Sumimasen Gyaru-son!

Tokyo has a lot of “Maid Cafes”, especially around the Otaku district of Akihabara in the Akihabara Electric Town (Akihabara Denki Ga). These Maid Cafes usually have cute girls dressed in lolita-style maid outfits, and serve the customers with drinks and food. If you pay a little extra, they will even play games with you, such as Connect 4 or draughts etc. These cafes have been the province of young male otaku until now…

The Otome Road (Maiden Road) in Ikebukuro district is becoming the yaoi answer to Akihabara’s otaku centre. Yaoi is a genre of manga popular with girls that focuses on homosexual love between men and is often sexually explicit. Yaoi as a term more used in English speaking countries, as the term “BL” (or Boys Love) is used more in Japan. A restraurant has opened on Otome Road called Lily Rose, which is a BL restaurant. The restaurant’s waiters are all really attractive young men in the BL style. Well, they’re really young women, dressed as young BL guys, with male names like Kaisuke-kun (kun being a honorific like san, but reserved for younger males you’re very familiar with). Generally in BL stories, you have “seme” and “uke”. Just like in martial arts where seme “attacks” and uke “receives”. This term has been used in terms of sexual relationships for a long time, and is in no way pejorative. Seme is generally more a traditional “masculine” role, being restrained, strong and protective – whereas uke would be more andryogenous or girlish in looks and behaviour. The waiters are called “gyaru-son”, which is another great portmanteau-type Japanese joke. Gyaru means “gal” as in a trendy young Japanese girl, with the word “son”, making a play on “garcon” – French for boy.

You might think it’s a little strange for girls to come to a restaurant staffed by girls to see guys – but one patron likes it: “Because the staff are really women, I can eat without fear of a man trying to pick me up, allowing me to take in the beauty of the ‘men’ around me as I enjoy my food.”

It’s just another reason why Japan is the most fantastic country on earth (^ ^)

アリス九號 (Alice Nine)

It’s Halloween time again, so time for lots of parties. This year I went to the big party in my local rock club in the style of one of my favorite bands. Unfortunately most thought I was there as an “emo”, but not to worry. Unfortunately visual kei hasn’t really crossed over to here yet. One girl totally recognised my outfit, and made a comment, so that totally made my night! \(^ ^)/. My outfit was a pair of big-soled shoes, skinny jeans, black fitted tshirt, cross pendant and chain, and a band-leader’s jacket, along with blue harajuku/manga/visual kei hair.  The look I was going for was アリス九號 (Alice Nine) who are a visual kei band formed by Shou (将), Hiroto (ヒロト), Tora (虎), Saga (沙我) in 2004, playing at the Ikebukuro Cyber. A while ago, I was in Marui in Shinjuku, and saw a video on one of the screens and ran to one of the girls working there and in bad Japanese, asked her who it was. I got her to write it down, so I rushed off to HMV in Shibuya (well, I was heading that way so went to that one) and picked up the CD.

My favorite of their songs is Yami ni Chiru Sakura (闇ニ散ル桜) which is actually quite an old song, from about 2005 IIRC. Obviously they’re all absolutely gorgeous guys, and look amazing – which I guess is kinda the point for visual kei (visual style, or literally “visual system, lineage, group“) bands. I’ve blogged about this before – probably far to many times really – and I love to go on and on about visual kei to anyone who’ll listen, but if you’re unfamiliar – visual kei bands are usually quite flamboyant Japanese bands, normally playing rock, metal or punk, but very often any type of music. It’s really important to have really good style, and most of the bands wear amazing clothes, and have androgynous looks with stunning makeup and hairstyles. Clearly I’m bound to like bands like this! (^_-)-*

One of my other favorite bands is Malice Mizer, with the amazing and enigmatic Mana, but they disbanded a while ago now. I loved their style during the Klaha era, which was gorgeous funeral gothic style – a style still popular in Mana’s Moi-Même-Moitié clothing label.

The good thing is that I get the chance to dress up again as I’m having a Halloween party on Wednesday too – oh, and I get to dress up every weekend anyway (^_-)-*

Did you just grope me? Shall we head to the police?

In one of my blogs about Japanese love hotels, I mentioned about chikan (痴漢, チカン or ちかん) or “train groping”. Japanese transit authorities have done a lot to prevent groping of women on packed trains, such as women-only carriages during peak hours, but unfortunately, it still exists. To combat the problem, Japanese games developer Takahashi created an ‘Anti-Groping’ appli for mobile phones. It was out in 2005, but has recently climbed to number 7 in mobile phone application popularity. The application displays messages on the phone’s screen in bold print to show to the offender; “Excuse me, did you just grope me?”, “Groping is a crime” and finally; “Shall we head to the police?”.

This application shows a lot about Japanese culture (aside from the fact that Japanese are using mobile applications a lot more). I guess in the west, if that happened, then we’d probably shout about it. In Japan, people tend to not want to make that much of a scene, and women are often too embarrassed to say anything out loud. This application allows someone to get the message across to a “train pervert” without having to cause any fuss. Tokyo transit authorities have arrested a large number of people, but it’s estimated that most women don’t report incidents.

DIY Harajuku Style

One of the major parts of the Japanese fashion scenes is customising clothes, making your own, or matching things together to make a look. CRAFT magazine has a feature on making your own Harajuku punk shirt.

Craftzine also have some designs for punk iron-on transfers you can print out onto transfer paper, but it’s always cool to combine these with acrylic painting etc.

In 8 Hours, 38 Minutes…

I will be heading to the airport to leave Japan. It seems like I’ve just arrived, but also that I’ve been here for a long while. I’ve made the most of my visit I think, and seen a lot of Tokyo, but I still ran out of time and missed lots that I wanted to see. Two weeks just isn’t long enough…

There is a lot I will miss about Tokyo; the vending machines, iced coffee in little cans, Mild Seven cigarettes, gothic fashion shops, Harajuku, Akihabara, Shinjuku, the weather (ok, well sometimes it’s a bit warm, but I’d rather be warm than cold – and I was really quite sick of the weather in the UK), the bum-washing toilets…lots really.

My case is packed, which was pretty much empty when I arrived, but it’s full now and really quite heavy. I’ve got my crappy gifts for people (honestly, don’t expect anything actually “good”), and my clothes for the trip are laid out ready. My iPod is charged, PSP is charged, and I have a couple of books in my hand luggage. In retrospect, I’m sad about leaving Japan – but I’ll be back soon…

Sayonara – the word used in Japanese to say goodbye – means; “If it must be so”…

Well, sayonara Nihon… arigato gosai masu!

Kill Bill and the earth moved!

Yesterday I was in Marunouchi, which is pretty much the center of Tokyo in the Chiyoda ward. Imagine an area comprised of a load of insurance company buildings, and you’ve pretty much got it. The area is just next to Ginza, which is just north of where I am at the moment. It’s strange that over the past couple of weeks I’ve got a really good idea of the geography (or is that topography) of Tokyo. Each time I visit an area, it fits into the surrounding places like a jigsaw. The weirdest thing is when I’m in a completely different area, but realise that I’ve arrived in somewhere I know really well, and another bit of the puzzle clunks into place. It’s really weird that I knew nothing about Tokyo two weeks ago, but now I can find my way around pretty well.

Marunouchi also has the Imperial Palace, and the Imperial Palace gardens, which are really lovely – although it was so hot again that I couldn’t walk around them too much. It’d be nice to go back again, but when it’s less than a million degrees. Cherry blossom season is supposed to be the best time to see the area, and there is a walk all the way through the park which takes quite a while. I did have lunch in a fantastic place called Aroyna Tabeta, which was braised pork with rice. The restaurant is in half of a railway arch, and really quirky. It’s authentic and reasonably priced Thai street food, and well worth a visit if you’re around there. It’s right next to the Tokyo International Forum, under the railway arches [3-7-11 Maranouchi, Chiyoda-ku].

After that, dinner was in a restaurant called Gonpachi in Nishi-Azabu, next to Roppongi. The place is a Japanese restaurant, but inside it’s design is really fantastic. I recognised the place immediately, and apparently it was the inspiration for the restaurant in Kill Bill, where the big fight scene happened. I had tempura, some beef and chazuke, along with a load of other small dishes. Along with a few Shochu drinks, it was a great meal. Afterwards I met some people and we went to Gaspanic, a club in Roppongi. It’s a lunatic place, where the women are agressive, and if you stop drinking, you have to leave. Even the staff check your drink, and if it’s too low; you either have to buy another, or leave. It’s a truely mad place! (^ ^)

Speaking of drinking – there are three important Japanese drinks; nihonshu, shochu and awamori. “Sake” is another name for nihonshu, which is brewed from rice and fermented. This is about 20 percent alcohol. It’s served warm or cold, but it’s generally the cheap stuff that’s served warm. Daiginjo is the really good nihonshu, but it’s expensive. Shochu and awamori are both distilled, so much stronger – about 50 percent. Shochu is made with rice too, but it’s sometimes made from barley or sweet potato. If it’s distilled once, it’s honkaku shochu, although it’s often distilled multiple times for a drink to mix with fruit juice. Shochu is a really nice drink mixed with juice, although by itself it smells evil! I woke up about 4am after only sleeping for a couple of hours (I’ll explain why in a sec) and took some headace tablets, as I’d had some Asahi beer too (^ ^). Awamori is distilled too, but made with imported Thai long grain rice, and comes from Okinawa. Okinawans drink it with ice and water.

The reason I woke up last night about 4am, was that I was aware that something was happening. The air conditioning was on, and making it’s usual sound, but it felt like I was sleeping weirdly and could hear my heart beating in my ear. I realised that I was wobbling slightly in bed, and a vaigue though passed through my mind. I heard from a friend this morning that it was an earthquake of 4.5 on the Richter scale. So I’ve experienced my first Japanese earthquake!! (^o^)

Today I’m going to fly around Shinjuku, Akihabara and Shibuya – although it’s so hot again today that I might come back before going to Shibuya and have a shower and cool down. I want to head to a sushi place in Shibuya that I’ve heard is really good.

Japan’s Newest Idol

As I’ve been in the south and west of Tokyo a fair bit recently, I thought I’d go north and east today; up to Ueno and Asakusa (“a-sak-sa”). In the 1600’s, Ueno used to be the adminitrative capital of Edo, which was to become Tokyo, and used to have 36 temples in the area to help ward off evil spirits. I visited Ueno Koen (park) which was Tokyo’s first park, but in 1868 it was the site of the Battle of Ueno between supporters of the Meiji government, and Tokugawa shogun warriors.

Ameyoko is the street market sprawling around the streets surrounding the station. “Ame” used to refer to sweets, so the name meant “confectioners’ alley”, but during the second world war this was the area to get black market goods, mostly from US soldiers, so the “Ame” became synonymous with Americans. There are a huge amount of sweet stalls, but also loads of shops selling all manner of goods “inspired by” other designers.

After Ueno, I visited Asakusa, and the Kannon Temple (Senso-ji), right at the end of a long arcade of covered tourist shops. By and large, they all sell tourist crap, but I bought a bean jam bun from one of the stalls, which was lovely. Just at the gate of the temple, I was interviewed for Fuji TV – so I must now be famous in Japan (^ ^). I reckon I’ll become an idol – so I’m waiting for the phone to start ringing soon! (^_-)-*

It was a bit of a tourist day today, and I have to admit I find the usual tourist things really boring. I’d much rather be experiencing the “real” culture of a place. If this sounds snobbish, I don’t mean it to be – just that I like different things.

The weather today though was so hot! Just unbelievably hot and humid. I thought I was going to pass out at one point, walking down the street – so I stopped at a small Japanese restaurant and had some food. Miso soup, pickles, onigiri rice balls and some watercress salad.

Tomorrow I’m going to complete the sub-centers of central Tokyo by visiting Maranouchi, which is the location of the imperial palace and where Edo castle used to be. As it’s the Odon festival at the moment, I’ve heard it’s open to visitors. The area also has the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Pokemon building – so it’s got it going on (^ ^) Beforehand, I’m going to head to the Tsukiji fish market for the freshest sushi in Tokyo!

Baby, the Stars Shine Bright in Shinjuku

Staying in the spirit of just going to places I like now, I was in Shinjuku again today. To be honest, I woke up at about 9:30 and felt so dead I didn’t think I’d bother going for breakfast, but I went down anyway. Although I walk a lot at home, I really don’t do this amount of walking and definitely not in loads of heat. I think yesterday was quite a hot day too as most of it was spent outside, and not in air-conditioned trains/buildings. After breakfast I checked mail etc, then went back to my room and had some sleep. After lunchtime, I wandered down to Shinjuku as I wanted to pop into Kinokinuya Books, and into my new favorite store; Marui, although you’ll notice it from the big 0101 logo on the modern building. I’m really enjoying knowing where things are now though, and with the help of the most useful book you can buy coming to Tokyo; the Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas, I’m finding places ok. Lots of people say that Tokyo is a nightmare to find places in, and it is true that a lot of places are very small, and you can find them only if you can read the kanji on a little sign outside telling you that’s it’s on the 5F or down a tiny staircase into the basement. Normally people think Tokyo is hard to navigate, but it’s generally because maps are mostly shit.

Japan uses a good system for addresses, which is a series of three numbers, and a district. For example, Onejuku’s address is: 3-18-1 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. So the “Tokyo” part is easy to understand, that it’s the city. Next comes Shinjuku-ku, which is the ‘ward’. The next part is an area in that ward, sometimes called a “cho”; like Kabuki-cho for example. The three numbers at first look a bit weird, but they’re (from left to right); the sub-area, or “chome” (“ko-may”), the city block, then the building number in the city block. So the address is the 1st building in the 18th block of the 3rd chome in Shinjuku in the Shinjuku ward. See – it’s easy! (^ ^). Most of the buildings have these numbers on them if you look hard enough, but the best part about getting a Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas is that it shows all of the block and building numbers on there. Don’t worry about looking like a tourist with a map, lots of Japanese need maps to get around – it’s a huge place! One way Japanese find where they’re going is to phone ahead and get the shop etc to fax them a map.

Anyway – enough of the Tokyo city planning (although there often doesn’t seem to be much planning at all sometimes).

Marui have a few different buildings in Shinjuku, like 0101 Young, 0101 Men, but I headed to Onejuku as it has a load of floors of gothic, gothic lolita, punk and other fashions. I have to admit I was totally blown away by the gothic fashions. I even own a bunch of clothes in that style, but I was really stunned at how gorgeous some of the clothes were. I just stood open-mouthed at them all, and wandered around probably the most amazing clothes shop in the world….in my opinion of course. Some come here to go to Gucci, Prada, Lois Vuitton etc – this is my designer shopping! The 5F is Gothic & Mode, 6F is Punk & Rock, 7F is Punk & Gothic and 8F is Lolita style. The gothic & mode and lolita concessions are my very favorite. I just love the clothes so much. In fact so much so, that I’m going to get my sewing machine out when I get home as I’m so enthused by it all. I have so many ideas now, but the problem is that I won’t have a load of stores like on Takashite Dori to get all the accessories etc. You can check out the floor guide, but here is a English Google translated version (although auto-translations sometimes are a little weird of course). Marui carries brands such as; Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Metamorphosis, No Future, Peace Now and my very very very very fave; Moi-Même-Moitié (the fashion label of one of my heroes – Mana, singer of Malice Mizer) [official Mana site link]. I think I’m going to *have* to buy something from M-M-M…just because I do (^ ^).

I also realised that Playstation 3’s are about ¥60,000 (about £250), which is almost half the price in the UK – so I think I might look into getting one. Just have to check if it’ll be ok to use in the UK though. Let me know if you know about that kind of thing…flyingjelly1 at gmail dot com…..thankyew…

Nakameguro again… Harajuku again…

It’s true that Tokyo is an expensive city, but it’s relative really. My tastes happen to be cheaper “regular” type eating places, like kaiten sushi, ramen bars, bento and izakaya places. The things I like to buy are manga art books, music, stationary/pencils, manga, t-shirts and strange stuff such as from ranKing ranQueen. I brought a fair amount of money with me, and people warned me that I would probably run out quite quickly, so take more than I thought I’d need. I brought about £300 in currency for the first few days, and a load in travellers’ cheques, to change when I needed to. So far I’ve been here for a week, and only just got through my currency.

Today though I’ve managed to spend a load of money in one. In Nakameguro yesterday I saw a messenger bag, and thought about it overnight. I decided to go back and get it today. I spent far too much on it, and it’s my most expensive bag – but it’s really very cool. It’s made of recycled rubber inner tubes and car seatbelts, and decorated with puncture repair kit patches. They suggest you apply your own patches too to make it more individual.

Speaking of spending money. I went into Loveless in Aoyama yesterday evening, and it’s probably my favorite shop so far. The entrance is a staircase down into the basement, looking like a cave entrance. You arrive in a dark, but airy shop with loud music playing and an assortment of really cool things around; clothes, interior decor objects, music, books etc – it even has a bar along one wall of the shop, but I wasn’t sure if that was for real or not – it looks really cool though. Downstairs from this floor is another floor carrying some amazing clothes – all with amazing price tags. The staff in there were very nice, very cool and very very cute! (^ ^) They do a free style magazine with purchases, and this issue featured photography by a few different photographers, one of which is a Flickr contact – it’s a small art world! I bought a really ostentatious green wooly hat with a huuuge bobble, and a Loveless party CD.

As it’s Sunday today, I’ve spent the day in Harajuku, threading my way through the hoards of tourists crowding around the cosplay people on the bridge. What you don’t see in the photographs of the Harajuku people are the millions of people around them taking photographs. People tend to sit around in the shade at the end of the bridge, and around them is a moving wall of people taking photographs.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll do the traditional culture thing, but I’m enjoying the pop culture a lot. I did want to go to Tsukiji fish market – but that’s a really early start, and I’m now used to the time change, so I’ve fallen into my normal sleeping patterns of about 2am to 10am. That’s 6pm until 2am UK time if you’re texting or phoning.. (^_-)-*

It seems like so long ago that I arrived here, but I thought today for the first time about going back home. Other than seeing my lovely friends, that thought fills me with dread…

I really like it here.

Ikebukuro, is coming like a ghost town (and Nakano)

There is a large building in Ikebukuro called the Sunshine 60 Building – part of the Sunshine City Complex, housing shops, restaurants, an observatory, an aquarium, a ghost theme park and lots of offices etc. Apparently it was one of the first big shopping/entertainment centers, but it’s since been eclipsed by the other complexes such as Roppongi Hills et al. I went to have a look at it, though not really for the shopping, but I’d heard there was a strange ghost theme park on the 2nd and 3rd floors, that does really good gyoza, called Namjaland (with something to do with Namco I understand).

Eventually I found the place, and paid my ¥300, and went in. It’s a really compac, and decidedly Japanese and strange place. It does have a really good area, designed to look like an old-time Japanese street packed with gyoza (japanese dumpling) vendors. Completely authentic apart from the laminated menus and piped in music (^ ^). The gyoza was really good though, and I went back for some more. I tried some vegetable and some prawn – although I couldn’t decipher any others, so stuck with that. This floor holds the ghost town, but also Ice Cream World – which does have every flavour of ice cream you can imagine. There was some completely black ice cream, but I didn’t go so far as to try that, as nobody spoke english, and I couldn’t understand what it was. It might’ve been licorice – although just as well it could’ve been something entirely more hideous!

I did try some bean ice cream, some apple ice cream (which was very nice), some ice cream made with “deep sea water” (which was vanilla as far as I could tell”), and….and I’m not joking here…roast chicken wing ice cream! …and yes, it was foul!

…sorry (^ ^)

After this strange experience, I visited the area’s Animate shop which sells manga and anime, and picked up another really good art book. I’ve bought a bit too many manga and art books since I’ve been here, and I suspect my case will be a nightmare on the way back! Still, I got some issues of Bleach which I have the English versions too. Then I had a walk down Sunshine Dori, in the – yep – sunshine (^ ^)

Ikebukuro is the third biggest sub-center of Tokyo behind Shinjuku and Shibuya, although it’s got a bit of an un-cool reputation. It isn’t as wild as Shinjuku or Shibuya, but it seems a pleasant place. A little further from the center of Tokyo, it has a lot residential streets on the west side of the station, although it feels a bit vanilla. Sort of a cross between Ginza and Shinjuku, but not either of them. I wanted to go on the “chin chin densha” (ding ding tram), which winds it’s way around the residential areas, but I ran out of time really and I wanted to go to Nakano before it was too late in the evening.

Getting to Nakano about 7pm, I headed through Nakano broadway, which is a fantastic, long covered corridor of shops with small alleys leading off at regular intervals to small restaurants and fruit stalls etc. Of course the ubiquitous vending machines can be found down these long alleys too.

My real reason for going there was to go to Mandarake, as it’s apparently a big store there. I picked up a few more manga books I was after, and also bought a cast iron Japanese tea pot, some green tea and a cup from a great little shop. I managed to ask him how much things were, and understand what he was saying – along with asking for directions to Mandarake, I wasn’t doing too bad really.. It’s just as well, as really not many people speak English. Apparently, most have learned English, but only really at school and haven’t had much practice – so consequently they don’t really like to speak it in case they get it wrong or offend. Also, this is their country, so it’s only right that visitors make some kind of effort…in my opinion of course.

As it’s the weekend tomorrow, most places will be heaving. I’m going to visit Harajuku on Sunday again as I’d like to go back to the bridge, but I think I’ll leave Takashite Dori and Cat Street for during the week. I’m also planning to check out a maid cafe in Akihabara, but there is absolutely no chance you’ll get in at weekends without at least a couple of hours wait. Another thing for next week I think.

I’d like to check out Naka-meguro too, which I might do tomorrow. It’s an area south of Shibuya, and quite an up-and-coming place. It’s relatively cheap to rent there, and that’s attracted a lot of artists, musicians etc. There is even a street art gallery there, so I’m quite interested to see what it’s like.