I’ve got a million other things I should be blogging about, but I was just talking some smack about eating Pizza in Japan/Tokyo and I recalled that, on my last trip to Tokyo I had some of the best pizza ever, in my hotel restaurant of all places.

I know Japan gets a bad rap for pizza, and I’ve had a whole bunch of truly awful pizza in Japan (married to/travelling with a vegetarian), but the restaurant in “The B Ikebukuro” is called Salvatore Cuomo & BAR, and it is a straight-up excellent Italian restaurant, and I had a wood-fired pizza with real prosciutto that was so good that I went back a second night to have it again (every other meal was Japanese food, don’t judge me).

I suppose if I were in better blogging form I’d tie this all together with something about preconceived notions and surprises and yadda yadda but I haven’t blogged since like March or something and so your closing thought is: Most of the pizza I had in Tokyo was terrible, but I had some amazing pizza too and I recommend it.

- Chris

Great short doc about Tokyo and Japan’s creative class following the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, featuring Pharrell Williams. Definitely worth the watch.

Sorry for the autoplay, nothing I can do about that. But click the trailer above to go to the website and view the whole thing, or http://www.palladiumboots.com/video/tokyo-rising#part1

- Chris

Last month I started up a blog called Oyatsu Break! (http://oyatsubreak.com), a Japanese snack food review blog. I also hosted a Kit Kat tasting party with like 40 flavours of Kit Kats that I’d collected on my travels, and shared them with friends. One of those friends wrote the story up for The Toronto Star, and now here I am!

http://www.thestar.com/living/food/article/1031538–kit-kat-club#article

It looks like the photos have gone awol from the article for now, but it should be in the Saturday edition of the paper.

My thanks to Corey for a fun article, and if you’re interested in more Japanese snack reviews please check out the new blog.

- Christopher
Photo by GALIT RODAN/TORONTO STAR

“Environmental guilt = a garbage bag filled with Japanese Kit Kat wrappers. If it weren’t for my kidnapping and blackmail side business, this would be the worst thing I’ve ever done.” – Corey Mintz, Porkosity

I went to Corey’s and I shared about 40 different kinds of Japanese Kit Kats with some people, and they wrote about it, and Corey wrote about it, and it’s gonna be in the paper and some other stuff. Click on the “Porkosity” link above for a few more advance photos.

- Chris

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Christopher

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT:

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

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

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

SPONSORS:

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for anything you can do,

- Chris

Apparently the folks at online importer j-list have started selling cans of the pancake drink, or as they call it “Dydo Hot Cake Mix Drink ~ Pancake Essence Beverage”. If you’ll recall, this is the beverage that I heard about and became obsessed with finding on my trip to Japan this past fall. I found it, drank it, and it’s delicious. It’s like tea-with-milk that tastes exactly like buttery pancakes and syrup.

It’s also worth noting that I found it served piping hot (in the can!) at a different vending machine, and it might’ve actually tasted even better warm. Anyway, you can now get a can of your very own! Or two or three. I actually brought back 5 or 6 with me, and they’re in the fridge waiting for a perfect moment to relax and enjoy one…

Maybe that moment is now.

Head over to http://www.jlist.com/product/DRK014 to spend $2.80 on a beverage that your friends will think less of you for having drunk.

- Christopher

An email in my inbox this morning has alerted me to the fact that the quizzical “Cheese Kit-Kat” is now in stock andavailable for sale at AsianFoodGrocer.com. While I can’t recommend this concoction for the taste–it’s a curious mix of gouda, white cheddar, and white chocolate–it is something to be experienced, and those 10 pieces that come in the box will quite happily satisfy the curiosity of you and 8 friends (you’ll want to try it twice, just cuz).

Check it out at http://www.asianfoodgrocer.com/product/japanese-ki-kat-white-chocolate-cheese. They’ve also got the really good “Adult Dark Chocolate” flavour in stock as well.

- Chris

So before I set about giving away at Christmastime the massive collection of different flavours of Kit Kat that I’d amassed (56, give or take), I decided to catalogue and take a few photos. I owned everything you see in the photos, at one point or another.

Shown flavours include Green Tea, Cola/Lemon Soda dbl pack, Cherry Blossom Green Tea, Bitter Almond, Sweetened toasted soy flour with mochi (I think), Cherry, Raspberry, Cherry Blossom Milk Tea, Semi-Sweet, Sparkling Strawberry (different than regular strawberry), vanilla, royal milk tea.

This might be a better view. Here at the left we can see apple and Melon, and along the bottom we see Ginger Ale, Dark Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Chunky, Green Tea Chunky, Sweet Potato Chunky, Banana Chunky.

I had amassed a lot of some flavours, and very few of others. Some were rarer and harder to find. Some were given as gifts. Some are… well, they’re old. I mean I’ve kept them in the fridge, but I might’ve been keeping Ginger Ale in the fridge since it was released 3 years ago. Luckily shitty chocolate has infinite shelf life.

Here’s a few of the single ones I have. That’s regular (yeah, they’ve got regular Kit Kats in Japan), Sweet Potato, Chestnut maybe, Anin dofu (a desert made of tofu that tastes like marzipan), and the ubiqutous cheese.

These little mini-kit-kats would be sold by the bag, 20 a piece. It’s part of the culture of Japan, of sharing things particularly in the workplace. You bring in a bag of unique candy, and they’re usually themed by season (warm sweet potatoes for the winter) or by location, and then you bring back a ‘to-share’ bag to the office to show and tell and share about wherever it is you went.

The Cheese Kit Kats come in a gift-box.

Here we have… well, the giftsets of Kit Kat. They come in pretty boxes with 12 little mini Kit Kats in them, and these are the upscale buy-them and share-them Kit Kats. They’re awesome.

Also notice: they have city or region names on them. Funny story, this is because these are generally only sold in the area listed. Go to Yokohama, get the Strawberry Cheese Cake Kit Kat. Or, apparently, Anin Dofu is also a Yokohama flavour. Kawagoe for Sweet Potato, Shizuoka for Wasabi. I’m sure there is greater cultural significance to this that’s lost on me, but frankly? It’s not that important.

You see, all of these items are ALSO available at Narita Airport. All of the gift-set flavours shown, plus a healthy assortment of the small bar/boxes. There’s a specialty foods shop or candy shop, near the food court, on the 4t floor of Terminal 1. It is import Kit Kat mecha. I found 4 flavours in Tokyo that they didn’t have at this shop. I found 14 flavours at that shop that I never saw anywhere in Tokyo. It’s worth finding, and don’t stop at the first shop that sells Wasabi or Sakura Kit Kats. Keep up the search!

So I realize this is crazy.

I don’t really collect much of anything more. I’ve stopped buying most comics, I get rid of graphic novels as often as I buy new ones. I kinda hit critical mass on the toys, and I only picked up one or two on each of the last few trips to Japan. But the urge to collect hasn’t gone away. For example: I also have a slightly disturbing collection of miniature foods… I buy them when I miss being in Japan, or just to cheer me up. Kind of like the Kit Kats. Though I assure you my current weight has almost nothing to do with them. The irony of my insane collection of chocolate? I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I’m much more of a fan of potato chips than cookies.

I just like unique and strange things, and unique and strange flavours, and the combination of the familiar and the outre and the fact that a lot of them taste pretty delicious.

But to the outside observer, like my husband whom I dragged into no fewer than 100 Japanese convenience stores looking for “rare Kit Kats”, this must seem insane. I am, literally, hoarding food. That’s the kind of behaviour that gets you put on special television shows.

I don’t want to be on a special television show.

So at Christmas I put one of every flavour I had into a bag and put that away, collection intact. Then I spent a month giving away everything else. Sharing it with friends in the spirit of the season. Except for a small bowl of singles sitting on the table leftover from my Christmas party, they’re all gone now. They were delicious, and weird, and outre. Adventurous friends tried some, less-adventurous friends pretended to (I found a sealed Wasabi Kit Kat on my bookshelf a few days ago). But yeah, now I am no longer… Well alright maybe I am crazy because I still kept one of each, but at least that’s a blogging project.

Oh, I will blog each flavour individually soonish. I just wanna make sure I have the time to do it first.

So that is the story of the Kit Kats. Or at least as much as I can explain. The rest I seriously recommend tracking down for yourself, at your local Asian candy store, importer, or online at http://www.asianfoodgrocer.com/ every once in a while.

But honestly? Get yourself to Japan, even if only to the airport gift shops.

- Chris

It occurs to me, this being a comic-book website, that not all of my readers may be familiar with club flyers, and may think them to be a mysterious gay-Japanese invention. Let me assure you–clubs all over the world advertise themselves and upcoming events with bright, colourful flyers. But the Japanese ones tend to use manga-style illustrations as a primary attention-getting tool in a way most North American clubs don’t, and that’s awesome.

What we have here is a big (8.5×11″ or so) flyer for an upcoming party at the gay club Arch, a surprisingly big club space in a Tokyo district where most bars comfortably fit 6, and max out at 12. You know it’s a big deal because I was there the first week of November, and they already had the glitz-and-glam advertisements out for a party happening December 11th…!

This is a party for “Gachi-muchi”, or chubby-muscly, a sort of Japanese-only gay subculture that’s kinda like bears but kinda not, too. It’s the type or look typified by the characters in Jiraya manga or in G-Men Magazine, and occasionally by notable names like Genoroh Tagame. The reverse of this flyer features all kinds of photographs–real life versions of the idealized figure shown here. But since there are no illustrations I left it alone. After all, some of those gents might want their privacy.

For more, check out http://www.clubarch.net/schedule/index.html.

Speaking of which, one of the sponsors of the Gachi-Muchi disco party is BIG GYM, a gay bookstore chain (!) specializing in gachi-muchi, bears, and manly men. As such, their stores aren’t generally found in the Shinjuku gay district, but out and about around Tokyo. This here is a free pamphlet they were giving away illustrating the proper way to tie and wear Fundoshi, or traditional Japanese underwear. Check out Big Gym online at http://www.biggym.co.jp/, they’re an awesome, awesome store.

This flyer was picked up from a tourist-friendly shop in Shinjuku ni-chome, and it talks about Rokushaku, a specific type of Fundoshi, and with English instructions…! Interestingly, while a chubby guy is shown here this shop was very ‘twink’ oriented (look it up if you don’t know), I dunno if they’d ever seen anyone this size walk through the door… heh. Until we showed up anyway.

Ah, I totally loved this flyer. This is for a bar in Okinawa called “clutch”, with accounts for the Pacific-islander theming. Basically just a great big fun party scene with all different kinds of guys, letting you know that everyone’s welcome. That’s the bartender, or master/mama, in the center there. I learned that owners of similar bars across the continent will send each other packages of flyers to display and distribute. It’s kind of confusing when you don’t speak the language and see an ad for a bar that you’ve never heard of before, and find out its a thousand km away. Still, it’s only ever a thousand km away…!

Here’s a picture of the flyer that Andrew took, hanging up at a bar. I think this was in a washroom, so… uh. This photo could be worse? :)

Finally, here’s a very cool thing. This is a free-giveaway from Big Gym (mentioned above) of an illustration by Gengoroh Tagame. They did this neat thing last year, where every month they gave away a free calendar with an original illustration by a famous gay manga-ka. It encouraged people to come back at least once a month, and hey, free calendar!

Totally gonna steal that idea.

Alright, that’s everything I grabbed on the last trip. Hope you enjoyed, folks!

Best,

- Christopher

In observance of World AIDS day December 1st, I thought it might be appropriate (and fun!) to dig out some of the “souvenirs” of my last trip to Japan.

I’m a comics guy, and if I’m out at a bar and see an illustrated club advertisement, I’ll grab it. I like illustrations, and I particularly like Japan’s specific brand of hot-chubby-bear illustrators, and so I came home with a treasure-trove of cool flyers and booklets. Unfortunately, new cases of HIV and AIDS are seeing a dramatic upswing in Japan right now (and amongst gay men in particular), and a number of organizations are doing great work to make people aware of the disease, how to prevent it, and how to live with it if you become HIV positive. And one of the many ways they’re doing so is by enlisting a huge selection of amazing gay comics artists, in a variety of different ways.

First up you see this collection of 9 illustrations and an info card called, so far as I can tell, “FACE TO REAL”, put out by the folks at http://www.hiv-map.net/. This was actually available as a bagged set of ‘postcards’ at a bar I visited (it was actually a gift from the bartender, once he found out I liked comics…!), and it features some of my favourite comic artists doing original pieces of work, including Jiraya (top left) and Sansuke Yamada (top right). You can click on the image for a slightly bigger-view, but to see the images in all of their glory, I strongly recommend you head to the Real Living Together portal at http://www.real-lt.net/dekiru/ and click on the image in the center. You’ll see an interactive Flash index of all of the images, and each image features information about HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately it’s all Japanese text, but the images are great.

I think it’s kind of amazing that this thing was mass-produced as a collectable, available at distribution points like bars! What a wonderful idea.

This next image is of the outside and inside of a little flyer with just the most adorable illustrations on it. Click to see it larger. Again, it’s a cool flyer with basic HIV/AIDS info on it, as well as a QR code that you can scan with your phone to get more info.  Unfortunately I don’t have any idea who the illustrator is on this one, and I apologize for the quality of the scan. If you can believe it, all of those illustrations are even cuter on the original. :)

For more information (in Japanese) and to see more of these illustrations, head over http://hiv-map.net/.

This last one though? This is utterly amazing. This is an HIV/AIDS info guide, but also a fully illustrated safe-sex guide. Better still, they enlisted the artistic skills of renown gay/bear manga-ka Echigoya Shinnosuke to illustrate the whole thing! Unfortunately most of the interior illustrations take this blog from “Not Safe For Work” right into “Oh, he’s posting actual porn now” territory, so I’m gonna err on the side of caution and stay away for now. Which isn’t to say that an instructional image of a little cartoon man rolling a condom onto his erect little cartoon dick is porn. It’s not. But the images of the dudes fucking is, albeit highly relevant and entertaining! So, yeah, until enough of you cry foul and demand scans, I’m going to hold off posting for now.

Did you notice the hole-punches by the way? This booklet is 30 pages (including the covers), with detatchable pages, and it’s meant to be inserted into a day-planner! Just because you’re a workaholic salaryman dropping by the gay bar on your way home from work doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a bunch of illustrated guides to putting on a condom, safe anal intercourse, and std info at your fingertips…!

Also? Printed in 1999. There’s no website info in the contact information. Pre-web!

I couldn’t resist, that image was adorable.

This is just one of the ways that comics (manga) and illustrated art are a part of daily life in Japan, in a way that they wouldn’t be here in North America. There’s a push-and-pull between fans who think the streets are paved with manga, and been-there-done-that-fans who insist that anyone who still likes comics, even in Japan, is a big old ostracized nerd (otaku), but the reality is somewhere between those two extremes. Comics are everywhere, illustrations are everywhere, and incredibly popular at conveying information in a direct and fun way.

And they make for some pretty amazing souvenirs! (Don’t worry, I made sure there were plenty of pamphlets left and got permission from the bartenders first).

So remember to play-safe out there folks, whether you’re in Japan, North America, or anywhere else for that matter. And tomorrow I’m going to post some club advertisements that also use illustrations.

Cheers,

- Christopher

I’m still in Japan, and I’ve got a whole bunch of little posts on the fantastic beverages I’ve been consuming, but this one took the cake… the hotcake that is! Ha ha ha. This is Morinaga’s Pancake Drink, which I heard about this week and then spent several days searching for in various vending machines.

I found this particular vending machine in Ryogoku, in front of the JeansMate. I bought 5 cans.

As you can see, it has more or less the consistentcy of milk tea. That’s kind of how it drank as well.

How does it taste you ask?

Like a delicious drink of pancakes, butter, and syrup (table, not maple). It’s pretty fantastic. Admittedly, there is no chance of something like this coming to North America, but as far as cult-followings for Japanese snack goods go, I strongly suggest you get on the pancake-drink bandwagon immediately. :)

- Chris

- Chris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click for larger!

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

- Christopher

Last week the excellent Japanese Culture blog Pink Tentacle picked up on the story of illustrator Goji Ishihara, a Showa-period Japanese illustrator who is fondly remembered for his children’s book illustrations… depicting horrific monsters and violence! This illustration is from the aptly named “Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters” from 1972, and if you head over to Pink Tentacle you can see 15 other illustrations from that book and a bunch more. They’re great! He’s clearly an amazing illustrator.

He was also immediately recognizable to me as the illustrator of a lovely little chapbook of erotic illustrations that I picked up at Taco Che, the alternative comic/book store in Nakano Broadway. It’s called “Erotic Art of Gekko Hayashi a.k.a. Ishihara Gojin” and it turns out that it was actually published by Taco Che themselves, though in 2005 and is now sadly out of print.

The book is fabulous, focusing on primarily gay erotic works, with some S&M a general erotica thrown in for good measure. From what I can tell, the chapbook acted as a gallery catalogue for an exhibition of his work that the store threw back in 2005. You can still see the event page here.

Slightly Naughty! Click to enlarge.

Looking back at it now with a modern eye, you can see the dedication to the depiction of powerful, lithe, and sexy male forms in his kids illustration work that Pink Tentacle dug up, and it goes to show the sort of coded gay language that was a big part of mainstream culture through the 70s and early 80s.

Unfortunately there’s very little information on Hayashi in English anywhere on the net, so far as I can tell, so any speculation as to whether or not he identified as gay would be up in the air. EDIT: I just found this interview at ComiPress that has a great overview of his career (apparently he worked right up through his 70s, including doing gay work until the end of his career, (including some racy stuff!). He also, apparently has a son who is the administrator of his estate (Hayashi passed away in 1997) so… yeah. Gay is still kind of a sliding scale in Japan. :)

The other neat thing is that all of the images that Pink Tentacle ganked came grom a site called “Gojin Fech!” which seems to be a massive repository of his work online, which I can’t seem to navigate at all, Google Chrome/Translate are utterly choking on it. But maybe check it out for yourself, and see if it works out better for you: http://shun50.cool.ne.jp/gojin.htm

Anyway, if you like really attractive illustrations of the male form from 1970s Japan (and who doesn’t?), I highly recommend googling the names “Gekko Hayashi” and “Goji Ishihara”, because there are tons of other fabulous examples of his stuff online.

- Christopher

I’ve talked about it before, but one of the most disorienting things about Tokyo is when you move away from the major roads and into the side-streets. It’s also one of the neatest. In Tokyo (and much of Japan), addresses refer to the city block you’re in, not a road address you’re on, so you might be #24 in block #5 of the Chiyodo Ward, and you might be unit #708 of that address, and all that means is you’re in one of 24 non-sequential buildings somewhere in that block on the 7th floor (assuming they count the ground floor as the 1st). Basically, you need to know where you’re going, or call head to have someone from the place you’re going meet you at an easy-to-find intersection/landmark and walk you back to there (really).

Consequently, the roads within these blocks tend to be barely big enough for a Japanese Domestic-sized car (small) or a scooter, or someone walking around trying to avoid both of those things. It also means you get an intense and fantastic density of bars and restaurants, overlapping and right on top of each other, usually with a niche or theme to try and differentiate itself from its neighbours. So the top two pictures? Well, they’ve chosen the humble tanooki (large-testicled racoon) as their symbol… and really, it was hard to miss.

We were in the little area just outside of Nakano Broadway–the amazing nerd mall I wrote about in my first trip to Japan. We had finished shopping for the day around 5:30 or 6pm, and were walking back to the JR station when we decided to take a detour and see what this little area was all about. Because it was so early, most of the bars, restaurants, and izakaya (a combination of both) weren’t open yet. Above, the metal shutter-screen to the second floor bar “B-Prime Video Game Bar” was down, and their LED pixelboard was off. Next to it, a Moomin-themed establishment was also closed.

Here’s a closer look at the Moomin signage, if anyone wants to take a crack at translating I’d appreciate it…! :)

It’s not all Video Games and Comic Books though, sometimes you get an authentic nearly-30-year-old Honky-Tonk bar.

Anyway, this is just a sort of scratching-the-surface thing, and neat as they are I don’t think that this little collection is unique, in that these ‘rabbit-warrens’ of bars and restaurants were everywhere we visited in Tokyo, each one holding a hidden treasure or two. If I get to go back, I think I’m going to travel across Japan a little less and get to know some neighbourhoods a little more.

- Christopher

I was at the Korean grocery store in my neighbourhood and found these neat snacks based on the anime (and manga I guess) Crayon Shinchan, by the recently departed Usui Yoshito. The writing on the bag is in fact Korean, as it looks like these are snacks based on the cartoon which has been licensed all over the world.

In addition to pasted-on English language ingredients, the back of each bag features different funny little scenarios featuring Shin-chan and his family. The contents of each bag are exactly the same, but I guess if you were a kid in Korea getting a different design in your lunch every day might be cool.

The snacks themselves are pretty good. They’re very lightly sweetened crackers… A little bit of sesame and ‘burnt’, a little sugar and cinnamon. They taste like Asian snack food. :)

Action-Man!

- Chris

Most of the Random Japan posts here are about food, because (more often than not) food was a sort of in-between thing when I was travelling. My visits to Akihabara were punctuated by a stop for Ramen, a stop for McDonalds, and a stop for Curry, but none of those three things really has much to offer by way of commentary on Akihabara… at least so far as the contents of this blog are concerned. But they’re a fascinating glimpse into day-to-day life in Japan, so I documented as much of that stuff as I could.

Case in point: Lotteria. One of Japan’s big fast-food chains, coming up alongside McDonalds, and Mos Burger. Where McDonald’s is all about its brand, and Mos Burger is all about ‘freshness’, Lotteria seems to be all about making as many random burgers as possible. Lotteria is a cross between food manufacturer “Lotte” (they make lots of kinds of candies and snack foods amongst other things) and “cafeteria”, which is a delightfully Japanese mash-up. Case-in-point on the weirdness front btw, that to the right is a burger with two patties, a fried egg, and teriyaki sauce. It was delicious.

I really dug Lotteria, their particular brand of fast food was just this side of obscene (seriously, check out their website – anything with melted cheese on it looks like a heart attack). But one of their best menu items is also one of their simplest and most straightforward: The Lotteria Potato. The potato comes inside this cute, branded box, alongside a rather generous helping of sea-salt in a little packet.

This particular Lotteria Potato was purchased from inside Sapporo JR Station, at the last possible minute before I’d miss my train and be stuck in Sapporo for another 12 hours. You can see it alongside our drink-of-choice on the trip, Kirin Lemon Chi-hi.

Opening the box reveals the potato. So far as we can tell, it’s a whole potato that’s been par-boiled and then sliced. It is then deep-fried to order, resulting in a very crispy skin and as the potato blooms in the friar, crispy and delicious insides. It sort of fans out, and is attached at the bottom. It’s sort of like a blooming-onion, but less unhealthy.

The delicious sea salt is then sprinkled in-and-on the potato. If the Potato is fresh enough, the salt will adhere to the bits where there’s still cooking oil on the exterior. At this point the potato is really, really hot, btw. So despite the fact that it looks and smells delicious and the salt is melting on top of it, consuming it at this point will burn your mouth.

Instead, you just take arty pictures of the potato, waiting for it to cool, wondering how you’re ever going to get a blog post out of pictures of a potato. And yet, here we are.

Andrew estimates he had three of these in three weeks, I think it was closer to five. For those of you travelling to Japan, I heartily recommend the Lotteria Potato.

Actually, we just learned something. I had my friend Dave translate this for me, the menu item listing for the Lotteria Potato. Apparently, in the lower-left corner there, it lists additional sauces for your potato for a small extra charge. They are “butter” and “caramel sauce”. Seriously. So in closing, I guess I’d like to apologize to all of you for not being able to tell you what a salty fried potato with caramel dipping sauce tastes like, as I wasn’t able to read the signage at the time. Should I have occasion to return to Japan, I promise you a full run-down.

- Chris

Spotted at ‘Plaza’  in Harajuku, July 2009. Ladies Briefs featuring Spider-Man. If you are a nerd who gets a lady to wear these for you, you are a lucky nerd indeed…!

- Chris

We got to Odaiba a little later than I wanted, and ended up missing a chance to see the lit-up Gundam do its whole thing. It had been powered-down for the night, but was still impressive. What was maybe more memorable was the view back across the bay to Tokyo.

- Chris

Love Star.

Sapporo.

Mos Burger X Mr. Donut. L to R: Donut Holes (asst), Chocolate “Cheese Burgers”, Mango Pudding, Fried Dough with Raspberry “Ketchup”.

Convenience Store Sandwiches on white bread. Default flavour is peanut butter, but these are special. Top: Strawberries and Whipped Cream Sandwich. Bottom: Caramel Pudding Sandwich.

Birthday Cake… thing. Thanks Dave!

Harajuku

Delicious.

- Chris

From a store just outside Harajuku JR Station, comes these socks. Mickey Mouse as Spider-Man, from July 2009… months before the announcement of the Disney/Marvel deal. Completely unlicensed, entirely prescient.

From my post on Harajuku, which I am working on at the moment.

- Chris

But I guess the photos will have to do.

Worth noting: The bananas were actually pretty good!

- Christopher

Kirin Lemon Strong, 8% alcohol. It’s terrible. Like lemon-flavoured paint thinner. Bought on my first night in Tokyo. This is Chuhai, a sort of only-in-Japan wine-cooler type beverage made with Shochu, which is distilled from Rice, Barley, or Potatoes depending… Chuhai comes from “Shochu Highball”, which is basically a mixed drink made with Shochu. I really dig these chuhai beverages, but this one with the amped up alcohol and chemical lemon taste? No good.

White-Grape flavoured soda at Mos Burger. Really tasty!

“Organic Orange Juice” J-BIO. Tasted awful, like under-ripe oranges. Sitting next to a piece of cheese-twisty-bread. What is the most prominent flavour in the cheese-twisty-bread? If you answered “wasabi/hot mustard”, you’d be correct. Worst breakfast.

Later in the trip, on the way to Sapporo actually, Andrew woke up in the morning and had a regular-strength Kirin lemon chuhai. This was our go-to beverage for the trip, and it treated us very well. Refreshing, with a hint of tipsy.

Asahi Presents: Fruits Party Chuhai! Tastes like muscat (green grapes). Next to it is “Gyoza Flavoured Hokkaido Potato Chips.” Behind it evidence of the more than 20 hours of work I did on Beguiling stuff while on vacation for three weeks.

This is a drinks case in the far corner of the food bazaar underneath Sapporo JR Station. This is the only place in Japan I saw A&W root beer!

This drink case is in the 7-11 attached to the Post Office near Sapporo JR station. In the center near the bottom, you can see two bottles of Rei Ayanami-branded Cafe Latte, clearly the best-selling drink of the day.

Nother shot of the cold UCC Cafe Latte with sexy Rei on it. These are all cold coffees, usually with milk in them. Milk and preservatives.

This was in Kyoto. We ended up staying in a budget hotel right near the manga museum, with lots of residences (and hotels) around. Just north of our hotel was this little scene, 2 vending machines in the outer lobby of an apartment building, with another across the street. Lighthouses that dot the city, guiding thirsty travelers through the urban seas.

Only 100 yen! Deal!

After walking under the blazing sun in Shirahama on Izu for basically three kilometres with no breakfast, I managed to convince my husband that we needed to eat. My increasingly cranky mood may have tipped the scales. We ended up going to the first restaurant we saw, which happened to be a Nagisa beer-themed restaurant, with western meals and really great beer, all-natural, totally unlike the Japanese beers we’d been drinking. Andrew had a pizza for lunch, I had pasta alfredo. It was just us, two sweaty white guys, and tons of Japanese house-wives, all getting lunch. My mood improved considerably after lunch, and I heartily recommend Nagisa Beer.

Our at a proper supermarket in Shirahama, with tons and tons of drinks. Awesome.  Not more selection, but definitely an impressive display! Let’s go in for a closer look.

I bought this Collagen Water, because I heard that it was a thing but I had never seen it on store shelves in Canada. It’s a little like drinking watery lube, with a hint of lemon. So no, I do not recommend it.

In Japan the word “diet” refers to Japanese parliament, and not eating specific kinds of food. So there is no ‘diet coke’ for the most part. They’ve got Coke Zero, which is still Coke Zero, but Diet Coke is called a bunch of different stuff. Currently, it’s No Calorie Coca-Cola Plus! This was a limited edition Coca Cola Plus, with added green tea flavouring. It tasted nothing like green tea, but for a diet coke addict in a country without diet coke… It was basically methadone for my heroin problem.

This is the awesomest canned coffee, BOSS COFFEE RAINBOW. So far as I can tell it tastes like all of the other canned coffees, but it is called BOSS and it has that dude on it, and also a rainbow.

Asahi Cocktail Partner! Made with real fruit juice, and perhaps Vodka! I think vodka rather than chuhai in this one? We tried one, I couldn’t really tell the difference.

The only place in Japan that you CAN get Diet Coke (okay, so I fibbed earlier), is Mickey Ds. While this is basically the size of a Large Coke in North America, in Japan it’s such a freakish size that it comes in a one-piece, sealed container for easy transport back to your home, because you’re clearly not drinking it while out. Japan!

- Chris

According to the just-discovered MustLoveJapan website (thanks @DebAoki!), Himeji Castle will be closing for repairs and upgrades beginning April 2010, until sometime in 2015.

If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you might remember that in the midst of my Otaku-fueled first Japan travelogue in 2007, I took a short break to post 20 Photos of Himeji, a town I really liked. Himeji is a medium-sized town, and very pedestrian-friendly, it’s on a grid and the whole thing seems designed to give you the best-possible view of the castle.

If any of my photos inspired you to visit Japan (or visit places within Japan) you may want to move quickly to see this attraction, before it’s off limits for the next half-decade…!

- Chris

Book-Off in Kyoto. Frighteningly cheap books.

Casa Magazine Cover in an Osaka Bookstore. Featuring a lovely little colour Moomin illustration.

Osaka Bookstore– 21 prints magazine with a cover by and feature on Moyocco Anno.

Same bookstore. It’s another history book by Hideo Azuma, author of Disappearance Diary. Lots more to be released by this fascinating creator.

A brand-new 2-volume best-of of Oishinbo, focussing on Shiro and Yuzan. MAVERICK! TYCOON!

Tripped over the Japanese-language reprints of Moomin whilst there. Lovely, small little hardcovers. Let’s have a peak:

It’s a little funny to see the Moomin’s speaking Japanese… especially type-set Japanese.

Another classic of comics literature… kept in the kids-book section rather than with the manga or comics.

Videogame strategy guides and artbooks. I spent a bit of money here.

I have no interest in Monster Hunter, but the art in this was lovely. 2 hardcovers in one package.

Monster Hunter is really popular in Japan.

I’ve got another big post in me on the manga sections of bookstores, for you bookstore fans. No worries.

- Christopher

That’s a huge fucking cell-phone strap, let me tell you.

- Chris

We ate really well in Japan, and savoured tons of local delicacies, a range of fusion cuisines from China, India, Pakistan, and Korea, melding with Japanese food. But we also ate at McDonalds a few times, because when you’re eating unfamiliar food night-and-day for three weeks, it’s nice to know that McDonalds in Japan tastes exactly like McDonalds everywhere else in the world. My husband is a baco-tarian, which is to say a vegetarian who cannot resist bacon, which is to say a bad vegetarian, so when it came to a quick, familiar snack wherever we were (literally wherever), we dropped in for The McDonalds Bacon Potato Pie.

It is potatoes and little tiny bits of bacon, deep-fried in a McDonalds apple-pie crust. It is delicious in the most horrifying possible way–kind of like a portable scalloped potato, but with more bacon and cheese. And deep-fried. It is also mostly-vegetarian, which is a difficult thing to find without lots of prior research when wandering around Tokyo, let alone the parts of Japan that get far fewer foreign visitors.

For the bargain price of 120yen, I heartily recommend you try your own while there. Maybe pair it up with an Ebi McBurger (kind of a fillet-o-fish made of baby shrimp) or a McPork.

- Christopher

One of the most interesting posts I’ve read in the last little while comes from TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama (writing at BoingBoing), called “Why It’s Time To Lighten Up About Weird Japan.” In the article Katayama talks about her experiences writing about the bizarre and fascinating aspects of Japan, for money, and the friction that can cause. It’s a good blog post, and Katayama’s a controversial figure in otaku circles precisely because of the articles she’s written.

It made me consider things like my Japan posts, which I’ve become known for, and which inspire and delight people. For example, this post is about a fried chicken lunch box you buy at a train station, which I could describe in a pretty boring way. Or I could say: Chicken Bentou! It’s a fried chicken bentou box! And delicious! Check this out:

On the right we have fried chicken (karage–kah-rah-gay) and a little serving of potato salad. On the left, we’ve got chicken-flavoured fried rice… and…

The fried rice has crumbled-fried-egg topping! Chicken and egg in the same dish! And peas! Seriously, a decent meal on a train-station platform for a whopping $8. Japanese cuisine isn’t just fish and rice (tho there’s lots of fish and rice), and despite sensationalist writings to the contrary westerners can eat familiar food should they desire, while visiting Japan. and they make a good piece of fried-chicken, lemmie tell ya.

It’s a fascinating juxtaposition on the surface, a traditional Japanese food preparation like a bento-box, instead filled with fairly “western’  ingredients like fried chicken and potato salad… and rice. :). The humour and the interest comes from the east-meets-west friction, and then having it turned back on itself. I don’t think a post like this would dip into the category of “look at the freakshow!”, and going back over my posts even something like Namjatown is presented fairly neutrally, because quite honestly, that place is fucking crazy. Anything I’ve posted about my trip to Japan has been, to my mind, positive, while reveling in the culture and the (quite frankly) alienness that you occasionally feel while immersed in it.

I get what Katayama is saying and I’d like to think I stay on just this side of carnival barker when talking about Japan. Even the random, unexplainable and fascinating and wonderful stuff that I try to pin down and explain and enjoy. Like Chicken Bentou. Here’s hoping that as I wrap-up my 2009 trip this week and continue posting Random Japan installments for the months to come, people continue to appreciate them as a peek into another culture, and not a peek under a circus tent. And if I err, here’s hoping that I don’t incur even a tenth the shit that Katayama’s had to suffer for doing the same coverage…!

- Chris

So one of the things that absolutely blew me away is that, for a dollar, you can buy a cup of ice cubes at most combini (convenience stores) located in/near train stations. You buy a cup of ice because maybe you bought a beer earlier in your train trip, and now it’s warm, and you want to drink the beer so you pour it into the cup of ice.

It is goddamned genius.

This woman doing just that at 10am on a Saturday reminded us that our puritanical bullshit about drinking was thousands of kilometres away, and so we bought a few beers from the vending machine on the train and joined her in having an ice-cold beer for breakfast. Life was very good indeed.

- Christopher

One of the things that really took me back in Japan? The alcohol culture in general is a hell of a lot more enlightened than it is in North America. We’ve all heard the stories about drunken salarymen making a mess of the streets of Tokyo, but I’ll take that over the wierd puritan love/hate relationship we have with alcohol here any day…

To that end, if you happen to wanna drop in to the local KFC for dinner, why not pick yourself up a nice big not-quite-a-pint of Kirin Beer? Beer: It really does go great with Fried Chicken.

(I couldn’t find any hint of this at the KFC site, which leads me to believe this is a more ground-level production… Or they want to keep it under the radar for some reason!)

- Christopher
Not everything I wanna say about Japan will be in 30-photo chunks… enjoy!