Milestone: 15 Months

It's time for a Milestone! You can compare to my other milestones by clicking on the Milestone label.

Month 15: Summary

Status:

Job: Children's Fitness Teacher
Financial status:  Good

Location:


City: Tokyo
Ward: Chuo-ku
Train station: Kayabacho
Residing in: My apartment, Hermit Fortress


Cast of Characters:


Major Characters:
Ken "Goblin" Tanaka
Aala "Kusoyaro" Kansali of Tunisia
Lo, Jean-Paul the French Laotian
Millo, Julian of France

Minor Characters:
Nana Takeuchi, once my boss
Erika Mochizuki (and Maxine!)
Fumi, the ex-hostess
Etsumi (It's-Me) Sugeno
Lisa Fukumoto Fang
Kuniaki "Forest" Mori

Retired Characters:

Sofie Monrad of Denmark
Julian "Shank" Einschenk of Germany
Anton "Foxboy" Jermaine of England

Rodrigue Zapha of France

Clement Sanchez of France


Top Five Highlights:
(since last time)

- Nichitsu, both in Day and Night
- The Santa Hat Operation
- What I Ate in Fukuoka
- Ninjamura
- Golden Gai


Still to Come:

- Nikko
- Robot Restaurant
- Studio Ghibli Museum
- The Festival of the Phallus
- Walking to Yokohama

Minatomirai

Let's hop out of Tokyo for a brief trip.
 Truth be told, in the 15-some months since my arrival in Japan, I've neglected, maybe forgotten, the fact that the second largest city in the whole country (the first, of course, being the gigantomegalopolis that is Tokyo, where I reside,) is actually in walking proximity to the capital (by my standards). That city in question is Yokohama - the satellite port city that is so close to its neighbor that the national census counts it as being part of the Greater Tokyo Area.
 Only once have I actually taken somewhat of a look at Yokohama, despite working there twice a month or so, and that was during my brief and incomplete visit of Chinatown with Lisa (who's doing great by the way. She was in Africa last I checked.)
  Today, let's take a look at the port Yokohama is based around, and the area that came to be known today as Minatomirai - Port Future.

 Minatomirai is a rapidly booming economic and touristic area that is held as one of Yokohama's most important areas in terms of modernization and expansion. Its picture perfect skyline features indiscriminately in all of the city's guidebooks, at the center of which is Landmark Tower, Japan's tallest skyscraper, containing 48 floors of shops, restaurants and offices, and 21 floors of hotel. Floating nearby are the three towers that border the Queen's Square shopping complex, which also contains one of the branches of my workplace. (How three buildings can make a square is another miracle of Minatomirai I have yet to solve.) Adding to the skyline is the signature Ferris wheel that is Cosmo 21 (once the world's largest.) That aside, its almost eery how flawlessly well-kept Minatomirai is. No trace of refuse or litter or even of fallen leaves can be found littering the ground.

The Red Brick Warehouse and Ken

 Besides the port and the enormous shopping centers, Minatomirai is distinguished by its proximity to the aforementioned Chinatown, the streamlined Yamashita park and the interesting Red Brick Warehouses, two former seaside warehouses that have been restructured into a show-hall/museum and shopping arcade respectively. Their antiquated look dates from very early 20th century, and each has survived earthquakes and World War II bombings alike.

So if you're ever in the area, check out Minatomirai. It's genuinely nice and hard to dislike.

A Tribute to J-Horror

I recently made the purchase of a 50 inch television that dwarfs my room like some kind of gigantic looming overlord. It's amazing. And so I took this opportunity to invite a few friends over who were unfamiliar with Japanese horror cinema and expose them to it.
 I've long time been a fan of Asian horror myself, and Japanese horror in particular. Unlike its American counterpart, J-Horror has a way of creeping up on you eerily instead of outright bursting out of the shadows in an attempt to go for pure shock reaction. It opts to show you disturbing images rather than brutal, violent ones, and is altogether more subtle.
 Last night had us watching the following movies - personal favorites and great examples of J-Horror, each and everyone of them, for different reasons. Here are my top J-Horror movies.

They move slowly, their faces shadowed or distorted.

PULSE / KAIRO
 Rather than outright scary, Kairo is eery, sinister, with an underlying message bleaker than any other horror movie. The plot has several layers of depths to decode but is generous enough to provide the tools to do so.
On the surface, Kairo is a movie about ghosts reaching out to people through the internet, causing a series of sudden disappearances and suicides, and forcing the main characters not to find a solution and end the crisis, but to migrate towards one another in an attempt to find comfort in an increasingly hopeless situation. Once again, Kairo intends not to feed the viewer nightmares, but to slowly unsettle through sound and slow, deliberate camerawork that maintains a sense of mystery and queasiness throughout the movie. This movie spawned a horrible American remake.

In the darkness even of your blankets.

JU-ON: THE GRUDGE
 I first saw the American version of Ju-On when I was 12, and remember it giving me such horrible, livid nightmares and nyctophobia. No other movie had scared me since. The original Ju-On, which shares the same director, tells the story in a much more interesting manner than its counterpart, and hits the viewer with a vehement onslaught of disturbing images and sounds, with the overlaying theme being that of a curse that destroys any entity that enters a house haunted by the violent murder of a woman and child. Ju-On is merciless particularly to people who hold within them even a grain of belief in superstition.

AUDITION

The turning point.

 Audition is an interesting take on the slasher-horror genre. It's a fascinating movie split at the center into two halves: a romantic comedy and a horror movie, producing a unique and memorable tango between the two. It follows the story of a man who hopes to find the ideal woman by setting up an audition with the goal of meeting she who can play his soul mate the best. Instead, though, he makes the acquaintance of a faceless actress shrouded in more secrets than he can imagine. Audition is not a movie for the faint of heart, and is notorious for its sudden steep descent into brutality and sickening imagery.

NOROI: THE CURSE
Noroi was the only one of the four movies I hadn't previously seen, and what a startling discovery it was. The movie presents itself as a documentary, with all actors keeping their true names, and follows a paranormal journalist in his quest to find the link between a missing child, an alleged ghost, a string of deaths and a woman from whose house can be heard the crying of multiple babies. The resulting movie slowly feeds the viewer bits and pieces of an even more disturbing truth underlying the already uneasy facts. Noroi is the best found-footage horror film I've ever seen to date. 

Honorable Mentions:

RINGU (The Ring) is a slow-creeping mystery/ghost movie with an exquisitely disturbing ending and a very loyal American remake.
DARK WATER is also a ghost movie about a mother and her struggle to keep a ghost at bay from her daughter. Spawned a crappy American remake.
CHAKUSHIN ARI (One Missed Call) is another ghost mystery about students receiving a call (from their own phone numbers) forewarning them about their own deaths. Spawned a horrible American remake.

Anecdote: It Snowed in Tokyo

Workmates and I

Today we got heavy snow. If my memory serves me right, we only had three such days last year.
 Tokyo ain't properly equipped to handle heavy snowfall, so it kind of just piles up everywhere and ruins it for the working man. Train lines stop and the streets bloat up with traffic. Boo.
 In one class, only one kid out of ten showed up and pooped himself and left the class early. It was awkward in an interesting way.

Golden Gai

Squint.
 That's a picture of me standing in one of the dimly-lit, run-down streets of Shinjuku Golden Gai, one of the last remaining vestiges of Japan before the economic boom that made it one of the modern day world leaders. The streets of Tokyo have since been torn down and redone and modernized, and yet Golden Gai still stands.
 What remains of Golden Gai today is a fascinating cluster of 200 bars, packed shoulder to shoulder and facing each other, separated only by narrow streets where two people could sparsely stand side-by-side. Some of these bars have stood their ground for over fifty years, run by the same owners.
　So narrow and cramped are these buildings that some of them can only fit five customers at a time, while others resort to having absolutely everyone standing.
Ken and Millo and I decided to have a look. Let us squeeze into a bar the size of a bathroom!

Well, it's kind of hard to choose. Many of the bars in Golden Gai have interesting themes to get you started, such as anime or horse-racing. I was partial to a Troll doll themed one run by a cute girl, but we didn't go in, since the cover charge was 1000¥ before even the cost of a drink.

You heard right. Despite Golden Gai being cramped and old and crappy for the most part, it does have a huge amount of frequenters. Places can afford to demand ridiculous cover charges.
 The place we did find, however, had neither the coolest theme nor the smallest interior. We chose the bar named simply, "Lonely," a decision based on the name, lack of cover charge, and the smile of the owner as we approached. It wasn't long after we sat down that the owner of the bar got talking about the story of his shop.
It's rare you encounter a bar that sobers you.
The short version is that, Mr Lonely, as the patrons of the bar call him, opened shop some 46 years ago, at the age of 19. The girl he was in love with then, who he had known since elementary school, soon contracted cancer and died without Mr Lonely having ever professed his love to her.

Mr Lonely, myself, and Millo.

To this day, every day, Mr Lonely burns incense and prays that he may see her in his dreams so that he may only remember her face - something that has not happened once in the last 40 years.
 Yeah, that's kind of heavy.
At any rate, Lonely is now doing quite good for itself, having been featured in the novelization of a popular manga comic book. It draws in a few wandering readers who wonder if the place actually exists (and who must be quite delighted upon finding out that it does.)

 

Enter the Photographer

One of Aala's recent events had me making the acquaintance of the Frenchman photographer, Julien Millo, who I will refer to as Millo on this blog in order to avoid any confusion with any past and future Juliens.
 Millo intends to stay in Japan for another five years or so, but most importantly he has that craving for adventure that makes him likely to be featured on this blog from time to time, and we've already made a few plans for future endeavors.

Oh, if any of you are wondering, that's a picture of him being jabbed in the crotch with a children's school book by Master Kagaya during his first visit ever to the bar.

 

It's About That Time Again

This picture unrelated.

Hey, You!
 Yeah, you, reader!

 Just about last year, I threw up an invitation to all my readers to design a logo for this blog. Actually, my readership is quite poor, as this blog was mostly made for friends and family to keep up with my antics, and I imagine most of my friends on the North American side have kind of forgotten about it any way.

 But if there are still precious readers who graduated from Illustration & Design, I'd like to throw the same proposition again!


I've no expectations. At all.




Does anyone want to design a banner for this blog?


There'll be no winners or losers. I'll rotate the banners every week.
The rules are simple:
 - It has to say "Sean the Alien" on it, somewhere.
 - It has to relate in some way. That doesn't mean I have to be on it. It could. Or it could be something to do with Japan, or an alien, or whatever. Nothing totally unrelated like a picture of Nicholas Cage or some shit.
 - It can't be too nutty. And by that, I mean, nothing offensive.

That's about it. Put a little effort in it, please!

THERE WILL BE PRIZES for those of you who send a banner in before February. Like, I will literally buy you something cool (but inexpensive) from Japan. And it will be different for each of you. Isn't that exciting?  You don't know what you'll get.
 Regardless of if you send it before February or not, I will be displaying all banners though.

Interesting Tidbits: A Lesson on Diet

If I look this happy it's got to be deliberate.

Hey, don't judge. There's lots you can learn in a children's science museum. Ken and I mostly went in here for shits and giggles. You can get in for free, since this place is government funded so that Japanese children don't end up fat and stupid. Well done, Japan. A certain few other countries could profit from such initiative.
 For the most part, the museum in Fukuoka is dedicated to health and to simple sciences, but what I wanted to share was what I thought was relevant to Japanese culture.

 I thought this was pretty neat: the place has a cafeteria where all the food is made of plastic. Basically, you grab a tray, put a bunch of food on it that you would likely get, and head to one of the dedicated computers. There, it tells you about your meal: if it had an excessive amount of calories for your size and age, if it was well balanced, contained the appropriate amount of meat, vegetables, and so on. Here, let's try!

Shit, at least I was being honest.

 Uh-oh. "Well, see, Sean," this computer tells me, "your shitty choice of food is too rich in meat and is terribly fattening." With that kind of result, it's a surprise I haven't gained a kilo since arriving here. Well, it's a good thing I spend so much time jumping around both inside of work and out.

Oh my God, no soft drink?

See, Ken's meal has a bunch more items on it, but is actually very typically Japanese. It looks like something you'd get out of a teishyoku (set meal) in a Japanese restaurant. And the results actually show that this kind of meal is actually conducive to losing weight.
 If you take a good look around you while standing in any crowded place in Japan, you notice a considerable difference in terms of the number of overweight people. There's approximately five times less obesity here that in Canada. Eureka! Could it be possible that burning more calories than you eat might make you lose weight? Shiiiit.

Kyushu Flavors

As I've mentioned in a previous post, the Kyushu region of Japan, Fukuoka being no exception, has a food culture that is in a few ways different than that of Tokyo, despite both being built upon the same crucible that makes Japanese food identifiable for what it is. Here are five notable things I ate in Kyushu, with the fifth being the glorious highlight. Of course, if the pictures are too small, keep in mind you can click to make the whole thing bigger.

Taiyaki
 Taiyaki literally means "baked sea bream," but it's not quite that. It's actually simply regular waffle batter cooked into a fish shape. The inside is filled with one of a variety of pastes, most commonly red bean paste. This shop claimed to have the best Taiyaki in Japan. It was...quite okay. I guess.


Seafood Barbeque 
 Fukuoka in particular has great access to seafood, allowing places like this one to make a killing in terms of profit. Hell, they don't even need to hire cooks, you just put the damn food on the grill yourself and light that shit up. They do offer lots when it comes to different types of seafood, though, and the prices are very affordable when it comes to shellfish.


Sushi
 Of course a surplus in seafood also means abundant access to affordable yet delicious sushi. Ken himself claims that Tokyo's quality in sushi (except for the ludicrously expensive places) doesn't compare at all to that of Fukuoka. Though I'm no expert in sushi, I can say that the one place I did eat sushi in in Fukuoka was quite nice indeed.


 Ramen
 Each of Japan's prefectures has its different take on the classic meal. Fukuoka's Hakata ramen has a particularly rich and flavorful pork soup, counterbalanced by very thin noodles. It's probably my favorite kind of ramen, and although you can find it in Tokyo, it's nowhere near as rich as that of its progenitor. 


And, alright, here's the kicker. This really ain't for the faint of heart. Click on the video to play.

Live Sashimi (Iketzukuri)

 So basically, they gut this horse mackerel live and cut it into pieces. The fish's vital organs are left intact, so it's effectively served alive, taking some seven or so minutes before fully dying. 

 It's...somewhat interesting seeing your meal stare back at you as you're eating a piece of it, but I guess fish have no feelings to begin with. Live sashimi is really something that can't be done very far from a coastal area, so Fukuoka's teaming with places where this is available. If you've ever had sashimi...well...this is the same damn thing, except, well, alive.

Mr Tanaka's Fishing Hour

Happy New Year, folks. I'm actually back in Tokyo, but I do have lots to share about what I've done during my trip down in the Kyushu area. There'll probably be a small burst of posts within a short amount of time, so heads up!

Mr Tanaka and I.

If I've learned one thing about Ken's father, Mr Tanaka, in the past week, it's that he's pretty passionate when it comes to fishing. The guy's got a whole room serving as a dedicated "fishing closet" and fishing poles tied to the top of his car. "Take us with you some time," Ken had offered one day, and he took us up on that and brought us along.
 "We're going minnow fishing. It's not difficult, nor is it easy, so it's just the right level for you guys," he had said as we were driving.
Mr Tanaka then explained to me how, although it isn't common practice to fish for such small species in America, it is relatively common practice in Japan. Of course, the way to do it is very different, requiring adapted bait and equipment.
He then brought us to what appeared to be a ditch on the side of the road. The weather was colder than what I had come to expect, and it wasn't long before my hands were shaking and red.

"That looks like the bait," you would say.

"This is how you can see if you're a true ninja," Mr Tanaka said, beaming. "A real ninja can resist the cold for a very long time." He laughed as he cast. Holding that thought into consideration, Mr Tanaka is probably a much better ninja than I.
 It was only thirty-five or so minutes in that I heard him excitedly shout "bite! Pull it out!" I didn't even notice at all. See, when a minnow takes your bait, you don't really get very strong feedback. But he had noticed the tiny ripple around my bobber.
 Sure as hell, I pulled my line out and had a minnow.
 "It's a miracle!" Tanaka beamed. "You are a true ninja!"
 Mr Tanaka, within the next thirty or so minutes, then proceeded to catch four of them himself. We returned home and put them inside a small fish tank. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I became a True Ninja, capital letters and all, complete with running nose and frozen hands.