Japan Tracks 2

Hey all you hip cats and groovy chicks!  It's time for another round of the hot new tunes that are sweeping Japan from coast to coast!  Take a perilous slide down the cutting edge of the Japanese music scene -- or at least check out some tracks that have slowly come to my attention over the past several weeks thanks to the pachinko parlor near the bus stop playing them on a near-constant loop.

And I ain't including that dang Avril Lavigne song.  Even though it's everywhere right now.  I.  Am.  Not.  Including.  It.

Kara - "Jumping"
I briefly mentioned Kara before, in connection with fellow musical act Girl's Generation, as an example of a Korean group that had made it big in the Land of the Rising Sun.  Kara seems a little bit more adult than Girl's Generation.  They also seem to have some obsession with wearing black in their videos and then switching to white at key moments to heighten the dramatic tension.  It doesn't always work, but props to them for sticking with the same iffy gimmick through multiple videos.  You can't say these gals ain't consistent!

You also can't say the hook in this track doesn't sound like a mangled version of the Mortal Kombat theme.






Big Bang - "My Heaven
What's this?  Another Korean group?  Man, Japan sure is loving K-Pop these days. 

I became acquainted with Korean hip-hop act Big Bang sometime during college, and I've regretted it ever since.  They are, first and foremost, relentlessly lame.  Which explains the embarrassingly lame quality of this song.  When I first started hearing it everywhere, I didn't know it was the latest from Big Bang, but I really should have guessed.   

Man, this song is stupid!

Hinamatsuri: Girl's Day

Because I can't let any Japanese holiday pass without notice, I wanted to make a brief post about Girl's Day (Hinamatsuri).  Girl's Day is full of everything girls like; namely, delicious rice cakes, obscenely expensive dolls modeled after the now-defunct court of the Japanese Emperor, and threats of marital ruin.

Every Hinamatsuri, little Japanese girls unpack sets of intricately-dressed Japanese dolls.  These sets can consist of a simple king-and-queen pair (if your family lives in a cardboard box) or a group of twelve or thirteen royals and courtiers (if your parents love you).  The girls set their dolls up on a multi-tiered display platform before chowing down on rice cakes.  And as far as I can tell, that's the extent of the festivities on Hinamatsuri.

Oh, except that if you don't take the dolls down by the following day, they'll make it so you never get married.  Thanks, dolls!

"We are vindictive jerks!"

GUNPLA Gundam Action!

Hey y'all! Sorry we've been so not-posty lately. February was a pretty blah month without much to report (besides what we've reported already). We've got some catching up to do, and I'm gonna start it with this post on GUNDAMS.

GUNDAM.

What is Gundam?  That thing above is a Gundam.  More specifically, it's a long-running animation sci-fi series about people who pilot giant robots called, well, Gundams. They fight each other, they philosophize, they discuss war and politics, but mostly they just fight each other. It's immensely popular in Japan and internationally as well, so much that it's been referred to as Japan's Star Wars. They even built a life-sized Gundam in Shizuoka.

For the love of Gundam!

As a middle schooler I watched the English version of "Gundam Wing" every afternoon on Cartoon Network.  It wasn't a very good Gundam series - there was a lot of talking and brooding and boring political treason I didn't care about.  Still, I kept watching because by the end it was always ROBOT FIGHTS.  And boy were the robots cool!  I went as far as to import the nicely articulated snap-together Gundam model kits from Japan, called GUNPLA.  I loved me some Gundams.

... Which is why I was so excited to hear there was a GUNPLA expo showing in downtown Hiroshima!  Of course, we went and it was sweet.  Here are some pictures from it:

The poster.  So exciting!

All sorts of radical GUNPLA Gundam models.  You can get an idea of just how many different Gundam series there are.  Look at em all!

They had a part where famous people customized their own Gundam models.  This is one is a Zaku II customized by American rock party guy Andrew W.K.

And this one is by Japanese J-Pop pretty-boy Gackt.

This was a really big and really complicated model - they had to put together all of the Gundam's inner machinery as well!

At the end of the exhibit there was a shop selling GUNPLA models.  I bought one and I talked Joanna into getting one too.  It was a lot of fun to put them together - like a magical time trip back to 8th grade!

Here's Joanna working hard on her lil' robot.  You can see the pieces the models come in.

Our finished Gundams!  Mine is on the left, Joanna's is on the right.  We got the cutesy "SD" or "Super Deformed" Gundams.

Alternate weapons!  What's cool about GUNPLA models is that they're not like other static model kits - they're more like really poseable little action figures you build yourself.  They always come with loads of extra stuff.

So that's our Gundam report.  Hopefully we'll be building more GUNPLA kits in the future - they're really cheap here compared to the old import rates!

Again, sorry for the delay - we'll have more posts up soon.  Till then, じゃあね!

Happy Fun Japan Party Time Store

These are some miscellaneous things Ryan and I saw when we were walking through the shopping arcade in downtown Kure.

We all know that no party is complete without a Hitler costume!  In case you can't decipher it, the writing on the blue strip at the top reads "Enjoy your life," which apparently would be impossible to do without a Nazi get-up.  Japan once again fulfills needs I didn't know anybody had.

You know how a lot of Halloween costumes in America are just normal, mundane outfits made ludicrously sexy?  That isn't the case here.  This is what Japanese school girls' gym uniforms look like to begin with.  No additional sexing-up required.  You'd think the fact that the Japanese public school system puts little girls in uniforms skimpy enough to double as fetish outfits would give someone pause.

The always-popular cute subservient maid costume.  Heck, you don't even need to go to a special costume shop to pick one of these up.  I've seen them at my local mall.

A horse head.  Wear it with any of the above for instant hilarity.

A tiny United States mailbox that plays a mounful-sounding rendition of "Mr. Postman" when you jiggle the lid.  And when I say "mournful-sounding," I mean the batteries are running low and it sounds like the singer just took a huge dose of thorazine.

"We want you for the bath time crew!" - creepy uncanny-valley child with disturbingly white teeth

You need to be careful what you do when you go out in super-public.

This store wants you to be its kids.  "Wow Wow" indeed.

Kure: The Place for Dads

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all dads are obsessed with World War II.  It's like, a law or something.

The moment a man hears his newborn child's cry, his first thought is: "My God, I'm a father.  This is the happiest day of my life!"  This thought is immediately followed by another, equally distinct realization: "I gotta start watching Band of Brothers!"

If your dad isn't injecting History Channel programs on D-Day and German war technology directly into his eyeballs by the time you're twelve, be forewarned: he may not be your dad.  He may be an impostor, possibly from another dimension -- one in which the laws of the universe are distorted to such a degree that gravity no longer functions and dads no longer spend entire weekends watching specials on the Battle of the Bulge and some bunker Hitler might have stayed in for like, a day back in 1944.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, Kure!  Everyone's dad would seriously love Kure.  It's got oodles of WWII-era battleships and submarines, museums dedicated to naval technology and kamikaze torpedoes, and really big fishing rigs every which way you look.  Ryan and I ended up spending a day in Kure when the Oyster Festival we were trying to attend turned out to be scheduled for the following weekend.

Here's some pics!

We somehow ended up on this quaint, nautical-themed train on the way to Kure.  It was kind of inexplicable, but we weren't complaining.  It was cute!

Battleships in the port in Kure.  Too bad you couldn't walk up to them for a closer look.

God only knows what this monstrosity was for.  It can't have been up to any good.

A robot.  Okay, so this doesn't have anything to do with WWII.  We just happened to stop at the Leiji Matsumoto museum at one point.  Leiji Matsumoto was the guy who wrote Galaxy Express 999.  And that means something to exactly zero of you reading this blog.

A gigantic submarine!

An actual mine pulled out of the actual Persian Gulf by actual minesweepers.  I hope it was disarmed?  But the sign was in Japanese, so who knows.

An anti-mine device after coming in direct contact with its quarry.  Zoinks!

Three cheers for Glorious Nippon.

The cutest mine sweeping device in the seven seas.

...Except for this one, of course.  It's a wittle seal!  *SQUEAL*

The sleeping quarters inside the submarine.  A cursory examination by yours truly revealed that they were even less comfortable than they look.  The hellish red lighting is a nice touch.

The control room of the submarine.  They also let you look through the periscope.  SUGOI~!

Plum Blossom Viewing

If you know one thing about Japan, you know this country has a lot of robots, some of which can do silly fan dances. But if you know two things about Japan, you know this country has a lot of robots and a mysterious Spring pastime known as Cherry Blossom viewing.

The annual blooming of the cherry blossoms is still a month and a half away, give or take. However, plum blossoms are just attaining their full glory in gardens across Western Japan. So I decided to wonder down to the famous Shukkei-en gardens in downtown Hiroshima to do some serious, hardcore viewing.

This is what I saw.

Beautiful!  Darker and starker in hue than cherry blossoms -- they felt very wintry.

It's quite striking to see these delicate blooms on otherwise barren branches.

I love the pale purple of the blossoms against the deep, impenetrable green of the bamboo thicket behind them.  Apparently, that portly white dude liked it too!

I'm not sure why these flowers were yellow.  I heard a few faint murmurings about "Japanese apricots" -- maybe that's what these were?

Some white flowers.  More Japanese apricots?  Boy, my horticultural knowledge is worthless.

The loneliest plum blossom.  In general, because of the lack of foliage, the flowers had a lonesome feel to them.

Those who came for the viewing could take a load off and enjoy some sort of Japanese alcoholic beverage, provided they could tolerate all the foreigners who walked by and took pictures of them downing their drinks.  I decided to give the booze a try after the man in the suit assured me that it was "very sweet" and "for children."

Bottoms up!

It may look like curdled milk, but it was actually quite delicious.  Very sweet, just like the dude in the suit had said.

Setsubun!

Hey everyone!  Did you know that February 3rd was a Japanese holiday?  Well WE did!  It was Setsubun, a holiday that involves throwing beans at people wearing demon masks.

Handy dandy Setsubun kits, available yesterday at your local convenience store.

During our celebration of Setsubun, we made an informational video about its traditions.  Check it out!