Dango tune and China descrimination

Two things:

my buddy Fumiko left a comment about the "Dango" that i tried yesterday (pictured below) watch the youtube video if you're a Dango/ricecake/flamenco/animation/Japanese lover. You won't be sorry

she said this:

"Jason,
Dango is 3 or more small rice cake balls on the stick.
Check this out! It was the famous song for dango!"



Item 2: a random forgotten memory from China: when i was walking down the street in Guilin in southern China i saw this middle eastern looking guy walking down the street seemingly minding his own business. then i see a chinese police officer yelling at him to stop and the guy does, and then the officer walks over and forces him down on his knees and his hitting him with his night stick. not super bone breaking hard but still enough to be insulting. I am assuming that this racial profiling is because, like it or not, most shady looking foreigners in China are shading looking for a reason: because they are! And are involved in drug dealing, counterfitting, and all that good stuff. Anyway it is surprising to see such blatant racial targeting combined with police violence in broad daylight in this little city of 3 million people in southern china. One of the advantages of looking asian. I still high tailed it out of there though.

Yurakucho Bike Ride

hung out with one of vivi's high school friends, katsuya. He loves heavy metal and is a drummer, slayer is his fav. here he is shopping for double kickdrum pedals.

he says with these he can do 16 bass drum hits in 1 second, you just wail away on these things with both feet

in front of A-Life, a club in roppongi

such a place does exist in tokyo, its just at the top of a hill i never want to climb again on a bike

maybe the part of the imperial moat wall

I had goals on this sunday:

1. ride bike and see the city - success

2. peruse the Odeo antique fair that supposedly has tons of cool old crap - fail - because by my luck it happened to not be this 1st sunday like it says it is, it was just a regular crappy market

3. give Ai these g-damn mooncakes i've been holding on to for so long - fail - because she was sleeping

4. see the parade floats in the Marunochi building - success

5. eat noodles at the Hibiya Patio "matsuri" - fail - because you have to wait in line for so long.

Bonus points though for getting to try dango and getting lost a lot and learning the city a lil more

something dango, rice cakes with something on them. delicious

more rice cakes, i guess these are mochi, i dont know what dango is but i will find out

i dont know why they dress up the Marunochi employees as red barret special forces members

so this was called the Chiyoda Edo Matsuri. I don't know why they call it a matsuri, it was not a festival at all, it was a display in the huge Marunochi building. I am gonna start slappin' matsuri on the end of everything i do so it makes it sound awesome. I'm gonna go participate in my own personal laundry matsuri right now.

these are all parade floats from different areas of japan. i am really feelin' this archer and archery and stuff in general, i think its gonna make an appearance in one of my illos.

i have seen this kind a lot, wonder what the deal is

look at this monstrosity, i would cry if i had to make this. it would be my lifes work

"london" party bus

do they mean the sweet sweet, green perfectly maintained grass that you're not allowed to step on? because i dont remember seeing any shelters. and they would all be filled with homeless people, which i saw lots of laying on that sweet sweet grass. Anyway what a poetic map

this crow was pretty ballsy. i have to study them more cuz im gonna use them in an illo.

im a fan of this color yellow. nice one guy keep up the good work. seconds later around the corner i saw another girl wearing the same ones. -1 point

the old store in a shipping container trick

this was the "grand tsukemen matsuri". see what i mean about using the word festival for everything? i guess you could call this a festival if you really stretch it, basically they were selling different kinds of noodles from all over japan. I have noticed that japanese people will wait in line for something for a long time if its something good. like 2 hrs for crispy creme doughnuts. i bet these noodles were good too but i said F it i am not waiting for that. there were different lines for diff noodles.

something unique to japan/asia, tables upon tables of people eating nothing but noodles. I guess i would be equally amused it if were tables upon tables of people eating hot dogs at some hot dog matsuri.

Meiji Jingu Shrine Autumn Grand Festival Day 2

I woke up early to go see Aikido and other martial arts demonstrations at 9 am and Horseback archery in the afternoon.

small girl or woman flipping two dudes.

there were tons more martial artists than wat is shown here warming up and wandering about.

i like the guy with the white beard and vest.

saw the horse back archery practice. Its called Yabusame. they ride by and shoot at three targets total.

was pretty cool to see, and feel the ground rumble as the horses run by. you can feel the raw power. getting chased down by one of these guys in the old days must have been terrifying.

the bows followed by a box of arrows

older woman fighting a guy.

guy with sickles

i must say i was really dissapointed in all the demonstrations. They were very safe, they were either no contact or very light contact. i mean like guys getting flipped over and people not even touching them, i guess just flipping over by themselves to show what could happen. but i want to see the real deal! almost all the demonstrations were btwn old guys. i only saw a few younger guys doing their thing.

i saw people waiting out side this tent later on and the tent was closed off. maybe they were waiting for it to open up for a chance to buy these flowers i think?

interesting round petals

im diggin these cabbages and the pink

i wondered over to this area to find this dance going on. dont know what this guy is, i think a fox. this dance was awesome. he was doing weird fox like stuff while the band played hipnotic headbobbing music.

at first it was the fox and the big red lion called shishi dancing on either side of the stage. looked like they were both doing their own thing. later on a little lion came out with a wee kid underneath. they kind of swayed their heads back and forth to the beat which was pretty catchy.

sometimes they would flail their head about.

the music in the dance was awesome. i could totally see someone sampling it for hip hop beats. the lions swaying back and forth and this music were hypnotizing.

the kid that was manning the little lion. he sat down next to me in front of the stage with some yaki soba noodles, his mom came along to eat up all the gari (the red ginger stuff) cuz he doesn't like it.

guys smashing the sheit out of some rice that talked sheit about their mommas. rice that does that gets turned into rice cakes sprinkled with something that people wait in line for for 20 min.

there were beautiful simply beautiful veggies and other produce and crops displayed randomly. i dont know whats going on cuz isnt it too late for harvest festival time?

on the right is rice but on the left i dont know. do you know your food in the field?

a whole tent with beautiful produce lined up, there were no prices listed either. what gives? are these just offerings or something?

veggie boat. later i would see this woman and her son that i met in Yoyogi park the 2nd day i was in tokyo. she told me if i was lucky i could win free veggies, i just had to collect the 5 stamps and drop that raffle slip in the box and wait til 1:30 pm. maybe that is where all the veggies go, but still i dont know why they're on display in the first place. i had work to do so i couldnt wait til 1:30 and i only got one stamp anyway. i would love a bag of the most beautiful vegetables i've ever seen.

green tea tent. i got my mom a bag, it was yummy

bees on a honeycomb.

more performances on stage, now all done by kids. its funny with these masks and how they were dancing, it just looked like freestyle time, and like they were all really performing for the crowd trying to do their freshest moves. kid in the middle looks like hes doing the superman. he wasn't but it all looked pretty funny.

dude in red looks like hes passin the mic to dude in the middle who is doin word up next to dude in white who is doin the ey yo finger point. hahahah. and debbie if you're reading this doesnt dude in blanco look like benny blanco? i mean the gesture cuz benny doesn't have a pink face with a permanent red smile face on it.

silk worm things

girl squeezing the crap out of a chick at the chick station.

some kind of archery ceremony

taiko drum performance by young girls. this was hypnotizing as well. i can't wait to see a big taiko drum performance cuz even this one gets your blood moving.

what cool thing are these guys waiting to do?

dude on a small ATV in shibuya

the little brige over the canal before my house had a crane, another large weird bird and a huge shoal of some kind of fish. so weird and cool that there is this kind of life going on in the heart of tokyo. i see cranes in there every day now so i guess that is their spot. anyway hooray for festivals

Meiji Jingu Shrine Autumn Grand Festival Day 1

this festival was actually more than 2 days, i just went on two days. Man you guys missed out. There was some awesome stuff goin on. I posted about this shrine before next to Harajuku in Yoyogi park. The Autumn Grand festival is for the birthday of Emperor Meiji.

they had a graaaand display of chrysanthemum flowers. Japan stays warmer a lot longer than other places, i guess being and island and all. There will still be beautiful fall leaves at the end of nov. and even into early dec. in the more southern part of honshu. So there are lots of flowers still in bloom around the city.

these flowers look so crazy

started out with some Kyogen, which are short humorous plays that accompany "Noh" plays (the plays with the masks). The humorous plays are whatever to me cuz i dont get it and the humor is so old school like 1333-1573 old school.

The japanese are often villanized in hollywood and cartoons in the US so when i see guys like this with their huge triangular shoulders i think of teenage mutant ninja turtles and evil and the footclan and that guy that is Shredder's right hand man and kicks a young student in the face after he took his eyes off him when he bowed. They were chanting this weird creepy creepy chant/song. The music was awesome, and seemed very difficult to keep time, was in such a weird time, and the musicians would screech or yell out from time to time which was awesome.

finally what i came for, the Noh play. not a full play so i only got to see this mask, and man is it creepy cuz its slightly smaller than a real face, looks weird yet quasi human so when this guy turns slowly to the crowd you wonder is it looking at me? it was pretty cold too so he was shaking, i dont know if its was cuz of the cold or cuz its part of the act but it was also creepy. add in those old guys chanting and you have creepy soup. but i liked it. want to see more. The no pictures ninjas were out in full force so i only got a few crappy shots.

the rest of this post is especially for my mamma, i wonder if she likes "ikebana" the art of japanese flower arrangment. ikebana has a few rules like everything must be organic. it also stresses minimalism. some of the crazier shapes are interesting. Imagine how much more you would enjoy life if you had the capacity to TRUELY appreciate things like ikebana.

minimalism stressed, so other parts of the flower are emphasized a lot like the stems and leaves, and only minimal blooms

wat is that fish thing, i must have one!

now onto the bonsai exhibit. i can totally see myself doing this when im older

roots penetrated this rock. anyway if jeanne raish is reading this i hope it inspires to keep trying with the bonsais

Halloween Tokyo 2009

So due to the fact that i just moved here and that halloween is not big in Japan i was unable to get a halloween plan together let alone a costume, so i had to just wear my old gatchapin suit at the last minute. I went to a couple clubs with one of my new roomates.

poor kid. this is wat elementary school girls have to wear.

seating chart that looks like a board game at a Hokkaido restaurant in shibuya. looks like a bad idea because it was sitting out where anyone could brush up against it and cause seating order mayhem.

so this would never fly in NYC. this guy is asking for it. but here its totally fine, he is not even a bad offender, i have seen lots of guys with these large man wallets that are almost falling out of their pockets. what do you call these things? they are like what women carry in the US. Its amazing how much crime is not a problem here.

in taxi on the way to somewhere in roppongi hills. the cheerleader is my roomates friend. I love the loooon crotch on these suits

these girls are not that slutty but as in the US, halloween is just a time where girls dress as slutty as possible which is great for guys.

this picture is more interesting than it looks. These girls are basically "shibuya girls" ditzy dolled up japanese girls. they are in their own shibuya universe, what do they know of my world/america? They are even further out in the universe than other japanese people because they are in their own little ditzy plastic girl niche. this is east meets west in such a weird way. Here i am waiting online to get in some club and then here are these two girls behind me that have no idea. no idea.

On another note one of my roomates friends bought these rice cracker snacks and gave them to me while we were waiting on line. The shibuya girls said they're called "happy town". I gave them some and they kept saying "I love happy town!!!!". Then i looked at the package later and saw it says "happy tongue" cuz they are kind of shaped like tongues. So they were really saying "I LOVE HAPPY TONGUE!!!!!". hahhahhaa. I gave them a lot of happy tongue. that sounds bad. hahaha

there were a few gatchapins out. there was one with a lot of his friends around him cheer for him or something so i went up and did my droopy sad charlie brown walk and one girl was very violently saying something like "ITS OK OTHER GATCHAPIN WE LOVE YOU TOO" and pretty much punching me a few times. hahahah. i wish i had the time to make a proper costume.

this girl was fun after she stopped shooting me and everyone else in the face. But i would do the same. Actually when i got the gun from her i kept gun butting her friend in the head and teaching them how to throw ya gunz in tha air!

subway near my new apt. there are only 2 employees instead of 5 like in china.

near my house. awesome. a fancy schmancy restaurant right next to a little mcdonalds. i love it. It looked like this guy in his suit was watching people walk into McDonalds all night long and not into his super expensive restaurant. could this kind of real estate thing happen in NY?

night rider like thing in the middle of the road.

In the living room of my new apt. this light bulb cost 7000 yen ($77) but they have been using it for 4 yrs. i love its huge and awesome incandescent glow. more apt fotos soon. Anyway next year i vow to make halloween in tokyo good. This time was fun but it could be even more fun with the right costume. ie a huge bulking painful cardboard cutout costume of some japanese cartoon character.

Urban Shrines

crazy right wing supporters. this is the first time i've seen a line of their vans stretching over a block long. they have loud speakers on their vans shouting out watever right wing supporters shout out.

a mouth of turin or watever its called on the side of shibuya no one ever goes to. made famous in the movie Roman Holiday staring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

riding along and suddenly bam. another shrine in the middle of this crazy compact city. this was was especially nice.

it says "Japan Productivity Center" in english up there. that's like what all of Japan is, one giant productivity center.

then right across the street is this. probably one is a shrine and one is a temple. still must learn the diff.

ashtray at the shrine or temple

this sign is interesting, i see glimmers of a smart thought mixed in with the poor english but i dont know.

more examples of every inch being utilized. i bet two SUV's couldn't fit in there.

another random shrine or temple on the ride home. im still fresh so i still think its cool to see these randomly

tons of people wore masks before swine flu. don't know if tons wore them before sars. but tons wear them now, so many there are ads like this on the subway.

went for a drink at this bar with Hiroko. i have seen a bunch of bars where the door is 4" tall. don't know why. probably wouldn't fly in the US with firecodes.

shibuya chuo gai area. first floor ramen shop. 2nd floor porn dvd shop. 3rd, 4th?, 5th - interesting, its for girls, they call that number to meet guys, of course in a dirty fashion. above that was a "telephone club" where you go and there are phones and you call girls i guess that will come meet your or something scandalous like that. And the list goes on!

Hiroshi has some orange leaves now. i hope its because hiroshi is a decidous tree and its fall, not because he has been a bad boy and is dying. also i dont know if Hiroshi is a bonsai or not. Anyway he is aging gracefully at this point.

there are tons of people that hand out packets of tissue with their ad printed on the back, probably even more so than just straight up flyers. this one has a face mask in it.

maybe i will wear it when i get the flu so i can be considerate like all the other Japanese and keep it to myself. maybe, maybe not.

Edo Tokyo Museum

another late night bargain grab 225 yen ($2.46) i'm gonna stop pretending like 100 yen equals $1 like everyone else has been for a long time, it simply isn't so anymore and it does make a big difference so im gonna start quoting the real price, yes it will deflate everyones balloon a little bit but the truth will set you freeeeee.

guy playing tunes on a saw in front of one of the museums at ueno koen. maybe it was the modern musuem. it is an eerie sound and just down right weird, but its was some how a beautiful sound though. anyway if dude really wanted to move units or make change he picked a horrible spot, he gets probably about 20 old ladies per hr in this spot on a tuesday afternoon at this obscure museum that no one goes to or wants to pay for. anyway museums suck here because you have to pay like 700 yen or watever the cost is for each section of the museum. so if you want to see the new watever exhibit, 700 yen, want to see the regular premanent collection? 700 more yen. so wack. it was a turn off and made me and my friend Fumiko from my illustration class at FIT go elsewhere, where we ended up paying into the same scheme at the edo tokyo museum further across town. sigghhhhhh.

we had to walk through akihabara to get to the other museum. akihabara is geek anime/electronics/video games/etc... town.

liked the signage

these guys are a dime a dozen in beijing cuz you can actually make just enough to live if you hustle every day. this is the 1st i've seen in tokyo and it was allllll the way on the east side in old town

looks like a bunch of river/canal dinner cruise boats. would be cool to do this. looked like the cheapest was 7300 yen ($80) including a tempura dinner.

we crossed over this bridge, it did not look as cools as this old woodblock print art.

monjayaki place. like okonomiyaki (japanese pancake things with stuff inside) only this is the one you eat with those little spatula spoons. i posted this before in the summer.

semi vertical bike racks

inside the edo toko museum permanant exhibit. worth it. the special exhibit is wat i came for. it featured ukiyo-e woodblock shin hanga prints(new era) from like 1915 to 1945 or further maybe even. anyway two of my fav guys were represented here, kawasi hasui and yoshida hiroshi so it was awesome and we spent like 1.5 hrs looking at it all. i discovered hashiguchi goyo who i also am a fan of now. so anyone who is a art fan check these 3 guys out!

all of japanese old stuff jammed onto one wall thing

awesome samurai armor. check out the parying mantis headpiece! I'm in love with samurai armor now after i had to reasearch them a lot to illustrate them in my Yahoo! japan themed illustration.

awesome weird and inspiring artwork showing the fire dept in old tokyo they would fluff that mop like thing below up in the air and march to the scene of the fire. yes they could be carrying water instead but where would the pomp and grandeur be? at least there weren't rival fire dept crews so everyone would end up fighting over who gets the fire resulting in buildings burning to the ground like in old NYC.

the cool thing about the edo tokyo premanant exhibit is there were a lot of hands on stations, like they had one of these that you could lift, not super heavy but def would suck to carry it for longer than 5 min. they also had a pole with two buckets of fake sh!t that you could try, again would suck after 2-5 min.

tokagawa ieyasu the shogun. he is the one that started the edo era (edo is the old name for tokyo) he is like the big dog of shoguns. i think shogun is even higher than the emperor thus there isn't one now. after him i think a few of his sons kicked arse too so the tokagawas were THE fam. on one hand this guy was an a-hole and murdered and slaughtered tons of people, on the other hand he can be looked at as good cuz he ended the warring states period by uniting japan under one leader instead of all the warlords trying to kill each other all the time. so what side are you on? i dont know

me in a thing that i think the daimyos rode in on various trips carried by guys. daimyos are the regional rulers under the shogun

a chicken on top of a parade float thing. interesting........

a subaru 360 next to Fumiko. the first japanese "light" car watever that means. maybe it means small and a mother lover.

crazy escalator madness

cool shaped coffe shop roof awnings

in the JR ryogoku station. we by chance went down a little side street that is famous cuz a sumo wrestler stable. stable sounds like horses, anyway i dont know if they live there congregate there or train there or all of that but they say you can seen them some times wondering the street and eating tonssss of food. somewhere btwn asakusa bashi and ryogoku station.

looks like erotic novels?

dont know what i ordered but was excited to see i ordered curry udon. awesome

left is plum salt! dont know about the other 2 but an awesome touch. didnt use any though cuz you cant do that to curry.

udon noodles hanging up. everything was set by a timer on the wall so they are just right. those japanese, what a bunch.

Design Festa Day 2

saw a lot of free hugs people

tatoos

don't know whats going on here, Vivi didn't either

these two again. but this time upon closer inspection i found out the girl on the right is not real!

their armor is made out of paper. close up it looks kind of crappy but further back it looks fine.

cool kid cool shirt

cool clock idea

beer break. heartland beer made by asahi i believe

complicated looking tea drink i brought from 7-11

latex suit wearing fetish girl whipping some guy who requested it

American photographer dude lovin' it. Weirdo latex japanese cybersluts lovin' the attention

great display idea to seel their mushroom keychains

i went with Vivi, my old roomate from 53rd st

this guys sculptures were awesome.

more latex fetish girls. they were tying people up in bondage ropes but i didn't get a pic of that

goblin balls.

this has been disturbing me all day. why?!?! they are two cute highschool girls that look like sisters doing the robot kind of while an older woman is suggesting to everyone that they take a picture with them, and the sign on her chest says the same. all they had was a flyer on that stool with a myspace address. and then on the myspace page there is nothing to answer, why!!????!!!! Here is the link if you are interested in the weirdness and headscratching things i have witnessed. http://www.youtube.com/user/miraclevell

why. this is a man. this is not uncommon. why

why. wearing underwear with a faucet on it that green liquid was coming out of

went to denny's afterwards. thats right, denny's the 24 hr establishment from the US famous for feeding drunks, college drunks, and other late night scum. i was craving a meat lover's skillet so bad only to find that Japanese Denny's is not like american denny's at all. its all japanese style quasi american food. still good though but not like US denny's at all, even the logo they use looks like a throw back logo.

stuff i bought. this is actually navy blue not blck

see that dog card in the middle. its acutally a 4 fold mini pamphlet about giving stray cats and dogs a home. his collar is actually a pink little rubberband! awesome design.

my new friend Hiroshi. its nice to have something living and green on your desk.

baby gachapin plush toy.

Design Festa Day 1

Design Festa is a huuuge art event held twice a year in tokyo. It's put on buy the same people that run the Design Festa galleries in Harajuku that i posted before. It was awesome and I am gonna go back again tomorrow. I can definitely recommend this to anyone who is lucky enough to be in Tokyo when it goes down. There are weirdos galore, hot ladies galore, bad artwork galore, good artwork galore, and tons and tons of stuff to buy mostly made by artists.

held near odaiba at a place called "tokyo big site". this looks like where an evil japanese corporation who makes deathbots would be set up.

ok so maybe i am confused a lot in japan as to which catergory a girl should go in because cosplay, and werido stuff don't really turn my crank

this was the most incredibly cute thing i have seen in Japan. this mom brought her daughter and she was yelling out like a shop keeper for people to come over. she said she would draw you for candy. Fumiko (from my FIT illustration classes) had a piece of candy so hiroko gave it to her and she started drawing with great intensity at her little pint sized desk. So cute it just makes you want to kick a puppy to correct the balance of the world.

another bring your daughter to work day couple? these weirdos were marching along while her mom played a clarinet. Everyone was happy, atmosphere was great, its a good time.

well that get up works at least. she got lots of people coming over to buy her faux sweets keychains.

this guys stuff was cool. i bought a print of a rabbit.

cardboard

snot bubble

weird looking girl dressed in elementary school boy uniform. i think girls wear a skirt and not shorts? not totally sure. or it could be a weird looking boy i guess, who knows.

these were awesome. but they were $700

thats Fumiko in the middle. she recently moved back to japan after working like a slave for 2 years at an evil greeting card company. working at a greeting card company is one of the only full time jobs you can get as an illustrator and she had to do it to maintain a visa to live in NY. weirdo girl on the left has cat eye contacts in

i bought one of these curtain things. she said its a story about something. I caught these elements 1. a nut 2. a thousand years 3. a tree

this dream capsule machine did not contain any dreams/fortunes/witty saying/poems/etc.... instead it contained capsules with two pieces of gum with the guys artwork on them. i was dissapointed.

wat is wrong with these people. there is way too much traffic at this booth that has fotos of nothing but cats.

for 2oo yen ($2) per person you get to sit in one of these while a staff member rocks you.

what is wrong with these two? all photos of that woman, and not like artistic statement fotos or ironic fotos, they were dead serious fotos.

later i saw in the guide that this band was called "Cutie Pie" they were your basic high energy side stepping japanese girl pop band. the guitar player wasn't even playing, and i don't know if the DJ girl to the right was going anything either.

samurai sword umbrellas.

some dancers gettin fabulous. design festa also has live performances and random booths of people performing their own live music.

was so hungry these glistening slabs of lamb meat looked like pure gold. but i got taco rice instead which was super small and sucked.

thin natural wood spoons. whats worse for the envioronment these or plastic?

this girl was seemingly all by herself. she was like a little adult woman with magnifying glasses.

there were lots of booths selling dolls. lots of anime features dolls and stories about dolls so i think japanese people have a thing with dolls. I could go into it more but i wont.

lots of people waiting in line for these fortune tellers. like in korea and china people here belive in this. there were a few booths of fortune tellers. they're so popular looks like an easy way to make a ton of money on a saturday.

a booth with nothing but llama fotos. this one if for Karol who just moved to Chile.

i could not tell what was going on here.

we asked who the guy was, i was expecting it to be a politician or something but the lady said its the artists old drinking buddy. hahaha awesome.

a booth doing fake wounds for 500 yen, might have been a school promotion.

weird, but his other stuff was cool

looks like this girl from before had a booth that was her themed because it was all drawings of her

japanese monsters

this guys 3d art was awesome.

this happens a lot in japan.

live painting. reminds me of brazilian street art.

one of the guys responsible for some of the live painting.

love that hand at the top middle and the

she was singing gross high pitched japanese "folk" music

wat is wrong with her? all fotos of white tigers. this is wat i would exhibit if i was 10 again.

these two were responsible for the worst music i've ever heard. both were playing with great intesity, the problem was they were instensly playing sheit flute techno.

a hot food vending machine, french fries, hot dogs, grilled rice balls, etc... reminds me of the food vending machine at SUNY albany in the basement of the tower on indian quad, except this food is probably waaaay better.

we saw this little adult girl woman on the train with her mom again. she was reading a fashion magazine that is for glittery plastic shibuya girls like nobody's business. she looked like she was 10 yrs old or younger but her mannerisms were totally adult.

Friday Night Destroyed

I went to Ikebukuro to look at an apartment and came across this book fair happening in some square near the station. interesting to see these japanese movie booklets for these hollywood movies like roman holiday and James bond.

tried this, tastes like chilsung cider in korea and both are basically sprite.

this makes me want to have a TV

various yumminess cooked inside these fish shaped sweet bread things. probably a story behind why they are fish shaped. i got mine with redbeans inside which is the normal way i think.

its getting chilly in tokyo these nights so i was craving some ramen and spotted this place in Sangenjaya and almost went in but then saw that it was Chinese noodles, and i am trying to eat japanese food for a while so i went to try and find some japanese ramen and not chinese noodles.

i went to this place near my house. the awesome part was i discovered those garlic sprinkles. they are like those fried onion things that come in a can in the states except they are garlic flavored! puts a new twist on ramen now.

if you are an illustrator you probably have seen this guys work before, Tadahiro Uesugi

went to TIFF, the tokyo international film festival because hiroko got two tickets in the mail. Here is a poster for Sam Rami's "Drag me to hell". they were also playing UP, and Schenecady NY amongst other US films. We saw "Staten Island" starring Vincent D'nafrio and Ethan Hawke and Seymour Cassel. Directed by first time director James Demanaco. He has written other movies but now says he wants to direct. I gave it 8 out of 10 stars on IMDB. good movie.

i hate rating movies right after i see them, but it was my duty to rate this movie for the audience award so i gave it a good. after the movie soaked in i think i should have given it a "very good"

met vivi and more of her highschool friends in shibuya. went to this Nabe (hotpot) place. liking the brush art on the walls.

the lid to the nabe pot. they said these guys are demons

after the stuff in the Nabe was eaten there was a nice surprise at the end. all that broth need not go to waste because they brought rice and cheese to make what the call "rizzuto" You can sign me up for cheese anytime.

Hoppy is non alchoholic beer. accept not really, its more like beer flavored soda. but you can mix it with half Shochu to make an interesting alchoholic drink. Shintaro said this is what they used to drink after the war cuz shochu is so cheap and hoppy is cheap.

these two were looking as spicy as our hotpot, especially dude in the flame red mexican hoodie pancho, miami heat hat and hawaiian jammers.

a throwback can they said.

after another bar it was time to get the last train back home, last train is only like 12:30. So like an idiot i set off to find somewhere to continue my friday night. i had seen a jazz bar in sangenjaya unfortunately called uncle toms cabin or something like that. i went there and they play actual records! I also like in japan how a lot of bars will display what they are currently playing, and also will display the various liquors they used to make drinks with on the bar counter.

anyway i drank too much, talked with the bartender in my super limited japanese, he said his father died a long time ago and he took over the bar and inherited all the jazz records. later on a guy came in wearing overalls, yes like a farmer. he was a tough looking guy and i ended up talking to him. first about jazz then he confessed with great pride that he is an "otaku" which means something like Geek. I'm not sure it otaku is limited to anime these days but that is wat we ended up talking about for a while. its funny to see this big tough looking guy who is a bass player in a punk band proudly saying he is a geek. I guess being this kind of geek is not really that bad in japan. lots of people love to say they are otaku.

Black and White is the name of this manga, it was made into a movie by my fav animation studio, Studio 4C. its awesome. i forget if this was the bartenders or the guys but it was cool to see this in japanese for the first time. i dont know what time i went home but i woke up feeling like a garbage bag on a hot summers day.