watashi to tokyo

New tokyo city buzz, Harajuku kun

I wrote about the "Rikishi seal" before, it was a mystery: someone put the seal of two sumo wrestler faces all over Tokyo. I sometimes saw the seals in Tokyo, but not lately and we never knew who did it or what the purpose of the seals were.

Recently we have a similar buzz item: it's Harajuku-kun. This face keeps popping up around the Harajuku area. The flyer says "take a photo of this Harajuku-kun and tweet it on Twitter!" Again, we don't know who's behind this or what the purpose of this is.

 

I went to Yokohama Toriennale 2011, I thought this might be a good chance to see Damian Hirst. Maybe his artwork won't be exhibited for a while. With a 1600yen ticket, you can enter the main building of the Yokohama Museum of Art and also BankArt Studio NYK. It's pretty good, I could see Damian Hirst's butterfly artwork and also drawings by Tadanori Yokoo and Tetsuya Ishida, who rank among my favorite artists.

After the museum, I went to JICA and ate feijoada. It cost only 500yen or so with rice.

just a post

I will pick two Japanese artists for today's post. Noriyuki Dehara is figurine creator, he makes his figurines with clay. Kimokawaii...

Another one is Kenji Murabayashi. His works are carved wooden figurines, cute!!

Since July 21th, the Shibuya tourist information center was opened in front of Shibuya station near the Hachiko statue. You can ask them anything about Shibuya.They have visitors from over 50 countries.

 

My American friend says "hell no" to Omu rice, he says that ketchup on rice is difficult to try. You think so? Omu rice is great, especially with a half-cooked omelette like in the movie Tanpopo.

 

Cool! Gandam Cup noodle TV ad "BOIL JAPAN"

Nisshin Cup Noodle TV commercial. Their message is funny and good: "We have a hungry spirit. Again and again, we rise and proceed, each time, we gain strength. Cup noodle keeps on boiling, generating, our energy. So have we. So will we". The Gundam stands up holding a boiling kettle. Background music plays "Stand up Stand up". He he he.

Another Cup Noodle commercial has Takehiko Inoue drawing "Musashi of Vagabond." Watch his great work. The copy is nice too: "There are no strong people, there are only people willing to be strong".

Lately my favorite Cup Noodle flavors are Tacos and Tom Yum Kung. By the way, they released Cup Noodle Rice across Japan, but it was only available in western Japan so the products were listed on auction sites for several times their selling price. It tastes like rice cooked with Cup Noodle soup. I have not tried it yet, but maybe soon.

When you see Yahoo! Japan's homepage, you find an energy meter which shows what percentage of the max energy supply we are currently using. Because the Fukushima nuclear plants have broken down, we have energy shortages (some people are suspicious and think that TEPCO's deliberately controlling the flow of power to make people reliant on nuclear energy). We must use less energy to keep the electricity from cutting out. So all over Japan, we are setting higher temperatures on AC units, using less lighting than usual, etc. Anyways, I found an interesting project: "Let's light up Tokyo tower with human power". On August 23rd, people will peddle bikes to generate energy to light up the upper part of Tokyo tower at 8pm. Ha ha ha, I want to join!

 

 

Michelin one star ramen!

Today's Google Japan logo, it's for the Sendai Tanabata festival. Thinking about the damage from 3/11, it is amazing to have the festival again this year.

MIST is the first ramen shop in the world to receive a star in the Michelin guidebook. Their menu contains ramen and new items like ramen sushi, etc. The shop was in Omotesando Hills until January, but now it's closed and will re-open somewhere in Tokyo this summer.

 

The shop is produced by French chef Yasuji Morizumi, who has another ramen chain called "Chabuya". Compared to MIST, Chabuya has more reasonably priced ramen and I went there in Machida last night.

I don't eat ramen so often but this time Groupon had a 50% discount ticket, so that's why I was there. Actually with the discount it ended up being just 380 yen. And of course I wondered how ramen made by a Michelin star winner tastes. :-)

Here is the ramen, I ordered half a boiled egg on top (80 yen). The soup was a fish-based sesame blend, and the noodle was really thick. Toppings included zucchini, asparagus and shiitake mushroom. It was good, but not super good to me. I prefer regular soy sauce or tonkotsu ramen.

I got a good tip. In Japan, ethnic foods are really expensive and Indian, Vietnamese, and Thai dishes cost around 1000 yen for an entree and if you want to eat Greek or Turkish food you will pay over 3,000 yen at least. As for Muslim foods, I have no idea where I can find them or how much it would cost. But I read that we can eat such foods for a reasonable price at one place. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is advancing its activities around the pillars of field-oriented approach, human security, and enhanced effectiveness, efficiency, and speed. It is located in the Yokohama Minato Mirai area (which has nice vistas, good shopping, and is in a lovely seaside area) and they have places to stay for foreigners who come to Japan to study and also provides restaurants for them. The restaurant has various types of international foods and beverages to appeal to people of many different cultures: vegetarian, Halal, African, etc. And it's not restircted to hotel customers, regular people can eat lunch and dinner there. The good thing is that beyond the reasonably priced food, there's a really nice view of the Yokohama port. A guy on Nifty Portal wrote about it and he says that this lamb is only 390yen (!?) I will try it soon.

Japanese TV network and Korean contents

Oh no, I didn't know I neglected to write in my blog for over 10 days!  Whoops!

You can move in 3D by moving the doll. Great!

"Kitano Kuni Kara" (From a Northern Country) is a very popular Japanese TV drama that aired intermittently from 1981 to 2002. Here is a great review site for the first season. "A guy "Goro" who separated from his wife went back to his hometown in "Hokkaido" (the North country) with his two children. The children were raised in Tokyo, so they are bewildered by the big change: there is no water, no gas, no electricity in the new house. But gradually they become comfortable with the environment and love the beautiful nature." The first season has 24 episodes, after that there was a 2 hour special show every other year or so until 2002. Almost 10 years has passed since the show was over, but many people still say that this is their favorite TV drama. Actually, the shooting locations of the drama are tourist spots now, especially the houses that Goro built by himself from scrap metal are popular places to visit. Here are some photos of those houses.

 

The window is made from the windshield of a bus!

This window is a laundry machine door.

After Winter Sonata became a big hit in 2003, Korean TV dramas and K-pop are very popular here in Japan. I won't call it a boom or trend anymore, since they seem to have a firm position in this country. Certain TV networks like Fuji (channel 8) or NTV (channel 4) seem to run K-pop or K-dramas often. On July 23rd, Japanese actor Sousuke Takaoka tweeted: "I don’t really watch channel 8 (Fuji TV) anymore. It sometimes makes me wonder if it’s a Korean channel." His tweet quickly spread and the news picked it up. Within two days, he was forced to leave his agency and he said "maybe I need to quit acting soon or later." Because of Takaoka's tweet, Japanese people are starting to complain to TV networks now (people are not complaining about Korean drama or K-pop, but are complaining about Japanese TV network and sponsors). And at the same time, we have this news: over 20% of stock in FUJI and NTV are held by foreigners. To protect the media, there is a regulation stating that the stock of certain companies (mainly media and airplanes) have a rate-cap to foreign holders and when it is broken, those companies' licenses are suspended (for broadcasting in this case). Actually now I don't wonder if NTV and Fuji have their licenses. People are starting to think that this Korean boom is supported not only by fans, but also because of TV networks' and sponsors' ulterior motives. Actually, there is a movement to boycott Kao products (one of Fuji TV's main sponsors) started this week by a radical group on 2 ch. They made a lot of negative reviews of Kao products on Amazon.jp. I can't agree with this, I understand we should boycott Fuji, but why the need to attack Kao? It 's too much. I will watch what develops on this topic. Anyways, Takaoka is staying in NY now for the stage production of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion". I hope he won't lose his career over this.