Entries categorized as ‘Japanorama’
I think I am finally getting over the jet lag. Asmuch as I loved Lost In Translation, jet-lag in Japan isn’t always always full of gossamer-lovely longing. Sometimes it’s just plain knackering and involves a feeling like your head is full of silt that can come on at very random moments.
I’m here in Japan with my fiancee, and staying at her family’s house in Tokyo, which is a thirty minute train ride from Shibuya station. Shibuya is the place with the famous multi-way pedestrian crossing that you’ve probably seen a picture of at some point. Tokyo is one of the most densely populated places on earth, but you don’t really feel it until you’ve seen something like the Shibuya crossing in motion. In many countries, having that many people lining up, ready and raring to go would feel threatening – but in Shibuya there’s a controlled feeling to what happens, and sometimes, when you cross, despite being surroundd by people, you can feel quite alone – because everyone is in their own bubble… As my finacee says, the only way a station and area as crowded as Shibuya can work is that everyone knows exactly where they’re supposed to go, and when (see these before and after pictures at the bottom)…. The sociological view that Japan is a society that values (and demands?) conformity to the group might sound like a bad thing to individual Western ears, but as soon as you come to Tokyo, you get many sliver-insights into why it’s pretty much true, and also why people put up with it…
Good things are happening in the blog-o-sphere too: Boing Boing has
linked to my Sedlec photos, which is brilliant – it’s nice to have
contributed a little to such a good site as theirs.
original
Categories: Japanorama
My trip to Tokyo has begun. Still slightly in the grip of jet lag, so am only going to post a couple of photos – anything longer would almost certainly not make sense… Click on the images for larger versions.
Categories: Japanorama
This year, I will be spending Christmas in Tokyo. Which is a little worrying.
Preparations for this, although they haven’t included learning "We Three Kings" in Japanese, have been hurried, many and varied, and I’ve also been busy working loads on upcoming issues of Custom PC so I have left the blog unattended for a bit.
Surprisingly, given it’s December, I’ve got quite a lot of t-shirt updates to do. The lovely worried image above is from a t-shirt design by Anko – appropriately enough an Anglo/Japanese company, which I picked up from Jean Snow’s blog.
Categories: Japanorama · T-Shirts
My Japanese might be bad, but it’s probably going to be good enough soon to get me a job translating video games. All together: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US! Some great of Engrish/Japlish to be found here.
Pic: Engrish.com
Categories: Ephemera and links · Games · Japanorama
No-one does monsters like the Japanese (Godzilla, Hello Kitty etc.) so it’s no surprise that Japanese folk-lore is full of creatures who could give the Bros. Grimm pantheon a good beating (now there’s an idea for a Streetfighter-style videogame…)
Anyway, Neo Kaiju is a project that sees American designers re-making traditional Japanese monsters as collectible toys-cum-pop art. They’re in the same vain as the sort-of popular Qees (explanatory link), and they look just as cool – more than they first appear, tiny and intriguing, like little optical illusions. Plus the monster below reminds me of one of the disguises Hannibal from the A-Team used (the one in the pilot ep that was used in the opening credits). PlayLounge, which is just off the recently redeveloped Carnaby Street complex, sells a lot of this kind of stuff, and makes for an eye-opening visit, if you’re in London… [via Boing Boing]
Pic: Neokaiju.com
Categories: Ephemera and links · Japanorama
Now that I am older and wiser, I have seen anime like Laputa and Spirited Away and realised that don’t giant robots from the future are not integral to Japanese animation (technically, Laputa does have
robots, but they’re sort of organic and…) Still, it was Ghost In The Shell that got me hooked on anime in the first place, and there’s still few things on celluloid quite as enjoyable as giant Japanese-drawn robots stylishly blowing things up. Terratag has some fantastic anime-inspired t-shirts, which combine, in their words, "ultimate machines and typographic force." Great gallery of concept art too.
Categories: Japanorama · T-Shirts
