I Squid You Not

So.  I had a dream.  I dreamt that I would spend every night on the shores of Toyama Bay until I saw the hotaruika no mirage - the firefly squid on the beach.  I booked a room at the Sky Hotel Namerikawa back in October or November to be sure that I was close enough to walk to the beach every night.  I was sure it was going to happen, because the new moon was on the first day of vacation, May 4, but I made plans to stay for several days, just in case.

Beautiful Toyama, on a not-too-beautiful day.

And if you’re paying attention, you may be noticing right now that I’ve been on vacation for several days already, and yet May 4 was not one of those days.  And if you have deduced from that fact that I fucked up and booked the wrong dates, you are correct.  What you may not have realized is that I didn’t figure this out until the Monday before the holiday.  And the holiday was an unprecedented 10 day vacation in Japan, thanks to the ascension of the new emperor.  Which meant that, basically, I was screwed.  I found two options that weren’t fully booked - one in Uozu, close to the shore, but looking sketchy as hell.  The other was by Toyama station (ie, inland), and was going to set me back $500.  Have I complained to you about my salary?  So, yes, things were looking quite bleak for me.  And then I wondered what my options would be if I tried Couchsurfing.

Now, for those of you who aren’t savvy, Couchsurfing is the predecessor of AirBnB.  The idea is that travelers host one another freely, paying it forward to the next couchsurfer who comes to their town.  It’s a good model if you like people and adventures.  Since I only like one of those things, I’d never tried it, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  And that is how I came to be staying with a young college student and her family here in Toyama.

Back to the squid: so my idea was that I was going to go out all night watching for them.  That was my plan until I got to my hostess with the mostest’s home Saturday night.  After a full day of wandering Kanazawa, following an overnight bus from Shinjuku, following a day of teaching, and THAT following two nights short on sleep.  Basically I decided I couldn’t do it.  Not that night.  But even the next day was cold.  Also, I’m not staying anywhere close to the shore.  Google maps estimates that it’d take me an hour to walk there, and Google seems to think I’m a faster walker than I am.

Well, I decided I could find a solution for that.  If I had a bike, it would be manageable.  I found out that Toyama has a bike sharing system, CycloCity.  I signed up for a weeklong account, and went to the station to get started.  It was super easy.  Problem solved!  Or so I thought.  Turns out that the system works only if the bikes keep circulating.  In order to avoid tourists who use the same bike for hours at a time, potentially leaving it unattended to get stolen, the first half-hour is free, the next half-hour is 100 yen, and each hour after that is 500 yen.  So riding around all night wasn’t going to work, either, as there were no bike racks near the beach.

It worked okay for getting me to the Inari shrine I needed to finish my photography project, at least.  Although even that I didn’t accomplish in the free half hour.  I mean, it takes time for the photos I was shooting.

I’ve been trying to convince myself since then, convince myself that it’ll be worth it to spend at least two hours on my feet, but honestly there’s no guarantee that even if I do that the damn things will make their appearance.  If it was as easy as “go to the beach, see squid,” I think I could muster up the enthusiasm.  I think if I had a travel buddy with me to keep me going (or that I’d at least be too ashamed to wuss out on), I’d be able to suck it up.  But.  Well.  That is not the case.  So I haven’t gone to shore.  I haven’t seen the firefly squid.

Instead, I’ve seen Avengers: Endgame.  It was awesome.  It didn’t involve me standing on my feet for several hours (although I was holding my pee for at least one).  Afterwards I got a nice wagyu burger from Shogun Burger.  See, maybe I don’t get to see the squid this year, but that’s okay because I really do like Toyama.  It’s a nice chill town with good food and places nearby to explore.  And I’m going to go explore some of them now.  So I’ll catch you on the flip side.

Golden Week - Round Two!

Apparently I feel like Golden Week needs to start in a gold town...specifically Kanazawa.  This is the second year I’ve done so, at any rate.  The funny thing is, when I went there last year, I wasn’t all that impressed, so I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to try it again - but I’m glad I did.

Just like last year, I started my day in the McDonald’s in Katamachi.  I figured after a long bus trip this was the best place to refuel and figure out what the heck I was doing there again.  I’m pretty sure when I booked the Willer Bus to go all the way to Kanazawa I was thinking that I needed to visit the art museums I ditched last year, which is funny because after I looked at Google maps I decided that was exactly what I wasn’t going to do.  But I actually started on TripAdvisor, looking to see what kind of classes or workshops they had, and it turned out they had one where you could make your own gold-leaf dish.  And when I looked to see where the place was, art museums got knocked off my to do list.

See, what I noticed about Google maps was that the district where the samurai lived was more or less on the other side of the street.  There were a couple of museums and houses to visit en route to the gold leaf place, and it was a freaking chilly day, so I decided moving from one to the next, warming up a little before heading back into the breach, would be an excellent way to navigate the area.

And it was.  I saw some cool stuff, including a museum that focused on old-style shops.  I saw some samurai houses - or, in some cases, what remained of them.  My favorite part of it, though, was the gardens each house had.  They made me want it to be summer, want to be sitting lazily on the edge of the walkways fanning myself and enjoying the view.  They were so fundamentally Japanese that it made me really sad to think about the fact that I’ll be leaving in two months, and I don’t have many more chances to see them.

I still wasn’t quite to the gold leaf shop, but I made a detour to see a couple of shrines - because this is me we’re talking about.  Of COURSE I went to shrines.  I can’t even use my photography course as an excuse because the last shot I had planned for that had to be at night.  The thing that drew me to Oyama Jinja was its very unorthodox gate.  It doesn’t even look like a shrine from the outside.  I made my way down the street toward it, not really sure what I’d find inside, but when I passed through the gate, it was like almost any other shrine you’d find.  It had a cool pond with an old brick bridge and some other nice water features.  It had a sculpture of a lily pad, with frogs hanging off its stem and edges, and a nice bench that I availed myself of before heading onward.  It was a really lovely place, but that gate made me curious about its story...just apparently not curious enough to look it up in the three days since I was there.  But that’s life, eh?

There was another shrine nearby that I swung by before heading on to Tajima.  Before I could make it I saw a restaurant advertising a “wild beef lunch,” which made me realize it was after 2 and food would probably be good.  It was a bowl of rice with slices of roast beef on top.  And it was...just not as good as the one from Red Rocks.  Which I guess means one of these days I’m going to have to brave the line to visit the one in Harajuku.

Finally I got to Tajima.  I wasn’t really sure how it was going to work out, because I was flying by the seat of my pants - hadn’t contacted them in advance or anything.  But after a quick chat the employees were showing me the different projects I could make and getting me settled.  Since I’d come to Toyama specifically to try and see the firefly squid, I decided my lacquer dish would feature them.  Which just goes to show that I’m not psychic, after all.  It was a relatively easy project, though, and only 1,000 yen to make, plus I got to enjoy all their beautiful art while I was working, so it was well worth it.

Forest Bathing

Not so long ago, the Interwebs taught me that the Japanese had apparently come up with a concept called shinrin yoku - forest bathing.  The idea is that it's therapeutic to get out in nature and smell fresh air and walk on unpaved ground and all that good stuff.  This weekend I had the opportunity to do exactly that.  See, this post is brought to you by my photography class.  I'll be writing about THAT particular endeavor in the near future; for now, suffice it to say that I got it into my head that one of my photos should be staged in Aokigahara - Japan's infamous suicide forest.

Now, I'd be lying to you if I claimed that the Sea of Trees - as it is known in Japanese - held no dark fascination for me.  Y'all know me better than that.  However, I hesitated to go there, even before some American jackass made a fool out of himself on Youtube by posting the video showing him finding a dead body there.  Because actually, that was exactly what made me hesitant.  I feel like I'm made of pretty stern stuff, and the possibility of spiritual remains doesn't phase me.  Physical remains, on the other hand, would have to be dealt with, and I wasn't sure I was ready for that.  That said, I knew in my head that I was unlikely to actually find anyone, which means I just needed a good excuse to me get out of the city.  Such as my photography course.

And the more I learned about the forest, the more interested I was in going.  It grows on a bed of lava that hardened after Fuji-san blew its top in 864 CE.  Since the ground is impenetrable, the trees' roots snake along the surface.  The trees grow close together, so it's cool and shady, and moss clings to many surfaces.  There are even special kinds of plants that grow there, although unfortunately I missed getting to see the white plants that grow there.

Geologically, the lava flow left behind lots of really cool (literally) caves.  Although the website I used for planning my visit suggested taking the bus to Saiko Bat Cave, when I got to Kawaguchiko station, the helpful info lady said the next bus would go to the Fugaku Wind Cave, so that was the one I ended up going to.  You could still see the way the lava moved, even after more than a millennium.  There was also a display inside that talked about how the cave was used for storing seeds and silkworm eggs, allowing for preservation and increased production. 

So I finally went this weekend.  As I sat in Jonathan's* having my weekly R&R**, I plotted my course.  It seemed that the Sotetsu bus from Yokohama was my best option.  Unfortunately, the next one wasn't til 12:20 and you had to book in advance.  Oops.  So I decided the time had come for another one of my epic*** rail journeys.  From Kikuna, my nearest and dearest, I rode out to Hachioji on the Yokohama line, then took the Chuo line for Otsuki.  And THEN I got the Fujikyu train to Kawaguchiko.  All told it took me about 4 hours to get out there.  Luckily the return trip somehow shaved off an hour.  It cost around 2400 yen as well, which was 400 yen more than the two and a half hour bus ride.  So, y'know.  Learn from my fail.

When I finally got off the last train I was dismayed by how many other people were around.  Kawaguchiko seems well off the beaten path, and it's not late enough in the year for going up to the top of Fuji.  I still don't get it.  Maybe it was the cherry blossoms.  While the sakura here has been pretty well denuded for the last week, the hills were alive with the sound of music...as long as the music sounds like this.

So I was afraid that there were going to be shit tons of people in the forest, which could be mendoksai for my photography.  As it turned out, though, whatever drew all the tourists, it wasn't the sea of trees.  Once I left the road behind, I was alone.  I passed one group who were exiting as I was going in, but that was it.  Thank goodness last night's Supernatural wasn't one of those "creepy forest creature" episodes, because honestly that could have transformed my appreciation of the forest's peaceful natural beauty pretty fast.

Once I got away from the road, it was quiet beneath the densely packed canopy.  A little sun streamed in, but it was cool.  The trees hadn't fully greened out, but the moss largely made up for it.  The ground was uneven, but soft under foot, layers of decomposing materials on top of each other: wood, leaves, moss, needles.  In fact, sometimes my footfalls sounded as if the forest floor was hollow.

I came to a fork in the path after a few minutes.  One led to the bird park, another promised a "rough trail" to the village.  I decided a rough trail sounded good, and took the right fork.  I quickly discovered that by rough they meant "unfinished," as in "it was a rough sketch of where to walk in the woods."  There were a couple of times where I came close to losing the trail.  Which probably wouldn't have been the end of the world as I have a pretty good sense of direction, but from what I understand, you're also more likely to stumble on undiscovered remains away from the trail, so I felt no need to prove that I'd be able to find my way back out of the forest without a path.

When I got to the next fork and realized I still had a long way to go toward the village, I decided it was time to head out of the woods.  I hopped on a bus that I thought was going back to the station, but ended up taking the scenic route - which I mean in this instance both literally and colloquially.  Getting a little closer to Fuji-san was a nice side bonus to this expedition.  As an artist I try not to pass up opportunities to look at the iconic mountain, particularly when I've spent the last week watching anime about camping around it.  I was kind of wishing I could've stayed the night and explored more of the area.  Maybe in my next Japan life I'll do exactly that.  Instead, when I got back to the station I walked to a nearby yakiniku restaurant and restored my vampiric HP with some tasty beef and a dolsot bibimbap.  Having sated my unholy appetite, I got my ass back to the station to begin the trek home.

So that was my Aokigahara adventure.  If you hate people and want to try out a little forest bathing, I can't think of a better place to do so.  Although, admittedly, I'm not really an outdoor cat, so what do I know?  After all, I was too busy taking pictures to relax and embrace nature, not to mention I have a healthy dislike of bugs getting in my hair, clothing, backpack, or really anywhere near me.  Since I got the shots I was hoping for, I felt satisfied calling it a day.


*Closer to home than Denny's...but their French toast isn't as good.
**Read and wRite
***In this usage, a word that means LONG...like, Aragorn and Frodo walking to Rivendell long.

Playing Hooky

(Alternate Title: True Confessions of a Budding Sumo Enthusiast)

It’s been about 2 years since the last time I got to watch scantily clad men pound their flesh against one another (at least in the 3D world).  While it’s something I don’t think the Western world really understands, sumo is incredibly popular in Japan.  Not only are tickets expensive, but they sold out faster than we could order them when we tried to get them last year.

Golden Kamuy sumo is still the best sumo...

However, this was one thing I still haven't made up for missing when I came to Tokyo back in 2014 - the sumo tournament at Yasukuni Jinja.  I thought with our really long spring break that the stars were finally going to align, but when I checked the sumo website, I discovered that it was taking place a week and a half later than it did back then.  I felt a little conflicted* about taking a day off school to go watch sumo, but the last chance I had to go to a tournament at a shrine I missed because of an IB training, so maybe I felt a little vindicated in sending in an email that claimed I was sick on that bright and sunny Monday morning.

My sources indicated that the tournament started at 9, but Google maps listed an event starting at 10:40.  Since I was hoping to avoid discovery by any late stragglers to school, I decided to err on the side of caution, and didn’t leave home til 8.  By the time I got to the dohyo there weren’t many places left to sit.  I was almost resigned to lurking around the back of the seating area, but I noticed some wasted space between my fellow gaijin on the uppermost tier and imposed on them to make room for me.  Shortly thereafter I spotted the missionaries from Tokyo 2nd trying to find a place to sit, but there was no more room where I was sitting, so I didn't wave them over.

There was activity in the ring as all this was happening.  The wrestlers seemed to be having some kind of warm-ups.  The fact that there were lots of wrestlers in the ring at the same time was my first clue - this isn’t Mongolia, after all - but there was something playful about the way they pushed each other around.  I even saw wrestler somersault his way across the ring.  Eventually they all cleared off and the dohyo was swept smooth again.

Right around 10:40, two blocks of wood were struck together, and two men wearing formal kimono led the first wrestlers into the ring.  Right away, I began to notice differences from the time I went to the tournament in Himeji with Five.  For starters, there was much, much less posturing.  These matches seemed straightforward - they weren’t even tossing salt into the ring.  They didn't psych each other out - a couple of stretches and it was on.  Another difference that struck me was the fact that each match was prefaced by a man with a fan calling out a poem (I think), in a lovely, resonant voice.  Now admittedly we arrived in Himeji much later in the day, while I got to see this tournament from its start.  I decided I’d have to stay long enough to find out if this was just the preliminary amateur hour, or if the difference was part of the fact that this was a shrine tournament.

Like much of Japanese culture there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about sumo.  Unlike many of these traditions,though, it won’t put you to sleep.  It’s fast paced and unpredictable.  Of course, if you’ve never seen someone push a man twice his size out of the ring, you may fail to understand what makes this sport so exciting.  If you’ve never watched a guy shoved to the rope on the ground, struggling with all his might to hang on, finally to shift balance enough to toss his opponent out of the ring, you might not get it.  You might not be able to imagine how entertaining it is to watch two 400-pound guys engage in a slapping match til one dances the other out of bounds.  But sitting on the ground, being showered with late cherry blossom petals, I had a hard time imagining a sport I’d rather be watching.  There was a food tent set up, selling drinks and snacks, and another with memorabilia swag.  There was plenty of room to move if you wanted to get up and get a drink or go to the toilet.  It was more like a picnic with entertainment; life doesn't get much better than that.

If I had to guess what makes it hard for the west to appreciate sumo, I'd probably boil it down to our fat-phobia.  These guys are huge.  Some of them are merely big, but others are distinctly fat.  I couldn't help wondering if these guys face the same discrimination as other heavyweights -  like when they go to the doctor with a medical complaint, does the doctor assume they'd be cured if they weren't fat?  Or does their status as athletes shelter them from that contempt?  Admittedly, as athletes they are much fitter than most people with their BMIs, but the fact remains that not everyone who is fat is unhealthy.

A little before noon it seemed the junior division was over.  They swept out the ring again, and the striking wooden blocks heralded the arrival of wrestlers wearing the richly decorated cloth that Five and I had seen previously.  They proceeded to take turns chanting over the crowd while the rest moved around the ring, with movements that seemed almost ritualized.  Now, I intended to stay and watch some of the senior division, but after about five minutes of chanting I realized my butt kind of hurt from sitting on the concrete, and that if my mischief managed plan included avoiding all teachers and students on my way home I'd better get on with it.

I walked through the front part of the shrine, through a sun-dappled grove of cherry trees that shed their leaves and wrestled me into admitting that yes, they are quite pretty (even if I still like plum blossoms better).  You may still be wondering why it matters that it was at a shrine?  Well, I guess that's because I like experiencing things in situ.  Seeing a moai in the natural history museum in New York isn't the same experience as walking down a hill to where they keep watch on an Easter Island beach.  The origins of sumo are bound up in Shinto harvest rituals.  Seeing a tournament at a shrine just makes sense to me - like getting back to its roots.  After all, I only have a couple of months left to immerse myself in Japan, and there might not be anything that captures the spirit of Japan as fully as watching sumo wrestlers under a clear sky while sakura petals rain down.  I probably should've chased the experience with some sushi, but Tony Roma's was closer and much better for my pink blood.


*Honestly I felt far more conflicted that Yasukuni Jinja is a military shrine, and some of those enshrined therein are considered war criminals in other contexts, but in the end I decided to keep my nose out of other countries’ grudges.

In the Pink

Saturday night I caught a pre-emptive case of the Sunday night blues.  Strangely enough, two weeks of doing almost nothing - hell, even with the two days’ work unpacking - didn’t prepare me to come back to school today.  Commuting is mendoksai and even though the new building is nice, I can't help thinking that moving sometimes don't solve old problems, and may actually create new ones.  It's probably too early in the game for me to be so cynical, but there it is.

I had a couple more chances to art it up before I surrendered to despair, though.  I've especially been trying to catch nihonga shows before the clock runs out.  Last Saturday I went to the Suntory Museum of Art to see their Kawanabe Kyosai exhibition.  I was a little irritated that it was so hard to look closely at the works, and for the most part it didn't knock my socks off, although the notable exception was a scroll depicting a fart battle.  Apparently this is a thing in Japanese art, dating back to the Heian period, and if you want to see what it looks like, Dr. Yokai has written a post about this unique genre over on his blog.

I wasn't done with nihonga yet, though.  I took leave of my sanity long enough to decide that the height of hanami season was the time to go to Ueno to see the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition about the "lineage of eccentricities" in Edo-era painting,  There were some really knock out paintings in the show, but there were so many people AT the museum that I was so triggered that I didn't really enjoy it.  After two years, I still haven't figured out how art students are supposed to do serious museum studies in this country.

After leaving the Met going to another art museum, particularly one that promised to be even more crowded, was the last thing I wanted to do...and yet, that is exactly what I did.  Sensei, the Director, and I had been talking about going to the teamLab installation at the Mori Building Museum in Odaiba for months, and finally we'd settled on a date and gotten tickets - a last hurrah before returning to the trenches for the last term.  We met up and walked over, where we were met by a long line of people, which turned out to be the line for pre-purchased tickets. 

So far, I was not impressed.

We waited outside for a while, then we waited INSIDE for a while, and finally, we made it to the real entrance.  We were ushered through a curtain into - I shit you not - a different world.

Let me back up here for a moment.  Last year the three of us and Horn Blower saw a performance of Drum Tao's Mangekyo.  Although the staging was relatively simple, the multimedia effects really added to the performance.  teamLab was the company that created those effects.  As a musical performance, it was sublime, but imagine, if you can, using the same ideas in - essentially - an infinite blackbox theater that loops in and around itself.  Words become butterflies, lights create waterfalls, and in a bamboo forest it's perpetually firefly season.  That's kind of what Borderless was like.  

In one room paths led through crystal ropes of light.  The colors changed, as did the patterns.  After we'd wandered in, the lights dimmed and started trickling downward.  A little while later the "rain" slowed down, and on the outskirts of the room parts of the installation changed colors, creating a rainbow effect.

All of my favorite rooms included that sort of 3D element.  One you entered to be greeted by poles holding up transparent plastic disks, across which flowed patterns of light.  The floor angled upwards and suddenly it was like you were standing in a pond surrounded by lily pads.  When the light tracked across the disks, it becomes apparent that those patterns are actually fish swimming.

The crazy thing was, once you were in the museum, it actually didn't feel that crowded.  The lines set me up to feel like there were going to be a ridiculous amount of people annoying me, but the inside of the museum was so big, and the installations made such good use of the space that for the most part, you could actually enjoy it.  There were parts that you had to wait for - the mirrored room with all the lanterns, for one, but I felt like it was totally worth it, and because they regulated how many people were in it at the same time, you really didn't feel like you were packed in; it was just you, your friends, and a few others.  Although I wasn't impressed when I got in line, by the time I walked out, I was definitely a fan.

Sadly, I can't say that about every part of my life in Japan.  Even though I'm glad to be out of the old school, where the air was toxic and my classroom was constantly occupied by other teachers, I miss my walks to and from work next to the stream that runs through my neighborhood.  I miss seeing the ojiisans who'd be exercising together along the way and telling them ohayogozaimasu!  I miss being able to hit the snooze button until 6:55.  But I'll soldier on somehow.

Staycation

A sad reality of my life in Japan is the fact that I never seem to have enough money.  Case in point: I have been on vacation for a week and a half but I haven’t left Yokohama.  Unless you count Tokyo, which I don’t...who really knows where one ends and the other begins, anyways?  And maybe I’m just getting old, but the idea of two weeks of staying up late and sleeping in, and generally just puttering around however my heart desires kind of appealed to me.  And that is why after a week and a half of vacation the most I can say I’ve accomplished is drinking enough coke to kill a horse and staying up to date on my photography assignments toward my master’s.

Be that as it may, I felt that I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave my six faithful readers without any adventures to enliven their dreary existences this week.  I had a great plan.  I was going to go out to Sanrio Puroland, since my suggestion to go there with friends had been shot down by said friends.  And then I walked out of the house last Friday to do exactly that, and I realized that it was cold and rainy and I wanted no part of the great outdoors.

Well, that decision made, I started looking for what else I could do on a nasty afternoon.  I opened Google maps and started looking at the places I’ve starred over the last few years.  I have a tendency to mark places I find out about where I want to go as favorites, so that I can visit them later when I have time.*  I had been looking at the west part of Tokyo, and decided to get a little weeb-ish.

One place I marked about a year ago was Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory.  This is a little place out in Shimokitazawa owned by Hayao Miyazaki’s brother, and it’s the home of the most kawaii cream puffs on the face of the planet.  I got there around 1 and was really only thinking about dessert until I stepped in the door and realized there was a restaurant with real food upstairs and it smelled delicious.  I inhaled the fettuccine carbonara, didn’t ask for a hundred refills of ice, and took my cream puff to go, which is actually pretty good behavior for me, but what can I say?  There was just something about the place that made me want to be respectful.

Next I caught the train over to Chofu.  At some point since I started watching Gegege no Kitaro I found out that Shigeru Mizuki used Chofu as the setting for his manga.  In fact the entrance for the forest is through Fudaten Jinja, so it had a star on it as well.  There’s also a Kitaro Chaya by Jindai-ji, the temple I visited last year for the daruma market, but I’d already eaten pasta and a cream puff, and since I shouldn’t reaaaaally be buying anything else, I decided to give the tea house a miss.  

I checked out the shrine itself, and then tried to find Gegege no Mori.  The back part of the shrine is restricted, but I noticed a row of stone lanterns along the east side of the shrine.  I followed them back to a small cemetery, where I could see the back part of the shrine.  Mostly it was an empty lot with a sakura tree, which was kind of disappointing, but not altogether surprising.  After all, you can’t just leave the entrance to the unseen world lying around where anyone can find it.

Although I may not need any more stuff to pack, I couldn’t stop myself from visiting Nakano Broadway, since I was already all the way out there.**  Call it a fact-finding mission in case I decide to sell off any of the stuff I already have and leave it at that.  At least on this occasion I successfully resisted temptation.  A few days later I was browsing the craft section of my friendly neighborhood Daiso when the opening song from The Promised Neverland - which I’ve just finished binge-watching - started playing over the PA system.  It was about that moment that I realized I really, really didn’t want to leave Japan.  There are things that bug the ever-loving shit out of me here, not least of which is the fact that it’s impossible to enjoy an art exhibit here (don’t even get me started on my job).  That said, it’s going to be really hard to leave it all behind.  Here’s hoping I make it back in the next life.

*The flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan is that I don’t always remember why I wanted to go some of these places.
**For the record, Nakano Broadway is nowhere near where I was, other than that they are both geographically west from the rest of Tokyo. 

The Pilgrim’s Progress

It’s been said that wickedness never was happiness.  After today, I beg to differ.  I suppose the definition of happiness can be debated, but I feel pretty damn satisfied, at least.

I’ve been in Japan for nearly two years without making it to a major anime event.  Not Comiket - that always happens while I’m back in the States.  Same with Jump Festa.  I considered going to AGF - Animate Girls’ Festival - last fall, but in the end I decided it wasn’t really my scene.  I forgot about Wonderfest this season until after it was over, and last spring break I booked my ticket back to Mongolia before I could even think about going to AnimeJapan.  That made this weekend probably my last chance, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to carpe this fucking diem.

Well, I say that now, but I actually put off getting a ticket til this Wednesday night.  I get a little skittish here in Japan about my lack of language, and although their website said you could buy tickets at Animate, I wasn’t entirely sure I believed them.  Even if it was true, I was maybe a little scared that I wouldn’t be able to ask for the tickets.  In the end, though, it turned out to be just as easily said as done.  I dropped in on the shop in Kawasaki on my way to taiko class, and even though waiting in line was mendoksai, the clerk understood what I wanted easily enough and I was on my way without any additional stress.

Now, that’s not to say that there wasn’t additional stress about actually going.  I’ve seen the photos of Tokyo Big Sight before Comiket, and although I was sure AnimeJapan couldn’t actually be as bad, one blog said that if you showed up before noon you could be waiting 3-5 hours, but if you came after noon, there was no line.  Now that I do the math, I realize that even if you showed up when the doors open at 10, you'd be waiting less than 2 hours, but there ya go.  Part of me thought that to get the true experience I should go to Odaiba the night before, stay at Oedo Onsen World, and then get in line early.  That part of me lost out to the rather more significant part that has achey feet and hates people, so I walked under those magical pathways - along with the other smart people who were just arriving - rather than waiting within them.

So I was finally there - the largest anime convention in the world.  Except...it wasn't really a convention in the way I've come to understand such things.  I think I’ve seen it called a trade show and that seems to fit better - all sorts of industry representation, big names presenting, but in an open floor space area - standing room only.  And sadly, most everything was in Japanese, so while I enjoyed soaking in the atmosphere, I didn’t get as much out of it.  That said, even if I didn’t understand what they were talking about, I definitely recognized these two seiyuu’s voices - Raphtalia and Filo from Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari. 

There were plenty of cardboard stand-ups, but my favorites by far were the ones done at the Kadokawa booth.  They had four different displays, and each one represented a different season and featured characters from a different anime.  Behind the characters there were video screens which gave an even greater sense of blurring the line between the worlds of 2D and 3D.  They also included objects that surrounded the characters in the scene - branches of trees, or lanterns and windchimes.  And this is to say nothing of the characters.  Anime characters are often portrayed in the same clothing episode after episode, so seeing them dressed in something different, something which put them so strikingly within that location was a real treat.  Especially if they were one of your characters...I couldn’t resist messaging the Kawaii Kingpin a picture of Albedo in her yukata.  Strictly because I knew how much he would appreciate it, you see...not because I was trying to rub in the fact that I was at AnimeJapan or anything.

Many of my favorite characters were around, too.  Toei’s booth had a lot of Gegege no Kitaro features, one of which was a short VR game which I decided was worth standing in line to play.  I was a little worried that the whole thing would be in Japanese and I wouldn’t know what I was doing, but there were subtitles and the assistants knew enough English to troubleshoot any problems (because there were some - my pointer was shooting off in the wrong direction).  I’ve never played any virtual reality games, mostly because they tend to be hella-expensive, but it was really cool, suddenly finding myself in Gegege no Mori so I can see the draw.  I may have to strong arm Sensei and the Director into playing Mario Kart with me at Lazona in Kawasaki in the near future.

This year’s theme was rock, and they had visuals of current anime characters as part of the theme.  These were featured on special guitar pick shaped can badges and ticket holders that you could buy when you ordered your ticket.  Apparently they were also auctioning off this SAO guitar as well, for charity.  I didn’t pay that much attention to it because it was rather poorly located between the cosplay area and the swap meet, which I was surprised to see, although let’s be honest - if you’re going to participate in a swap meet for anime merch, you could hardly do better than here.

But then again, if we’re being honest, I was less interested in old merch than new.  Without a doubt, Goodsmile’s booth was the one I was most looking forward to visiting.  I apparently missed the announcement that they were going to release a line of nendoroids from Tate no Yuusha, because it was a pleasant yet frustrating surprise to see the finished prototype of Naofumi on display (pleasant because unexpected, frustrating because he wasn’t yet released so I couldn’t take him home with me).  There were several other upcoming releases on display including Mai, your Bunny-Girl Senpai, complete with bunny suit parts, although sadly, the Hyakkimaru prototype I lost my mind over about a week ago is apparently on display at the Dororo cafe in Animate Ikebukuro.  Goodsmile did have a limited selection of merchandise for sale, and I briefly considered buying a Tate no Yuusha key ring, but it was about that time that I realized I hadn’t spent any of my budgeted money and that I’d be passing through Kawasaki on my way home, which seemed like a sign that I shouldn’t waste money on key rings that I definitely didn’t need when I could put that money toward gorging myself on yakiniku and buying something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

As an art teacher I had to admire the skill and creativity that went into all of the displays.  One booth showed their characters as photomosaics made up of hundreds (thousands?) of stills from their anime.  This one had an artist (or possibly THE artist...not sure what this one actually is) creating a huge drawing of the character in pastel.

But without a doubt, the artistry I was the most in awe of was this display of dolls from Thunderbolt Fantasy.  I’ve never even heard of it, but they made me feel natsukashii for the dolls from AnimeIowa’s MiniFestival.  Which of course made me realize what - in my opinion - was really missing from AnimeJapan: the opportunity to participate.  Shopping is great, as is walking around in a wonderland, but there were no prizes to win, no opportunities to show off mad skillz, or to lead a panel or three on relevant topics.  And fair enough...this is the big leagues, not some backwater like Tatooine.  Or, you know, Iowa.  But I still couldn’t help feeling like there’s no place like home.

The lack of a contest didn’t stop me from bringing my favorite sensei with me for the day, and since the Boku no Hero Academia display didn’t have Aizawa in it, I felt pretty justified in my choice.  If you’re really sharp, you may have noticed that’s Eraserhead I’m casually cosplaying in that first photo.  If you ask me, cosplay casual is the only way to dress for these things.  You’ll be free to enjoy yourself without having people constantly wanting to pose fo photos with you, and you don’t have to stress for months ahead about your costume.  I prefer to save my stress for my dolls’ costumes.

In the end, I spent most of the afternoon enjoying the sights, then limped my way back to the Rinkai line ahead of the masses to catch the train back to Kawasaki.   I’ve made a habit of stopping into the BookOff there before my taiko classes to check out their selection of anime swag, so after feasting at the Gyu-Kaku a block away I went in and indulged.  After all, I may have been eating more red meat, but my blood is as pink as ever.