31 or...?

This is from ages ago but I ate ice cream with two friends of a friend who were in Tokyo to see Utada Hikaru's WILD LIFE concert! We were looking for a place to eat ice cream in winter and went to the koban (police stand) to ask, because cops should know where that stuff is. (And they did, very kindly, point us to the nearest Baskin Robbins.)

Baskin Robbins in Japan is called 31. Because when the initials B and R are put together they kind of form the number 31. I don't get it.

Baskin Robbins ice cream is expensive here but so festive~!

Getting down to storytelling

Lots of stuff going on, I don't know where to start.

Well, I've been doing English babysitting, which is a real challenge because it's an 11-month-old girl, and 11-month-olds don't want to play with you or hear you talk, they want to grab whatever catches their fancy and throw them. She's actually noticeably improved after one session of me talking non-stop to her, though - she can almost say "hi" now and waves. Yay.

I also went to the creative arts section of a vocational school (not the Manga Juku, a different place) and met with a professional mangaka - Fukuyama Youji sensei, the creator of Mademoiselle Mozart. He lectures there now. When we first saw him he was making beautifully detailed figures out of something like plasticine. Apparently all you have to do to harden the figure is stick it in the microwave. He was saying how easy a class this was as there wasn't much to teach about model making - and manga students would come here to relax when they got stuck or uninspired and come make their characters in 3D. He had a botched head on a piece of wire that looked so cool, and I asked him if he was throwing it away, and he said in a sort of singsong voice, "Nope, you can't have it." As he can't let a botched piece out into the world.

He and his wife gave me some really helpful advice on my work. While earlier people I met with at the school hinted at how some of the kids had no motivation and were pretty much flunking the classes, with a sort of cool disapproval on their faces, I got none of that negativity from Fukuyama sensei. He was very accepting and he and his wife were both funny, cheery and laid-back. They suggested I get used to inking things the traditional way - using pen nibs - and draw in a way that will appeal more to Japanese tastes in order to get assistant work. They also said what I expected - that the most important thing in manga is /expressing/ the story you're trying to tell - and as my art is already fine I need to show I can do the story and expression side of things. He was very nice about my art, taking time to look at it properly and giving a bit of praise and constructive criticism. I'm going to make something before I see them again in January, on one of the days I can take free classes there.

On that topic, I notice there isn't really any kind of "indie comic" scene in Japan (unless Comike counts). Aspiring mangaka will choose a manga magazine they want to get published on, and slave away at trying to get accepted. Teachers advise students not only based on skill, but also based on how well they're appealing to their chosen magazine's target audience. It makes me wonder what those people do who want more freedom in their work. I guess they "gaman" - grin and bear it for the time being, until they reach a level of success where they can take more liberties.

One of the school directors was telling me that thanks to the recently passed law restricting expression in anime and manga, some of their school activities such as animation screenings will no longer be held in Tokyo. :(

There were quite a few non-Japanese there, too. I met a Brazilian guy who attended the school between return trips home and back to renew his tourist visa. There were quite a few Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese around.

Panelling

An example of what I did in my second manga juku class. The subject was Panelling. I made a one page comic about a random daily experience I had (true story ._. ) and the pro sensei came and repanelled it to show me how it could be expressed more dynamically. (She did two different versions. The one on the left is the revised one.)


Basically when I go to Japanese restaurants I get nervous asking if I pay before the meal or after cause I never know which it is! So I was working up the courage to ask, all the while paying for a mealticket....and then I asked the lady, /handed over the ticket/, and wondered why she was reacting with just.."Yes...?" and a confused expression on her face. I was wondering if it was my Japanese or she was like this cause I'm a foreigner and sat down, then realized about the mealticket. Facepalm.

Free Manga Classes!

I started going to these free manga classes at the Manga Juku in Ochanomizu. You can bring your work and pros will give you free advice, and best of all you can keep coming for free, once a fortnight or so. The first lesson was on character design and we got to watch a pro inking an illustration right under our noses. The second one, which I went to today, was on panelling where we had to panel and ink a page. Oh and they gave us free pen nibs!

Here are some familiar original pages! They were hung up in the waiting room.

Cute stuff I saw on the streets of Tokyo

Just to clarify, that dog is wearing a bee suit. And the guy on the bicycle kept ringing his bell 100 times a minute to get everyone out of his way.

I saw this really cute wish at a temple somewhere between Nakano and Saginomiya station. The one at the top says "I wish for my parents to be healthy" and there's a cute little drawing of the parents. xD

This bunch of buildings along the railway track looks pretty drab and depressing, until you notice the tiny windows with Christmas trees in them.

Garasu no Kamen poster. xD Wtf.

Cute furniture shop in Ebisu I saw today, but damn expensive.

FLOPPY and The Parasite Museum

I am so lucky I got into the FLOPPY concert on the 27th. I hadn't booked a ticket cause I found out too late, and I had to wait till all the support bands finished playing to be allowed to buy a ticket, which thankfully was available. I am SO GLAD I got in, too. The music is nothing like what you hear on CD. It vibrates your bones and transports you to video game heaven. I had to stand on my tippy toes the whole time because I was at the very back, nearly round the corner down the corridor leading to the exit. The livehouse was about the size of a large classroom. I got a limited edition CD and made friends with a fellow fan there!

The next day I went to the parasite museum in Meguro. There were fellow Perth people there. Is it just me or do Perth people love this kind of oddball stuff? I could tell where they were from just from their particular brand of geeky humor. Here's a whole bunch of shots from there.

Infested praying mantis.


Infested rodent.
Infested dolphin's stomach!

Infested fishy!

And, warning, the next pic is not work safe.

.

.

.

.

.


Gods.

And an 8.8m long tapeworm that was inside a man.

They were selling parasite necklaces, you know like the ones you can get with bugs trapped inside the plastic.

Adorable Exotic Petshop!

I saw this pet shop for exotic animals on the way to the FLOPPY concert last night (still too tired to blog about it!), omg.

Giant Nan!

Ok, not much going on other than drawing a lot and walking a lot, but here's some of the little delights I've found! I'm starting to become a regular at this restaurant called Asian Dining Lama. For only 780 yen (680 if it's the curry of the day) you get a salad, a bowl of curry, a drink and refillable nan or rice. You're sure to leave full, and it tastes pretty good, and it's run by an Indian (I think) so I can kind of relax in there. And the nan is gigantic! (My hand is in the pic for scale.)


Maybe it's cause I've been living in expensive-food-Perth, but I love it! They also have one of those challenges where if you can finish eating a massive dish of curry you get it for free, but I don't think I could handle that with my tiny stomach.

I also went to Takadanobaba and saw the coolest little bar ever, there were old-school figurines in the window, bizarre tribal statues out front, garlic hanging all over the walls and their idea of Christmas decorating is this:


They serve champloo apparently. I'm intrigued.

Haven't posted in a while due to having to do boring stuff like work, job searching, opening a bank account, etc. I did however really enjoy Nakano Broadway Arcade, so I took another trip to explore. I find this place a lot more interesting than the famed Otome Road - many more otaku & old school toy shops, which I found by accident as I went there looking for the tin toy shop and shop that sells things people forgot on the train, which I read about on the net but couldn't find. :( Still it's the most fun shopping location I've found so far (aside from Harajuku maybe) and it's a short bus ride from home.


I also went with my ex-classmate to see the Howl's Moving Castle-style Ghibli clock in Shiodome - we got there right about noon, when it went off, moving its turrets and waving its arms, with little mechanical people working inside. We also went to Harajuku, where I found a T-shirt with Pedo Bear on it. o_o

Yes, I know, the bear was originally 2ch's Kuma, and it wasn't till later that it became famous as Pedo Bear, but nonetheless, priceless.

I can't get to the books!

AWWW

Oh, something I forgot to mention in the previous post - this is the cutest bottle of Absolut Vodka you've ever seen.

They also had Jack Daniel's whiskey and a bunch of others. This at my local convenience store! For approx. 250 yen.

I ate Char Zaku's head

Today I met up with an old primary school classmate from Perth who's been living in Tokyo for a while. He taught me how to use the train passes and stuff, and showed me where to get formal clothes in Shinjuku. I got a pair of business pants, will go to Shibuya for an interview-worthy bag one of these days.

AND WE WENT TO THE GUNDAM CAFE.

This is what it looks like in the daytime.

And this is what it looks like at night:

I got Char Zaku ice cream, which was a red ball of ice cream with silver ball thingies in it covered in orange sauce, and chunks of something black which made it look more like a Zaku head. I have no idea what was in it but it was quite good. Fruity. There was a giant Gundam RX-78 model in an alcove near the ceiling, display cases filled with masterfully built plastic models and signed plaques - the only one I recognized was Tomino's in the middle - I'm not yet Gunota enough. :(

The coolest thing by far, though, was the toilets. The men's side was apparently Earth Federation themed, and lucky me, the women's side was ZEON! When you enter, you push a glowing red button and there's an alarm and the light pulsates, and the lid of the toilet opens! It flushes after you get up and the lid closes too, but considering how Japanese toilets normally behave I guess it's not that much of an eye-opener. Nonetheless the toilet was a very exciting experience for this shameless otaku.

ALSO - at the arcade I played the Gundam cockpit game, Senjou no Kizuna! I had no idea what I was doing after I got my pilot card (on the side of Zeon of course) so I just pressed random buttons, wondering why I couldn't fire. I started turning left and right and jumping randomly, which must have made me look like a spastic ballerina, and I got killed once.. but once I figured out how to fire and use my melee attack I realized that the other five or so people in the game were total n00bs too, and I went psycho on them. I must've been pretty annoying because I think I knocked this guy down five times with melee attacks, then finished him with my bazooka. I was cackling with glee, hopefully they couldn't hear me through the mic. >> I think everyone in the game was confused - the only people who got kills were me - 2 and another guy - 3. The game has a panoramic view so it made me a bit nauseous but it was so much fun! Arrrrrgh!

Shopping for important stuff, Sugamo

Yesterday, we went to Sugamo - the so-called "grey ghetto" which is supposed to be a sort of mecca for people over 60.

Happily my mother was drawn to every clothes shop there and pointed out the retro cafes and enka CD shops that lined the main shopping street, Jizoudoori. We saw some Buddhist shrines/statues, an outdoor performance of some sort of Japanese folktales, and a chrysanthemum ikebana contest, and the shopping stalls nearby were glorious. There's so much selection in Japan for clothes, bags, accessories, etc. that you feel like you own something unique - in Perth there's so little choice that you double up with other people a lot - same shirt, bag, etc. The prices were so much better, too. We bought some 100 yen toe-less socks and these finger-puppet gloves (for a second cousin).

The famed red undies that give their wearers energy were there, which I didn't buy as they too were for the over-60 bracket. Also I went into a McDonald's to see if it was true that the

meal sizes were written in kanji...but they weren't. Disappoint. D:

We also went to the Electric Town in Akihabara to buy a transformer for my laptop.

The first guy we found said "Nuhh it should work without one! Everyone else will say the same thing!" but the second guy, an old man wearing a Chinese name tag tucked away in a little stall who was some kind of transformer guru, tested out one of his step-ups with my laptop and it charged! I semi-dropped it on the way home but thankfully it worked. It feels about as heavy as a gold bar.

I HAVE ARRIVED

I finally have internet access, so here's my first report on Japan!

I am so glad I've done this before. It's easy to forget just how incredibly overwhelming and stressful Tokyo can be. You are bombarded with imagery, ads, and intriguing little details which are great if you're as curious and city-loving as I am but it tires you out fast. Taking the train home we had to change lines about three times, which is hard if you're not used to it because there are many railway companies in the same station (or in separate stations in the same area) with separate ticket machines for each one, not to mention having to line up for them and figure out where you're going quickly because you'll hold everyone up if you stop moving. I retreated to the safety of the wall a lot to get out of the flow of people and figure out which line/direction we had to take next.

In the first photo we're at the platform to take the train out of Narita airport into Tokyo proper. I was kinda disappointed that the exchange rate at Narita was so bad (72 yen to the Aussie dollar). I'm being careful not to spend much.

After dropping by our home stay family's place to drop off luggage we went to Shinjuku (second photo) to buy an adapter for my laptop's plug. I thought I wouldn't need a transformer because my AC adapter can take Japan's voltage but it turned out to be too weak and my laptop wouldn't charge.

The people here are so fashionable that people watching is great fun too. Also the fact that people are everywhere. If I see some particularly notable characters I'll mention them.

The first day we didn't do a lot except that little bit of shopping and meeting the family at their house in Saginomiya, Nakano. They're very nice and hospitable, and used to foreigners. It's a relaxed environment, something I've never actually experienced in Tokyo before. They can all speak English (!) and they've got this adorable cockerspaniel Jey.

That's the first day, I'm dead tired so I'll write about the second day (today) tomorrow.