazingly awesome rockabilly band, and they did an amazing job. The crowd seemed as into them as they could possibly be without moving or even nodding along to the music. :)

Speaking of the food court, this is… Taco Rice. It’s rice with the contents of a taco dumped on it, sort of, including a slice of avocado and a whack of Japanese mayonnaise. It was… interesting. It wasn’t bad, it was just a little bland, which I’m going to chalk up to the differences that come from the appropriation of another culture’s food.

This was entirely animatronic, btw.

It was a bit of a crowded event. :)

At the edge of the second floor, the organizers created a “dark” area with low-to-no lighting, for projection and light-oriented at. It was super cool, and added an entirely different flavour to the work. Unfortunately my own camera was not adequately prepared for low-light shooting, so I’ve borrowed some of my friend Jim’s shots from this area.

Amazing miniature, on the scale of the object above.

The spirit of Umezz lives on… ;)

Now we get to the performance aspect of the show. This is a young woman who likes to wear a sailor-suit bathing costume, wearing a rubber-duckie ball-gag, writing around in a children’s pool full of plastic balls. She prefers it when you take pictures of her.

As you might imagine, she was very popular.

This is Shintaro Kago! He’s an amazing manga-ka and illustrator, a favourite of folks like myself and Scott McCloud(!) for his brilliant formalist invention and playing with the medium of comics. As I said there was _almost_ no manga or comics at Design Festa, but there was Shintaro Kago, and that’s absolutely amazing as he’s been one of my favourite mangaka ever since I saw his work in Viz’s sadly out-of-print Secret Comics Japan.

Kago was primarily selling plastic toys and prints of his work, but he had both original art(!) and self-published manga and books(!!) for sale, and I was happy to go home with some of both…! It was, in a word, super-awesome to meet him and although I had an amazing time at Design Festa, this totally made the show for me.

I managed to record a little bit of this completely insane Japanese noise-band. So why don’t I play them for you?

I’ll come back and edit this with their info once I find that postcard they handed me.

So that was Deisgn Festa Vol. 31! Actually, to be completely honest, that wasn’t even a tenth of the experience, nor a quarter of the photos we took. As I mentioned up top, you can see the full-ish gallery over at Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157625080240231/.

Thanks for reading, and look for more Japan Travelogues very soon!

- Christopher Butcher

I think it’s fair to say that on my Summer 2009 trip to Japan, I spent a lot of time in stores that sell manga. I’m a pretty manga-specific guy actually. Sure, I’ll get suckered in for some cool looking toys, and I’ve got no resistance to Gashapon at all. But generally, the other otaku goods fall a little flat with me–given the choice I’m filling up my suitcase with books. Manga mostly, a few artbooks, and the occasional oddity. :) So when I say that my favourite manga displays in Japan were found at the Shibuya location of Tsutaya–the country wide chain of media stores–well, I hope you’ll consider it a ‘considered’ opinion. The Shibuya Tsutaya has an enormous depth and breadth of selection, well-organized and with lots of creator and series-specific displays, lots of hand-written recommendations and decorations, and the taste of the staff seems to be exactly the same as my own.

For example, it’s where I found this mini-shrine to Tekkonkinkreet creator Taiyo Matsumoto:

Everything in one convenient place? Don’t mind if I do.

To get to the Shibuya Tsutaya (and I’m sure it’s just one of dozens), take the Hachiko exit from Shibuya JR Station. Hachiko is the name of the dog up top there. Directly across the scramble crossing, in the same building that houses the Starbucks, is Tsutaya. Actually, I covered it briefly on my 2007 trip, if you wanna go check it out: http://comics212.net/2008/02/24/japan-2007-shibuya-ginza-ramen-museum-macadonaru/

I enjoyed it so much I went for another spin and came away just as impressed at their manga retail acumen! Here are some shots from inside the store.

The elevator to B1 drops you in the middle of the shoujo section, and a large poster promoting the work of Fumi Yoshinaga, amongst others…! Zooming in to the top of the post there?

A signing card/poster by one of my favourite mangaka, Paradise Kiss and Nana creator Ai Yazawa!

The English editions of Paradise Kiss from Tokyopop were sort of awful approximations of the elegant Japanese designs–complete with metallic inks. Gorgeous. On the very edge there, you can see 2 copies of the Paradise Kiss postcard set and “Welcome to the Gokino World”, an artbook of Ai Yazawa’s pre-Parakiss work. I have both of these items, I’ll try and blog them at some point in the future… they’re amazing!

This is one of the new-release tables, which features giant stacks of manga, hordes of manga… and the cool, fashionable young people checking them out. I really dig the interior page reproductions, I think that’s a cool idea that I wish we did more of here… that I wish we had more space to do at The Beguiling where I work…! :)

A closer look at the new releases sees a two-volume best of edition of OISHINBO, “Maverick” and “Tycoon” for the opposing father and son culinary enemies! Also, some sort of ridiculous salaryman manga, and another cool-looking food manga in the upper-left corner.

Some more new releases.

The magazine-wall of new releases. Love the full-face display too.

This month’s Shonen Ace Monthly Gangan comes with a DVD!

Meanwhile, it looks like the Azumanga Daioh gang make a return engagement…?

I loved these fat Golgo 13 collections. Note the complete run of Golgo 13 also on the shelf around it… 120+ volumes.

I guess with all of these close-ups, it’s kinda hard to get the best idea of just how big this place was…? Apologies, I don’t seem to have taken a reallllly wide shot. Still, trust me, it’s a pretty big floor :)

Here’s another one of those ‘shrines’ I was talking about… this time to Naoki Urasawa, creator of the then just-completed PLUTO series! As you can see, Pluto is prominently featured, but it’s his (then) brand new manga series BILLY BAT that really took the cake!

Oh and a signing card from the creator of  Emma, Kaoru Mori, peeking through on the right hand side there… I may not have even seen that in store. Good thing I took photos eh?

This weird food manga looked fascinating too. Love the display signage of the sardine on the plate.

So here’s something weird. Junji Ito did a very strange cat-manga…? The horror guy, you know, Uzumaki and Gyo? Yeah, I had to buy it. I haven’t read it yet though, but it’s kind of amazing that it exists. I’ll try and blog that too.

Here’s the shrine to all-things Takehiko Inoue. I love that Slam Dunk STILL has more facings than his 2 current series, Vagabond and Real.

So I just wanted to post this–this is how BUDDHA by Osamu Tezuka is sold in Japan. As a box of 12 manga, each with a different weirdo animal illustration on the cover. I… I don’t get it.

An amazing collection of some of the awesome signing cards they’ve got in store from the folks who’ve visited! That’s Junko Mizuno up top, followed by Suehiro Maruo in the middle. And the bottom is familiar to me, but I can’t make it out. Feel free to let me know in the comments, and I’ll correct it!

Speaking of which, this hand-made sign for Suehiro Mauro’s adaptation of Edogawa Rampo’s “Mysterious Tale of Panorama Island” is awesome!  Make sure to check out the English-language edition when it gets released this fall from Last Gasp!

How it all works: These manga shelves are the most fantastically designed things I have ever seen. Stroke of genius, really.

How it all works: Have a standing special order? Supposed to get a toy with your magazine purchase? Want something really thefty? You can find that material behind the counter, ready for pick-up when you’re ringing out.

That’s it for this time! Look for the last post in this travelogue very, very soon. We’re visiting one more Tsutaya before we leave the country…

- Chris

So, continuing from my last post (http://comics212.net/2010/07/06/japan-2009-harajuku-kiddy-land-tintin-shop/), I spent a bunch of time in Harajuku this time around, and it was great. We set a very relaxed schedule, and planned only to walk around and try to go to places and see things that we hadn’t seen before. That said, I couldn’t resist the lure of either Kiddyland (the awesome toy store) or the beautiful Tintin shop, but we did decide to disappear into the sidestreets and back streets of Harajuku, a mostly residential part of town that didn’t get much in the way of tourists. It was wonderful, and a great reminder that there’s so much to Tokyo–and really any travel destination–than the must-see stops in the guidebook.

Popping back around the corner from the Tintin Shop is the Louis Vuitton flagship, which featured a massive installation of work by and based on the art of Takeshi Murakami, which is… pretty awesome! We explored a little bit and found it utterly delightful, but in retrospect I wish we’d lingered a little longer. They were pretty serious about a lack of indoor photographs, unfortunately.

Omotoesando is quite a bit less busy, the further away you get from the station, Meiji Shrine, and tourist attractions.

So about 5 minutes after that last photo was taken, we decided to just duck down a random side street and see what life was like outside of the malls and stores. So of course the first thing I photograph is a convenience store… (Combini/Conbini for short). Why? BECAUSE I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE. I know, it’s ridiculous, but seeing it I was just… overcome. I dunno. I thought I had the conbini hierarchy all figured out, but I’d somehow completely missed “Ministop”. More to learn!

I could look at pictures of Japanese streets for hours. The cars, the powerlines, the architecture… It’s even more fun to walk down them.

About the time we tripped over this corner, we realized that we were going to see some unique stuff. Tiny office buildings, bright-yellow appartments overtop tiny parking spaces. Those awesome delivery mopeds… The buildings in Harajuku are fabulous.

Great little artbookstore.

Tiny little retail space undergoing rennovation. Andrew shown for scale. :)

Detail!

This one took the cake.

Some great under-the-bridge ‘graffiti’:

Hippie-beach-party-drum-circle store going out of business. That Pegasus is BAWLER.

An old Japanese lady laughed at us as we were taking this photo. I think she was just NUTS though.

This freaked me out, this whole complex.

Then we got back to the main street that Harajuku station is on, and managed to walk back up! It was a lovely little detour, we walked a pretty good ways, it was super fun… except for being v. hungry for much of it. Travel tip: Remember to eat. Seriously.

Then we got back to the place that made their own donuts! Which was a lovely time. You can check it out in one of my Random Japan posts about Desert: http://comics212.net/2010/02/09/random-japan-dessert/

Loved the Hello Kitty/Lucky Cat mashup at the entrance to this Family Mart.

… and then we were at  the entrance to Takeshita Dori, the cool/cute/boutique shopping strip that runs parallel to Omotesando. It’s Jam-Packed with boutiques, restaurants, chains and more. You could spend a whole day just here, but as you can see the sun was starting to set so we didn’t dawdle.

Explicit anti-jerk instructions written in English. I mean, they still misspelled a bunch of the instructions, but… Yeah. I guess some people come here and are jerks and need to be told otherwise. :-/

Not only CAN you smoke in restaurants in Japan, you basically HAVE to smoke in restaurants in Japan.

This was a Faaaaaaaaabulous shop for drag queen clothing! I clearly was a) not gonna fit into anything and b) was not the intended audience, so I didn’t head in very far. But I did love it a great deal, and was happy to stumble over it. Sugoooooiiii!

I’ve run into some pretty strange versions of “tough” outfits in Japan, but I thought this sound-effects hoodie over-top of the Angry Goofy t-shirt was pretty badass. Didn’t have my size, alas.

And before you knew it, Takeshita emptied us back out onto the main shopping throughfare, right at the doorstep of the gorgeous “icecube” building that house the Japanese H&M flagship.

The then-recently-opened Forever 21 store is right next door, and I can’t tell if it’s ALWAYS that busy on a Sunday or if there was a special event, but the lineup to get in was surprising!

The infamous condom store kitty-corner to the gap. Biggest, pretty-big, and “smart” sized condoms. Heh. That is some brilliant-assed advertising right there.

The exterior of the Uniqlo t-shirt store was branded to celebrate the anniversary of Shonen Sunday magazine, and the store featured all kinds of Shonen Sunday t’s and signatures/original illos by creators including Adachi and Kubo.

Here’s a close-up on the Zetman (Zettman?) illo for Halliday, who’s a huge fan of this series.

The interior of the store is fantastically exciting, and all the shirts are sold in capusles!

We then ducked back up one of the boutiquey side-streets to check out some of these utterly fantastic clothing shops.

Love that Domino’s delivery bike.

We tripped across a zine show… 15 minutes after it closed! Soooo pissed off about that, as the idea of buying a bunch of handmade Japanese zines? That is an awesome idea I would like to participate in. Disappointing. I did meet the really lovely Maki from Presspop Gallery, and I encourage you all to check out their nifty blog: http://presspop.blogspot.com/

We ducked back to the main street to visit Blister, the then-only-comic-book-store in Japan (for Western comics, superheroes and the like). I heard CB Cebulski say lovely things about it and was hoping to check it out. Sadly, they were closed to… and then they closed their doors for good a few months later. Too bad. :-/

One last look at the icecube building and then it was time to head back to the train station, and home for the evening. We were laden with packages and exhausted from walking for 8 or 9 hours around Tokyo, but it was a lot of fun.

I never did figure out what the hell this guy was selling, but speaking as a fat guy sweltering in the 40+ degree heat of Tokyo’s summer, I would certainly have purchased whatever gave him such refreshment. Feel free to translate this in the comments and make me feel more foolish than I already do :)

And that was Harajuku! Thanks for reading! I’ve got maybe 2 more posts from 2009, one on the Tezuka Museum, and one on Tsutaya. Hopefully I’ll get to those soon.

- Chris

This is Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly manga anthology published by Square/Enix, best known in the west for their video game properties. It is where the very popular Shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist, published in English by Viz, is originally serialized. This is one fat piece of comics.

For comparison’s sake, here’s how this puppy stacks up against my USB plug… it’s about 3 inches thick, and about a 90/10 split comics and advertising.

As you can see, the final story begins serialization on page 1103. The magazine, by my count, weighs in at 1144 pages. In addition to FMA, it serializes a number of popular stories currently being released in English, including Soul Eater from Yen Press. Stan Lee has a serial in here too (really) called HEROMAN, which I’m sure is coming to the U.S. annnnny day now.

In addition, the magazine was even FATTER on the shelf, coming with two gifts! A double-sized Fullmetal Alchemist folder, and a Fullmetal Alchemist mechanical “sharp pencil”. A nice little bonus…!

So how much was all of this? 1144 pages of manga, two free gifts?

That’s right, 500 yen. Actually they charged me 499 yen. That’s about 5 bucks, give or take.

I kind of wish manga would continue taking off in the states, rather than stumble into the plateau it’s hit… Because man, there’s so much further to go.

- Chris

P.S.: Having a wonderful time in Japan, wish you were here. :)

I absolutely had to go back to the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum on my second trip to Japan. It was one of the highlights of my first trip, and while I felt like I really got a good run at it the first time through, Tezuka popping up all over the place on my second trip reminded me that, even if it was going to be out of the way, I knew I’d enjoy going. It turns out that I absolutely did. :)

The approach to the Museum was pretty great, but I feel like I covered that last time. I will say that when the familiar Phoenix statue and glass dome came into view, my heart swelled a little.

Love that statue.

The notice-board outside the museum announced… well, a title of an exhibition entirely in Japanese, and I didn’t have any idea what it said. I was able to figure out that it was an exhibition of Tezuka’s early works, with a specific focus on “Shin Takara Jima”, the first-ever Osamu Tezuka manga graphic novel. Oh, Shintakarajima translates into English as “New Treasure Island”.

The last time I was in this area, there was a permanent exhibition outlining just what the 100,000+ pages of manga that Tezuka had completed in his lifetime looked like. Now, it’s the introduction to the exhibit, which thanks to commenter “Kransom” I now know says:

“5 Periods of Tezuka Osamu: #5 / 1947: Tezuka Osamu’s Story Manga”

Looking at the website the other periods were (roughly)

1) “Exhibition of Eternal Stories – Final and Unfinished Works”

2) “1966-1973: Opened Eyes”

3) “2008: To a New World”

4) “1961: A Passion for Anime – The Age of Mushi Pro”

So apparently it was a multi-part, non-linear exploration of Tezuka’s manga career. This, the fifth part, was about the origins of Tezuka’s story manga… or basically “all the rare stuff we could find and display”.

Which, as exhibits, go, is FUCKING AWESOME.

These are digital printouts of some earlier, pre-Tezuka work. When I saw this I was kind of prepared to be let down… I mean, if it was just going to be reproductions, not that cool…

They did have a neat selection of pre-Tezuka manga graphic novels on display, and you can sort of see the natural evolution from strip comics and gags.

Interestingly (and stupidly) I did see some reproductions of these early pre-Tezuka books elsewhere on my trip, but did not buy them. Maybe next time?

A brief aside… Tezuka’s 80th birthday would’ve been in 2008, and the museum still had this little tribute room still set-up for him. This is the room that had Tezuka’s actual work-desk in it, last time I was there. Alright, back to it…!

The entrance to the exhibit was pretty awesome, starting with Shintakarajima and a bunch of the books under glass… as well as individual panels blown up everywhere… It was very immersive, and super-cool to see all the original hardcover graphic novels even if they were under glass.

It was also where I first noticed…

Original art! Aieeee! Click for larger on all of those btw.

So yeah, it was an informative and interesting exhibit (if you could read Japanese especially) and I liked seeing the books, and the blow-ups, and all of that. But the walls were completely lined with original artwork from Shintaka Rajima…! I mean COMPLETELY LINED. I didn’t seem to get a photo of it (somehow!?) but there were at least a hundred framed pieces of original Tezuka art from Shintakarajima up on the walls at this exhibit. It was awesome, I didn’t know what to look at first!

These pages of original art were remarkably well-preserved and beautiful… so much so that I wasn’t convinced that they were real, that they might have been high-quality reproductions or something. I mean, this was a story that came out in 1947, right? Well, I went and checked and… they’re from a re-drawn, later edition of the book, from the 1980s…! Tezuka’s notorious for redrawing panels, pages, whole scenes from his work, and apparently in this case he redrew THE ENTIRE MANGA. Here’s the story (it’s a good one):

Shintakarajima - New Treasure Island, Original 1947Edition (from 2009 Archival Edition)

New Treasure Island is based on an original story written by a veteran cartoonist in Osaka, Sakai Shichima. Tezuka Osamu, who was not yet THAT popular in 1947, adapted Shichima’s book into manga, which became Tezuka’s debut work (excluding some earlier gag manga and short newspaper strips). It became incredibly, incredibly popular, almost overnight, and sold more than 400,000 copies, laying the groundwork for the manga craze. While “New Treasure Island” was based on the work by Shichima, Tezuka had essentially created an original manuscript for the work. But before publication, substantial modifications were made by Sasaki Shichima, who cut nearly 60 pages and also changed some of the dialogue. Mostly, Shichima felt that some of what Tezuka had drawn wasn’t appropriate for children. While the book did very well, Tezuka basically stopped collaborating with people and eventually he refused to allow the work to be reprinted at all.

Shintakarajima - "Complete Works" edition, published 1984, Kodansha

In the late 70s/early 80s, Kodansha undertook to reprint a line of books called “The Complete Works of Tezuka Osamu,” (which aren’t even close to complete btw, a little less than half of his work isn’t included), and Tezuka Osamu basically rewrote and redrew the entire thing from scratch so that it could be reprinted and to bring it closer to his vision for the original, and maybe to thumb his nost at Shichima a little too…! He also improved it dramatically, frankly. The “Complete Works” edition of Shintakarajima weighs in at 228 pages and was published in 1984 (5 years before Tezuka’s death), as compared to 192 pages in the original. In 2009, seemingly in conjunction with this exhibition, the original version of Shintakarajima was reprinted for what seems to be the first time in nearly 50 years, in an archival slipcase edition that set me back 20 bucks. Yeah, of course I bought it. :) Totally worth it too, btw.

I also feel I should point out that “Shintakarajima” is written in romanji (English characters) on the cover of the book as Shintaka Rajima, but this is just an arbitrary phonetic break… Neither “Shintaka” or “Rajima” are real words. The title is three Kanji Characters, Shin (?), Takara (?), Jima (?), and on the original edition it’s also written out phonetically next to the big characters as 7 syllables, for the little kids who might not know their Kanji yet.

So yeah, all of the original art I saw on the walls? Tezuka going back and re-drawing himself from more than 35 years earlier, in a style even more influenced by filmic traditions than the original. As a point of comparison, here’s the first sequence from the original 1947 edition (scanned from my copy of the archival re-release):

The version that Tezuka ultimately redrew was even more cinematic, more “filmic”. So much so, in fact, that the panels that make up the beginning of Shintaka Rajima were set, one-at-a-time, on an HD monitor and run sort of like an animatic, or limited-animation cartoon, next to the original art at the museum. Luckily, I captured it on film! Check it out:

So this is the first chapter, presented a panel at a time. You can see that to tell the same amount of story in the new 1984 version, Tezuka took 45 panels(!) compared to 16(!) in the original one. While he did establish the dog in the story earlier (he basically comes out of nowhere in the original version…) that’s 3 times as many panels to tell the same bit of story. Scott McCloud oughtta work that into the revised edition of Understanding Comics… ;)

Anyway, this was a fascinating little discovery for me, I hope you enjoyed learning about it as much as I did. :)

Here’s a close up on a display case worth of early Tezuka graphic novels. It’s worth noting that many of these books, including Metropolis, Next World, and Lost World 1 & 2 were translated and released into English by Dark Horse in the early 2000s, and all four of them are currently “between printings”… Unfortunately. If you find’em, snap them up. I can’t imagine Dark Horse deciding to go back to print on them at any time in the near future.

Actually a quick check shows that Dark Horse’s online store has everything but Metropolis in stock for 40% off. Probably money well-spent…! They’re a little rough as works… unsophisticated maybe? But fascinating glimpses at early manga.

It’s kind of remarkable to see that some pages Tezuka got on the first or second go, almost no whiteout or paste-ups or anything. And some of them are just laboured over, you can see where Tezuka is trying to carve the illustrations out of the page, drawing and redrawing to get it as simple as it looks in the final…!

Following the original artwork, there was a bunch of history of manga that I could not read, but it was a fun (though a little cramped) way to move through the exhibition… and through the years! While the exhibition starts in 1947, it quickly moves through Tezuka’s career, highlighting his most popular works.

It led us into… more original art!

So this might be a bit difficult to tell, because there’s nothing in the picture for scale… but this is a wall, probably 8 feet tall, a reproduction of how the manga page appeared in print. I photographed it because it’s from my favourite story from Tezuka’s Phoenix series, “Space”, the fourth volume of the series. And on the wall opposite it was…

The original art for the page! Oh, how I covetted it. The page dates from 1968 or 1969…

You can click for larger if you like. :)

Here’s another page from that story (I believe).

More art!

Two things I find amazing:

- The paper has yellowed a little, but the white-out hasn’t, which makes the white-out practically GLOW… drawing attention to all of the mistakes! That’s gotta be brutal for an artist to see. :)

- The zipatone looks like it was laid down yesterday! These pages are basically 40 years old, and the zipatone (the grey dot patterns, pasted on a clear backing and cut into the shape of the grey areas above) is still clear and crisp. North American zipatone from even 20 years ago has started to yellow, badly. I don’t know what Japanese zipatone is made of, but damn, did they do it right!

Unfortunately, that’s everything for this visit. Sure, I went to the gift-shop, and took dozens of photos, but most of them are the same as my 2007 visit. Some of them will make it into “Random Japan” posts, so don’t feel too bad.

Luckily, robo-Tezuka is still working away in the basement, creating new dreams for kids of all ages.

What I really want to get across to you though, is that you really, really oughtta visit the Tezuka Manga Museum if you’re any kind of fan of manga or comics, it’s just amazing and inspirational to be in the place, and the proximity to original art (and so much of it) by a master of the form? Amazing.

See you next time!

- Christopher

Thanks to the following people who made this post possible with their Japanese language and research assistance:

- kransomwastaken on twitter
- Colin Turner, lastgaspbooks on twitter, &
- Scott Green @ AintItCoolNews, aicnanime on twitter.

- Some text adapted from now-defunct versions of the Osamu Tezuka website, at http://tezukaosamu.net/
- Don’t forget to check out the amazing resource, http://tezukainenglish.com/

So last time I went to Japan (2007), one of the first things we did is visit NAMJATOWN, a theme park inside a mall. Except it’s not just any theme park, it’s the weirdest theme park I’ve ever been in. And it’s not just any mall, but the Sunshine City shopping complex, a huge collection of malls and shops and a 60-story skyscraper. It’s all exactly what you want out of a truly overwhelming, immersive, alien experience. I highly recommend it.

So we found ourselves in Ikebukuro in 2009, and so we went back and got us some gyoza, and decided to chronicle a few more things. We’ve tried, wherever possible, not to double up on photos we took in 2007, and most of this stuff is going to go uncommented-upon, because really, what needs to be said? It’s Namjatown.

Namjatown
Photos by Christopher Butcher and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher
June 2009

2007 Namjatown Photo Gallery: http://comics212.net/2007/09/14/day-02-part-3-namjatown/
Namjatown Website: http://www.namja.jp/ / http://www.namja.jp/img/pdf/guidemap.pdf

View Larger Map

He’s cross that we haven’t been back to visit in a few years. We are sorry, Mr. Namja.

This year’s theme is: Pudding Festival, with pudding’s from around the world. This festival’s slogan is NO PUDDING, NO LIFE. Needless to say, we got ourselves some pudding.

Andrew stands outside The Massage Forest (“Healing Forest”). Cheese Shirt by Lucy Knisley.

Sadly they did not sell restroom paper lanterns. Cuz? Awesome.

So right outside the washrooms in the ghost village is this special little surprise, a dilapidated old milk fridge. But could it be… haunted?

Black-light!

It’s actually much darker with more pin-pointy black-light effects. This is a long exposure.

No idea.

We got hungry so we headed off to Gyoza Stadium (also known as Gyoza Bazar). Outside of the stadium they sell beautifully packaged gyoza for you to take home and enjoy!

Delicious beer and fried dumplings. Beer by the creators of Pac-Man.

At the top of the stairs, there’s this whole animatronic show with a little stage and Mr. Namja and some eagles. Actually, why don’t I just show you?

There’s a sort of jukebox where you can put in a few bucks and bring this stage-show to life. Except the control panel is in Japanese, and I do not read Japanese. So I picked a song that is a terrifyingly creepy ‘western’ with no voices.

Then we went to the Christianity-themed portion of the theme park.

Notice the cross as his hat, and the little baby angel things.

One of the animatronic angels on top of the gate surrounding the Merry-Go-Round in religious-themed area (also a weird conflation of French and Italian too). This one plays violin, the others play other instruments like harps and things.

One of the Namjarians was nice enough to pose with us, alongside the baby angel egg(?) that you bring around with you to play the games in the religious area. He was dressed as a sort of techno-elf.

We visited the Pudding installation, where there were refrigerator cases with all kinds of pudding from around Japan. Seeing as Hokkaido milk is highly prized, we decided to sample a Hokkaido pudding. After all, No pudding, No Life. Which we took as a bit of a threat.

They also sold the incredibly popular boobie-pudding there. The boobs are filled with pudding.

We did not buy any.

Our pudding choices. The one on the left was a pudding-drink. The one on the right was a traditional thick japanese milk pudding with syrup. I’ve never found them outside of Japan, even in import stores (they do have short expiry dates). They’re AWESOME.

The little container is ceramic, with a pretty lid. The pudding was delicious, in case you were wondering.

Then, some creepy fucking marionettes.

There is no better way to follow up pudding than with Ice Cream, so here’s the Dairy Lab, a deserts-only food court.

Here is the mascot of desert. Rowwwwrrr!

Adjacent to Desert Lab is the Ice Cream Museum, which has lots of displays and information on ice cream in Japan. They are in Japanese. There are, however, lots of videos that are neat, and some English puns. Zooming in on the top there…

I think these are supposed to be video-cassette cases. Which is funny in a different way. :)

I didn’t show it, but they had a huge selection of little cups of ice cream like this. Hundreds of flavours, including Horse. Which I did not try. Instead we settled on Shochu (rice-liquor) and Cucumber (left), and Garlic (right).

It even had a slice of cucumber frozen in it. Anyway, our complaints about both were that they weren’t STRONG enough. Last trip we had a curry-ice-cream that’d knock your socks off. These ones barely tasted of their professed flavours (and were a little freezer-burned to boot!).

That’s not to say we didn’t finish them, however. But the puddings were better. After all, no pudding, no life.

Then it was time to go. A quick trip to the gift-shop evidenced some of the worst merch I’ve ever seen. This was a t-shirt that we elected not to buy. I mean, it’s great in a truly awful way, but I prefer my ironic t-shirts professionally crafted.

Forget about it though, it’s Namjatown.

- Christopher

One of my regrets last time I went to Japan was missing out on the Osamu Tezuka installation at Kyoto Station. Despite the fact there was advertising for it everywhere, including those super-keen Astro Boy and Kimba The White Lion statues/pointers, I couldn’t find it when I was there. This time though, I actually asked someone at the tourism office, and they told me exactly where it is. And so I went there, and took awesome pictures for all of you…!

So Kyoto Station in and of itself is a marvel. It’s a beautiful, high-tech reimagining of a temple-style building with a curved roof and open sides to let air flow through, but all done up in glass and steel. If you get a chance to visit, I do recommend it.

The exterior of Kyoto Station features all kinds of great signage that tells you about events going on there, and especially about the Tezuka installation. Here you can see the various signage, all pointing viewers in the right direction. Long-time readers will remember that I did not ACTUALLY see the little arrows on all of these signs, pointing me in the direction of the space, because I’m a dork. I seriously just thought it was a stylized design element… Ah well. Found it this time!

The Kyoto Station / Tezuka installation was, I believe, completed for an anniversary of Tezuka/Atom, and to commemorate the reopening of the station. It’s also located on the other side of the Kyoto Hotel Granvia, on the outside of the station, which explains why maybe I had a bit of trouble finding it last time. Here we see the entryway sign… which is also promoting a live stage-show of Beauty and the Beast, also happening in the same general area. Needless to say I didn’t stop in.

The main entrance is nice, with lenticular animations of Astro Boy (Atom!), Kimba, Black Jack, and another character I don’t know the name of. I still really love the little “fins” on the first ‘o’ in KYOTO, in the shape of Astro Boy’s hair. That’s just genius. Actually, since I’m a big fan of Big pictures on the blog, here’s a close-up of then Astro Boy lenticular. Unfortunately you won’t quite get exactly the same effect.

I think the thing that most impresses me about this whole thing is that with something like Disney, or Marvel, or DC, or whomever, it’s very much ABOUT THE CHARACTER. The creator (except maybe Walt Disney, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish) is pushed far to the background. This installation is “Tezuka World”, and Tezuka the creator is at the forefront of the work. I think that’s pretty incredible, and something for all of us in the comics industry to aspire to.

So the installation is, honestly, mostly a gift-shop and retail oriented, with a few cool additions.

More pics and info under the cut! Click:

There are quite a few statues of Tezuka’s characters scattered about, fun to photograph or take a picture with. As you can see, the film adaptation of Tezuka’s nutso graphic novel MW (translated into a lovely English edition by Vertical) is opening this weekend in Japan, and this isn’t the first installation I’ve seen dedicated to the film. Unfortunately to put up the big cardboard standee, they had to cover a kick-ass mural of all of Tezuka’s characters.

There’s also a theatre set up, showing two different Tezuka cartoons exclusive to this installation! The one I saw was from the most recent Astro Boy series a few years back, and it was very kiddy. I mean, it was alright, but let’s just say it was pretty easy to follow despite the fact that the characters never stopped talking—in Japanese.  I’ll be honest though, sitting, in the middle of the day, in a theatre, alone, watching children’s cartoons? I had serious doubts about the direction that my life had taken. I decided to rationalize the whole thing away as “free air conditioning” with it being 90 degrees and humid outside. But.

If you buy a ticket to the theatre (only 200 yen! What a steal!) you get access to this cute little reading area, set up by the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Shown is one copy of every single manga that Tezuka produced in his lifetime. That’s a lot of work there…

Honestly, none of this was a patch on the totally kick-ass Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, outside of Osaka. I still consider that the high-point of my last trip to Japan. But considering it’s only about 40 minutes from Kyoto station (and free if you have a JR pass…!) why not do both? :)

Here’s a little bit more on the MW movie from the display, including a close-up of some hi-res reproductions of original pages from MW.

Those are illustrations, output onto canvas and framed, featuring Tezuka’s most popular series. Not quite the same thing as seeing original art, but it’s still quite nice. It’s also a reminder how little colour-art we see from Japanese mangaka in general. I think the prevailing opinion is that the colour work is either outdated, or simply inappropriate for the North American market. I get that, particularly when you look at the difference in sell-through between Vertical’s relatively successful Tezuka releases with cutting-edge book design, and Viz and Dark Horse’s more traditional releases, featuring colour painted covers. Seeing original Tezuka colour work up close, you can tell there’s a ton of craft there, but it might just be the wrong “style”. I’ll talk about this more later maybe? Anyway, what you’re really here for is PICTURES OF CHARACTER GOODS! HERE WE GO:

That’s right! ASTRO BOY BLUEPRINTS! Translucent and printed on Vellum! Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

So after taking this photo, just knowing these things were out there… waiting to be purchased… it haunted me. HAUNTED ME. So I went back and bought a set of Astro Boy blueprints. Actually, I bought like 6 or 7 sets, and we’re going to be selling them at The Beguiling eventually. But for now, I’ve taken a few close-up photos of them for you. Enjoy!

So now I hope you can see why I had to buy it. This is the whole thing. We can see it’s a 1:2 scale blueprint for ATOM, and that he’s 1.35 metres tall, and the side panels show the usage of his powers taken from comic book panels. As I mentioned this is two layers on velum, with the top being his exterior casing and the bottom being his guts. More closeups!

And here’s a view with the guts-layer on top and the casing level underneath. Soooo cool.

Oh, and clockwise from top left, we’ve got: GOD OF COMICS, the first English language biography of Tezuka (haven’t read it yet); a Japanese-language exhibition book I picked up that detailed the first exhibit I saw in the Tezuka museum in 2007, which is just dozens of photographed reproductions of original Tezuka pages, warts-and-all; Ode To Kirihito, Tezuka’s mature manga pub’d by Vertical Inc.; a Japanese-language newstand manga anthology that’s just reprints of Tezuka stories (Seriously, 3 bucks, 400 pages, different chapters of Tezuka stuff, bought off a newstand I believe.)

(You can click most of these for larger versions.)

The blueprints measure about 2 feet by 3 feet or so. I’ll post at the blog when they become available for sale.

Astro Boy / GeGeGe no Kitaro Crossover!

This Pluto and Atom statue set was only 200 bucks! And in the upper-left corner you can see the price-tag for the complete mini-reprinting of Tezuka’s entire library (seriously, every book is there and it comes with a magnifying class). It’s only $750 or so. I would, quite sincerely, like to buy this some day.

Puzzle!

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this in my Japan posts, but usually when you’re doing business with shopkeepers, you don’t actually hand money over for your purchases. That would involve touching and germs and general squeamishness. Instead you put your money on a little tray, and then the shopkeep takes the tray and takes your money off of it, and puts your change in the tray and then puts the tray back down in front of you. I know, I know, but it actually works surprisingly well, and hey, no germs! Here we see examples of 4 different Astro Boy change trays. I… I bought one. I have yet to start using it at work. :)

Before I go, I wanted to share this. Mos Burger, one of Japan’s greatest hamburger chains (seriously awesome stuff) and Mister Donut have teamed up to create MODSDO, which is utterly insane and wonderful. Above, clockwise from top, is the MOSDO ‘burger’, the MOSDO “potedo” (do is for donuts), a mango pudding, and a mix donut for people that don’t like to choose.

The two burgers featured mini-donuts sliced in half, a sort of choclate crackle “burger” patty, and then either raspberry sauce (instead of ketchup) and raspberry mousse (instead of mayo) or green tea flavoured… something. It was surprisingly delicious, and honestly not that sweet.

Maybe I just like puns too much, but the “potado” killed me. It’s unsweetened donut batter, extruded to look like French fries and then deep fried. And served with ketchup. Also, surprisingly pretty good! B- for flavour, A for texture.

We have been eating so much great, tasty, and weird stuff on this trip.  But this was… pretty special. :-D

So as we were leaving the train station the second time, we spotted this. I just wanted to take a few minutes to balance out the tide of Japanese schoolgirl/sailor suit outfits that permeate the internet with this, pictures of actual Japanese sailors congregating in the station. They were cute and fit and dressed like sailors.

They even ride the elevator together, lovely. :)

Alright, updated blog is updated! Thanks for reading, or reading again!

- Chris

I figure everyone is at least as OCD as me, and would love to be able to read as many of the spines on the books in that Jinbocho manga bookshop post as possible. So I’ve decided to upload the hi-res, unedited photos from that day to flickr. I think they’re only 3mp, but that’s still 5 times as big as on the blog here.

See the set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157622846202868/.

Edit: Did you know? If you have an unpaid Flickr account it limits the display-size of your photos to 1024×768? I did not. Anyway, just got myself a pro account, and the original-sized photos are showing up now, at like 3600×2700 or so. Enjoy!

- Chris

It’s easy, as a tourist in Japan, to stick entirely to the  Yamanote (ya-ma-no-tay) line that circles downtown Tokyo. It’s got all of the major stops–Shinjuku, Harajuku, Ginza, Namjatown–and with each city block in Tokyo being about ten times as dense with shops and apartments and life as a similar block in… say… Toronto… you could spend a two week trip to Japan never stepping on any other form of public transit than the Yamanote JR train line. Maybe take a cab once in a while. But sometimes when you venture off the beaten path, you can find something pretty cool and not very touristy, and that’s just awesome.

So manga fans, let me introduce you to Jinbocho.

View Larger Map

Jinbocho is the publishing-district of Tokyo. I know that’s going to sound a little weird to most people–a publishing district!?–but yeah. All of the major publishers have offices in this prefecture, including manga publishers, and when you get that many people who love print in one place, bookstores are bound to crop up. But in fact Jinbocho sort of happened the other way around, with most of the area destroyed by fire in 1913, a university professor (apparently) opened a book shop in Jinbocho afterwards, and led other like-minded sorts to do the same. Now the streets are literally jam-packed with bookstores of every shape and size, particularly used book stores, and particularly used manga shops. While Nakano Broadway offers the otaku a safe, windowless haven to pursue nerdish pursuits, Jimbocho focuses it’s nerditry like a laser, straight at booklovers. And wow, does it deliver.

The center of Jinbocho is the intersection of Yasukuni-dori and Hakusan-dori, but more importantly to foreign travelers it will require multiple transfers. You’ll have to get on a train line that isn’t the Yamanote line (the Chuo/Sobu line!), and then you’re going to have to get off the train at Suidobashi Station, and exit the station and walk across the street to get on the subway (Metro)! And take that 2 or 3 stops! And then you will end up roughly here, at said intersection, with bookstores on I think 3 of the four corners.

As I mentioned, Jinbocho is home to a number of famous publishing companies, including Shueisha…

…and Shogakukan. Now, while these two behemoths have teamed up to run our beloved Viz Media here in North America, in Japan they remain fierce competitors and closely guard their publishing secrets. Actually, that Shogakukan Building looks a little familiar now that I think about it. Where have I seen it before?

Why, I remember the Shogakukan building from when it was wrecked in 20th Century Boys Volume 5 by Naoki Urasawa. A volume of manga that… coincidentally was published in Japan by… Shueisha! Heh heh heh. There, now we’ve all learned something hilarious.

So anyway, the bookstores in this neighborhood are awesome, predominantly Japanese but with lots of great foreign bookshops as well, and the prices run the gamut. This one just down the street from the main intersection was pretty outstanding, with an amazingly curated selection of books. Here’s a few more pictures.

This was a pretty neat, tiny little manga store that only stocked the absolute newest stuff, floor to ceiling. No pics inside… no room!

So I was lucky enough to meeting a friend in Jinbocho for lunch, and this is where he brought me. The first floor is a rare books store. The second floor has a really wonderful, delicious little curry restaurant in it. But to get to the curry restaurant, you need to go through:

Yeah, that’s right. It’s a manga shop. A totally amazing used manga shop. According to @tke918 on Twitter, the signage in the window in the pic above this one roughly translates to “We are selling anime cells and out of print mangas… at Nakano Bookstore” hah! So maybe it’s a little like Nakano Broadway afterall. Anyhow, the curry in back was fantastic, the best Japanese-style curry I’ve ever had. But the bookstore? The bookstore was heaven.

Here’s how to get to it:

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And here’s why:

Untold riches… and children’s masks.

Why yes, it’s a case full of rare manga, including first-edition and second edition Tezuka graphic novels.

That’s a first-edition Lost World Volume 2, going for 126,000 yen, or about $1260. While I was in the shop, the proprietor had just bought a bunch more early Tezuka and was wrapping them. He let me hold a 2nd edition ‘Treasure Island’, the first-ever Tezuka manga. That was pretty cool.

So good. But for more, you’ll have to look under the cut…

While the store was 90% about the manga, they did have a couple of ‘period’ toy reproductions, and… what’s that over Tony’s shoulder?

Why, it’s anime cells. Including a Kimba, The White Lion, and behind it? It’s a cell from Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle In The Sky! It ran just-about two grand, so no, I didn’t come home with it. Just to the left of this shelf though, was about 5 shelves of anime cells (including a whole shelf of JUST background paintings, for between 10 and 20 dollars a pop. There were a couple of them that had recognizable characters, but nothing I felt passionate about. Still, I can think of worse things to do than page through anime cels for a half-hour.

If you’re Japanese ain’t that good (and mine is awful!) then you probably have no idea why this is interesting. Well, some of these are collections of comics and illustration by Seiichi Hayashi, author of the ground-breaking (and surprisingly still revered) Red Colored Elegy. I bought like 3 or 4 of them.

Why it’s a bunch of English language graphic novels and trade paperbacks! They even had the second All Star Superman HC! And Sandman Doll’s House! And a complete collection of the Japanese GEN13 collections that I kinda wanted for the kitsch value, but not $60 kitsch value.

In fact they had a whole bunch of English language comics. Well not a whole bunch, like 2 shelves, but 2 shelves more than I was expecting.

Still, if you ever need to get a complete run of Kurt Busiek’s POWER COMPANY in Tokyo, now you know where you can find it. And only 50 bucks too!

I took this picture in the vain hopes that Kurt Busiek would link this post.

But Back to the manga: MANGA. They had so much manga. SO MUCH MANGA. So many volumes, collections of old comics. There’s probably unkown treasures in these books, stuff never reprinted, unavailable now. Hell, that Bat-Manga book from a few years back was a total-fluke find… What else had a cartoon or a TV show in the 60s? Is there weirdo forgotten 60s Captain America manga?

This is a hell of a lot of issues of GARO, the influential underground manga anthology.

This is a bunch of issues of COM, the alternative manga magazine started by Osamu Tezuka, as a response to the popularity and success of “Gekiga”. THis is where Phoenix was launched.

This is a picture from the elevator, into the store. You can see some original art on the wall there (some nice stuff), the baskets of original art there in the background. You’ll see the security gates there too, where the ‘door’ to the store is. Now notice all of the books and shelves of books Outside the door of the store.

I don’t get it, it just looked fun. Neat set of Lupin plushies there though eh? :)

THis is actually a print. But it was neat, so what the hell? GeGeGe No Kitaro, by Shigeru Mizuki.

Here’s a bit more of a close-up on the originals. THere were several instances here where you could get manuscripts for whole stories for 40 or 50 bucks, and individual pages for 20 bucks. I have to admit it, it was sooooo tempting to just go broke scooping up as much original manga art as I could, but I decided to just buy one really lovely little piece. Wanna see?

It’s absolutely beautiful up close too, but I have no idea who drew it, or what series it’s from. It did come with two pieces of paper, which I’m fairly certain has that information on it (the little yellow one) as well as warnings (the big white one) about copying it. If someone could be so kind as to translate the title/artist…

I’d certainly appreciate it. :) You can click on that to get a much bigger version.

And that brings us to the end of the tour… For now anyway. I’d like to thank the fine folks at Nakano Bookstore for letting me take so many wonderful photos, and for the art, and just for running such a wonderful shop. Nakano Bookstore, hell, all of Jinbocho might be a little out of the way, but it’s a worthy destination for manga fans.

- Chris @ The Beguiling

My friend Corey Mintz settled on Shirahama as his almost-tropical destination of choice, for his trip to Japan. It was before my first trip and he got the idea from the Lonely Planet guide who raved about it. Shirahama roughly translates to “white sand”, and that’s what you get: 2km of white beaches on the Pacific Ocean. If you go off-season, which is essentially the 11 months of the year that aren’t August, no one’s there. “It’s like Muskoka after Labour Day” as I would explain to my Canadian friends after returning. I don’t have a clever colloquialism for you if you’re American, apologies.

Before the 2009 trip I saw Corey down and implored him to describe his trip to Japan, from start to finish, so I could steal all of the best parts. Shirahama was one of the best parts. I also learned not to only leave myself an hour to explore Sapporo, but that’s for another post.

So yeah: Shirahama is a resort town, sister-citied with Honalulu in Hawaii. It is 3/4 empty in the off-season. It is beautiful, a truly strange mix of post-war Japanese architecture and Beach Boys / Jan & Dean surf-culture. Oh, and naked outdoor onsens where you sit in a pool of scalding water as the waves crash down right next to you; the Pacific Ocean goes on forever.

I could live in Shirahama.

They greet you at the train station in Hawaiian shirts.

There are empty hotels everywhere.

This is a second-floor onsen, just off the beach looking out to the ocean.

This is the beach.

This was Tuesday night I believe. No one on the beach but us and the locals.

Because we were outside with two brand-new cameras, the setting on all of these photos are a little dark. It was an overcast day, but bright, and really warm. 75-80 degrees or so. You’ll also notice a significant different between Andrew’s photos (above) and mine (the next little batch).

Here’s another view of the onsen-on-the-beach.

In Japan there really are vending machines everywhere, including on the beach.

Kiddie Shower.

A meat little restaurant/ice cream stand, that you had to cross a bridge to get to. And check out that roof…!

You can see it better here, one edge of the beach has a large rocky outcropping that’s rather lovely to walk out onto. Looking at these pictures now, the scale is really weird… it’s actually a huge area and outcropping. Maybe I need a camera with a better depth of field? Next trip.

There were actually three onsen on the beach, this is a little foot-bath with a lovely tranquil garden and not-too-hot water. Customary with all Japanese baths, you had to wash your feet before you could put them in the bath. I mean, you didn’t Have To, there was no one around. But that’s when our morality is tested. Japan operates on the honour system, fella.

Pretty eh?

So this is just a little bit past the foot bath, and this is when our initial stroll on the beach got a bit creepy. It’s about 3 in the afternoon here, and this shop is closed. In fact, the restaurant and ice cream stand was closed too. Everything was closed. Heh.

The next batch of photos will be behind the cut, for folks reading at comics212.net. For folks on feed-readers, this is gonna be a huge post. Sorry!

For those not in the know, these are big concrete things that keep the shore from eroding. They’re called ‘tetrapods’. Popular opinion is that they don’t work, and may have started out as political graft because someone owned a construction company a favour. Heh. They are neat though. They come in triangle and explodey-shapes.

The yellow rubber on the sidewalk is for the blind. It’s everywhere.

So this here is one of the oldest onsen in town. It didn’t seem to be open while we were walking by, else I’d have stopped in for a dip. It also seemed a touch unfriendly, but maybe we were imagining things…? Anyway, just off camera to the right, in front of this building, is a statue. It’s no ordinary statue though.

It’s a dripping conch shell. I don’t want to be… well I don’t want to be untoward but my is that evocative. Of something. I took a video.

Heh.

I took this picture like 12 times trying to make it work. Enh. The colour on that market (closed of course) was amazing.

As I mentioned, most of these hotels were almost completely empty. Not a one of them had an English language website, none of them were affiliated with a major chain, none of them were on Expedia. We ended up staying at a guest-house off the beach solely because their website was basically-constructed enough that google translate didn’t completely choke on it when I tried to figure out the amenities. They all looked amazing and next time I go to Shirahama I’m going to show up even if I can’t book the hotel ahead of time, because who doesn’t want to stay at some of these places…? They’re awesome.

This is a picture of a tank of sulfur-smelling hot water. It is gross as all hell. It’s also just inside the entrance to Shirahama Saikinoyu Onsen, mentioned in 8th century Japanese texts as a place where Emperors came to take their baths. As mentioned, it is a scalding 42 degrees or so, and sits outcropped into the ocean, so that the waves literally crash down on you. It is a quiet, meditative, beautiful spot. I highly recommend it. I didn’t take pictures though, that seemed a little bit… awkward? Luckily, other people had no such compunctions.

It’s definitely worth seeing for yourself though.

On the walk up the road we passed by a couple of larger resorts, including this Onsen Theme Park, which looked… awesome. Sadly, that wasn’t the exact experience we were up for this time around, but we did get to take a picture of a fat little man in a washtub, and isn’t that what it’s all about?

Then we got lunch at a lovely little restaurant that served this Nagisa beer, which was also pretty good! I got a past dish that was actually pretty solid, and Andrew got:

Pizza! But not ordinary pizza…

Pizza with chopped (actually, riced) hardboiled egg, cheese, and tomatoes. On a cracker crust. Because… Japan! Also, the restaurant was entirely filled with middle-aged ladies and us, which (particularly in the south of Japan, in a tourist town that doesn’t get many gaijin at all) caused a bit of a stir. Anyway, we liked the beer so much we brought some bottle back for our friend Paul and his beer-rating pals.

What’s that, just outside of the restaurant?

Why it’s a totally kick-ass house.

So we had walked back around and towards the water, to one of Shirahama’s main attractions, Senjojiki. It roughly translates to “thousand tatami mats”, as the ocean has eroded the soft stone over thousands of years to create a series of impressive cliffs. It reminded me of Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia, actually. To get there you walked through a magical forest.

Actually, it was just a lovely little park with trees that look slanted because the grade of the ground is so steep.

There were maybe 20-30 people here all told, which made it the most people we saw at one time for our entire trip to Shirahama.

Andrew’s away on the rock in the upper right corner there. He’s the yellow dot.

You can sort of tell that Andrew was a little braver than I was. Only a little tho. :)

On the way back to town from our walk, we took photos of more weird buildings, more weird hotels, and some lovely flowers. But really, I want to leave a little something to the imagination.

Shirahama is not a terribly easy place to ‘do’ if you’re not at least a little fluent in Japanese, or unless you happen to be very determined. But it really was a wonderful trip and it added an entirely new dimension to traveling to and across Japan. If you can, do it! Just maybe do it in early July, unless you wanna spend your vacation on the beach with 10,000 other people instead of 5.

- Christopher

So when I found out there was something called “The Pokemon World Centre” in Tokyo, I added it to my Japan itinerary pretty much immediately. Sadly, it was kind of… well, it’s in an office building. I don’t know any way to put it better than that. But I got photos!

Pokemon World Center Tokyo & Tokyo Tower
Photos by Christopher Butcher and Andrew Woodrow Butcher

We got off the train at Hamamatsucho JR Station on the yamanote loop. We were reminded that POKEMON was just down the street, with signage leading the way. Despite that, we still got a little lost. Just so you don’t (in future), here’s a map:

View Larger Map

Scenic Hamamatsucho is… kind of awful really, just a block after block of office tower. It’s still The Future in the way that everything in Tokyo looks like The Future, it was just way more nondescript than I think I was expecting.

It’s grey buildings and green blue glass and as much greenery as they can shove in.

This shopping concourse is nice enough, I guess, but does this look like the entrance to POKEMON WORLD?

And Yet.

Click “Keep Reading” to Keep reading:

The Pokemon are pretty neat though.

So the store is basically like a giant gift-shop for an attraction that doesn’t exist; it’s a ton of pokemon related merchandise (including all sorts of cards, video games, etc.) all in one place. But there’s no… there… there…

I mean, it was filled with adorable things. Plushes, candy, stationary. If you wanted a pichu (the baby/unevolved form of pikachu) then you were in luck.

Corn flakes! I don’t think breakfast cereals are that big a thing in Japan, but apparently you can get the corn flakes at Pokemon World.

I did think these were sort of cute. I dig this style of design.

And hey, if you’re a girl, they’ve got PINK Pokemon stuff for you!

All kinds of gear to customize your Nintendo DS (the main game platform of Pokemon), including carrying cases, game holders, and swanky stickers to jazz-up your design!

Bought this one.

Didn’t buy this one.

This dude was All Over the store.

I didn’t get a huge number of pictures of the store, but I did want to take a pic of the single-worst piece of Pokemon merchandise, and this was it. It’s a Pokemon-themed banana protector. But only for small bananas. I realize that the last two sentences are begging to be euphamisms, but they’re not: pay $5 to protect your child-sized banana. With Pokemon.

I’m probably on some sort of list now for having typed the last sentence.

Even the exterior signage is grey… blah!

Then we took our leave of the store. Actually, inside the office building and just around the corner was a little room where you could… do something… withe Pokemon. Honestly at this point my lack of Japanese language skills were really letting me down:

But not being in the Pokemon Union, I decided to pass. I guess they hold events or something here.

So yeah, Pokemon World in Tokyo is… well I’m sure it makes the kids who are rabidly into Pokemon happy, on some level. But I feel like it’s a total failure, the complete opposite of something like the Ghibli Museum. Hell, even if you outright hate anime and the films of Hayao Miyzaki, just visiting the Ghibli Museum is impressive. Hell, I’ve been to studio ghibli boutiques in toy stores that were nicer than this space. Cold, anti-septic, under-designed, poorly-merchandised, it’s awful. It’s a corporate outlet version of children’s dreams.

I realize that some people hate Pokemon, but I honestly thought before I went to Pokemon World that it wasn’t just a cynical cash-grab designed to separate children from money–that it was just a demand-based outgrowth of the popularity of a smart, well put-together children’s game. Now? I’m not sure.

At least the graphics are great. Feel free to make up your own mind at http://www.pokemon.co.jp/pokecen/english.html.

Meanwhile, in the distance, poking through the mediocre grey office towers was the sun! And it was shining down on Tokyo Tower! It’s like a mini Eiffel Tower! It’s the starting-point for countless magical girl anime, from MKR to Escaflowne! It’s a bonafide tourist destination, and after dragging Andrew to see Pokemon (and sucky Pokemon at that) we need to see something he might actually enjoy. And so, we head off in that direction. A map we pick up along the way says it’s about a mile. Easy-peasy.

Walking at street-level, you really begin to appreciate the density and uniqueness of Tokyo. I really dug this picture, so I uploaded a bigger version. Click through to see it full-size.

Oh, and, between that last picture and this one, we passed the station again, and as it was now the beginning of end-of-workday rush-hour, the used manga salesman had shown up. This is a guy who scavenges through recycling bins grabbing fair-to-decent copies of manga anthologies (and occasional tankoubons) and sells them for the bargain basement price of just 100 yen. It was suggested by Patrick Macias in Cruising the Anime City that this is the end of the manga food chain, and a must-do event in Tokyo. Well I lugged my Shonen Sunday (with first-appearance of Takahashi’s Rin-Ne!) all over Tokyo that fine day, my wallet a 100 yen coin lighter.

In between Hamamatsucho JR Station and Tokyo Tower is a massive shrine complex. I’m sure once upon a time we wouldn’t have all of these buildings and things between this outer gate and the main shrine, but the passage of time is a bitch and real estate is hella expensive.

If you’re going to have public washrooms, why not make them the most beautiful public washrooms you possibly can?

Here’s the outer gate to the shrine, which I’d like to repeat, is about a half-mile down a crowded Tokyo street from the boring-ass grey office block from the beginning of this post. Japan is nifty.

So what I’m saying is, just seeing this shrine made up for dragging Andrew to the Pokemon World Store. Lookit how happy he is. Gosh I love him.

Standing inside that big gate, we look back down the street. Those fuzzy-grey buildings all the way in the back are where we’ve come from. You don’t really notice the walk, the streets and architecture are so lovely.

It’s right around here that I probably oughtta start watermarking my photos, but whatever. This giant shrine and garden sits in the shadow of the tower, neatly juxtapositioning old and new Tokyo.

Continuing along through the shrine complex, we came across rows and rows of Jizo statues.

Until at last we were right underneath Tokyo Tower. I’m going to spare you most of the interior pictures… the whole thing is set up exactly like every tourist attraction you’ve ever been to, complete with food court, and it hasn’t changed much since at least the late 70s. There’s not just a gift shop, there’s a gift-arcade, and when we visited on a slow day there were no less than 100 Japanese schoolchildren. Loud ones.

These are photos from the first observation deck, the one you can get to with your “general admission” pass. It’s still pretty high up, mind, but for an extra five bucks you may as well go all the way to the top.

See. Pretty far up. Not AS far up as we could be though.

There we go.  That’s all the way at the top, and you can see Tokyo sprawled out in front of you. It’s pretty overwhelming… in the best possible way.

On the way back down through the main observation level, we passed this band doing a few Beatles covers. I was a little disappointed that despite being a professional band (albeit playing a club set into a tourist attraction) their grasp of the lyrics to popular Beatles songs was shaky at best. Still, they had a lot of heart.

Oh, and here’s something that’s so cool I almost put it into its own post:

What’s this?

…

If you guessed “braille” good for you. It’s one of the braille instructional panels set into the ledge beneath the observation windows at Tokyo Tower. And that trapezoidal bump in the long line up there? FUJI. Mt. Fuji is so badass it gets its own braille demarcation, to let blind folks know they’re facing the direction of the mighty mountain. I never really thought of braille as pictographic before, but yeah, I was totally blown away by this. Awesome.

Despite being a 50+ year old tourist attraction, this Tokyo Tower shaped bottle of water was the only good souvenir in the whole shop, and it wasn’t even that good. We ended up settling on a fridge magnet, but even that was the wrong colour (red instead of this awesome safety-orange). Someone needs to tell the people making this stuff that their tower is Orange, all of their merch was red for some reason.

This was a lovely little diorama showing what the area looked like before the tower was built.

So since we’d decided that it was going to be too late to do much of anything else once we were done at the Tower, I decided I was going to see every last scrap of what this place had to offer. In case you were wondering, there are two floors that are essentially this: big white empty rooms. Mysterious and depressing.

Maybe this is where people hang out who are afraid of heights?

Although it did have stuff to look at. Thanks to being brutally outdated, it still lists Toronto’s own CN Tower as the tallest freestanding structure in the world! Oh, Canada!

So we’re poking around on one of these barren, empty floors, and what should we come across but a music/alt-culture store. Seriously. There’s nothing on this floor but an empty white room, a broke-ass video arcade, and this store selling X-Files Posters and Camp Crystal Lake wood signs. Check it out:

Being tucked away on the empty 4th floor of a Tourist attraction, I can understand why they might be having a sale or two.

Yes, an actual mannequin.

Spider-Man/Venom yin-yang? Damn right. And no, I did not buy any of this.

We did pick up some awesome 1″ buttons (badges) featuring musicians of the British Invasion, so that was something! We took our leave and walked through the more traditional gift shop area (it was more like a giant gift-flea-market) before heading out.

TCAF represent!

This is a weird thing to have on a towel. I almost bought one as a souvenir, but there’s no Japanese writing on it anywhere. It’s just… odd…

Anyway, we hit the McD’s in the food court on the way out (large coke for only 120 yen!) and called it a night.

By this point I’d been on my feet for the better part of 8 hours, and decided discretion was the better part of valour, and we cabbed it back to the station rather than walked. Still, we had a great day all-around (even if we were slightly let-down earlier) and got to see a couple of bonafide Tokyo landmarks. And we MAY have stopped in Shinjuku for a nightcap or three too. There’s no better way to end your evening than with a happy-hour that goes until 11pm.

Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

So one of my favourite retail experiences during my first trip to Japan was stumbling over the exciting department store TOKYU HANDS. Not just because Tokyu Hands was the official outlet official merch for the (then-new) Neon Genesis Evangelion film Evangelion 1.0: You Are [Not] Alone. I mean, that was a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the ONLY reason. It’s just a cool store, exactly what you might have in mind if I described it as “a department store by and for people who live in Tokyo, but no clothes.” All manner of personal and lifestyle goods abound, especially anything cool, weird, or beautiful.

We hadn’t make it part of our itinerary to go back this time out, but with locations adjacent to the Shinjuku Kinokuniya (which I’ve already blogged about), and in Ikebukuro where we ended up anyway (pictured above), I figured… why not check it out and see what’s new? And take a few dozen more photographs? Oh, and you anime fans will be happy to know that the Eva store was up and running, full-steam-ahead, for the release of the second movie.

And now, here’s a bunch of awesome random stuff!

Considering the frequency with which I lost my umbrellas in Tokyo… or anywhere really… I couldn’t justify buying one of these lovely ones. This lovely display graces the main-floor entrance of the Shinjuku store.

Indoor grills for making all of your barbecued favourites in tiny Tokyo apartments… complete with fake plastic food!

Tissue boxes.

These light-up hanging grapes were awesome. Unfortunately they were not $200 awesome.

Keep reading behind the cut to see 40+ more pictures:

So… these are bandannas/flags/cloths, emblazoned with art that mashes up Star Wars (original trilogy of course) and traditional Japanese artistic motifs. They’re AWESOME. We bought quite a few. Here’s a close-up of my two fav images:

Those are Fucking Amazing.

If you read Japanese, you can check out the manufacturer’s website here: http://heart-artcollection.co.jp/.

Everyone likes stickers.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s Division Chief Kosaku Shima pedometer game! Featuring the star of the insanely popular Salaryman manga (which saw three volumes get a sort-of English language release as part of Kodansha’s bilingual manga line 10 years ago… worth tracking down!), it’s a game where you can make decisions and get points for walking around… earning him the contract or the girl! Exactly the sort of thing I would’ve grabbed as a souvenir if it weren’t 50 bucks.

Ghibli tape dispensers. Catbus or Gigi! For the executive with huge balls, or the housewife who needs to spice-up her scotch-tape needs.

Barbapappa planter, with plant!

Clickity Click–Barba-trick.

So this is kinda neat. There are these… noodles… that are shot down a bamboo ramp as they’re made fresh, basically riding a water slide during which people sit around the bamboo and grab the noodles as they flow down. Ah here we go. They’re soemen, and when they’re riding the bamboo they’re “flowing somen” or “nagashi soemen”. Anyway, this little device replicates the regional noodle specialty at home!  Aren’t you lucky!

Speaking of food toys, I’ve kind of become obsessed with tiny fake plastic food from Japan, since my last trip there. Seeing this little automated home sushi conveyor belt for your fake mini-sushi nearly killed me. Despite only being $20…

…the box was surprisingly big. Seeing it on the first day, with 3 weeks full of buying to do, the idea of buying a giant box of ridiculous item was just… I couldn’t do it. Sigh. But if anyone would like to pick one up for me, BY ALL MEANS. You can send it c/o The Beguiling. :)

These are… banks. They are twice as disturbing as they look. You put change in the mouth. They’re made of a creepy sort of PVC. It’s like they’re num-num-numing on your fingers when you put change in. They’re awful. AWFUL.

Ugggggggggh.

Remote control transformers? YES. Remote control transformers from the godawful fucking movies? NO.

Sorry, childhood.

Tiny food!

Sadly, I hadn’t read the AWESOME metal manga Detroit Metal City before I got to Japan. If I had, I probably would’ve snatched these guys up. Actually, these are in the Revoltech line, and I saw them being cleared out for 600yen a pop at a discounter in Akihabara towards the end of my trip. So much regret, so much regret…

So Cute.

OKAY! Now it’s time for EVANGELION GOODS! This store-within-a-store was located right inside the main floor entrance of the Ikebukuro Tokyu Hands store, and it’s probably still there now!

It was pretty popular.

Replicas of the pilot plugs, featuring tiny little Shinji and tiny little Rei. Only a hundred bucks.

I showed a friend these pics and his response was “They even have Evangelion dildos!?” Which… I’m sure the manufacturer does not recommend these items for that purpose. That and they’d be waaaaaaaaay more likely to have Evangelion fleshlights…

You can’t really see it, but the Eva manga tie is lettered in English. In Comic Fucking Sans.

That thing ain’t worth two hundred dollars. You could have one CUSTOM MADE for half that price.

Heh.

…and Evangelion soccer balls. These are totally awesome. There was a ton more eva merch up ins, but you can only photograph a busy display so many times before you get the eye from the normally-polite staff. Ah, what the hell, one more of the back-side featuring merch from Gainax’s newest property, Gurren Lagan.

So that’s Tokyu Hands! If you want to see the pics from my first trip to Tokyu Hands in 2007, check out this post: http://comics212.net/2007/09/08/japan-day-02-ikebukuro-tokyu-hands/

Thanks for reading! Lots more to come.

- Christopher

What you see above is a backlit, prominently placed adverisement for the Azumanga Daioh anime DVD Box Set, placed above one of the many escalator banks in JR Akihabara Station. Advertisements like this are literally all over the station, alongside ads for cell-phones and other gadgets, video games, and of course anime and character goods. Basically, if it’s for nerds, it’s being advertised on the walls of Akihabara Station.

The advertising starts on the billboards that line the walls of the train station, a blur of cute anime girl iconography whizzing by you as the train slows to an eventual stop. But it doesn’t matter, because the cars are so crowded you can never really see the windows anyhow… It’s all about giving you something to look at when you’re back after your shopping trip, reminding you of what you forgot to buy, what to get next time.

Incidentally, sorry for the awful photo up top :).

I think part of the reason that Akihabara is so popular with Western nerds (otaku) is that, aside from just being a haven for nerd retail stores that contain all of the nerd goods of your dreams (and darkest fantasies…) the experience is incredibly immersive; the anime and manga, the visual culture starts before you even step off the train, or into the street. For someone from The West where the idea of an advertisement for a comic, “grown-up” anime DVD, or anything with big eyes and a small mouth is basically inconceivable, Akihabara feels like validation.

Of course, that’s a bit of a myth: it just seems like validation. Really there are tons of complex levels of social strata involved in being an otaku in a larger society, otaku pride is actually a bit like gay pride: hard-won and presented with an edge… because of the number of people who think you’re a third class citizen or worse (awful pervert).

The sun setting over Akihabara from my 2007 trip.

The streets of Akihabara are paved with the discarded pamphlets advertising maid cafes handed out by cute girls outside of the station. It’s visual culture writ-large, and even with recent… unsavoury… events, a place where nerds can be nerds, and enjoy their nerdish pursuits. Though newer otaku havens may pop up all over Tokyo (the utterly awesome Nakano Broadway being the biggest so far) Akihabara will continue to be the second home for many otaku (or for those who are still in the closet… their first home…!)

Of course, manga and anime does manage to make it out of the Akihabara ghetto, because really, ‘normal’ folks read manga too… once in a while. A big exception to the Otaku-ghetto rule? Naoki Urasawa, and his (then) just-released new series BILLY BAT, the follow-up to the his incredibly successful PLUTO and 20TH CENTURY BOYS. The last volume of PLUTO (volume 8) was released the week before I got to Japan, and there were huge displays of it everywhere… and tons of advertising for this new series. I only caught this outdoor train-station advertisement once, I think at Harajuku, mixed in amongst the fashion, alcohol, and lifestyle advertisements. It says a lot about who Urasawa’s work is targeted at, who his audience is. And isn’t.

Hell, Urasawa has so successfully shed the otaku image they even let him on the train, instead of just waiting outside it. Much like Nana creator Ai Yazawa on my last trip…

So fight on, Urasawa-san! You’re carrying the torch for all of us.

- Chris

The July 2009 Manga Release List. Yeah, just July.

Who likes pictures of Bookstores!?

I just went through my 2007 Japan Photo set, and would you believe that in all of my pictures of Kinokuniya’s awesome 7+floor flagship store in Shinjuku, I never once took a picture of their sprawling, massive Japanese-language manga section? I think that’s because I hit Kinokuniya towards the end of my trip, and by then I’d taken hundreds of photos of manga stores like Animate and Tora No Anna, but I don’t think I ever gave Kinokuniya it’s due as being a great, centrally located and excellently stocked bookstore–whether you’re a manga fan or not…!

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Kinokuniya’s flagship store is located in Tokyo’s capital, Shinjuku, about 5 minutes walk from the south exit of Shinjuku Station. Shijunku station has like 20 exits, so it’s actually closer to the “New South Exit” but walking everywhere or anywhere in Tokyo is a joy, if you happen to be in love with cities and people-watching. Kinokuniya (the bottom red box) is actually on the otherside of the massive Takeshimaya Times Square Department Store, which is giant and beautiful, and has a whole Tokyu Hands inside too! It’s worth the walk.

Unfortunately on both days that I visited the store it was raining outsie, and so an exterior photo of Kinokuniya didn’t really work out. Once again, the photo above is from Wikimedia commons, taken by the user “Ons”.

Instead we took the awesome 7th-floor glass bridge between Takeshimaya Times Square and Kinokuniya. You get a pretty fun view of the city from here too.

I’m kind of surprised by how many folks I’ve talked to that don’t know about this particular Kinokuniya, despite the fact it’s prominently mentioned in most of the travel guides. I know it’s not a 4000 year old shrine or anything, but a giant well-stocked bookstore is my kind of temple.

The glass bridge lets you off on Kinokuniya’s foreign-books floor, which incidentally carries a huge selection of manga in English. Representatives from all of the major publishers could be found, although much like Kinokuniya New York, this store seemed solely interested in Manga By Japanese Creators, with no OEL or manga-influenced North American work to be found. That said, their selection of English-language manga was amazing, balancing popular long-running series with prestige graphic novels and series traditionally popular in Japan. The English-language editions of Pluto, 20th Century Boys, and Black Jack even merited attractive + well-made signage just to draw attention to great work.

Oh, and, they can get English-language manga we can’t even get here, like the bilingual editions of Kodansha’s Division Chief Kosaku Shima, or the bilingual Doraemon volumes. It’s jealousy-inducing.

Keep Reading After The Break:

It looks like the non-manga selection of North American graphic novels has shrunken a bit since the last time I was in town, with movie and tv-related material getting the primary placement (and the most orders). Still, whoever’s doing their ordering here knows their stuff as this is a fairly well-rounded and cultivated collection for a mainstream bookstore. No Chris Ware, no Seth, but you could say that about 90% of North American comic book stores…

Oh and what’s that in the bottom right hand corner of this photo? The U.S.-only release of LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE BLACK DOSSIER? The book DC wouldn’t ship across the border to Canada because of some fake-ass legal boogity-man, and it’s sitting in Japan?

Hey DC, thank you for making this easy to get in JAPAN through BOOKSTORE channels, but impossible in CANADA through THE DIRECT MARKET YOU HELPED CREATE. You fucked this one up and it sucks.

But let’s move on to happier things… and if you wanna see more of the books to be found on the foreign-books floor, check out my post from 2007.

All the way back down on the second floor of the store is the manga, anime, video game guides, and artbooks. Basically a haven for otaku. The photo taken here represents about a 1/4 of the total area of the floor which is entirely devoted to nerdish pursuits, with the majority of the space taken up by manga shelving. The shelving is pretty ingenious too, with 3-5 shelves of manga display space on every unit, and roll-out storage underneath. I would love to find a source on these sorts of shelves in Canada… Oh, and, right in front there you can see a display? That’s for Neon Genesis Evangelion, in honour of the new film. Let’s get a closer look.

Here you can see the official Eva manga, the ‘Angelic Layer’ series, and a few other tie-in books. Oh, and right in front there? The new boxed edition artbook of Neon Genesis Evangelion mangaka and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. I wanted this, badly, but at $150 and being massive (not bringing that back meant I could bring back about 12-14 different manga) I had to pass. You can find a review from someone whose eyes were bigger than their stomach here. Apparently it’s also been heavily pirated as well. Jesus.

A nice surprise when I arrived at Kinokuniya was this lovely little featured-display of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, in its original two-volume Japanese edition. It features cut-outs, a hand-written recommendation, and a note about the Tezuka-prize win! I’m so very happy to see Mr. Tatsumi getting added attention in his home country, and I hope it continues… Because just to the right of A Drifting Life there is Tatsumi’s newest manga, a “rakuga” comedy manga that was released just as I was leaving Japan! It’s pretty “inside” for a manga, relying heavily on bits of Japanese culture (comedy duos) that are almost entirely unknown here in the West. A quick Google Translate/Amazon.jp mash-up says the book is “Beach Grass Vaudeville Comic Strip” which… I mean your guess is as good as mine as to whether that’s accurate. Still: Neato.

Oh, and I visited another great bookstore and found a similar, more extensive display for Mr. Tatsumi:

This is from the bookstore “Libro”, located on the 6th or 7th floor of the massive Seibu Department Store complex above Ikebukruo Station, at the east exit. They had a really well-maintained store, with a huge selection of alternative and adult work (not porn). Here Tatsumi’s work was used as the centrepiece for a display of gekiga work in general, much of which has been coming back into print since the popularity and attention that A Drifting Life has received. I’m going to go over some of these books in a future post, but yeah: Mr. Tatsumi’s getting some good attention, so that’s excellent :).

Meanwhile, back at Kinokuniya, up-and-to-the-right of the Tatsumi display is about half of their selection of alternative manga:

I spent a half-hour going through every book on these units, trying to absorb everything. Sadly most of the books were shrink-wrapped (although considering the crowds around the un-shrinked magazine racks, that’s probably a smart business move on their part…) but it was still great to just discover everything. I’ve done my best to allow you to capture that feeling, by uploading a super hi-res version of this photo…! Click here for the 4meg version: http://comics212.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/DSCF8698-large.jpg.

Some of the stuff is probably recognizable, the spines for Bambi and Her Pink Gun are written in English. :) But just going over the picture now, seeing the little enclaves of books by Usumaru Furuya (Short Cuts) for example, brings back memories. Enjoy browsing!

Speaking of, here’s a close-up on some random gekiga re-release that looked awesome that I didn’t buy for some stupid reason.

Right across from the weirdo manga is… euromanga! Big full-colour anthologies with Skydoll on the cover, as well as the Japanese edition of one of those Watchment tie-in books. Actually, the European album imports were interesting and, as you might imagine, the manga-influenced comics were the ones that were widely available in Japanese. Hm.

So now we’re to the part of the post where it’s mostly just big shelves of manga… but let’s be honest: BIG SHELVES OF MANGA. Upper left is Shigeru Mizuki of Ge Ge Ge No Kitaro, Lower-centre is the red-and-white-striped spine goodness of Kazuo Umezu (Drifting Classroom, Cat-Eyed Boy). Top Middle seems to be Leiji Matsumoto of Galaxy Express, and the majority of the face-up books and the entire last two shelving bays? Osamu Tezuka, bay-bee. Lots and lots of Tezuka. With some cross-racked PLUTO for good measure and to bring in the ‘kids’.

A close-up on those neat Umezu spines.

That complete list of manga titles scheduled to be released in July…

…and August, just in case you thought July was a little slow.

In Japan, Kodansha’s latest printings of Akira are value-priced at like $10.00. They have cool gilded-edges that are the same colours as the spines too. It’s nifty. In North America Kodansha is releasing AKIRA at $25 per volume. … Sometimes pricing and sales is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know that?

Golgo 13, anyone? Come on, even if you don’t really like the series, can you imagine how bad-ass you’d seem if someone walked into your apartment and found one hundred and twenty-three volumes of Golgo 13, and two best-of collections? YOU WOULD SEEM PRETTY BAD-ASS.

Seinen!

Josei(?)

I just kind of liked the look of these.

Blurry Shojo!

Happy Mania in a faux leather-bound edition. Moyoco Anno is REALLY popular in Japan. Note the new Moebius book there too. And the Hanawa-looking-title in the middle there.

See, it’s all at least interesting, and in a store full of it it’s just overwhelming. I could’ve spent days (and thousands of dollars) at this store.

When I took this photo it hadn’t been announced that Death Note artist Takeshi Ohbata’s Bakuman was on its way to North America. So this photo isn’t that interesting now. Note the stacks and stacks of One Piece behind it too… In Japan One Piece is much more popular, and with a wider audience, than even Naruto.

So here’s something. When you first come down the escalator from the upper floors, you’re greeted with this… a wall of artbooks featuring characters and art from manga and anime. There’s tons of stuff here, only about 2% of which ever used to make it into the Previews catalogue. That number has fallen to basically zero, in recent months… Copies of highly sought-after artbooks are scarce on the ground throughout most of North America, with most fans having to pay huge mark-ups through importing services.

Click for larger if you wanna take a look.

Now here’s the thing… this is the wall-of-artbooks based on manga and anime properties. What I didn’t really understand until the last second before I had to leave the store? There’s another huge wall of artbooks right-around-the-corner based on video game properties:

Now this is pretty blurry, but basically the unit on the left is game guides for Nintendo DS games,with more strategy guides on the wall behind on the left (which are usually heavily illustrated)… but the two shelving units on the right are all pure art books.

If you don’t care about this, I’m sorry for boring you. But if you’re a fan of this stuff? This is probably heaven for you. :)

That’s another thing that’s great about Kinokuniya–while I was downstairs nerding out about amazing manga and artbooks (I didn’t go near the DVDs), my husband was upstairs nerding out at their amazing collection of French and Latin textbooks. Kinokuniya, the store with something for everyone! If you’re an expat, this is probably your second home. If you’re a bibliophile or mangaphile visiting Tokyo? It’s a great stop on your itinerary.

- Christopher
All pictures by Christopher Butcher, ©2009

Village Vanguard Kyoto: Photos by Christopher Butcher

Click to view the gallery:

- Chris

Okay, a couple of pictures to tide you over:

Starbucks in Japan has a new kind of drink, the “Jelly Frappucino”. Basically, it’s a regular frap with coffee-flavoure Jello in the bottom, which breaks up as you suck it through the straw, for an extra hit of coffee flavour. It’s actually pretty good, but it is definitely weird.

This is yours-truly at Narita, about 20 hours after I started the trip. As you can see from my bloodshot eyes, I can really use that intense coffee beverage.

So far I’ve only bought one manga, and honestly only to blog about it, because it’s weird. What you see here for about five bucks is 400 pages of manga about cats. Cat-themed manga stories. By a variety of artists. Includes a special section at the front of full-colour photos of cats doing adorable things. Also, the manga itself is pretty adorable.

Look how adorable that thing is.

I’ve also started drinking. We saw this advertised on the train, so I figured I’d give it a shot. It’s 8% lemon-flavoured alcohol, to get you hammered more quickly and in a more financially prudent way. In these tough economic times, why not buy the booze that has twice the alcohol content for the same price (148 yen)? Anyway, it tastes a lot like lemons, real lemons and not like lemon-flavoured beverages, but also, when warm, a bit like kerosine. Would Not Buy Again. I love the Kirin cans though…!

It’s sort of a grey, drizzly day. But still: Japan!

Like I said, we just watched some TV with the kids before they went off to kindergarden, so in closing I will share two shots of the show we watched with you.

- Chris

In September 2007, my husband and I traveled to Japan for two weeks as the fulfillment of a dream of mine to visit the country. On my trip I took nearly three thousand photos, and since my first day in Japan I’ve been photo-blogging my trip. Obviously comics212.net’s interests run towards comics, manga, and popular culture, and so the subjects of my photographs generally break down along those lines. But I found it impossible to be in Japan and not be captivated by it, from seemingly mundane experiences like visiting a convenience store to the truly surreal experience of visiting a Japanese theme park, and everything in between.

Below is a list of my entries about this trip, with rough descriptions of what each entry entails. Thanks very much for reading, and I hope you have as much fun viewing these photos as I did taking them.

- Chris

INDEX:

Day 1 (Convenience Stores and Shopping Malls)
Day 2 (Here I Am, Rock Me Like A hurricane)
Ikebukuro Tokyu Hands
Ikebukuro Sunshine 60 and Toys R Us
Namjatown. (Ikebukuro)
Animate, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ikebukuro
Sidetracked: Let’s Talk About Comic Shops
Akihabara Electric Town
Asakusa, Odabia, and Village Vanguard
Harajuku, Gothic Lolita, Yoyogi Park
Harajuku, Peanuts, Tintin, Moomin, and High Fashion
The Studio Ghibli Museum & Mitaka
20 Photos of Himeji
Kyoto Train Station
The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum & Takarazuka
How To Draw Manga with Osamu Tezuka (Tezuka Museum)
I Just Counted… (an aside)
Kyoto International Manga Museum
Shinjuku Kinokuniya Books
Nakano Broadway Mall
Shibuya, Tsutaya, Ginza, Ramen Museum, Macadonaru, The End

See All Posts From This Trip:
http://comics212.net/category/japan/

–

Image: Statue of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, outside of the Tezuka Museum. Photo by Christopher Butcher.

The thing about Japan is, it’s where I’ve always wanted to go, and having been there, part of me thinks that it’s where I want to be. That’s not to say that I’m blind to the socio-economic realities of what that means; I’m aware that even the most acclimatized westerner is still gaijin, and that it would never really be my home the way Canada is. But Japan is, in many ways, the realization of many of my dreams about comics and culture, and about society as a whole. I can’t say that a day has gone by since I got back that I haven’t thought about returning. I feel like I only scratched the surface of the country during my last visit there, and despite frequently being hot, sweaty, tired, and wet (typhoon!), I was never, ever bored.

This is my last Japan Travelogue post, bringing us right to the end of my trip. The last two days marked a significant downturn in the lack of pictures taken, owing partly to the novelty of picture-taking wearing off a little, and partly due to the fact I lost the camera. Well, heh, I actually left it in the Ramen Museum overnight and had to rush back to Yokohama on the day of our flight out of Japan to pick it up.

Incidentally, I’d like to thank everyone for reading and enjoying these posts, particularly the people who’ve told me that they never had any interest in visiting Japan until visiting my blog. That means an awful lot to me, that’s why I’m here really: To Share The Joy. :)

With that, click “continue reading” to find out about my last two days in Japan.

We set out reasonably early (for us) because we had a lot to fit into our last day! I decided that we couldn’t do Tokyo without putting in at least a cursory visit to Shibuya, to the famous 6-way crosswalk most recently caught on film in “Lost In Translation” I believe.

The train station at Shibuya had an elaborate newsstand/bookstore, with plenty of advertising for forthcoming and recently released manga. It’s kind of shocking to think that popular shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist was up to volume 17 last August, with volume 17 set to be released in North America less than a year later… It was also neat to see advertising for comics, and retailers savvy enough to make a living off them.

Shibuya station had a number of neat statues, but somehow we couldn’t find the most famous one of Hachiko the dog, even though it was broad daylight. The space in front of Shibuya JR Station is an incredibly popular meeting spot, filled with pedestrians of all stripes. I felt we fit in reasonably well here, which is kind of a rarity for two hulking white dudes in Japan.

Later that evening we ended up back in Shibuya, so we decided to take another crack at finding the mythical dog, and look, he was right in front of the station (just like the real Hachiko). If you’re not familiar with Hachiko, it’s a very cute story about a dog who came to wait for his owner at the station every day at the same time. The owner, a professor at Tokyo University, eventually passed away but the dog would still come every day in the hopes that his master would be there. Bittersweet…

Meanwhile, back in the daylight… The square in front of the station was host to a large political protest! Apparently North Korea is abducting a lot of fucking Japanese, while the government is accused of being too afraid to do anything about it. Lots of faces being held up, I wonder why this isn’t more of an international issue? At any rate, this was our second or third brush with politics in the two weeks we were visiting, which was kind of interesting.

This is the big Shibuya crossing from the thick of it. We were there in a non rush-hour setting so it wasn’t as busy as normal. I was kind of hoping to be crused by a throng of people, but no dice. We did want to get a good photo of the crossing, so we went into the store with the Starbucks.

EDIT: I forgot that we took a photo of the crosswalk later that night with our cell-phone camera! Here’s a pic.

I just remembered that there was some sort of holiday some that day (you can see that the streets are blocked off in Ginza as well) so it really isn’t as busy/cool as it could be.

It turns out that store is Tsutaya, a cool-ass retailer of music and DVDs and video games… and because this is Japan, manga as well! Shown above is the large promotional effort for the soon-to-be-released (then) new Final Fantasy video game, Crisis Core. The game will be out in English later this year.

The Japanese LOVE 24, apparently. Or someone expects that they will anyway.

The best-seller wall in the music section. I can’t believe it’s been like 15 of these posts and I haven’t mentioned this, but do you know what the number-one, bestselling CD and single for our time in Japan was?

Beautiful World, by Utada Hikaru. Which just happens to be the theme song to the new Neon Genesis Evangelion theatrical films, released while I was in Japan. This song put a near-surreal Otaku stamp on almost my entire trip; it was omnipresent, playing in every store and every video screen that featured music videos. The ‘cool’ stores, the otaku stores (where you could buy the single with a limited edition Rei Ayanami slipcase), it was everywhere. Even stranger? Way bay in the late 90s, Utada Hikaru was the first J-Pop singer I ever really heard, or could identify by name (the second was Namie Amuro). We even had one of her import singles in my house (my brother owned it: he was kind of in lust with her…). Full circle.

Edit: My brother told me that I was wrong, and in fact, he was completely in love with Namie Amuro before he was in love with Hikaru Utada… I really disliked Namie Amuro’s music though, so I apparently blocked that right out of my mind. Let’s go with: Utada Hikaru was the first J-Pop music I heard that I actually liked…

So we went to the second floor to get a picture, but a hundred other people had the same idea as me (not to mention the huge lineup of folks coming to buy coffee) so we decided to skip the photo and head to the basement… for manga! A ton of manga! Coming off the escalator we walking through a section dominated by shojuo (and yaoi) material.

At this point, it’s important to note that Tsutaya had my favourite manga selection and layout of anywhere on the trip. The tightly-packed used book emporium Mandarake was absolutely amazing for a hardcore fan and I could have spent a long time digging through their collection of stuff. But the thing that really makes Tsutaya work is their merchandising, they have it down pat and the whole manga section looks like it was maintained by someone who really cared about the work… And who liked great stuff! For example:

The Taiyo Matsumoto display.

Notice the hearts. Heh, anyway, by the end of the trip I owned more-or-less everything on this display, but the one thing I had never seen before was this:

A special smaller, 4-volume edition of Matsumoto’s Sci-fi adventure series No.5 (Number Five). You can see the regular-sized editions just to the right there. Apparently the larger album-sized work was collected in a size a little bit more… digestable to Japanese manga fans, collecting two of the previous-format editions at a time (with a spiffy prisma-foil logo!). No. 5 has the dubious distinction of being “the lowest selling Viz manga of all time” but it’s really outstanding stuff, at least what I’ve read of it. I hope (hope) that it’s eventually continued here in North America… maybe a physically smaller format with fewer total volumes in the series will aid that…? Maybe? Anybody?

Another great artist-oriented display was dedicated to Naoki Urasawa, creator of Monster. This display featured everything you might want to buy from Urasawa, including every volume of his popular 20th Century Boys and its continuation (not a sequel) 21st Century Boys, so-titled to mark the passing of the millennium. I ended up picking that book on the middle-left, simply titled Urasawa, as it was a 568 page tome that collected all of his early short stories in one place for about 10 bucks. It’s really neat watching his work develop over the course of the series, and I was amazed that even though I can’t “read” the work, it’s actually pretty easy to “read” the work and follow along with what’s going on thanks to his strong storytelling skills. I can’t see this ever making it to North America, and I’m glad I picked it up while I was there!

Tsutaya also had an outstanding selection of independent and “alternative” manga, with lots of beautiful little signs recommending books to check out. I bought a few things at random here just cuz, which is a sign that your merchandising is working. Collecting all of the more unique and interesting work in one (prominently located) space? Makes a lot of sense.

More indy/alt manga, including the new edition of Hell Babies, the artbook collecting work from Junko Mizuno. I bought that one. Just to the right of Junko’s artbook is a new(ish) three volume manga series by Mizuno that I picked up as well, and it’s just as strange and cute as her other stuff… I think I read somewhere that it’s been picked up for release in North America? Maybe by JAPress. Anyway. I spent as long as I physically could flipping through these and deciding on stuff to buy, but Andrew was getting a little impatient, and rightfully so: We had to get to the Kabuki!

Goodbye Tsutaya, you’ll live in my heart forever.

Fun-fact: The JR trains have screens that show where you are on your train line, and how many minutes it is to all of the other stations near you.

These maps flip between Japanese (both Kanji and Hiragana), and English (romanji). It is fantastically easy to navigate the Tokyo train system.

It also shows you all of the connections to all of the other lines, which (helpfully) have their own colours too. Tokyo has the best goddamned transit I have ever witnessed.

We pulled into the fashionable high-end Ginza district of Tokyo. There was a giant video screen with various computer generated bodies doing aerobics, but they all had the head of a creepy old man. It was very “Creepy Richard”.

There’s a lot of money in Ginza, with the area nearest the JR station being very office- and business-oriented. We decided that we’d walk from the JR Train Station down to the Kabuki theatre to see the sights along the way. One the one hand I’m glad we did, as it really is a beautiful, and relatively “old” area of town…

…on the other hand, it was like 90 degrees outside and even in the shade, I couldn’t help sweating. Uggggh. If you just want to get to the Kabuki theatre, my recommendation is to hop on the subway from the Train Station, pay the dollar or whatever it is, and arrive quickly and coolly. But the pictures would have been much less interesting to you, I suppose.

Apparently it was some sort of holiday so many of the shops and businesses were closed for the day. This was the window display in the lobby of a high end boutique… It was absolutely incredible.

We stopped for a drink along the way, and found what I think might have been my favourite drink of the whole trip: Kirin Lemon Black. It’s like a slightly sweet carbonated lemonade with a real undertaste of ginger to give it a kick. Plus it was branded with Pirates of the Caribbean, which is something I guess? Anyway, my opinion of the drink may have been artificially inflated as I was so incredibly thirsty.

Outside one of the more exclusive-looking restaurants was this picture, of Ginza’s glamourous past. The writing on the sign says “Lunch: 7,350 yen, Dinner: 10,500 yen”. Or between 70 dollars and 100 dollars. Or so.

This little guy (used in my Valentine’s post) is one of the icons for Tenshodo, a model train and high-end jewelry maker.

So: Kabuki. Long story short, we got there and there was a two hour wait to get a chance to buy tickets. I kind of freaked out a little at the idea of waiting 2 hours to get a chance to buy tickets, to wait an hour for the show, for something I didn’t really want to see in the first place? So although we had planned to see Kabuki that day… We did not. Sorry Japan! Perhaps in the future!

We took the subway to the train station. The subway had a barber shop in it.

We went to Ramen Town! The Ramen Museum! It’s in Shin Yokohama, which is far enough away from Tokyo that it’s actually considered it’s own city (and not a suburb), but still only about 35-45 minutes away by JR train. Of course, if you’re like us and had a JR pass that let us use any train we wanted for one low price, you take the Shinkansen (bullet train) and you get there in like 8 minutes. It’s a little like taking a flight from JFK to Newark, rather than taking the subway… It’s quicker, but the locals will think you’re retarded…

On the top floor is the Raumen Museum (I’m just gonna spell it “ramen” from now on, since that’s how we spell it in North America…). Thrill to different balls of ramen!

See the different textures of Ramen!

Look! It’s cones… FILLED WITH GRAIN!

The Ramen Museum!

Heh, seriously though, the ramen museum IS really cool, because in the basement of the building is Ramen Town, a recreation of old-timey Japan that sells the best ramen you will ever eat.

So you enter ramen town and there’s one floor of old-timey buildings, a bar, games, etc. Then you descend into the lower level, and you’re surrounded by top notch ramen! The best ramen shops in Japan are invited to open up a sattellite restaurant here in Shin-Yokohama (new Yokohama) and serve their own local style of ramen. It was pretty cool.

The lamp-shades on the way down to Ramen Town were made of ramen.

It’s seriously like being in M*A*S*H* a little. You’re in these tight winding streets, there’s Japanese Enka (country) music playing over tinny speakers, and everything is perfectly recreated (except for the Japanese families wearing jeans and golf shirts). THis is the outside of a candy store, selling old-timey candy.

I really liked how they weren’t afraid to embrace the somewhat seedier aspects of the past alongside the more family-friendly ones. Gentlemen’s clubs, bars, police boxes, all of them were included in the re-creation.

That’s “Club Noa Noa” in Japanese… This was particularly neat because our hosts’ son is named Noa.

So you’re exploring and then you walk around a corner and…

It opens into the first floor, complete with painted twilight-sky.

Our friend David joined us for dinner, because even when you’re living in Japan, you can’t resist going to eat the best ramen in all of Japan.

Tourist shot.

The actual ramen restaurants were quite modest after everything we’d seen outside, but the food was pretty spectacular I have to say. I’d go back in a heartbeat, even if we had to take the regular train.

And as I mentioned, this is the point at which I forgot the camera in the ramen restaurant. Sigh. Sorry Nathalie! But I got it back in one piece, which was nice.

This took us to our last day. We needed to be at the airport by 4pm, which meant that we needed to sprint down to Shin Yokohama to pick up the camera, and then maybe poke around and find something to do for a few hours before heading to the airport. Unfortunately, we were kind of exhausted at the end of our trip, and slept in a little later than intended. We made it down to Shin Yokohama just after lunch, where our camera was waiting at the admission booth of the Ramen Museum for us. We were very happy to see it again, and the people at the museum were super cool.

So basically, we didn’t really have time to go anywhere, but we had too much time to just sit around the airport. And we hadn’t had lunch. So I decided that I would spend some of my remaining yen trying every single McDonald’s food item that was not available in North America. As a public service. Because I am willing to go to the very depths of gastronomy for you, my readers.

Clockwise from the Coke, that’s a) fries (for Andrew), b) McPork burger, c) Teriyaki McBurger, d) Tsukehime Burger (with cheese), e) Ebi Filet-O. Grand total: about $12.

The McPork Burger was actually surprisingly alright. It’s very peppery burger (made of pork rather than beef) with a peppery sweet sauce. It tasted exactly like McDonald’s food.

The Teriyaki McBurger was… pretty fucking gross. Apparently this is one of the most popular burgers at McDonald’s, but it’s just dripping with teriyaki sauce. It didn’t taste bad or anything, but I couldn’t see myself ordering this ever again… It had a reconstituted feeling to it. Tastes exactly like McDonald’s food.

Oh, the Ebi Filet-O. Ebi is Japanese for shrimp. This is basically a croquette with baby shrimp floating in it, with a flavoured mayonaise on top… or tartar sauce, or something… This is incredibly unnatural, if for no other reason than the fact that you can’t filet a shrimp, shrimp have no bones. That and there are weird texture things, where you’re eating the burger and it’s got a deep-fried croquette flavour (sort of like a less-fishy filet-o-fish), but then you encounter a whole baby shrimp and it’s differently chewy and slightly strange. The overall flavour is okay though… It tastes like McDonald’s food.

As mentioned previously on this upate, the Tsukihime Burger features a poached egg, cheese, poorly-cooked bacon, and a weird flavoured mayo… It’s only available once per year in honour of the moon festival (autumn solstice) and features an awesome package. As for how it tastes? Say it with me now… Like McDonald’s Food. I mean, sure, it all comes together in an interesting way, and it’s less offensive in texture than the Teriyaki McBurger. But it’s still not something I would want to eat all year round… or say, any other time than on a special trip to Japan…

I had already made three or four posts about my trip to Japan by the time this little McDonald’s visit rolled around, and I knew this would make for a great entry… but I still don’t recommend eating this much McDonald’s food ever. Still, when in Rome eh? And luckily I didn’t end up “paying the price” for this at all, which was great… my last meal in Japan was, fittingly, fresh sushi, which was a much better note to go out on.

So this was the end of Japan, for me, the very last photo in the camera is a smiling shot in a ShinYokohama McDonalds, just before the batteries died. I think it sums up the trip: happy, tired, slightly glassy-eyed, and full.

So, in short: best time of my life. I’d go back in a second.

Thanks to David, Kiko, Noa, and especially Andrew for a great trip.

Hope you enjoyed everything guys!

- Chris

Nakano Broadway Mall is pretty darned cool. Located at Nakano JR Station just a few stops from Shinjuku, Nakano is your typical Japanese mall, except 75% of the ‘typical’ stores have been replaced with shops aimed squarely at hardcore otaku. From the arcade areas to the original art and animation cells to the manga and the toys to the idol goods and video games… just fucking everything. You will spend a fortune, nerd, so be sure to bring one with you.

I had such a good time here. To see some of the amazing stuff we found at the mall (like that original Tezuka sketch up top going for $1500 or so), just keep reading.

For this trip we were joined by our host David and his adorable son Noa. Bringing a toddler to a shopping mall full of insane nerd stuff was probably not the best idea, but he ended up behaving well and having a great time. This is us on the walk to the train station.

As I’ve been mentioning throughout the entire travelogue, the release of the new volume of Ai Yazawa’s Nana was a big deal. As you can see in the background Japanese commuters do still read on the subway trains.

And these dudes were both reading Nana Volume 18. Nifty :)

That covered walkway at the bottom of the pic leads to the entrance to Nakano Broadway Mall… sort of. You see, to get to the actual mall, you’ve got to walk through that long covered shopping arcade first (with the glass curved roof and the two suns on the front of it). Effectively, you’ve gotta walk through a different mall to get to the mall you want. Luckily it’s right across from the train station (and I wanted to include this picture so you could actually find the place) but… yeah. Japan. :)

At the end of the corridor (past the McDonalds) is the real entrance to Nakano Broadway. On the right there you can see foreigners walking out with their purchases. I have to say: Otaku Mecca has a pretty impressive entrance. It’s like God is shining down on it from above.

It’s a little hard to explain the mall to outsiders, but essentially, the space is 4 stories tall (with one basement level) and features tons and tons of small-to-medium sized stores, as well as dozens and dozens of heavy-duty display cases. The stores also have display cases in them for their regular merchandise, but the majority of the cases feature consignment-goods from other sellers. It’ll have a price on it, and a barcode with the seller’s info encoded into it, and if you want something from the case you just call over the guy watching you like a hawk and he pulls it out, scans it, and takes your money. As such, there was tons of stuff to look at (and photograph) and considerably fewer shopkeepers to scream at you about taking photos (although I did get yelled at a few times… gomen nasai!).

Above we’ve got a collection of rare manga and fanzines. If you have to ask how much any of them were, you couldn’t afford them.

Heh…

Hahaha… Oh man.

Just as a reminder, the 1 Canadian/U.S. dollar is worth about 100 yen, meaning that you can re-buy your childhood for between $20 and $630 a pop above.

The yo-yo shop on the third floor featured the third-best yo-yo (player? artist) in the world. You should check out the video of him doing his thing, it’s pretty cool:

http://comics212.net/japan/DSCF4500.AVI 

This is the outside of one of the Mandarake manga stores, I believe. Sort of? Anyway, Mandarake is a huge used manga chain that also deals in all sorts of Japanese pop-culture ephemera. The manga was awesome. I really, really didn’t want to get kicked out of this one, so I only took one photo of the inside:

This is one of… maybe 8 or 9 aisles like this, packed floor to ceiling with manga. It was breathtaking. The sales staff showed me where the Taiyo Matsumoto shelf was, and then I just grabbed everything off of it and bought it all. It was all used too, so like, $30 for 9 books. Kick-ass!

You can see Mandarake’s (man-dah-rah-kay) website at http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/index.do. They seem to have an English-language webstore now, for all of your otaku needs.

Smurfy. The Baby Smurf toy is creepy, it’s all off-model.

Remember Popples? I do. I can’t even believe I do, actually.

It’s the Glico running dude! With two different anglicizations of his name! Cool, but not $50 cool.

I seriously had to just cut out video-game purchases all-together. I mean, video-game toys are one thing, but I don’t think it’s safe to just have access to any video game _anything_ that you have ever wanted, in working order. You just have to draw a line.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t look though. :)
Then, we went into an ‘antique’ store, which was amazing.

This one was my favourite. This is a doll that would totally fucking murder you.

Naruto is popular!

Then we went to lunch.

Then I went and spent a like $70 on Super Mario Brothers related things. It was… it was so cool. The wall of Mario is cool. I know, you probably don’t believe it, but at least 50% of the stuff up there not only looked perfect, it also made noises from the games. I wanted to spend more than I did, but I was already really, really pushing it. I mean, how was I gonna get all this stuff home even? Still: awesome. Awesome.

Patrick Macias’ Cruising The Anime City: A Guide To Neo-Tokyo spent a lot of time talking up TACO che, an indy comics/arts/manga store next to some dude selling ultra-accurate replica weaponry.

It was a fun store, but really crowded when were were there. I’m not a small guy by any means, and so I found browsing a little difficult. Still, I did manage to pick up some cool stuff like unreleased Junko Mizuno manga, a gay erotic art collection, and a fan-made tribute manga to Japanese horror manga master Kazuo Umezu. That was pretty nifty.

Exceptionally popular capsule-toys. Oh, speaking of Capsule toys…?

One of the capsule machines had NO.5 toys, based on the Taiyo Matsumoto manga that I love. Talk about cool (and rare!). I spent $24 acquiring these. ^______^;;

Hehehe.

Then it was late, and we needed to head to meet David’s lovely wife Kiko in Akhiabara, but you’ve already seen those photos.

For every photo I took there were 10-15 that I didn’t, and probably should have. More original one-of-a-kind sketches, original manga art, original Studio Ghibli animation cells, toys, manga, art books, more manga, more toys, it just went on and on and on. Go there. Go. Now. Nakano Broadway.
- Christopher
P.S.: Next: Ramen museum.

Hey there! Welcome back to the photo-tour of my trip to Japan. In case you’re just joining us, it took place between the 3rd and 15th of September, 2007. You can see all of the previous entries by clicking: http://comics212.net/category/japan/.

…so right after we get back from our sojourn to the Kansai area (Osaka/Kyoto/Nara/Himeji), we decide to head out to Shinjuku. In retrospect this was a huge mistake, because Shinjuku is a massive area of town with the JR Train Station right in the center, and really, it’s the hub of everything. To the west of the station is Tokyo City Hall and the financial district, to the east is Kabuki-cho, the naughty area of town. To the south though is an awesome building that combines a Tokyu Hands (see our Ikebukuro entry from much earlier for more on Tokyu Hands), a Takashimaya department store, and a massive 8-floor bookstore, Kinokuniya Books. Kinokuniya is probably best known in the west as the best place to get all of the cool untranslated manga, and they’ve got outlets all over the country. In Japan though, it’s just the largest bookstore there is, with the Shinjuku flagship store weighing in with 8 massive floors, including an entire floor more-or-less dedicated to English-language books.

We got to Shinjuku late as it was, and then spent 2 hours at Kinokuniya (when honestly, we could’ve spent a whole day). We should never have tried to do this on so little time. What were we thinking? Next trip we’re going to explore more of Shinjuku, but we also might just plan for a good 6 hours at this bookstore.

We started out the trip, as usual, in quaint Saitama. This is the view opposite the train station, which I thought was lovely in its way. This is what’s known as “the golden hour.”

We got to Shinjuku just as the sun was setting, and everything we read and everyone we talked to insisted that we needed to see the Tokyo City Hall, and so off we went. Two massive towers, connected and then extending separately. It’s a weird building.

I guess weird isn’t descriptive enough… It’s more like the scale is off. The whole thing looks like its built for giants. It’s beautiful, but it implies that everyone walking into it is kind of small and pathetic in comparison. So much for caring, compassionate gov’t.

The view from the top is lovely though. Notice the way everything is built, with mostly 7-9 floor low-rises, and larger buildings built up along major streets where the real estate is more valuable. Intersections of the most valuable real estate get skyscrapers. Sort of a cost/benefit analysis laid bare. “Sure, the higher we build the buildings, the greater the change they’ll get destroyed when the next quake hits. But it’s worth so much money we can afford to build the buildings quake proof and charge everyone triple!”

Long way up… or down.

Okay, unfortunately I had to cheat a little. The photo above is from Wikimedia commons, taken by the user “Ons”. My photo of the exterior of the building turned out absolutely terrible.

So as I mentioned, Kinokuniya is an 8-floor bookstore in Shinjuku, which is both daunting and awesome. You can’t exactly get lost in there, but you can certainly lose yourself. Because of our time constraints, we decided to only visit the fifth floor English-language books section. When I visit people’s houses I love looking at their bookshelves, and I sort of treated my visit here the same way. I didn’t assume I’d buy anything, but I did want to see how English-language books, and possibly comics, were faring in Japan.

The first display I triped over was this, adjacent to the artbooks! It’s all of the Fantagraphics editions of Peanuts! Awesome! Resting alongside the fabulous Cartoon Modern book, the Chip Kidd Peanuts biography, and… a Love Is… collection. Heh. Ah well. Congratulations to Fantagraphics for being the best-represented North American comics publisher I encountered in Japan: two stores.

We actually found the French-language section next, and France was nicely represented through BD, children’s books, novels, business books, and more. Near-complete collections of Tintin and Asterix were present, and right after I took this photo a little French boy ran up and grabbed a Tintin volume, which was great to see. It’s nice to know that were I an ex-pat living in Japan, I could still buy beautiful French albums that I had no hope of reading.

Then I found the English-language graphic novels shelf. Sadly, it was only one bay, but when I really looked at it I realized what an impressive selection of books it was! They had a great collection of art comics on the one hand, and that week’s new releases in TPB format from DC on the other (I think it was the second or third 52 collection).

I was so impressed with this selection of books that I actually took a couple of larger photos of the shelf just to show you why I was impressed… and, I’ll admit, to give some of the less-represented publishers a little kick in the butt to maybe get their work better represented. You can click on that smaller image to the right and see the full-size bookshelf.

I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised about this, but it genuinely caught me off guard: they had a ton of English language manga. At least 6 bays of it, including the big Viz feature display there (everyone loves Death Note). Tokyopop and Viz were about equally represented, with material from Dark Horse, Del Rey, and at least a few other smaller publishers making appearances as well.

But no OEL.

Seriously, I didn’t see one book that could be considered “OEL Manga” or “World Manga” anywhere in the store, and that included the manga AND English-language sections. Kinda strange, eh?

Here’s the first two bays of manga, with the beginning of the alphabet and over-sized material. Props to Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat for making appearances, and kudos to whomever decided to give a full-facing to the excellent Sexy Voice and Robo. Oh, and you can clearly see Vertical’s edition of Tezuka’s Buddha there too, props to them on a striking cover design!

If you check the upper-left shelf, you’ll see some relatively unfamiliar manga. These are in fact English language, they’re the “learn English through manga” releases from Kodansha, which includes the kick-ass Salaryman manga Division Chief!, classic kids adventure series Doraemon, and gentle domestic comedy Sazae-san, all otherwise untranslated and unavailable to English readers. The translations are a little bit stiff, but the production is beautiful.

This is the point at which I broke down and started making a pile of things to buy (you can see the stack at the bottom of the picture). I got representative samples of every manga series translated into English but otherwise unavailable in North America, and in hindsight I probably should’ve bought two or three times as much. It’s not like Doraemon is going to drop in English any time soon. If and when I make it back, I know what I’m stocking up on to sell at the store…

I also found this kinda/sorta strange book, which is an English language edition of SLAM DUNK by Takehiko Inoue. The complete series was translated, apparently for exclusive distribution in Asia. I couldn’t pass it up and so I bought the last volume, just so I could spoil the ending for myself :).

Other areas of note included the fiction section, which included lots of translated novels by Viz (Be With You, Brave Story, Kamikaze Girls, Train Man) and Vertical (Boy, Crimson Labyrinth).

I kinda wanted to drop a bunch of money on books about Japan in English from a store in Japan, but I decided to skip it. I did take a photo of Patrick Macias‘ then-recently released Japanese School Girl Inferno because I thought the idea of a guide for westerners to the history of Japanese schoolgirl fashion being sold in Japan was ingenious.

On that note, Macias’ Cruising The Anime City was an invaluable edition to my trip, and I’d recommend anyone taking a trip to Japan read this thing front to back and then back again. The cultural insight into the Japanese otaku mindset and history will help you navigate your way through Japan better than many of the included maps. Oh, and I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Paul Gravett, I’m sure he’d be chuffed to know his lovely book Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics made its way to Japanese bookstores.

And then we disappeared into the night.

So, here’s my closing thought: A Japanese bookstore in Japan has a better selection and diversity of product for English-language graphic novels, including manga, bd, superheroes, artcomix, strip collections, etc., than 90% of comic stores in North America; if Kinokuniya can develop a market for that material then North American stores could too, and there’s nothing stopping them.

- Christopher

One of the most interesting stops on my trip was on the relatively recently opened Kyoto International Manga Museum, located in Kyoto. I almost missed visiting the museum on my trip, but I’m very glad I attended; it’s an essential stop for any manga afficionado or comics commentator visiting Japan. It is at once, a thriving commercial attraction, valuable historical record, and prime exhibition space. Consisting of thousands of manga (free to read with a paid admission), numerous permanent and rotating gallery exhibits, and all housed in a gorgeous converted elementary school in downtown Kyoto, the museum is an absolute wonder and tremendously inspirational.

In preparing this particular entry, I realised that I hadn’t taken as many interior pictures of the museum due to copyright law and out of respect for the proprietors of the museum, and so I’ve had to fill in some of the gaps with pictures from the Museum website at http://www.kyotomm.com/international/english/. Copyright information for all photos that aren’t mine is listed underneath each photo.

The sun was setting as we arrived at the Museum, a surprisingly substantial walk from Kyoto Station (despite how close it looks on the map provided on the museum’s website!). Word to the wise: take the subway, unless the museum is one of many stops on your walking tour of the city.

Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Kyoto International Manga Museum. All Rights Reserved.
The manga museum is housed inside the former Tatsuike Primary School, which has undergone some extensive remodelling in sections, but in others has been wonderfully preserved. The school auditorium, for example, is entirely preserved and featured an art installation on early post-war manga(!) while I was visiting. The museum also features a completely preserved classroom, alongside information about the classes that used it, which is pretty neat.

The main entrance features an amazing gift-shop, jam-packed full of historical collections manga AND books about manga! All Japanese-language, sadly, and as this was nearing the end of my Japanese trip and I had already filled an additional suitcase with books, I had to pass, but any budding manga scholar needs to check that gift-shop out, I could’ve dropped a thousand dollars there, easy, on stuff I didn’t see anywhere else on my trip!

The main feature of the museum, for locals and visitors alike, is the “wall of manga” which is actually several walls of manga that span two floors and feature thousands and thousands of books to read, for free (with the purchase of admission to the museum at around $5 for the day). The museum was quite busy with teenagers and young adults quietly reading away on the evening we visited, and this cross between a traditional North American library, and the Japanese rental library model seemed popular. It also seems like something that would be easy to adapt for North American use, and would fund the day-to-day operations of the museum if not actually generate a little extra money.

Themed displays of manga dotted the museum, including this SPORTS MANGA exhibit. I was happy to see Taiyo Matsumoto’s PING PONG there… ;)

On the second floor we found a bookshelf that contained international comics, both original work from around the world as well as foreign-language translations of Japanese work.

I was kind of amazed to see someone had donated the (very expensive!) Absolute Watchmen… I can only imagine what Japanese readers think of that book. Still, Tatsumi is there with Goodbye, a little bit of Ashley Wood’s Hellspawn. Heh. Quite the schizophrenic collection…

This shelf made a skootch more sense to me, with English language copies of Julie Doucet’s My Most Secret Desire, Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and Seth’s Clyde Fans filling me with Canadian Pride.

I pulled out the copy of Clyde Fans to maybe take a picture for Seth, only to see that this particular copy came from… a store down the street from me in Toronto! A discount store at that… Heh. I travelled around the world to find a book from Bloor Street in Toronto, how about that?

…now I should point out that about this time a staff member from the museum dropped by to ask me why I was taking pictures of things that I clearly shouldn’t be. After assuring her that I didn’t take any photos of the inside of the books (I even scrolled through the camera with her) I introduced myself to her as being from The Beguiling, and mentioned that I was a friend of Seth and thought he might enjoy seeing a copy of one of his books in the International Manga Museum. We had a really good talk about the museum after that AND they didn’t kick me out for taking photos, so it was win-win.

One thing that maybe hasn’t come through from the rest of this report is that much, if not most, of the signage in the museum is bilingual. This is the only comics-related attraction that I visited in Japan that went to such lengths to make English speakers/readers comfortable, and both my husband and I really appreciated it. Getting to understand the information behind the art exhibits in particular was great, and I’d like to thank the folks at the museum for being so accommodating.

Another word on the exhibits: You couldn’t ask for better exhibition space than we found at the museum. With at least three large gallery spaces and three-to-four smaller spaces (converted classrooms) every corner had something interesting to see. Although the success of these exhibits vary, it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into them. If I lived in Japan, I know that I’d be visiting this museum at least three or four times a year, thanks to the volume of new manga art and culture exhibits that they prepare.

Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Kyoto International Manga Museum. All Rights Reserved.
Then, unfortunately it was time to go, we had to leave not only the museum but Kyoto as well, in time to make it back to Tokyo for the last train to our hosts’ house. Like I said, I didn’t really get a lot of pictures because of all the original art that was hanging on the walls and the general… tenor… of the environment, but I hope this little essay has at least got you curious. If you’re in Japan or on your way there, make sure to make a visit to this fabulous museum. If you’re trapped outside of Japan, spend some time with the website, it’s really well put-together.

The Kyoto International Manga Museum
http://www.kyotomm.com/index.php

- Christopher

One thing I’ve noticed is that I started taking fewer photos as the trip went on, all of the strange and wonderful started to get a little more familiar, and therefore less-likely to make me stop and pull out my camera. Andrew and I had a wonderful conversation last night about all the stuff we’d seen that we didn’t photograph, like some of the crazy department stores, or the restaurants, or the street fashion. Hell, you’ve only seen 640 photos of the more than 2000 I’d taken by this point in the trip. Seeing some of the wonderful photos in Amy & Kazu’s photoset reminded me that there’s so much more to this trip that didn’t make it to the screen here (mostly because it is so far away from being relevant to comics I couldn’t even pretend to post it).

Anyway, thanks everyone for continuing to read and enjoy these posts! I particularly appreciate all the links you’ve been sending my way too ;)

We’re getting near the end, I think there are maybe only 5 posts left in the trip, but there’s some good stuff too. Thanks for reading!
- Christopher
Photo: Representing TCAF at the Nakano Broadway Mall.

So the last entry had my visit to the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Japan. One of the coolest features of the museum is one that I didn’t show you: Little How-to-draw and how-to-create-characters instructional illustrations by Tezuka that were set into the floor. Although it’s probably an exercise for the kids or something, I still thought it would be cool to show you the illustrations, and hopefully you find them interesting (or useful!). Enjoy!

Finally, Amy Kim Ganter (creator of Sorcerers and Secretaries from Tokyopop) let me know that she and her husband Kazu Kibuishi just got back from a trip to Japan in December, and they’ve got tons of their own photos of Japan to ooh and aah over (they’re pretty awesome…). Check out their photos at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/studioamzu/collections/72157603502094080/

…and check out week two, part two in particular for more views of the Tezuka Manga Museum.

- Christopher

Hi there, and welcome back to the ongoing chronicles of my 2007 Trip to Japan! You can check out previous entries by clicking “Japan” under the categories tab to the right.

This time out we’re heading to The Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka, Japan, just outside of Osaka. Although the man needs no introduction, I’m gonna do one anyway: Osamu Tezuka is the God of Manga, one of the originators of the medium and undeniably a pioneer. His numerous creations include Tetsuwan Atom, known to the west as Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion, Phoenix, Black Jack, Princess Knight, and many more. In fact, the full range of his creativity is on display in the museum, and the whole thing is a testament to his amazing work and career. The Tezuka Museum was definitely one of the highlights of my 2007 trip, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting the country as an essential stop.

CONTINUE READING AFTER THE CUT:

As I mentioned the Tezuka Museum is in Takarazuka, the town where Osamu Tezuka’s grew up. Takaruzuka is internationally famous as the home of the Takarazuka Revue, an all-woman theater troupe! Founded in 1913, when the troupe is performing Takarazuka is a bustling tourist spot, but when it isn’t, it’s about as sparsely-visited as these photos will show.

So, just a little bit more background about all of this. The national railway is called the JR, but by no means is it the only railway. In addition there are numerous privately-run above-ground rail lines (‘trains’) and below-ground lines (‘subways’). The private railway stations are usually found right-across the street from the JR stations, which is convenient for those traveling from abroad, but can be a little confusing when there are 2 or 3 stations in close-proximity with roughly the same name. The Takarazuka JR station is across the street from the Takarazuka Hankyu rail station, and that station is attached to Hankyu Mall, which you must walk through to get to the road with the Takarazuka Grand Theatre (where the Revue performs) as well as the Manga Museum. You can see how this can be confusing, right? Luckily thanks to this awesome website, http://digilander.libero.it/joe.chip/tezuka_e.htm, we navigated all of this with ease, but you can see how it can be difficult to get around if you’re not used to… well, all of it. If you’re traveling abroad, do your research!

So yes, above is the outside of the mall that you need to walk through (and go up and down 4 or 5 floors) to get to Hana No Michi, or Flower Avenue.

Flower Avenue is a gorgeously decorated part of town, flanked by European-themed building facades selling all manner of souvenir, as well as a large steel bridge that was almost entirely ornamental.

Andrew and I did both went over and under the bridge, and it was similarly lovely on both elevations. You can see the theatre complex in the background on the right, there.

I’m so totally in love with him.

Here’s me with an ornamental wrought-iron fusebox grate.

Gorgeous little parkettes and lush greenery were everywhere, belying the fact that it was like 90 degrees that day. I can’t imagine their water bill, because I spent $5 on drinks while in Takarazuka and I was only outside for like an hour.

Outside the theatre is a statue featuring two of the most famous characters performed at the theatre, Oscar & Andre, from the stage adaptation of the manga The Rose of Versailles, a shoujo manga classic by Riyoko Ikeda that is unavailable in North America. It’s totally available in French though, so someone, somewhere must have been able to make money with it. Hint. Hint.

If you’re interested in the Takarazuka Revue, I recommend checking out the relevant chapter of Aimee Major Steinberger’s recent graphic novel Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures In Japan, as the author is humourously obsessed with the troupe and it makes for an enjoyable read. Find out more here: http://www.gocomi.com/index.php?module=japanai&skin=japanai

40 Helens Agree: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out

Just kidding. We have no idea what these women were doing but it kind of creeped us out a little.

Finally! Here we are at The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum. Yay!

As we saw at the top of this post, there is a completely-amazing Phoenix statue outside the museum.

Completely. Amazing.

The walk to the front door lets you know that this as much a shrine to the master as it is a chronicle of his work. Stone pillars featuring bronze reliefs of his most famous characters mark the path, as do concrete handprints and footprints of those same characters…

(In Order: Kimba, ___, Black Jack, Astro Boy)

Just inside the front door are two different mosaics that will totally knock your socks off. I felt kind of bad about walking on the Phoenix or on Tezuka’s cartoon face…

Welcome to the Tezuka Museum! Yay! Astro Boy Says ‘Sup?

Best thing about the Tezuka museum? Everyone wants you to take as many photos as you can. Which means? Lots of pictures for you, a modicum of commentary from me.

The permanent Tezuka exhibit featured like 20 or 30 of these displays that chronicles Tezuka’s life story and his artistic development. Unfortunately, all of the writing was in Japanese, but that didn’t stop me from marveling at the hardcover first-editions of his work all over the exhibit. So cool.

Also? Tons of original art.

Tezuka’s famous beret and glasses, preserved for the ages alongside a wonderful piece of his art.

It was amazing seeing his original art, paste-ups, corrections, changes and all.

A collection of effect designs by Tezuka! Pretty cool… and useful, one would assume…

This display case was cool, as it recognized the accomplishments of Tezuka’s contemporaries. I can recognize Doraemon by Fujiko F. Fujio (upper left) and Cyborg 009 by Shotaro Ishinomori (who went on to create Kamen Rider) but I can’t figure out the rest of them. Rar.

Wait! Apparently there are translations of all of the exhibits at the Tezuka website! Holy Shit! Another thing that would have been useful… Whilst in Japan. According to the website:

“In 1953, Tezuka Osamu moved to the Tokiwaso apartment in Shiinamachi, Tokyo. Following Tezuka Osamu, Terada Hiroo moved into the apartment. Later, after Tezuka Osamu left, Abiko Motoo and Fujimoto Hiroshi (Fujiko Fujio) also moved into the same place, followed by Suzuki Shinichi, Ishinomori Shotaro, Akatsuka Fujio, Moriyasu Naoya, Mizuno Hideko, and Yokota Tokuo, etc. Even Nagata Takemaru, Tsunoda Jiro, and Hase Kunio, who all lived in Tokyo, gathered there, suddenly making Tokiwaso a hotspot among young ambitious Manga artists.” Well, there you go.

Original animation designs for the Astro Boy animation.

Kimba! (or Jungle Emperor Leo, as he’s known in Japan)

Look! It’s the first magazine to serialize Phoenix, I think!

Original art from Ode To Kirohito.

Original art from Buddha!

Elevator to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs to the second floor, the following site greets you: roughly 150,000 sheets of paper, to symbolize the roughly 150,000 pages of manga that Tezuka completed in his lifetime.

Beyond the monument to a lifetime’s work is Tezuka’s desk, and you’re invited to sit at it. I decided that I wasn’t quite up to sitting in the chair of Osamu Tezuka. Because, you know. I’m not Osamu Tezuka. Oh, surrounding the desk are replicas of the book covers of his more than 400 manga tankoubons.

If you do decide to take a spin, you get to see Tezuka looking down over your shoulder via the mirror on his desk (looks like a picture frame), which is kind of creepy but kind of fitting, too.

In this definitive scene from Buddha, you can see some of the artistic changes that the sequence went through before Tezuka deemed it complete. Buddha’s head was originally larger, and higher off of his body, and a new piece of art has been pasted on top here. Tezuka’s original art was amazing and inspiring… it looked like actual human hands had touched it…

I loved this original in particular. It was suspended between two pieces of plexiglass that let us see not only the front and back, but also allowed the light to stream through the page showing the many, many levels of changes that the piece had undergone. This is the front…

…and this is the back. Fully half of the page had been redrawn, including a change from a cartoony shorthand version of Black Jack into a more realistically drawn one. There were lots of examples of this type of change, and it was amazing to be able to delve into Tezuka’s creative process like this.

Just in case you can read Japanese here’s the description for this piece.

Also! Kind of cool is the fact that there was a wall of pieces detailing the changes a story had gone through between it’s first printing and it’s ‘final’ incarnation:

Here we see a photostat of the pages as they were originally printed.

And in the newest edition, we can the changes, from obvious (the hair and beards are longer!) to subtle (look at the quality of the stipling and ink texture on the rocks!). Other pages had even greater changes… Tezuka kept fiddling with his work all throughout his career, hoping to improve it (or if he was anything like the artists I know, trying to be less embarrassed about his old work…).

Original Phoenix painting.

The museum featured a library with different editions of Tezuka’s manga from around the world for you to read. It also featured a giant machine that let you view recordings of many (most?!) of the Tezuka production cartoons. Oh, and it had a fun little cafe and I got a lemonade.

Look, it’s the only place in the world that you can get a copy of Phoenix Volume 1 in English!

Not that I’m bitter.

They also had a ton of boks ON Tezuka as well.

Ever wondered what the history of Tezuka manga looks like? Hundred of volumes in multiple editions are on display, an impressive combination of nostalgia and pride.

Tezuka also designed a 3d map of Takarazuka which was narrated by Mr. Mustachio, I believe, but it was in Japanese.

From the 3rd floor we took the elevator to the basement, where the strangest event of the day occurred.

At the front of a long row of workstations for children (that I admit Andrew and I spent at least a half-hour playing with… We animated Astro Boy! Heeeeeeeee!) sits… Tezuka, his back to you, as he works away on various anime from beyond the grave.

We were a little creeped out by this, but the Japanese attendent was like “Do you want to see the show?” which… I guess? No? But then she pressed the giant button anyway and the Tezuka began to shake and move.

And turned to look right at us.

…

Japan!

The steps back to the first-floor exit conveniently featured the history of manga, in Japanese. Something that you can’t get in book-format in North America, at least not as in depth or convincing as what the Tezuka Museum would deign to put on their walls…

And so with a ridiculous pose with Astroy Boy firmly completed, we bid goodbye to The Tezuka Museum, and all of its splendours. I loved, loved, this Museum, and would go back again anytime, especially now that I know I can bring translations of all of the exhibits along. If you’re planning a trip to Japan and consider yourself a manga fan? DON’T MISS THIS.

Bonus: Convenience Store Photos!

The Tezuka Museum is at the corner of Flower Avenue and Osama Tezuka Way (rough translation), and that corner also houses a convenience store.

Finally! Today is the day that NANA was released!!! All of the hype and advertising (and there really was a lot; you’d never see something like that for a comic book here) saw Nana Volume 18 rocket onto the newsstand, surrounded by another manga title, sure, but also young women’s fashion magazines. It’s pretty clear who the audience is for this one…!

Andrew was starving and largely afraid of Japanese food, and so he picked up… pre-packaged Peanutbutter Sandwiched with the crusts cut off! Peanut butter, Butter, and Bread, all of it surprisingly sweet (everything in Japan is made with refined white sugar!!!). Verdict? He’d ate it again 2 or 3 times during our trip!

This is the butchest coffee you can get. For entertaining times, make it mustachioed homosexual icon on a rainbow can times.

Then, when we got back to the hotel in Osaka…

It’s the fried-food vending machine! YES! YES! Beef Noodles! Fried Rice! French Fries! How could I not try fried food from a vending machine!?

Only 111 seconds left!

And? The fried rice and fried noodles from the vending machine were considerably better than some fresh fried rice that I’ve had in Canada. I mean, it’s not the real thing, but for $4? Awesome.

Thanks for reading this entry! I have a fun little entry about the Tezuka Museum that will go up about 18 hours from now, and the next major entry will be about the International Manga Museum in Kyoto. Thanks for continuing to read and link these entries! At least 7 or 8 more to come.

- Christopher