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

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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.

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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:

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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/

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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

Thanks to everyone for the compliments on this photo-journal. The response has been pretty phenomenal, and I hope the Japanese government sees fit to throw a few kickbacks my way… I wake up every morning and I’m kind of angry that I’m not still in Japan. :-/

This time out, I gotta thank a friend of mine who helped me out of a fairly major blunder on my trip to Japan. Several of the photos this time out (including the one above) are by my friend Eric Kim, a budding amateur photographer and the artist of Oni Press’ Love As a Foreign Language. All of the photos from the Tezuka display come courtesy of Eric, and you can check out the photos from his trip to Japan at his flickr page, http://flickr.com/photos/inkskratch/ .

We arrived at Kyoto train station and it was really, really hot. Unfortunately there’s no Relax Time for us, we’ve got a packed day of temples and shrines to see, plus the Kyoto Manga Museum and the Tezuka Museum and… Yeah. The Best Laid Plans are completely shot to hell by the presence of this:

Continue Reading After The Cut:

This is the Osamu Tezuka-designed waterclock in the Kyoto train station, featuring the mythological centerpiece of his PHOENIX series of manga. I have to say, I honestly wasn’t expecting this and I was completely blown away by it. Everywhere we went in Japan offered wonderful little surprises like this, and it made taking in the country amazing… and slow-going. It took us an hour just to explore the train-station…

It’s hard to describe the scale of the Kyoto train station… Kyoto is (one of) the old capital(s) of Japan, and as such it had an incredible weight to it, the city was full of history and absolutely none of it was present in the ultra-futuristic train station. Kyoto Station is one of the largest buildings in Japan and the second-largest train station in the country. It incorporates a shopping mall, movie theatres, cafes, government facilities, and… like 30 different train platforms? It’s a half-kilometer long, and was opened in 1997 to celebrate the 1200th anniversary of Kyoto. It’s stunning, the main area is as big as three football fields and there are tens of thousands of people around. The official site is even awesome. You come up out of this basement where the platforms are into this huge building and I was just completely floored.

That’s like the last 5 of 8 banks of escalators? Anyway.

Right about this time, we almost broke the camera. Well, something happened? It… it crashed? I don’t know how the software loaded on your camera can crash, but it did, and I was in the middle of this giant, brilliant building, and maaaaaaaaaaaaybe I freaked out a little bit.

Success! Popped the battery out, counted to ten, popped the battery back in, and I’ve got an adorable photo of Andrew! Yay!

It’s like the richest kid in town had his erector set explode.

So! All over Kyoto Station, in addition to the awesome Tezuka Phoenix Water Clock there were pictures and art featuring Tezuka characters. We kind of figured out that there was a Tezuka exhibit somewhere in the station, but it’s like 5 football fields wide and three times as deep and 9 floors and… Yeah. I couldn’t figure that shit out at all.

And I’m like OMG! ASTRO BOY! HE’S ON THE INFORMATION KIOSK! HOW CAN I BE MISSING OUT ON THIS!

Kimba The White Lion Too! Depressing, right?

Then, when I was back in Toronto and going over these photos, I realised something. There are GODDAMNED ARROWS ON ALL THESE SIGNS. THE TEZUKA CHARACTERS ARE RUNNING TOWARDS THE TEZUKA EXHIBIT! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I swear to God, I thought the ‘triangles’ were just design accoutrement. But no, they were big fucking arrows pointing the way, the whole time, and neither Andrew nor myself figured that out until we were back in Toronto. (slaps forehead).

You know who’s smarter than me though? Eric Kim, who found AND photographed the exhibit. It’s called TEZUKA WORLD. Eric let me use his photos here, and he was even good enough to write up the following little essay on his feelings about Kyoto Station and the Tezuka exhibit. Thanks Eric!

Eric’s photos start here!

Tezuka World is impossible. It would never happen over here. A miniature shrine that celebrates a comic creator’s life and work on some extremely high-priced real estate in the heart of a major city? Whatever. Maybe a cute little weekend exhibition, a passing interest to a once great medium. But let’s face it, folks: Tezuka World would never be here, let alone the much larger Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum. You’d be laughed out the door for suggesting such idiocy.

I had to console myself daily with this mantra: “It can only happen in Japan”. But you can only say that for so long before you want to puke blood. At the end of my three week trip, I was starting to scream to myself, “Why just Japan? Why not back home too?!”

Initially, I thought the Japanese were crazy. Now I understand that they’re not crazy: they’re fearless. They’ll try out ideas because there’s an opening in the public psyche, and they’ll keep trying it out because they believe in the idea. It’s never “why?” over there; that’s ridiculously defeatist. Rather, it’s “why not?”. That is, at the very least, more optimistic.

Tezuka World is a “why not”. Tezuka has won the world over with his creations: why not have a shrine to him? Why not have a whole bunch of his artwork along the walls, annotated so that people can get closer to a creator they love? Why not have a whole showcase of toys from different eras? Heaven forfend that people might actually like this childish shit, or even worse; see the creator as being more important than his licensable properties.

Look at that kid. The kid standing there, posing alongside Mighty Atom and flexing his arms. That’s the “why” to the “why not”. That even after the store closes, when there’s nobody left in sight on the streets surrounding Kyoto Station, that there should still be children both young and old wandering close to warm memories that sparked an imagination.

I want North America to be like this; a lot of people do. So you ask me about Tezuka World, and I give you a hope that one day it won’t be impossible at all.

- Eric Kim.

Thanks Eric! That was dark, but perfectly summed up a lot of my frustrations with North American comics culture when viewed through a Japanese lens… All those photos were just awesome too. I’ve tried hard not to draw tooooo many conclusions in the body of these travelogues, but suffice’d to say that there will be quite a few ‘wrap-up’ posts in 2008 that really… detail… some of the things I’ve learned and decided since my trip.

…anyway, don’t feel too bad for me, I got to live out all of my Tezuka dreams a little later on in the trip… Meanwhile! We were STILL IN THE TRAIN STATION!

So three more things about Kyoto Station. The first? I got a haircut in the station. Seriously. My hair had gotten shaggier and shaggier on the trip, and with the temperatures floating between 30 and 40+ degrees centigrade every day (that’s like mid 80s to high 90s farenheight) I had decided that enough was enough. Sadly, I do not have any photos of the truly, truly bizarre men’s hair salon in Kyoto Station (directly across from the Phoenix water-clock, btw), but I do have a good couple of before-and-after shots for you.

Not Shown: The massage via massaging machine I was offered during my haircut; the ear-cleaning service; the manicure; the eyebrow-plucking; the inability to tip someone for good service due to cultural mores. I don’t know if you really got a feeling for the city-within-a-city feeling of Kyoto Station, but maybe the concept of a perfect, $20 haircut will help…

Also neat about Kyoto Station? The massive, massive bookstore with a huge manga/artbook section. You’ve all seen enough photos of bookstores by now, but I did want to show you a cool feature:

The store featured incredibly hi-res, full-colour, actual-size reproductions of manga art from a variety of series including One Piece (shown). That paste-up on the board? As far as I could tell, that was printed on the board. I was completely fooled at first, but then I realised that the NOT FOR SALE stamps weren’t stamps… they were actually printed on the art. It was pretty neat, a sort of miniature gallery space and tribute to manga inside a fairly standard bookstore…

Also? Custom-made poster promoting the imminent arrival of the new volume of Ai Yazawa’s NANA series. These guys really love manga, and it was heartening.

Chris notices comics culture: The KIOSK brand of variety stores? All done-up in word-balloons, which is tres cool. Also note that the top word-balloon is 3d and contains a working clock. Comics and manga iconography are a huge part of Japanese design, and it’s interesting to see if reflected in so many places of every day life. You look at that and right away you realize what an effective information-conveyance icon it is, and wonder why it’s used so sparingly in the west. As an icon it completely transcends comics, while never stopping to remind the viewer of them. I kind of want to do the whole front of my store in word-balloons now… We’ve got one so far, but we could certainly use more.

Okay, we’re finally done with the station. Now to get onto the bus and go visit all the shrines and stuff… But you guys don’t care about that, right? So next post? The Osamu Tezuka Museum!

- Christopher
Thanks again to Eric Kim for all of the great photos and essay! I love you guy! Check out Eric’s website at http://inkskratch.com

Thanks for continuing to read my Japan Photo Recap. I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but these photos were taken between September 3rd and 17th in various areas of Japan; I’ve been safely back in Toronto for months now.

So, after we left the Ghibli Museum in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, we actually took the train over to Tokyo Station and hopped on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Himeji, near Kyoto. Himeji is one of the old Capitals of Japan, and is famous for Himeji Castle, one of the oldest and the most authentic castle in all of Japan. This is the “culture” portion of the trip, which is to say not pop culture. As such, and considering the aims of this blog, I bring you a short photo tour of our day in Himeji largely without comment. At this point in the trip, my illustrious husband started taking photos as well, so some of the credit should go to him. And now, without further ado, the first alcohol vending machine I found in Japan:

Two kinds of beer and two kinds of scotch!

In the warm summer night, we encountered a statue of a naked man playing saxaphone. There is bizarre street art all over Himeji.

I love Japanese street scenes like this, wires and electric signs and density.

This is a covered shopping arcade, one of four (4) around this big that we passed on the walk between the train station and the castle. The street has a roof on it, and you can shop there. Awesome.

I actually climbed all the way to the top of that.

Proto-comics.

The view from the top.

The exterior of the castle, on our way out. Just consider the curvature of the wall, and the thousands of stones that went into building it.

Finally, enjoy your breakfast at Starbucks with a hot dog.

After this we hopped on the train to Kyoto, which has one of the most amazing train stations in the entire world. Hell, it might just be one of the most amazing buildings in the world. And? It has an Osamu Tezuka exhibit. See you in a few days!
- Christopher

Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind classic animated films including Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away, has been amongst the most prominent and venerated exports of Japanese culture to the west. The films of Studio Ghibli and it’s head, Hayao Miyazaki, were right there at the beginnings of my own awakenings into Japanese culture; Nth generation fansub VHS tapes passed from University student to University student through “internet”, and they somehow wound up in the hands of a bunch of 13 year olds in Brampton. Through the grainy, fuzzy, poorly-tracked screen we could see into a world that was beautiful and deadly and sad-but-hopeful, visions of our own world: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was a revelation.

What’s that you say? There’s a Ghibli Museum in Japan? And it’s easier for foreigners to get tickets through local Japanese cultural agencies than actual Japanese? Let’s go!

Continue Reading Behind The Cut:

The Ghibli Museum is in Mitaka, a medium-sized suburb of Tokyo just a few train stops from Shinjuku Station. As a brief aside, we almost never had a problem getting _anywhere_ we wanted to go in Japan. From Mitaka station to the bus stop that goes to Ghibli, there was always clear, well laid-out English signage to direct us.

Ah yes, The Bus Stop! From the Mitaka train station, the Ghibli Museum is really only a 2km walk or so, but having walked 40 km since I got to Japan and with an overcast sky threatening to open up at any moment, we decided to take the (relatively inexpensive) shuttle bus to the Museum. The bus is, of course, branded with the Heraldry of the museum as well as little nature icons. Also? Japanese buses are adorable.

I decided to wear the new shoes I picked up in Harajuku the night before. Long day on your feet + new shoes? Awesome Idea!

Okay, I’ve tried not to play the “foreigners are different than us, and therefore hilarious!” card at all during this, but I totally lost my shit when I read this on the bag of the guy in front of me waiting for the bus.

I saw you sad.
and your sadness is very sexy.
strong fragile man you know what I mean?
because this is love, maybe.
a_

JUST ARRIVE NEW DESIGNS
A LIFELESS ORDINARY. DOUBLE STANDARD CLOTHING

Hey, hey reader? Your sadness is very sexy. Just putting that out there.

Sadly, we got a standard Mitaka City bus that was cute, but not Ghibli-themed, and therefore less cute.

The approach to the museum is neat, with little bits of it peaking through the trees even before you ‘arrive’. The museum is built into an actual park-area, so it’s surrounded by lots of lush green trees and grass, and a small community.

Because of the threat of rain, the Museum had put out awnings to keep us dry whilst waiting to head inside.

The museum is not just a building. It’s sort of like an embassy from Narnia or Wonderland–the aesthetic of Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki’s films in particular pervades every aspect of the experience, from the exterior design which has a very… unique feeling meant to integrate with the surrounding park to the interiors, which feature the lush dark woods and design of films like Spirited Away and Kiki’s. There is no point at which you think “oh, they forgot to design this bit”. Except for the awnings out front.

In Japan, particularly anywhere you want to be, they don’t want you taking pictures. So while this Totoro stained glass is pretty awesome, it also got me ’spoken to’ and asked not to take anymore pictures inside… Because of this, I was not able to take many photos inside.

This is the interior of the main hall, which goes up more than three stories and ends in something pretty cool…

These photos are of the little grotto pictured a few photos ago. It was really lovely and serene.

You can’t really see it, but the skylight at the top of the main hall has a bladed ceiling fan, with the blades constructed to resemble airplane or flying-machine wings from films like Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Also? Little walkways and hanging tapestries everywhere. Neat!

Did I mention there’s a giant stuffed catbus for kids to climb on? There totally is. I really wanted to climb the catbus, but man, would that have been awkward. If you’ve got kids, take them while they’re still young enough to appreciate the above.

The third floor leads to a spiral metal staircase, that leads to the rooftop garden. This is the utterly awesome top of the spiral staircase.

Tourist shot. So, I’ve been waiting to do this for years now. It was very fulfilling. Hehe.

A path continues along behind the statue deactivated robot husk, and into the rest of the garden, which feature something else very cool.

This will mean nothing to you if you haven’t seen Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

For me though? Awesome.

Some photos from the roof.

The thing is, if Miyazaki wants a water fountain, he designs an amazing steampunky water fountain with a fun handle and that works as an art object.

Or you know, why not make an awesome leaf-shaped bench with a spinning handle?

After the character goods-focused photos from last time, sure you aren’t interested in an exhaustive photography piece on the inside of the Ghibli Museum shop. <-- This is the lie that I'm telling myself, because I know you want photos of all of the exclusive and rare Ghibli stuff but they wouldn't let me take photos and so I've let you down. I'M SORRY.

We decided to end our trip at Ghibli’s cafe, but with a 45+ minute wait to get in, we decided to try out their little outdoor snack bar instead. Hot Dogs, Ice Cream, Curry, and Beer? Don’t mind if I do. Notice the Porco Rosso.

Look, it’s Ghibli-themed beer! Let’s GET ONE!

This? Really good actually! It’s chilli with a quail egg on top and a delicious Miyazaki beer. This was a really nice little place to chill out and enjoy the surroundings, on a raised patio surrounded by greenery and happy families.

There’s a close-up on that label for all of you fans…

The last stop on our trip was to check out a free showing of a Ghibli movie only screened here at the Ghibli museum. Yay! We headed back down into a courtyard we had missed the first time.

This was a working well that we could not work very well. Nifty though!

This was the drain for that pump. Yeah, that’s just a drain cover…

This is part of the outside of the movie theatre… I really wish I could show you more, but there were staff everywhere. I guess you’ll just have to make the trip and see the museum… or more of it… for yourself!

As for the film we saw? It was an adorable little movie about a lost dog, that was incredibly easy to follow despite being in Japanese. The kids were enraptured the whole way through, awesome.

That marks the end of our trip. Some unhappy Japanese policemen kept the peace in the bus line-up, underneath an awesome Totoro bus stop sign.

And so we left Mitaka behind, with a lovely shot of its downtown core just outside of the train station. It’s a beautiful little city, and with all of the greenery as well as the bustle and proximity to downtown Tokyo, it seemed like just-about the most perfect place to live that I found while I was in Japan. Of course it’s probably a billion dollars, but still! Who else decorates their main street in pink lanterns? I’m on board for Mitaka. :)

As for the museum itself? It’s something that I think every Miyazaki fan should see. Sure, they wouldn’t let me take any photos, but the museum gift shops actually had two amazing books for sale on Ghibli and on the Museum, one was a thick book full of photos of the museum for like five bucks, and one was a massive tome done in the style of the Ghibli art books, on the history, vision, and construction of the museum, in both Japanese and in English! It even includes several interviews with Hayao Miyazaki! If you see it for sale anywhere, pick it up, it’s got a wonderful amount of insight into the mind of this master of Japanese animation.
…then we got on the train to Kyoto. But that’s for next time.
- Christopher

The Peanuts store is pretty damned awesome, what with it being a completely and thoroughly ‘themed’ shopping experience, meant to feel like the historical middle American past of the strip.

By the way, in Japan it’s not Peanuts, it’s all about the Snoopy. Welcome to Snoopy-Town!

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It was almost Halloween when we were there, which explains the Great Pumpkin display, as well as the ghost-costume wearing Snoopies and Woodstocks.

Hey look! It’s the English-language Fantagraphics-published Peanuts books! In Japan! (alongside tons of volumes of the Japanese Snoopy collections, of course). This image is here in the hopes that the fine folks at http://www.fantagraphics.com/blog will link me. *Cough*

Also, heh.

Notice the themeing on the counter? Look familiar?

The whole thing was like an outdoor market in California somewhere, ‘cracker pavement’ floors, sewer grates, the whole nine yards.

Even a fire-hydrant.

What’s with all the aprons? We saw aprons everywhere… I know there’s a really specific domestic culture in Japan, but I feel like people in Japan are collecting aprons rather than buying them to use… Like decorative thimbles or something. Weird.

These were both pretty awesome, actually. :)

We actually bumped into a woman in the Peanuts shop who was carrying a Tintin shopping bag… which blew my mind. I mean, I’d knd of acclimated to the idea of a Peanuts Boutique store (not a boutique: actually bigger than most comic stores I’ve visited), but a Tintin boutique? In the area? She spoke really great english and actually gave me the commemorative postcard that you get with purchases at the store, which had a handy map on it! Awesome! So off we headed in search of the Tintin store.

This is the first major intersection we came to, and it was clearly AWESOME. Shopping is more than just an activity here, it’s a way of life. Speaking of which, there was another awesome condom shop on this corner, so I had to get another picture of the greatest condoms I’ve ever seen.

I’m not going to lie to you. I now have both a Pikachu condom and a Spider-Man condom, and I have 6 months to use’em. :)

It was really busy, being Sunday afternoon (I think). Coming up on the right, you can see KIDDY LAND, the first Japanese toy store that I got to visit in Japan. I only spent $250 there.

Boutiqued all to hell and 7 stories of toys, I was having a little shopping freak-out. How could I go all the way to Japan and not get Doraemon souvenirs?

The girls’ section was really cool, though very… domestically oriented.

Much like everywhere in Japan, there was an elaborate Evangelion display, with a life-sized Rei Ayanami doll. It was so cooooool. I found eva stuff in this store that I didn’t find anywhere else. And bought it.

Evangelion Unit 01 Papercraft. Tyt!

This is so cute that it makes minimates look like vomit.

Ebony… and ivory! Living together in perfect, harmony! Side by side in my display case, oh lord, why can’t we?

Never forget: Hello Kitty is bigger than Jesus, and celebrates way more holidays to boot.

MOOMIN! There’s a giant Moomin boutique! Three times as big as the last Moomin boutique!

These pictures are included in the hopes of getting a link back from http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/blog/index.php. Because that’s how I roll. :)

Madeline!

My cousin Alison would have totally died.

Andrew feels a vague sense of unease. Maybe because the Totoro’s were looking at him?

I had to buy myself a Jiji (Gigi?). So I did. But I mean, they’ve even got a replica of the baked fish dish that she delivers in the rain! LOOK AT THAT.

So awesome. But I knew we were on our way to the Ghibli museum later in the trip, so I didn’t want to spend all of my ducats up front on Ghibli stuff if it might be available elsewhere, or more officially, or… something. I don’t know. I was just rationalising not spending that much money up front. But. Yeah.

Yikes.

You know? Seriously? There was nothing I was looking for that couldn’t find, and a ton of stuff I never even thought I’d find. Anyway.

(I really like this photo.)

We headed down the alley off of the main strip towards the Tintin boutique after finally escaping the kick-ass toy store. Even the alleys were cool, pedestrians and scooters and amazing little boutiques.

Then we got to the TINTIN STORE! Yeah! All I did was freak out and take pictures.

The original albums in French.

The Japanese translations! These are really interesting, because they’re printed in the manga digest format, though they keep the original left-to-right orientation.

Rather than shrinking the art, they decided instead to cut-and-paste the panels and pages to create a thicker, more ‘manga-sized’ expeirence. And in black and white too. I’d be surprised if this particular translation/reformat wasn’t actually handled in France, because it’s pretty-much a note-perfect translation of the stories from one format to another. I picked up one of these for a diehard Tintin fan that we know, and he loved it. Cool beans!

Life-sized bust of Capt. Haddock, anyone?

By the time we exited the Tintin store, it was getting dark. Luckily, Harajuku stores open late and the whole area goes all night!

The outside of the toy store Kiddy Land at night.

The Dior headquarters. Apparently there’s a fabulous club in there exclusively for the jet-set superstars of Japan. Needless to say, in shorts and a T-shirt I was not invited. Actually, we didn’t even go in.

A view from the bridge over the main shopping drag.

The ultra-fabulous flagship Ralph Lauren store.

The shanty-town that sprung up in front of the ultra-fabulous, flagship Ralph Lauren store. Power to the people!

Marc. Jacobs.

Sure, the big names are all over Harajuku, but there are really beautfully designed boutique clothing stores crammed into every square foot of the area we visited.

Andrew is carrying my bag of toys.

3 floors of boutique shopping.

This isn’t affiliated with the video game company Rockstar Games in any way. They just seem to have uh, homaged, the logo…

This place was tamer than an Old Navy commercial. YOU HAVE A POORLY-NAMED STORE.

We like the perfectly design graffiti.

This was Book-Off, and they sold discount manga. 105 yen-400 yen. At this point I’ve been walking for like 7 hours, have three bags of stuff, and? I bought another 20 manga. For like 40 bucks. I bought the two Taiyo Matsumoto artbooks for $8 each. My feet are killing me, after this photo.

I got laughed at for being a tourist while taking a photo of the gorilla.

They had so many awesome shoes, and they were all on sale. Problem? Size 11 in Japan is reserved for Sasquatch. But if you’re up to a size 9, mens? The world is your rare-sneakers-from-around-the-world Oyster.

Mmmmm…

Then we went for crepes. They were so, so awesome. This is the fake-food crepe display out in front of the crepe stand, to show you how awesome your crepe would be and help you make up your mind.

By this time I’m falling apart, and I find the street warning message hilarious.

YOU ARE A CRIMINAL.

MY DOG IS IN DANGER.

I am still amazed by how awesome the design can be though.

I am worse for wear.

Then a masked hero appears, and heads into the subway. He waves though.

Then I was shocked by the awesome machine designed to go up and down stairs.

I slept well this evening, surrounded by my day’s purchases. The next morning? Studio Ghibli!

- Christopher

It turns out I took more than 300 pictures in 8 hours on our day-trip to Harajuku, so I’m going to break this day up into a couple of posts just so I don’t crash anyone’s browser.

First stop? Harajuku station. Looks kind of… Bavarian… doesn’t it? Harajuku is considered the fashion-capital of Japan… or one of the fashion-capitals, anyway. Street style is the name of the game, and the area is divided into what seemed like three pretty distinct areas; the network of main and side-streets filled with fashion boutiques; the Meiji Shrine forest; Yoyogi park, a huge public park. We’re looking at the Takeshita-dora entrance, which lets out into the fashion-district. Before tackling shopping though, we decided to visit the shrine and soak up some (old) culture. You can’t do that, though, without running through a labyrinth of…

Gothic Lolitas! And their admirers, of course (see bottom-right corner). The bridge over the rail tracks is filled, Saturdays and Sundays, with ‘rebellious youth’ decked out in outre fashions of all stripes, though the ‘gothic lolita’ style (think: creepy babydoll) is the most famous. This wasn’t actually the first costumed person we bumped into, though.

This was. Yes, those are live goldfish.

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A whole culture has developed around tourists–both local and foreign–coming to take the pictures of the dress-up kids. You’re not meant to take photos of anyone when they’re behind that little hanging sign so that the kids don’t always have to be “on” and can sit in the shade (it’s like 90 degrees out, in this picture). It’s kind of fascinating.

This dude is in nerd paradise.

Just around the corner from the bridge is the entrance to Meiji Shrine… Sort of. You see, it’s really a trail that you walk for 20 minutes that gets you to Meiji shrine, punctuated by these giant tora (gates). It’s the most amazing, serene, long walk. Apparently it’s something you’re supposed to do at New Years.

It’s really a forest. It completely shuts out the light and noise of Tokyo.

Along the way there are 1000 cases of consecrated wine.

There, you can juuuust see the entrance.

The gravel path ends in beautiful stone blocks…

…and an impressive entranceway. I know it’s cliche to say this, but the pictures don’t really do it justice. The scale is… off. Everything is too big, and it makes you feel small. It’s hard to explain, but it really is the most lovely approach to a religious site I’ve seen.

Once inside, the shrine really is impressive as hell. It’s a frequent pilgrimage site and so while it may not be as ‘authentic’ as some of the unrestored sites, it’s absolutely gorgeous.

This is a purification area. Well/spring water is constantly bubbling up, and you do a special prayer and pour it over your hands and sip a little.

On the way back we took a different path, and ended up at an unused entrance to the train station. I love stuff like this. Apparently it’s only opened for New Years, when thousands of people come to make pilgrimage to the shrine.

Then we went to Yoyogi Park. I don’t think you’d believe what I’m going to tell you if I didn’t have pictures. Actually, let’s have a beer.

Andrew has a beer just WALKING AROUND ON THE STREET! OMG! Seriously, what’s wrong with North America? Friggin puritan nonsense.

Okay so in Yoyogi Park, directly adjacent to Meiji Shrine…

A group of 30 to 40-somethings get together and dress like 80s rockabilly throwbacks to 1950s greaser style.

This includes dudes with slicked back hair, lots of leather, and their ‘chicks’. Occasionally, there are motorcycles. On the boombox? Guitar-rock.

Can you see, just poking out from behind the neck of the guitar? Can you see his hair?

CAN YOU SEE IT NOW? You will never unsee it. That’s real hair.

Then, this group of… squares… I guess… they literally did a complicated dance routine to “Rock Around The Clock”. It was amazing, absolutely amazing.

Elsewhere in the park, indy bands set up and just start playing on the street. The music is pretty much crunchy guitar rock, right across the board. The bands set up like 30 feet from each other, each trying to be louder than their neighbor.

I really, really wanted to see these guys play but they took forever to get their shit together.

Our beer finished, we decided to head out into the wilds of the massive, blocks-wide network of streets that made up the fashioniest place in town…

…our first stop? The Snoopy store, where we spied this gothloli leaving her perch on the bridge to do some shopping of her own. But unfortunately, the inside of this magical shop will have to wait until next time…!

- Christopher

Next: Harajuku.

- Chris

Our first stop on the way to “Good times island” was Asakusa, a lovely area of town that, again, felt like actual people lived there. Japan’s transit system (as I may have mentioned) is awesome, and there are regular (and quick!) trains that head to Odaiba island regularly. But for our approach, we heard about a special little water-transport that would be worth investigating. Since we had two hours to kill before or trip, I figured we’d investigate the area. Right across from the ferry dock is the golden headquarters of Asahi (they make drinks, but are solely known in the west for their dry beers), and next to it is a building with a golden “flame” on top. Yeah.

Also, the water is not normally that sort of hideous brown colour. Because of the hurricane a day or two before, the mud at the bottom of most rivers and lakes was dredged up and moved around a bit.

Asakusa (“ah-sah-ku-sah”) is home to a the famous Senso-ji temple. The outter wall surrounding the temple is the Kaminarimon Gate (shown here) with its giant celestial statues and even bigger lantern.

The path leading from the gate to the temple is a large covered shopping concourse. You can sort of see how it evolved from traditional shops and stalls into its current form, it’s kinda neat. They sold everything there too, lots of souvenirs and food and stuff.

And boobs too.

Pagoda!

This was our first real encounter with old things in Japan, and it was fascinating to see the tug-of-war between contemporary and historical. Clearly it is important that these sorts of sites are preserved, but it seemed just as important that they be used and interacted with. Giant statues, but behind fencing. A huge historical walkway draped in retail stores. I’m really conflicted about this treatment, but at least I got to experience some lovely old temple and the grounds.

Then we headed back to catch our boat–a ferry custom designed by Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock creator Leiji Matsumoto! The ‘Himiko’ water bus runs between Asakusa and Odiba on the Sanida River, and when I heard that we could ride this instead of the subway to our destination? No contest.

Man that’s cool.

The inside of the ship was lovely but unspectacular, and it’s too bad they couldn’t find a way to integrate Matsumoto’s characters (who narrated our trip down the river on loudspeakers) into the trip. Still, it was a very civilized way to travel, and short of adding a little more seating I’d recommend this trip as a wonderful way to approach Odaiba.

The ferry dropped us off on… the beach! Yes, that’s right, Tokyo has a beach. …don’t go in the water.

The bridge from Tokyo to Odaiba.

Right on the beach is the massive shopping complex DECKS. It’s wierd, seemingly comprised more of big non-shopping stuff than what you’d normally think of when you think of a mall. There’s a giant Sega-themed arcade called “Joyopolis”, a sports-themed amusement area called “Muscle Park” and of course “Nostalgia Town”, a loving recreation of Showa-era Japan, the period of time between the end of WWII and the economic crash in the late 1980s.

Nearly 50 years of history are compressed into a sprawling level of a mall, right down to a recreated train station.

A child’s room perfectly preserved, with a very modern youngster sitting out front.

Older Gatcha machines, repaired and retro-fitted, but filled with recreations of toys from the time-period.

Several stores featured old-timey candy.

The most beautiful Candy I’d seen. I picked up some of this for gifts. :)

Classic Nintendo crap (and some new Nintendo crap as well). The Nintendo trading cards were going for a shocking ammount of money.

Did I mention that there was a booth selling anime cels? And I bought one? Featuring Tezuka and Astro Boy? And it cost $15? FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

Chris Notices Comics Culture

This cold drinks stand incorporated word balloons into its design. Meanwhile, the image to the right there is a pictographic narrative banner two or three stories high that told you about how good a time DECKS really is!!! Comics and their iconography seem to be integrated into much more of every day living than they are here in North America, and the implication is comics are simply ubiquitous in the culture–you wouldn’t catch a Japanese national photographing the front of a cold drinks stand for no reason.

You said it, buddy!

Actually, heh, we visited one more store inside the DECKS complex: Condomania! This is the best thing we saw:

Yeah, that’s right. condoms in the shape of monsters, soccer balls, and Pokemon. Japan.

I did want to mention that there really are amusement park rides on Odaiba.

One of the most distinctive-looking buildings in all of Japan is the Fuji TV headquarters building, which is located on Odaiba. The erector-set construction and massive suspended sphere are incredibly magnetic, and add to the over-all futuristic feel of the island.

The ground-level is the main entrance for the people who actually work in the building, but the multi-level great-glass-escalator brings visitors up to the observation deck level.

The main deck features a themed Fuji TV store that carries all kinds of stuff from there various shows. We didn’t go in because it was absolutely packed, but I’m just realizing that Fuji TV produced IRON CHEF, one of my favourite TV shows of all time… There might have been cool Iron Chef stuff in there. :(

Also of note? Sazae-san, the gentle humourous Japanese comic strip has been popular for decades. In its animated incarnation, it rates its own large store in the Fuji TV complex, also filled to the brim with shoppers.

But we haven’t stopped ascending. We handed our mascot-themed tickets to the lady, who took us right into the sphere itself…

The inside of the sphere features a 360 degree view, and…

…the actual set of a show! They also had a demo set up, showing how green screens worked that you could try out.

Did I mention that Odaiba had a scale model of the statue of liberty?

We hopped back on the tram that circled the island, on our way to a mysterious shopping centre I’d heard about.

Madonna is EVERYWHERE, by the way. I couldn’t even figure out what she was meant to by advertising, except MADONNA.

We arrived at our destination: VENUS FORT. Finally, a shopping centre just for ladies. Sure, it looks like a giant hideous warehouse on the outside, but on the inside?

It was done up like a sort of faux-Italian street, complete with elaborate lady fountain in the centre.

What faux-Italian, women-themed mall would be complete without an exhibit of dolls? Yeah, we stumbled into an exhibit of rare BLYTHE dolls.

I don’t know anything at all about these dolls, but I do know that fans of them are intense, dedicated, and passionate.

And that this exhibit of rare dolls probably would have made their heads explode.

No photos, of course.

But what to do if you’ve got too much testoterone for Barbie-branded clothing, lush cosmetics, and a doll-show?

Head to the car show, across the way. A giant room full of rare cars.

All Andrew could say was “What the hell? Who PAYS for all of this? What IS this?” over and over again. It was really, really weird.

The second and third floors of Venus Fort are for the ladies, but actually, the first floor is called VENUS FORT FAMILY, and features a few non-lady oriented stores. My favourite store, and probably my fav in all of Japan, is Village Vangard.

http://www.venusfort.co.jp/shop.cgi?sid=193
http://www.village-v.co.jp/

Village Vangard is called an “exciting bookstore” and I couldn’t agree more. It focusses primarily on manga and art books, but takes a very cultivated, heavily boutiqued approach to the material it stocks. Everything about it is absolutely awesome, including lots of hand-written recommendations, excellent fixtures, energetic staff, and awesome, awesome themed or ’boutique’ displays.

First up is a display of manga by Kiriko Nananan.

Then, a giant stack of the just-released box set of Hayao Miyazaki’s manga classic NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, for the bargain-basement price of about $25 for all 7 volumes.

Hand-written FUCK!! on a sign? Probably an awesome manga.

An alternate take on the popular series that’s been discountinued by its North American publisher.

Two pictures showing a huge vertical display of Taiyo Matsumoto’s work and toys based on it.

Damn, the Tokyo Tribes manga is bling in Japanese.

It’s the Doraemon boutique!

Kids books.

Mmmm. Art books.

Inflatable superheroes and underoos. No actual comics though.

The reggae display.

The Smurf Display.

Remember this giant face from when we were in NAMJATOWN? Apparently it’s like, a thing, called “The Mouth Of Truth”. This is an official recreation of the original stone face, sent over as a gesture of good will from italy. It lives in the VenusFort mall.

And with that, we bid the lovely Venus Fort goodbye.

After Venus Fort, we headed to our rest-stop for the evening, a funky little place called “Ooedo Onsen Monogatari”. Onsen are Japanese-style baths where you sit around in hot water, usually spring-water, whilst naked (!) and relax. This particular onsen is more like an onsen theme-park, made-over to look like old timey Japan. It features the baths and all that, but also a big area with restaurants, bars, midway games, and other entertainment. It’s a lot of fun actually, and a much more easy-going way for westerners to acclimate themselves to the particularities of Japanese style public bathing. Luckily for all of you reading, cameras weren’t allowed in the bathing areas, but I was able to snap a picture of me decked out in my Yukata at one of the restaurants.

We actually stayed overnight in the onsen, as they provided large public sleeping areas including tatami rooms and big rooms with comfy reclining chairs with their own teevees. It’s a pretty unique experience, and something I can really imagine happening in North America. Anyway, the onsen was awesome, and highly recommended :)

The next morning we got up and made our way back to our host’s house for lunch and a day out on the town, but not before I bought a pair of underwear from a vending machine… unused, of course, because who wants to wear the same undies two days in a row? Japan: They have everything in vending machines.

- Christopher

Just a quick note that the entries are going to lose their “Day” tags in the titles from this point on, because after this day (and even during) our trip compressed, doubled back on itself, and in big parts stopped having anything at all to do with comics. As this is a comics-related blog I don’t want to dilute the focus too much, but almost all of my photos will be going up on a public sharing service thingy sooner or later so you won’t miss anything, promise.

With that, Akihabara:

Patrick Macias recounts the history of Tokyo’s Akhiabara district in the excellent Cruising The Anime City: A Guide to Neo-Tokyo and since you should all read that, I’ll spare you the bio and just point out that Akhiabara is a neighborhood that is in the process of evolving from a discount electronics mecca to a hardcore manga and anime Otaku paradise. Shown above is Chuo-dori, the main drag in Akihabara facing towards the train station, I believe. We visited Akihabara twice during the trip, on Day 03, and on Day 11. The photos here are from both trips.

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Pachinko is basically Japanese slot machines. This is a Pachinko parlour with not only an Evangelion-themed wing of these machines, but also a fun cardboard cut-out of the cast where you can decide to be Asuka or Rei. This is not the wierdest thing about Pachinko in this post.

This was just awesome. If there was any way to get $11 colour flourescent lightbulbs back to Toronto without them exploding in my luggage, I probably would’ve dropped a ton of money here.

This is the outside of Comic Tora no Ana, one of three such stores within a few blocks of one another in Akhiabara, and contender for “biggest manga store in Japan”. Much like Animate in Ikebukuro there were at least 8 or 9 floors here, though unlike Animate the focus here was mostly on Doujinishi — fan made comics — and sexy doujinshi for men, at that.

Here’s a shot just inside the door, I think, of the new-releases table. The volume of material that is released is just amazing…

It’s Phoenix Wright Manga! OBJECTION! (Hah, I’m only including this for the google hits). Still, one has to imagine that some smart publisher has picked this one up for North American distribution.

Somehow I don’t see UDON picking up this particular Capcom-related manga for release in North America. Heh. Actually, this store was, moreso than anywhere else I visited in Japan, REALLY UPTIGHT ABOUT TAKING PICTURES and so I didn’t get much in the way of comics-related photography, sorry guys… This spank-worthy Felicia drawing will have to tide you over until later in the ‘tour’.

Back outside and we see one of the myriad statues and pieces of Otaku memorabilia that decorate the various electronics and culture stores, all beckoning you inside.

I like taking pictures of convenience stores.

This store on the other hand, just up the street, was very encouraging of my amateur photography. Thank you, Toys Golden Age Akihabara! You are awesome:

There were toys of all makes, models, and origins on every surface of this store, including the floors, on top of display cases, and even some on the ceiling. Shown above there is a Brandon Routh-styled Superman toy(!) from Microman that was never released domestically! Of course I bought it, because I’m a nerd.

I really bet Viz wishes KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC would have taken off.

So in Akiba (as the cool kids call it) they’re really not afraid to let their Otaku-flag fly, as evidenced by this awesomely decorated store on the main drag. They also don’t seem to be too concerned by copyright either, because I can see Namco and Nintendo in the U.S. teaming up to fuck these guys up with lawyers for even HINTING at what they’re showing here. This is another way in which Japan is better than America. THERE, I SAID IT.

Retro gaming is much loved in Japan and Akiba in particular, and there are a lot of stores that feature retro game carts from the exceptionally rare to the 10 for $10 bin. If you’ve got the money, you can also pick up any Japanese-originating video game system you can remember. So, no Atari 2600, but lots of Nintendo.

Here we see the disk-drive add on for the Japanese version of the Nintendo entertainment system, called the “Family Computer” or “Famicom”. I remember as a kid we’d hear stuff like this on the playground and dismiss it as the highest level of ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’. I mean a Disk Drive? For the NES? That’s ridiculous. All of your schoolyard myths are true… in Japan.

Speaking of which, do you enjoy retro gaming, but aren’t interested in dropping $$ on an old-school Nintendo system that might stop working the next day? Well you’re in luck, because for UNDER TWENTY DOLLARS you can pick up the Famulator, a home console system that EMULATES THE FAMICOM. Want to play all your old Famicom and Nes games (that have no copyprotection, FYI) on your big screen without the download charges on the Wii? Here you go. Games sold separately.

Wanna buy a Super Famicom (SuperNES in the States)? They were here for between $15 and $25, depending on the condition. They all worked though.

Sure, you could buy a vintage Sega Genesis (also known as Mega Drive in Japan), but for just 999 yen (that’s about 10 dollars) you could also buy an emulator system called the GAME JOY. All of the Genesis love, plus a 6 pack of games (including Sonic, Golden Axe, and Shinobi). For $6. Japan.

Mario is wearing a sign, telling me not to take pictures. I’m kind of an asshole, I guess, but come on… You’d take this picture too. (Sadly Mario was not for sale)

This awesome throw-pillow? Also not for sale. WTF?! Why would you do that to me?

This is my host, David. He is posing in front of every game you could ever want for the Famicom. He’s really happy to be here, it’s his favourite store in Japan. It’s very close to my favourite as well. And did I mention that the whole time we were in these stores, that the music playing overhead was 8-bit video game theme music? Awesome, awesome, awesome.

As we leave, the sun begins to set on Electric Town. It’s kind of lovely.

…and it actually started to get busier at night.

Here we see a dude escorting his girlfriend to work at a Maid Cafe. Seeing them reminded me that I needed to see a Maid Cafe before I died, and so we decided to go to the only place where I knew there was one for sure: Don Quixote department store.

It’s hard to explain Don Quixote. It’s 8 floors of a department store on Acid, in Japan. Whether you want to dress up like Goku…

…or buy novelty underwear branded by a comedian…

…or buy cheap cutting-edge street fashion…

…or get lost in the toy section…

…or become a goth…

…or go to a maid cafe, Don Quixote in Akiba is the store for you! Heh, seriously though, this particular maid cafe is actually NOT the maid cafe inside Don Quixote. When we got upstairs to the one inside DQ, it was not only completely full with an hour-long wait to get in, it was also being actively patrolled for folks taking pictures. Apparently the girls who dress as Maids at DQ and then perform are actually becoming famous idol-singers, and if you’re going to take photos, you gotta pay!

Meanwhile, this Maid Cafe was just down the street and took up two whole floors in a shabby little commercial building. As you can see, they’re pretty serious about photos as well, so I didn’t get anything from inside (sorry) but I’ll try and explain what a maid cafe is for you.

Basically, you’re either a total desperate nerd (male or female) or on a date and want to go someplace insane for a coffee, so you go to the coffee shop where the girls are dressed like maids. They all talk in anime voice-actress-voices and charge you for the privilege of spending money. All of the food is made of refined white sugar. They hit on you non-stop, if you can communicate in Japanese. If not, it is awkward when they hit on you. When they bring your food, they do a little song and dance routine to make your food “MORE DELICIOUS!!!!”. Then, the floor-show starts.

Everyone has to go to a maid cafe before they die.

Can you make out that sign up there? What does that say…

Oh, that’s right. It’s a maid-style beautician. In case you want to be groomed by a psychotically happy and subservient woman dressed like a French maid. If that’s like… your thing.

As you can tell here, we’ve entered the criss-cross of small streets and ‘back alleys’ that make up the dense, hardcore area of “Electric Town” that’s more-or-less across the street from the train station.

Andrew and The Colonel.

Their afros are silver pachinko balls, FYI. This is the same pachinko parlour that had the Evangelion display out front.

This is how it actually looked.

This is how it felt.

The thing you need to understand is, in Japan, stores have no problem sending people out front to yell at you while you walk by, on a loudspeaker. HEY YOU COME IN WE HAVE THE BEST PRICES!!! Usually they’ll have three or four people out front, yelling over one another, at the bigger electronics stores. Yeah.

Coolest toy display in Japan.

Oh, Yotsuba! revoltech.

Derek, those two were for you.

Ashitaka No Joe lives in a shop window, beckoning you in. I thought this was kinda cool.

On the other hand, I thought this “life size” manequin of Asuka from Evangelion that was for sale was a little creepy, for some reason. Perhaps because it was for sale next to a young-girl-in-school-outfit manequin that was life-sized, anime-styled, and also for sale.

Let’s just chalk it up to ‘cultural differences’.

Speaking of cultural differences, this is LAMMTARRA, the 8 floor (plus at least one basement level) porn store around the corner from the train station. As you might imagine this place was INCREDIBLY BUSY at 10pm on a Friday night. No, really, really busy. It just kept getting dirtier with every floor you ascended. The 8th floor is called “MANIAC WORLD”. I probably should not describe what is for sale in MANIAC WORLD. Let your imagination run wild.

Needless to say, no pictures of the inside. Sorry.

Speaking of the train station, directly across from Akihabara Station on the JP line is a huge ultra-disturbing nerd-mecca department store, that I only found out about after I got back to Toronto. Fuck. Somehow, I managed to take multiple pictures of it without ever figuring that I should have gone in.

It breaks my heart, seriously. Just go to that website (SO NOT SAFE FOR WORK) and you’re like “OMG THIS IS AWESOME” and I could’ve seen it in person and didn’t. Can you hear my sigh from where you’re sitting? You should be able to.

Ah well, it’s not like I didn’t see a million other awesome things, right? Like this. THis young lady is a worker at a Maid Cafe, and she is handing out free packages of tissue paper that advertise her maid cafe (includes map!) in front of the station. This could be your job, dressed as your own personal fetish, handing out leaflets every night.

I think that one is actually a sexy nurse. Anyway, these people have nothing on the folks who show up in front of the train station to sing, perform, or throw an impromptu magic show WITHOUT any commercial aspect. Seriously.

Singing, choreographed movements, the whole kit and kaboodle.

She performed to her own pre-recorded voice describing the tricks on a loudspeaker.

Man, these guys looked awesome, like Japanese hip hop harlequins, but we were there for 10 minutes and they couldn’t seem to get their shit together. I secretly feel like their performance was amazing.

Japan really is the future.

CUTE BABY! This is Noa, the son of our hosts in Japan David and Kiko. You may remember a blog post from a year ago or so where I was holding him and he was tiny. He is big now and likes to talk and run around. He was exceptionally well-behaved in Akiba, though he was a little weirded out by all the freaks. Pft, amateur.

So we’re in the train station, and at this point I’ve resolved to buy a different kind of Japanese beverage every time I’m thirst. I ask David if this one is any good, and he says it’s alright, but it tastes “mediciney”. But it’s a health drink, apparently, and I could probably use a health bonus. So I drink it.

Then Kiko mentions that it has nicotine in it. And I was like “What?!” and David looks at the ingredients, and apparently the second or third ingredient there is nicotine. Japan.

Finally, we’re ready to head home. I just want to thank Kiko, David, and Noa again for being such great hosts while we were in Japan. We had a great time. And at this point there are like 10 and a half days left…

- Christopher

I don’t know if I made it clear last post, but NAMJATOWN is actually inside a mall. Well, it’s more of a huge city-block shopping complex called SUNSHINE CITY, which also houses another mall (World Import Mart, seen in the bg) and the 60-story skyscraped SUNSHINE 60.

Every mall I went to in Japan was bigger than the last, and had colder and more intense air conditioning than the last, but the Sunshine City complex still stands out in my mind as being particularly huge and labyrinthine (it has a whole theme-park in it, after all).

So at the top of the building here is an observation gallery, an aquarium, and a gallery space. Let’s go to the top of the building, shall we?

a The elevator ride up was full of new-age music and black lights, with light up sea-creatures on the wall. It was staffed by an elevator attendant who would not look us in the eye. The elevator closed and opened by women in ridiculous outfits who did not want their pictures taken, but still wouldn’t stop bowing.

…and Tokyo! The view from the top of the building is pretty spectacular, with all of Tokyo spread out in front of us. Notice how it’s sort of grey and overcast? That’s the beginnings of a Typhoon.

I was kind of surprised by how ‘Green’ Tokyo is. They really do try to incorporate plants and trees into their city aesthetic as much as is possible. That’s a big park….

Storm’s a comin’

So there was a gallery space at the top of the Tower, and we figured we’d walk through. All of the photographs were inspired by the Aquarium, and the majority had the theme of the aquarium being a sort of exotic buffet. Heh.

On the way down, the elevator had black-light and new-age music, but instead of light-up sea creatures, it was all light-up constellations.

ANIMATE. I think I mentioned in a previous post, ANIMATE is actually a nation-wide chain of anime and manga stores, and the store in Ikebukuro is the flagship, and probably the biggest. 8 Floors of pop-culture, including an event space (that was sadly closed when we visited…). Let’s go inside!

I guess what I’m trying to get across here… is that there’s a lot of fucking manga. There is so much fucking manga, and so little of it is licensed for release in North America, that I am now officially disputing the claim that there is a “licensing dryspell” coming (or any variation therof). Not every manga is Naruto, but there’s so much fucking midlist that something truly catastrophic would have to happen to actually run out of salable licenses.

This is one of the new-release tables. One of.

With the New Evangelion movie being a phenomenal hit the weekend before we arrived, every store worth their salt had huge Eva displays out. So much Evangelion merchandise. So… Much.

Evangelion Doritos? Tastes like Shinji.

On the top, we see Evangelion flavour curry. No, I’m fucking serious. On the bottom? Boxes of Evangelion cookies. Maybe you don’t understand; Evangelion is big here. V. Big.

Here’s something really cool. These are for pre-ordering hot new material. You just take one of the little tags in the holder up to the desk, and they’ll order (and hold) the item for you on its release day.

Random manga that looks cool that I didn’t buy. Any idea what it is?

Oh, Yaoi.

Speaking of yaoi, these are all Yaoi/BL/Changepurse novels. There’s so much yaoi and related stuff. I’m not surprised that the category is growing so quickly in North America, there’s just a ton of material out there waiting to be licensed (and the titles, so far as I can tell, aren’t generally from the larger manga publishers who can be… prickly… when it comes to licensing negotiations. I am looking right at you, Square-Enix.

By the way, this is a different floor full of manga than the previous floor full of manga we were on.

Okay, this floor… Heh. This floor had books on display that if I even took a picture of, at a distance, I could be arrested for that picture in Canada. Go to Wiki and look up “Shota-Con”, which might be NSFW? Anyway, Shota-Con is the male version of Loli-Con (Lolita Complex) manga. On this floor they decided to put together a feature-display bay of books, all explicit-covers out, of Shota-Con. So you’re walking by looking at manga, and all of the sudden you’re like OH SHIT WHAT AM I LOOKING AT WALK AWAY. Just going to show there really is a manga for everyone!

Now let’s flush out our brains with… The Studio Ghibli Nook! Look, it’s a ton of totally fucking awesome Ghibli merch, in a nature-themed display area.

Oh, I want that.

Oh, I want those. But since I was heading off to the Ghibli Museum on this trip, I decided to skip over buying additional Ghibli stuff.

This was the ‘merch’ floor. T-Shirts, dolls, cosplay accessories (but no actual costumes). That sort of thing. Basically the best booth at the best anime convention, but without a few hundred sweaty congoers pawing through everything before you can get to it. Just two cute girls.

Look, it’s adorable cat-boy statues! I saw this series around a lot (can’t remember what it is) but it looks like it might be very LOVELESS (the manga, not the Azzarello comic) –esque.

It’s the Moomins! Remember, your childhoods are alive and well and waiting for you to re-buy them… in Japan. Here we have all kinds of fantastic Moomin goods.

Awww!

OMG! They’re having a little tea-party, and the tea-party is also a desk calendar! Aieee!

They even come in adorable boxes adorned with the art from the comic strips! Who could resist this? Who? NO ONE. I gotta get on Drawn & Quarterly about importing some of this merch to go with the delightful books they’re publishing.

Do you know what mystery-box toys are? Basically, it’s where you buy a line of toys, but you don’t know which toy you got until after you’ve bought the toy. It’s kind of like crack or Pokemon cards. Anyway, in addition to all of the mystery box toys for video game and anime characters, there’s also… Miniature food. Seriously, all of the food items in this picture are smaller than a quarter. Random miniature food.

You think it’s stupid, but then you see it, and you can’t help wanting… Miniature food. And a little box to display it in. Oh, Japan.

Interesting thing about these toys. You might have seen some of them (the final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts figures in particular) in your local store. In this case, Diamond doesn’t actually import these toys, they do a whole new production run for North America (sometimes with slightly-less than ideal manufacturing) that lets them sell the figures for less than you would pay in Japan. So buck-up, fanboy! At least some of your current situation is better than you’d find overseas…

It’s YOTSUBA! Yes, the adorable little green-haired girl that has stolen our hearts is coming to 3-d toy form, courtesy of the fine folks at REVOLTECH. You might know the Revoltech chaps from their super-posable lines of robots, including MAZINGER, EVANGELION, and even a few Transformers… Well on September 27th, Revoltech is releasing a Yotsuba figure with alternated head, hand, and super-posable. What’s that? I will have left Japan by then? Why, that’s right, I will have. So no YOTSUBA for me, no YOTSUBA for anyone. (Seriously, I hope Diamond picks these up.) In other Revoltech news, they started doing Veritechs from Robotech… The VF-1J was released and I totally bought it and it’s awesome. Although I guess it’s technically MACROSS in Japan, all I know is that I was able to successfully buy more of my childhood… Yay!

DVDs anyone?

Discount plush toys.

And that concludes our shopping day at ANIMATE. I spent like $200 dollars, which is pretty good (considering) and picked up a few things for Haliday as well, so hopefully he’ll be ecstatic with happiness. …I seriously loved this store. I wish I had gone back for hours and hours and hours. I totally, totally want a store like this one day. I need $20 million dollars.

So let’s round out the day with a little sight-seeing. This is a bicycle parking lot (also: mopeds).

Japan looks a lot like Futurama, in spots.

Ahhh… Convenience stores. You’re so awesome. You’ve got all kinds of stuff that’s delicious and scary. Here, for example, we have some sort of un-refrigerated egg salad in a hot dog bun. IT’S ONLY ONE DOLLAR.

Canada Dry is the Ginger Ale of choice in Japan, which makes me unreasonably proud. Note, the bottle says CHILL TIME, which makes this the most pimped-out drink I saw during my entire stay. I can almost here the anthem…

It’s GOURMET Pringles. And what Gourmet flavour do they have? Why, it’s Grilled Shrimp and Garlic Pringles. So of course we had to buy a can, and taste it. Now, I know what a Pringle tastes like, and I know what Grilled Shrimp tastes like, and believe me, I likes the garlic, so of course this should taste like none of those things. It was actually sweet, for a potato chip, and the strongest flavour? Lemon. Apparently the lemon you squirt on the grilled shimp. No garlic, not even any shrimp flavour, just a sort of oddly sweet and vaguely lemony pringle. It was very disappointing, and strange.

We went to go meet a friend for dinner, and walking through Ikebukuro, we cam across this movie theatre with huge advertisements for the Eva movie. It was kinda neat… Otaku pride.

Apparently Denny’s is some high-end fancy restaurant in Japan. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t eat there, because it’s Denny’s.

Funny Japanese signage about killing your dog with an elevator.

Department stores are all FUCKING HUGE in Japan. This is Bic Camera, an electronics superstore. It probably also carried Toys and Manga. I say this, because we ended up going to a department store across the street from here for dinner, because all department stores generally have floors that are full of restaurants. We actually went to a Tonkatsu Restaurant on the 8th floor of… I think PARCO or one of those, right outside of Ikebukuro station. The 8th floor is also where the book section was, as well as a toy/hobby section. What do I see in the toy section?

That’s right, it’s a display case full of figures and statues from the TEKKON KINKREET movie and manga.

I settled for only buying two little dolls because I was already completely loaded down with stuff from they day’s shopping, but man, I coulda dropped a fortune on this stuff… Hell, even bringing a bunch back to sell at the store…! But… yeah. This was pretty much the last time I saw the figures too, so I didn’t even have a second change at them. :-/

The bookstore had a run of Tezuka’s Buddha, in the animal-paintings covers. :)

So after dinner we hoof it back to the train station, and the wind and rain has picked up a lot. I was totally impressed with the BOOK VENDING MACHINE. We managed to make it about half-way up the line back to Saitama, but due to high-winds and rain (HURRICANE!) the service was… cancelled! Shocking! The trains always run on time in Japan! WTF!? So we went and tried to grab a cab (elapsed time, 2 hours, in the rain and 30 degree heat…).

Here’s us in the cab. The cab ride took about 45 minutes because the trains had stopped running, and the weather was brutal, and the streets were just full… The ride should have cost about $40… but the cab driver took a wrong turn, felt terrible, and only let us pay him $20. We forced a tip on him of $20 more, which is totally unheard of in Japan, but it seems like a night for breaking with convention…

Finally, we arrive home. Wet, exhausted, and carrying bags and bags full of our day’s purchases. We slept… soundly. End of Day 02 (Finally!) – Christopher

Yes, it’s NAMJATOWN, a multi-floor themed indoor amusement park. Sort of. While there are three over-riding “games” you can participate in (if you both read and speak perfect Japanese), really, you just go to see one of the most amazing, tacky, fucked-up places you’ve ever been. Seriously. It’s NAMJATOWN. I was first made aware of NAMJATOWN by my buddy Jim Zubkavich of Udon Comics. He, sleep-deprived and in total culture-shock, traversed NAMJATOWN within his first couple of days of being in Japan his first time, and found it thoroughly surreal, and dammit if that wasn’t an experience I wanted for Andrew and I. NAMJATOWN, by NAMCO, makers of Pac Man. Hang on to your hats, kids!

Maybe whilst in the theme park you would like one of 7 different kinds of massages? Why not enter the massage forest?

Look, it’s Andrew and Mr. Owl, in the massage forest!

We’ve entered haunted Edo-period village from the past now. Lots of black light. Oh, and there’s one of those masks with spider-legs that are on the floor up in that birdcage there too. It would periodically move around and scare the bejeezus out of people.

This man would cut off your hand if you stole his disgusting food. Actually, the food was plastic. Actually, he was animatronic.

Haunted Buddha statues.

Crazy 3-d/video screen presentation with creepy frogs singing at you and the many-armed statue dancing along.

Cat shrines?

Not just a broken-down truck, it also served food on busier days.

…and what it served was GYOZA! NAMJATOWN is also the headquarters of the WORLD GYOZA STADIUM, featuring more than a dozen gyoza-maestros strusting their stuff from a cacophony of stalls! I’d been in Japan for 24 hours at this point, and I was used to Japanese people shouting things at me in a language I didn’t understand, but this took me back a little. I’m pretty sure everything translated to “HEY WANNA BUY SOME GYOZA WE HAVE THE BEST GYOZA HERE RATED NUMBER 1 BY SOMETHING YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HEY DON’T WALK AWAY GYOZA!” I don’t mean to seem rude or anything, but I clearly could not understand these people and that made them shout louder, which I found odd. But… fuck it. Delicious fucking Gyoza. So we went and got some.

On the left there, the Garlic Gyoza? HOLY SHIT. SO GOOD! Easily the best I’ve ever tasted. I wonder if these guys have to audition to get in here? I mean, you think you’ve had one deep-fried pocket of seasoned pork and garlic, you’ve had them all? Not even close. Just thinking about them now is making my mouth water, and all I have is grilled shrimp Pringles. Sigh.

This was dish 2. We seriously DEVOURED these Gyoza. They were Garlic and Pork, and were easily the best Gyoza I have ever had. They were so good that my husband had fully half of them, and he’s a vegetarian. I am strongly considering going back at the end of my trip for more Gyoza.

Our suspiciously attractive gyoza girls.

NAMJATOWN also has shops decorated with signage. Like this.

OH LOOK IT’S THE SADDEST CANDY IN THE WORLD. Fucki.

Despite not being able to take part in the electronic games that were going on, the experience here was still amazing thanks to the expertly crafted llittle streets and walkways….

Look! It’s Mr. and Mrs. Namjatown, and they’re playing with the children! Run while you still can, kids.

Gosh, he’s adorable.

This was a shrine that had at least three different bits of religious iconography in it, which was weird enough, but you actually knelt down in front of that screen on the lower left there to play a game called “Princess Maker 2”. Oh, and don’t worry, there’s a fake bible in front of the angel there on the pillar. Because why wouldn’t there be, it’s NAMJATOWN after all.

This was the room that… Okay, seriously? There was nothing in this room except for that angel, and video-projected stained glass windows that are washed out a little there by the flash. NOTHING ELSE IN THE ROOM. I really can’t express how little any of this made sense.

Then in the next room, it was Christmas!

Giant Italian stone face of truth (more on this later).

Mmmm, it’s worth noting that the little angels on top of the pillar? They actually moved and played their instruments in time with the music from the merry-go-round. Yeah. They all had different instruments, too.

Oh shit… I ran right into him. Maybe he won’t notice me?

Mr. Namjatown notices EVERYTHING.

There was a tiny plastic net over top of those buns, so you could not steal them.

Look into the eye and put your hand in his mouth. If you are lying, he will bite it off.

The official robot of NAMJATOWN. It’s worth noting that this character appears nowhere else in the entire theme park, nor on any goods, and was apparently not attached to or relating to anything. In fact, it was set up in the middle of the fake French/Italian walkway area. I feel like this theme park is constantly being revamped and reworked, it’s almost like a mall where shops or areas close and new ones open up. I feel like this guy was part of something that had disappeared and was just too cool-looking to do away with completely…

Tourist shot.

Oh man. This dude was talking and he was SO EMO. All skulls and deep sad voice and goth and shit? But he was behind a two-way mirror, and just as I tried to take another picture… he was gone! I think he’s the angel of death actually. There ain’t no angel of death at Disneyland kids, not even Tokyo Disney.

Andrew knows what he did.

It’s a trap!

This was a fake bar set up in the middle of a hallway. I think it had something to do with one of the games? Maybe?

We waited around to see what came out of the little box, but nothing ever did.

It’s the Ice Cream land! Because why have on Ice Cream stand when you can have at least 6!?

The Ice Cream in Japan museum is housed within NAMJATOWN.

Here we go.

I ordered this because I decided I was going to eat weird things on this trip. But yeah, it looked pretty unappetizing.

Also, the cone said “QUEEN TOP” on it. The jokes write themselves, ladies and gents!

…and you were all wrong! It wasn’t Sesame Ice Cream, but Sesame Gelato! At least I think so, I can’t read Japanese. It was definitely Gelato though, from…

Yes… The darkest Gelato known to man… or cute little (badly dressed) Japanese women. Actually, the Gelato Nero in the display case was basically full, with most of the other flavours clearly having at least been ordered. Andrew had a delightful lemon sorbet, for example. Anyway, it was… okay. Sesame-ish, but something else as well, and I think it was actually DYED black. This gelato was so black it actually stained my hands a little. Oh, NAMJATOWN.

Ghost Panic, one of the games you could play that looked really cool, actually… You held up these little ghost hunting devices and you could see ghosts, I think? Hmm. Oh well. Maybe when my Japanese is better… :-/

And so we bid farewell to NAMJATOWN, and its weird collection of shit. Did I mention there was a game there where you had to stop terrorists from detonating a dirty-bomb? There was. Just saying. I had a blast though, honestly. We both did. Getting off the plane and, for all intents and purposes, just diving into the wackiest stuff that Tokyo had to offer worked out great for us, I’d recommend it. NAMJATOWN probably wouldn’t have seemed quite so strange if we had a chance to acclimate to the rest of Tokyo first.

Ah, who am I kidding? NAMJATOWN is weird no matter what.

- Christopher
This post had nothing at all to do with comics…

Seriously though, I’m in Japan, everything’s goddamned awesome. I don’t even have an angry bone in my body at this point, let alone a righteously angry one (and for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, click here).

But… did you see this? http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_editorial_why_comic_shops_still_matter/. Go read that, it’s really good. I wanna give Tom a big hug. Perhaps I will next time I see him, and won’t that be awkward? Anyway, Spurge wants a new direction to the discussion about comic shops, and I think that’s great… Anything to get away from the stuff the folks are saying in THE BEAT’s comments section. So, let’s go: topic starter.

I am in Japan, and there are comic book stores everywhere.

Seriously. Not American Comics, for the most part, but if you blurred your eyes a little you’d recognize many of the places I’ve been visiting as comic book shops. This is in a nation where, as I’ve already blogged, comics are readily (and volumously) available in standard book stores, at the ‘news stand’, at train stations, the 7-11, even in vending machines. Comics are everywhere, and despite that, there are still dedicated comic book stores…! The argument from a number of people is that comic book shops should go the way of the dodo, in favour of mass-market distribution in traditional book stores, and via the internet… But here I am in a country where comics ARE available in the mass-market, in fact, comics make up something like 40% of all published material in the country. And yet, despite that, there is a clear market for comic shops. Even when they have side-lines like used comics, dvds, statues, etc. Even when they don’t, and it’s all about the books… this happens in France too, btw.

The next message in my Japan travelogue is about the end of day 02, where I go to ANIMATE, an eight-floor comic book store. It’s pretty neat, and I was totally inspired. I think you might be too?

In advance of my post, you can find out more about Animate at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animate.

The comic store doesn’t need to go anywhere. We all just need to try a little harder, I think.

- Christopher

When last we talked, we had just left the Tokyu Hands store in Ikebukuro. A short walk away from there is the Sunshine 60 mall, which was our next destination. Chances are, if you’re trying to get somewhere, you can just walk down the street to it, or you can look for a department store, head inside, and follow the signage to enter one of the many underground tunnels connecting businesses, offices, etc. If you’re reading this in Toronto, it’s sort of like the PATH, but AWESOME and 1000 times as big. So, since it was 40+ degrees outside with the humidity (that’s like 90 to you filthy imperialists), we ducked into a lovely underground air-conditioned walkway. And what did we come across? A giant Toyota “auto-salon” that was having some sort of amazing SGT. FROG event! Yeah!

Right this way to SGT. FROG! John Jakala would be SO EXCITED right now!

Look! There he is! Wait… what?

It’s a green DS with a new SGT. FROG game. Oh… Uh, huh. That really wasn’t worth getting excited about. You couldn’t EVEN buy the game, or any of the awesome merch. They did have arcade machines set up playing Ridge Racer 4, though. Anyway, here’s some SGT. FROG:

And Japan’s answer to the Segway, and that adorable little Toyota robot:

If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you know that I’ve recommended a graphic novel anthology many times named JAPAN: AS VIEWED BY 17 CREATORS. It’s published in English by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon, and it contains comics about Japan by 8 bande desinee creators, 8 manga-ka, and Frederic Boilet, a Frenchman living in Japan. It’s really quite good, and I’m going to take a moment to recommend it again: It recently received a second printing and is available from better comic stores everywhere. I highly recommend it. Anyhow, in the book there’s a story by a French creator, Nicolas de Crecy, who is quite wonderful anyway, but in this instance is turning his attention to Japan’s character-based culture. In the story, the narrator is… researching all of the different characters that adorn Japanese products (and also ideas too… Hello Kitty may brand every type of good imaginable, but here? Characters also appear alongside almost any message, from not letting your dog poop on the flowers to exercising proper train safety). The author is completely smitten with all of the various chara-goods, the adorable and bizarre drawings that cover soft-drink cans and are turned into cell-phone charms. The author finds the variety of them, the different styles and shapes, the sheer number of different characters overwhelming. I knew something about Japan going in, but I’m not entirely sure that I was ready for the density of the chara-goods culture. The first mall-shop that we stopped into was M.I.X., and it had… nothing but character goods:

More popular in death than it ever was in life.

You knew one day Elmo was kill the rest of the cast and dress in their skin. Admit it.

It’s gay sumo duck! Not shown: Everything from Thomas the Tank Engine to Lilo & Stitch to… jeez, you name it.

Here’s the comic-strip explanation for the Elmo thing. This is the first part of “Chris notices comics culture” by the way. This explanation (posted near the toys) is in comics format, where I feel like in North America we’d end up with a single illustration or something like that… Andrew thinks it might be a little different, but I’m thinking “single image” at most, maybe with little insets. And it’d be product photos instead of illustrations too… Anyway, I thought this was neat, and can even forgive the Comics Sans font, which looks pretty good in this specific context…!

I’m really only taking a picture of an NBX apron to make Andrew’s cousin Alison jealous.

A different store had perfectly designed square toys that I regret not buying.

The food court walkway entrance.

Andrew enjoys a crepe. This has been a theme of the trip so far, as the crepe’s here are plentiful and delicious and… everywhere. Well, everywhere “cool” where young people are.

The Sunshine City complex.

Oh, McDonalds. But more on that later.

Finally!

Hallowe’en costumes and decorations.

Pingu! Just so you know, all of the beloved cartoons and characters from our childhoods? Hanging out in Japan.

Pokemon Megablocks (fake Lego).

This was weird… Children’s author Eric Carle is a brand here… “The World of Eric Carle”, and as such there are lots of “Very Hungry Caterpillar” branded goods, like crayons, notebooks, etc.

Gotta catch’em all!

Creepy.

Looks like Toys ‘R’ Us only stopped selling realistic guns in their DOMESTIC stores, eh Dad? That’s a remarkably realistic looking plastic gun btw…

Hey, look, it’s a little display of Star Wars stuff. Wait, what the hell is that in the center?

OMG. Is that a Japan thing? Or was this around the world? Because this is brilliant (though maybe not $28 brilliant?).

You don’t have to look very far for sexy girl action figures… Toys ‘R’ Us Japan caters to children of all ages, from Pokemon to otaku shut-in!

Pretty frick’n cool though.

I know this is going to seem stupid, but I totally forgot that a) MICROMAN figures are Japanese, and b) they are everywhere. This is a side-cap display of some of the basic models, and the Kinnikuman (ULTIMATE MUSCLE in the U.S.) figures. Not shown: The creepy Brandon Routh-styled SUPERMAN Microman figure. That I bought. Along with Supergirl. I… I needed someone for my Batman Microman figures to fight against.

I would have loved these as a kid. Real cameras, binoculars, and MP3 players that transform into robots…

…but as an adult, what I want is the transforming police(?) car that comes with the Moe cute little girl being menaced under her skirt by bad energy demon action figure. Note: THIS IS A REAL TRANSFORMERS ITEM.

The full-size version of the girl comes with a non-transforming car, and a convenient up-skirt pose…

Of course, I’m not one to judge. I almost bought this for a measly $45. You see, I had one as a boy, and the ultimate expression of adulthood is to re-purchase your youth. Luckily, the Japanese had me covered:

I had all of these. Never have I come closer to dropping $150 on toys in a single shot. But believe you-me, I was pretty fucking close in the Toys ‘R’ Us. I didn’t grab any of them though. As my boss would say, “Congratulations! You’ve taken a step towards adulthood!” It is small consolation.

Ultraman!

Squid Monster!

Ge! Ge! Ge! No Kitaro!

Gundam!

The new DragonQuest game (Dragon Warrior in the states) was released here just as we arrived. It’s kind of a big deal because it’s for the Nintendo wii, and the DQ games have a history of supporting the ‘winning’ console in the console wars. (I think.)

Speaking of video games, the Nintendo DS games in Japan are outstanding! Whereas we’ve got “Brain Age”, about the only educational title on the system, they’ve got tons of ‘games’ like recipe/cooking instruction titles, a camera attachment and games that let you take advantage of that, and even:

That’s right! Take the TOEIC test on your DS! Score high whilst learning the English language!

Also? There’s a NANA game. I guess NANA is a certifiable hit, huh?

So we finally left Toys ‘R’ Us (damage: $100) and headed out into the mall… and into glory! But you’ll have to wait. We’re running out of time in the hotel room in Himeji, and that castle isn’t getting any less incredibly old. Sorry guys! More later.

- Christopher

For Day 2 in Japan, we decided to take it easy–only a few train stops away from our home of Saitama (seen above, in the daytime, this time) to Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is a lovely little mini-city within Tokyo, most notable for… shopping. It features several huge malls, most notably the Sunshine City complex, and the flagship store of Japan’s largest chain of anime and manga stores, ANIMATE, is in Ikebukuro.

In Japan there are plenty of ways to get around, including the public rail (JR) which are above ground trains, and the private above-ground trains and the Tokyo subway system (below ground). All of these trains operate using the same perfect tap-card, meaning you never have to fumble with different tickets, tokens, or fares. Your tap-card (a credit card with a chip in it that can be read without being swiped) also works at lots of vending machines and convenience stores. Toronto could learn a thing or two (note: this will be a theme).

Please continue reading after the cut:

People reading novels and manga on the train.

A book vending machine. Oh, literacy.

Andrew conveniently points out where we are in Ikebukuro. Did I mention that Tokyo train stations and maps have tons of English on them, and that getting around is REALLY SIMPLE? It is. It’s almost disheartening. Anyway, on the map Andrew saw the store TOKYU HANDS, which he wanted to visit because of its vast amount of paper-goods.

A lovely little park-path. All “wasted space” in design is made as beautiful as possible. It’s heart-breaking.

When we got to Tokyu Hands, the first floor entrance level was taken over by… THE EVANGELION STORE! Celebrating the release of the new movie (you may have heard from ICv2 it was the number one movie in Japan last weekend) was a little boutique of top notch and rare Evangelion goods. T-shirts, ties, giant Rei Ayanami dolls, toys, toys, toys, toys, toys! So much eva. I settled for…

LCL JUICE! Yes, Juice themed like Evangelion’s artificial amniotic fluid. I’m bringing this one home as a souvenir. I also bought a Kaoru & Shinji-branded cold milk-coffee, which was delicious.

But we could only stare at Eva crap for so long… (elapsed time: 25 minutes). So we went to see the rest of Tokyu Hands department store. I think… I think I’ll mostly let it speak for itself.

Miniature plastic food? Everywhere.

The 8th floor (yeah, 8th) had a pet store.

The photo of the chipmunks didn’t turn out.

Yeah. Chipmunks. Like Chip ‘n’ Dale up top.

That’s the first 3 hours of day two. More to come!

- Christopher

Anyway, I’m exhausted from walking for like 14 hours and then the ordeal of getting home with no train. No big posts right now. When I wake up tomorrow though, I’ll post the first half of the day (at least). Until then, you can wonder what the HELL I am about to eat in this photo.

- Christopher

I’m in Japan. Above you can see Saitama just north of Tokyo, where we’re staying for much of our trip. It’s very hot and very humid here, but sitting here under some lovely A/C and looking back over today’s photos? It’s damned lovely. Also? I’M IN JAPAN. Everything is wonderful so far.

I’ve been up for 28 hours, so after arriving at Narita and taking the train through Tokyo everything is awesome. Variety stores. A mall. Bookstores, arcades, all of it. It’s absolutely amazing and I’m very tired and don’t have much to add. So! Here’s some more pictures (after the cut).

This is one of 4 aisles of manga at a mall bookstore. Sort of Waldenbooks sized. They had a huge selection of stuff. Just right of dead-center in this picture is the sign for the BOY’S LOVE section. So much BL/Yaoi… they’ll never, ever run out of work to license.

This was posted in the store. It is, I swear to god, just the itemized manga releases for the month of September.

Sooo tired…

- Chris

I’ve already been fortunate enough to get some great advice from friends who’ve visited the region before on business and for vacation, but I have something of a broad and diverse readership here with their own impressions of the country, so I thought I’d open the floor. What should I see? Where should I go? In particular, can you recommend any great vegetarian cuisine for my husband who is afraid of fish? If you could list a few things that I shouldn’t miss in the comments section? That’d be great.

A little background: We’re going to be spending most of our time in the Tokyo area, with quick trips to Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto on this trip. Obviously I’m interested in manga (and to a lesser extent, anime), but other cultural happenings or unique experiences would be great too. We already plan to hit the larger interesting neighborhoods like Akihabara, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Roppongi (and the ridiculous Roppongi Hills complex), Ginza, etc., but we’re looking for the wonderful things within those neighborhoods that shouldn’t be missed.

Also, if you’re in Japan and want to meet up for an Asahi, let me know and we can try to work something out.

All suggestions will be read and appreciated.

Best,

- Christopher