watashi to tokyo

Were Japanese such "light"?

I laughed so much! Because I found out the title of my book in Thailand was not "Watashi To Tokyo." Guess what! It is "Bento Sumo Tokyo" :-D ha ha ha ...orz. I did not know that, well, but it's okay. Linda says the title make the sales better (thanks!) and I can't read Thai language.(It looks just like code for me) "Bento Sumo Tokyo" Yoroshiku!

Talking about code, I like this news : Look at this in flickr. Is it code or something? In Japanese, it is "ブルックシールズのアルファベット".

My friend sent me this Bloomberg article. Here is another resource titled "No sex please, we’re Japanese". Ha ha ha

Were Japanese such "light"?　I am not sure. As long as I see erotic Ukiyoe "Shunga", sex wouldn't be so taboo. In the Edo generation, there was a registered prostitute area "Yoshiwara" (I don't think this English page is good though). As Kabuki actors were idol for people, Oiran were a kind of culture icon and fashion leaders. Here are old post cards of Yoshiwara on Harvard Univ. During golden week, I read a popular manga about Yoshiwara and Oiran: Sakuran by Moyoco Anno. This year, it was made into a film, starring Anna Tsuchiya, directed by Mika Ninagawa (daughter of Yukio Ninagawa). Here is a trailer. Since the director is a professional photographer, colors are so beautiful in the film.crazy news stories and articles, It's very difficult to accept "Japanese are so light." The article says "34 Percent of Japanese who have sex weekly, again the lowest number in the survey. The US was next lowest at 53 percent; Greece was first at 87 percent." Hmm would it be related to working time? People would be so tried and have no energy after work. Then only their imagination could grow up.

Reading many

"Yuke Godman!"

My Blog has been released as a Tokyo Guide Book "Watashi to Tokyo" in Thailand. I can't read what they are saying, but it's okay, I am just happy for this. Thank you to Linda and La-or for giving me such a great experience.

I was a little bit surprised to read the news this morning. The actor who played "Soga" in Ultra Seven commited suicide in a waterfall in Kagoshima. Ultra Seven is one of my favorite TV programs and it is very fun to discuss it when I drink with my friends still now. Like I wrote it sometimes, Ultra Seven is something special for some Japanese.

TV shows in which monsters (someone inside a monster costume or alien costume) appears are called "Kaijyu (monster)-mono" in Japanese. The Ultra series (Ultra Seven, Ultraman....) is the most representative one and because of their hit, we had the boom in the 1970s. Besides the Ultraman series, there was Spectreman, Mirrorman, Kamen Rider, Sentai mono etc., I can't count them all! There were a lot of "Kaijyu-mono" in those days. This "Kaijyu Blog" has a huge collection of Kaijyu. Unfortunately it is only in Japanse though, so try the links.

"Yuke! God man" was just a 5-minute TV show. It didn't have any story -- Godman had a fight with a different new monsters every day. "God man" is well known as a super low quality Kaijyu-mono too, but so that some like it as a cult-like Kaijyu-mono. Some Kaijyu were old monsters which were used in other TOHO monster movies (nice posters site!). Some would be low-budget versions of their original monsters. Here are some sample of monsters...see? What cool guys, they all look like failed pork buns.... By the way, there is a French guy who has a great Tokusatsu, Kaijyu collection and you can check his collection on YouTube. Of course he has "Godman" too. Unbelievable!

This weekend

This is the funny, but somehow heart-warming project "Candy." Talking about candy, my favorite candy would be ichigo milk. It strawberry milk crunchy candy, Yummy :-).

UNIQLO open the T-shirts shop "UT store" opened in Harajuku. They always have 500 or so kinds of T-Shirts. I like this Tezuka Toribute, Creative awards, Great Personage and Traditional company collaboration.

I read Bill Gates is a big audio fan and he has 700,000 of dollars' worth of audio sets. However Bill was surprised to hear the sound of this small Japanese maker's speaker, "better than mine!" They have such a legend, some people (banker, investor) heard the sound and supported the small company when they had hard times. If you are interested in this story, you can hear the sound in this Aoyama listening room in Tokyo. I wanna try once.

Anyway, my long holidays are over. I like working, I like my job, but sometimes I feel I will be able to find other ways to live. I don't want to live looking forward to holidays :-) You know what I mean. I am not depressed, but I am thinking about it seriously. I mean I say good bye to my image of ordinary life.

Blog Stickers

I found this "Driving Cube." Nissan Cube runs on your blog and tells how many times you visited the site. That tool is released at the Nissan Cube official blog. If you like it, copy and paste this tag on your blog. They have some nice blog stickers here besides the Driving Cube. And in this page, there are nicely designed small games, wall paper, screen savers. Check their funny TV ad too.

I checked other good Japanese blog stickers. The Blog Apartments has a lot of fine design stickers. Morse Coder is good, and I like this Paint Bit too. Sony Ericsson has 13 nice blog stickers. I like the plug one and goldfish one. If you like tropical fish, how about this mini aqua. As a funny one, this is . A sushi cook shows unidentified animate beings or funny food (they say).

New useful device

I am still in Golden Week. Tomorrow I plan to go hiking around the Tama area, which was the location of Ghibli's movie "Pompoko". During such long holiday nights, playing some online games on the PC is very relaxing, I tried this: "Makibishi", You play the role of Assassin, who is searching for five ninjas hidden across five different environments. By the way, wasting time and being lazy is a really wonderful activity during holidays. I thought the worst Japanese wallpaper was "Kozozushi" (via kozo sushi chain), but I found a worse one today. "Randoseru" is a Japanese child's school back bag. This is a crazy TV ad of some Randoseru and their official site has the wall papers which are beyond of my understanding. It is hard to find such low quality stuff on the Internet recently.

I seriously plan to buy this stuff: "talking (oshaberi) nachudon." It checks and senses your house plants' condition and talks to you on your plants' behalf. "I am fine," "I need water," "I need sunshine," "I am so so," etc. They say nachudon can speak 200 words. Don't you think that is great? You may not kill trees and plants anymore with this. The bad part is his way of talking sounds really childish and stupid (if you can understand Japanese, see the movie on this page). Why do they make him talk like this? It makes me annoyed.

Another new device is this. Medical Life Care Giken made skin checker, human stress checker, and alcohol tolerance checker. Now they will release your pet's stress checker. Hmm, if I could know my pet had such a stressful life, what should I do? By the way, "Doting Japanese pet owners are known to go to great lengths for their pets' well-being, taking cats and dogs to specialist masseurs and even acupuncturists." Yes, we are! Strange?

Expressway in Japan

I am back from the camping trip. I stayed at Koganezaki Camping place. One tent are costs 4000yen, plus I need to pay 1000yen for per person. Since three of us stayed there, each paid about 2300yen for one night. It sounds so expensive (usually it's not so expensive), but their facilities are really nice (clean washlet toilet and coin shower etc,.) So I can accept it easily. However, I can't accept the expressway toll. It was cost over 5000yen there and back; then of course we had bad traffic. That's exasperating to me!

By the way, on Japanese expressways, there are rest points called "Parking area". They have shops, bathrooms, and a gas station. "Service area" is a bigger one. Their facilities and services are getting better recently. Ebina Service Area is a big place on Tomei Expressway, They have a massage shop, free wireless LAN spot,etc. Each AP and SA sell their local special foods or special souvenires. For example, Hamanako SA sells many eel specials (Hamanako is well know as good eel), like the eel pie, the eel bowl and the eel hotdog! And sometimes the service area shop makes their special food too. I bought a "melonpan" (cockie bread) in Ebina SA because I heard theirs is really good and very popular. Check the service area when you drive on the Japanese expressway. It will be interesting.