20th Century Boys, NY Premiere

I got down to the big city this past Sunday to catch the New York premiere of the first two chapters of a planned trilogy of live-action 20th Century Boys films. The movies were shown as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. It's an involved process for me to get to lower Manhattan, but 20th Century Boys was well worth the trip: the movies were fantastic. The first chapter, especially, was riveting; the 2.5 hour run time flew by. The second film was a bit slower, and rapidly multiplying plot threads came dangerously close to causing the whole thing to come apart at the seams, but it still managed to entertain while setting up a third chapter that is going to be epic. Part 3 comes out in Japan in August, and the IFC people promised to try to bring it over as quickly as possible.

New York area fans who missed the first showing of the 20th Century Boys double feature will have another chance next month. There will be a repeat performance at the Japan Society on July 4, with complimentary food and beer during the intermission. The films are eminently worthwhile: Naoki Urasawa's sprawling tale of reluctant heroes, evils cults bent on world domination, pop nostalgia, and persistent childhood traumas has received an adaptation that does the original justice. You simply will not see better summer movies than these this year.

Japan '08: Tokyo Miscellany

In this post, I'm going to cover a few odds and ends from my time around Tokyo. Next time, I'll leave the Kanto region and start delving into Nara and Kyoto.

This run down apartment building was just across the street from the first Ryokan where I stayed, in Hongou. It looks like classic Bohemian student housing. The architecture in residential areas in Japan seems to be much more heterogeneous on average than it is in the US; neighboring houses frequently vary widely in vintage, materials and style.

Here's me at a kaiten-zushi (rotating sushi) joint near the University of Tokyo in Hongou. I wasn't bold enough to place special orders, and just sampled what was going by on the conveyor belt. The plates are color-coded by price, and tea is self service via hot water taps and a tin of powered ocha with a measuring scoop. The other important culinary establishment in Hongou was Hotto Motto, a fast food chain where the bentou (lunch box) style food was hot, cheap, and surprisingly tasty.

I didn't spend as much time in Ikebukuro as I might have, just a quick visit near the beginning of the trip. I made a quick dash through the Tora no Ana branch there, then headed to Cinema Sunshine to watch the Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen movie, which was fantastic, though it was pretty much just a straightforward compilation of the first half of the TV series, except for its final 15 minutes. Fellow traveler Sujith went to see Hokuto no Ken: Zero, which was playing at the same theater, while Ray continued doujinshi shopping at Tora no Ana.

The most convenient way to get into the JR train system when I was staying in Hongou was to head to Ochanomizu, which is between Hongou and Akihabara. Here is one of a pair of picturesque bridges over the Kanda River, viewed from the Ochanomizu JR station.

Here's the view of the river and JR station from the western bridge, looking east. The brightly lit buildings on the horizon are in Akihabara, I believe. I saw this scene many times, transferring between trains after late nights in Akiba.

One of the best meals I had in Japan was in Ochanomizu, at an izakaya (traditional eatery and drinking establishment) called Kanda Wadatsumi. The sashimi was excellent, and we tried out some other odds and ends, too, like oden. A few items were above my Japanese cuisine rating, such as a grayish paste--I can't recall the name--apparently crab-based and meant to accompany drinks, but overall the American contingent made a good showing at the table. R-san gets the credit for recommending Kanda, and also kindly pointing us in the direction of one of her favorite brands of sake, Hakkaisan, which it turns out is available in the US. I recently picked up a bottle at the Mitsuwa shopping center in Jersey.

While waiting for the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Kyoto, I picked up a Tokyo Station bentou. Shinkansen stations each offer their own lunch boxes, made with local, seasonal foods. As prepackaged chow goes, it was awfully good.

Kalafina in Boston

This past Saturday I attended Anime Boston, mainly in order to see Kalafina in their first American concert. I know Kalafina mainly through their role as the vocalists for the music in Kara no Kyoukai - The Garden of Sinners, though I certainly enjoy their other songs.

Producer/composer Yuki Kajiura with Kalafina signing autographs (there was no photography in the concert itself).

As expected, the concert was well worth the trip to Boston. Kalafina have what humorless pop-music snobs would probably describe as an "overproduced" sound, but they held up remarkably well in the live show. I get the impression that some songs, notably oblivious, are really designed with a fair amount of post-production work in mind, but Kalafina got through it in fine form. In the second half of the concert, especially, the audience and the singers started getting enthusiastic, and hearing sprinter towards the end of the show was definitely a chill-inducing experience. The encore was a real treat, and it's a shame that some people had to bail before it got started. For the encore, they ditched the canned instrumental music, and it was just Keiko, Wakana and Hikaru doing a couple of slower songs, with Yuki Kajiura herself on keyboard.

Crumby photo of Kajiura and friends signing my oblivious single.

The opening act for Kalafina was the Video Game Orchestra (Youtube Channel), which proved to be a pleasant surprise. If I were putting together a concert of video game music, I would probably want to cover Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, some Square-Enix standards, and, oh, maybe throw in something token from outside of Japan, like a Halo medley. That's exactly what they played. It was fairly awesome, and I would have bought CDs if they were selling them.

Garden of Sinners promotional flier from the Kalafina table in the dealer's room. Distributer Aniplex was at the convention, but apparently didn't announce anything solid about licenses.

Mmm, New Haruhi

As people have suspected for a while now, the spring season 2009 rebroadcast of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) actually includes new material, starting with this week's episode. Most excellent. It looks like I've got something to add to the must-watch spring TV anime list, which up until now consisted of K-ON! and Eden of the East.




2008 was sort of a slow year for new TV anime, with only a couple of truly outstanding shows, mostly airing in the autumn. 2009 is shaping up to be considerably more exciting.

Japan '08: Nakano

Nakano is a shopping and residential area on the western fringes of Tokyo proper. It was a bit out of the way for me, but I made two trips there, lured primarily by the shopping opportunities.
It's common in Japan for political candidates to harangue the voters from street corners, using vans with loudspeakers. Everyone seems to ignore them. As near as I could make out, this fellow in front of the Nakano train station was concerned about the recession and the evil influence of the American economy. My friends and I listened in while eating tasty imagawa yaki (cakes with red bean paste) from a store behind the van.

Nakano Broadway is a multistory shopping mall at the far end of the Sun Mall covered shopping arcade, just outside of the north exit from the JR Nakano Station. The first floor is conventional, but the upper floors are dominated by anime, manga, figure and costume shops.

The Mandarake Main Branch is located in Nakano Broadway, where it opened way back in 1987. Mandarake Nakano is fragmented into more than a dozen specialty shops scattered around the mall; this is the used manga outlet, which is the heart of the operation. In general, Mandarake and the other anime-related stores in Nakano Broadway seem to focus on classic material and used goods, compared to the trendier shops in Akihabara. Nakano predates Akiba as an otaku destination, after all.

Nakano Broadway seems to be in the midst of a decline, as was mentioned in one of the episodes of the TV anime Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora last year. In the darker corners of the upper floors, there were quite a few storefronts that were permanently shuttered. Mandarake itself looked about as busy as when I was last there, in the 1990s, anyway.

Japan '08: Harajuku

Entrance to Yoyogi Park in Harajuku.

There is an obnoxious stereotype that underlies much of the discussion of Japan on the internet, and even worms its way into supposedly serious consideration of the Far East in mainstream media. Apparently, the country's population consists mostly of pretty ladies in kimonos who spend their days performing tea ceremonies, and weirdos who wish they were American. Nobody I know in Japan fits into either category, but walking around Harajuku on a warm Sunday afternoon, you can sort of see where a naive visitor could get that impression. I would not presume to say that the guys in the photo above (or their poodle-skirted girlfriends) literally want to be 1950s Jerseyites, but they certainly have a peculiarly well-developed interest in certain aspects of American pop culture.

Walkway in Yoyogi Park.

Harajuku is in the western portion of Tokyo, midway between Shibuya and Shinjuku, and thus on the opposite side of town from where my gang was staying. We headed there on a Sunday, which is when amateur musicians congregate in Yoyogi Park, as well as a peak time for people to visit nearby Meiji Shrine. Quite a few fellow tourists apparently thought out their sightseeing itineraries along the same lines that we did. So, the place was completely overrun by visual rockers, goths, German backpackers and ladies in kimonos, and was eerily similar to the Japan of internet and TV fantasy, at least superficially.

Prime Addict at Yoyogi Park. These guys struck me as one of the more enjoyable and polished acts in the park that day.

The musicians congregate along the road through the southern side of Yoyogi Park (best reached from the JR Harajuku Station: just follow the throngs over the bridge over the tracks, and bear left). The performances ranged in degree of elaboration from lone guys with guitars, up to nearly professional bands with truckloads of equipment and cadres of groupies.

Path to Meiji Jingu from Harajuku Station.

Meiji Shrine, dedicated to Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), is one of the major Shinto shrines in Tokyo. It's located on the east side of Yoyogi Park, in a densely forested area that also functions as an arboretum of native trees. The trees at the entrance in the photo are Camphor, Cinnamomum camphora.

Giant gate along the way to Meiji Jingu.

I probably saw more people in kimonos during a quick dash through Meiji Shrine than on the entire remainder of the trip, including lengthy tours of Nara and Kyoto. It's a pleasant walk to the shrine from Harajuku Station; you'd hardly think you were in the middle of Tokyo.

Street protest in Harajuku.

Later, we ran into this protest march, which as near as I could tell was concerned with poverty and the banking crisis. 60s-style student radicals, with hardhats and bandannas covering their faces, were conspicuous by their absence, which was sort of disappointing.

John and Sujith at Fujimamas.

My ex-pat friend John was kind enough to show us around Harajuku for the day. After getting the tour, we headed to Fujimamas, an Asian fusion bar and restaurant that John frequents. The Japanese beer industry has long been dominated by a handful of giant breweries, which produce quality if somewhat monotonous product. Small independent brands seem to be starting to catch on, though, and I wonder if the Japanese beer market isn't going through something like the microbrew revolution that happened in the US 30 years ago.