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Old stuff, Ōokayama 大岡山, Tokyo

2012-01-14T21:10:00.007+09:00

The other day I dropped my daughter off at her kindergarten and had a couple of hours to kill, so I wandered around the local area.

It's called Ōokayama, near Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and about 20 minutes by train from Shibuya.

Anyway, somewhere along the ramble I stumbled across this amazing oasis of miniature shrines alongside an artificial waterfall and huge carp in a pond. The place is located slap-bang in a minor valley, deserted and looked, well... old.

Obviously I loved it!

Plus there were some interesting old houses and objects around the same area. The refugee old rotary dial phone particularly appealed to me.

Also a great place to sit and read - since I'm currently getting into Shuichi Yoshida's novel Villain - and mull over the directions of my own, parts of which are going to be set in older Tokyo.

End of Year Top 10 Guff - 2011

2011-12-28T20:54:00.021+09:00

I know a lot of people decry these things, and most of us are worn out by the concept by the time the clock hits 11:59pm on December 31st, wherever in the world you may reside. Here in Japan we get there way earlier than North America or Europe, but a couple of hours behind Australia, so over all we're pretty fortunate.

Funnily enough I just stumbled across an old one I did at the end of 2009 (here), so it's interesting - or p'raps not - to compare and contrast.

Anyway, things Japanese again take precedence since that's the subject this unruly blog is supposed to relate to, and I live in Tokyo; however, I have other interests (I'm a music journalist, a hack DJ/producer, and this year I published my first novel, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat), so I'm going to throw a few more things into the mix.

If 2011 in Japan was a movie, we’d probably find it far-fetched fodder.

This year we’ve had multiple earthquakes including a doozie that hit the 9.0 mark back in March – and thereby triggered huge tsunami that overcame concrete tsunami walls and carried about houses like they were made of tin foil. Around 20,000 people died.

We’ve experienced typhoons that killed hundreds more and created mudslides that destroyed villages. Then there’s been the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, radiation in the food supply and radioactive hotspots in Tokyo, revolving door government ministers, and hints of possible future economic meltdown.

The trouble is that this has been the reality, not some movie pushed through by Toho. In comparison, the movie and telly industry this year in Japan quite simply pales.

It’s been an eventful year in other ways as well.

In July we lost Sakyo Komatsu, author of the novel Japan Sinks – to natural causes at age 80 rather than in any great disaster – and manga artist Kei Aoyama died far too young at the age of 32 in October. Last February Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi, better known as Tura Satana of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), passed away.

Contrary to Internet rumours, however, neither Satoshi Tajiri (the creator of Pokémon) nor Masashi Kishimoto (creator of Naruto) passed away at all.

The spate of scuttlebutt that followed hot on the heels of the March 11 tsunami included one that Hello Kitty creator Yuko Shimizu was also a victim. Again – not true.
And as rather spiteful Twittering has proved false, we do get to see beyond the general sense of doom, gloom and mayhem that’s prevailed here this year. Things are still happening, and creators like Tajiri, Kishimoto and Shimuzu are still alive and operating - even if I'm not the biggest fan of their stuff.

I doubt that the disasters this year affected the downward slide that anime has suffered over the past few years.

While studios such as Production I.G, Bones and Madhouse are still producing the goods – if on a more subdued level – others like Studio Ghibli appear to be on the wane. There are still anime gems to be found on TV here (even if I struggled with a Top 5 list) and the occasional big screen feature movie, but there’s been no imaginative smash hit like Spirited Away or Summer Wars since, well, Summer Wars in 2009.

That said, my mates at Madman Entertainment in Australia released the English language version of Summer Wars earlier this year, and if you haven't indulged yet, you should.

Meanwhile Production I.G has hardly been asleep at the wheel. Earlier this year they released a brilliant mini-feature anime called Drawer Hobs (Tansuwarashi in Japanese) that’s doing the international film festival circuit instead right now. What it lacks in the action quotient the story more than makes up for with a playful sense of humour and a refreshing, quirky and whimsical look at contemporary life in Tokyo – disasters be damned.

Director Kazuchika Kise has credits that include the two Patlabor movies helmed by Mamoru Oshii, along with Oshii’s more famous Ghost in the Shell and Innocence. Kise was also involved in the production of Blood: The Last Vampire, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai, and all the xxxHOLiC animated adaptations.

Another I.G offering also doing the film festival merry-go-round is A Letter to Momo, a hands-on creation by Hiroyuki Okiura (he also handled the script and storyboarding).

Regular readers of this rambling blog might connect the dots: Okiura directed the fantastic action anime Jin-Roh – The Wolf Brigade (1998). This latest baby took seven years to finish, and anime production masters involved include Masahi Ando (Spirited Away), Takeshi Honda (Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance), Hiroyuki Aoyama (Summer Wars), and Hiroshi Ono (Kiki's Delivery Service).

I.G’s Blood-C was easily the best animated thing on TV this year, although it was almost equaled by the resurgent studio Bones in October with the debut of Un-Go, directed by Seiji Mizushima (Fullmetal Alchemist).

Not only did I publish my own novel this year, but I got right back into the swing of reading as well - probably to start with to help save on electricity after all the nuclear reactors were switched off around the country.

While I dug out old faves like Raymond Chandler, Kristopher Young, Dashiell Hammett, Haruki Murakami, Joseph Heller, Philip K. Dick, Ryu Murakami, James Ellroy and Yasunari Kawabata, I also got to explore the terrain of some newer cats like Kristopher Young, Steve Mosby, Molly Gaudry, Guy Salvidge, Urban Waite, Shuichi Yoshida, Tony Black, Allan Guthrie, Grant Jerkins, Justin Nicholes, Josh Stallings, Marcus Zusak, Nigel Bird, Paul D. Brazill, Gordon Highland, Heath Lowrance and Yuko Matsumoto. There were some great reads tucked away on trains here in Tokyo over the past twelves months; thanks to all of these people for keeping me inspired and/or marginally sane.

I'm currently about 120 pages into my next novel, titled One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, and fingers crossed it pans out reasonably well in 2012.

The reception to Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat was bloody brilliant, thanks in large part to fellow bloggers Elizabeth A. White, Marcus Baumgart, Jacob @ Drying Ink, Tony Pacitti @ Forces Of Geek, and Guy Salvidge @ Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus. Thanks for the other sweet reviews, too, from Verbicide, SF Book Reviews, Farrago, Amber, Jody, Gordon, Jessica, Colin, Jane and M. L. Sawyer. Some of these are here.

I also have to thank my publishers, Another Sky Press, for making the dream-thing come true, as well as every single person who's bothered to read the wayward tome. Ta, mates!

Music-wise, I still adore my electronic/leftfield techno stuff, and there were some amazing slabs of vinyl from Slidebar in Germany including a new one, Behind Moisture Crack, with Cristian Vogel, Bill Youngman, Tobias Schmidt (and me - shhh), and the latest outing from Neil Landstrumm. I also had the absolute privilege of remixing Detroit legends Aux 88 - alongside Gez Varley from LFO - on the Black Tokyo Remix Sessions 2 12-inch.

Elektrax in Sydney is continuing to do amazing things under the helm of the very talented and prolific DJ Hi-Shock (the Lucy remix of Ground Loop's Ampersand was one of my tracks of the year). Sebastian Bayne is doing a great job running IF? Records - well, he did release my latest Little Nobody album Hard Foiled, plus an EP (Linoleum Actress) with remixes by himself, and the great Justin Robertson and Paul Birken - plus there's great stuff from Seb himself, Enclave, Mike Holmes, etc.

Hats off to my mate Shinji Tokida who runs Plaza In Crowd here in Japan, for releasing the Commix CD of my stuff, remixed by the likes of Shin Nishimura, DJ Wada, Mijk van Dijk, Dave Tarrida, James Ruskin, Luke's Anger, Dave Angel, Justin Berkovi, Ben Pest, etc.

Finally, rounding out a crazy year in too many respects, Auricular Records in the USA got out my most recent release. Titled From the Back of the Fridge, they say it's "A retrospective/archival collection of the works of Andrez Bergen. Packaged in a futuristic resealable silver bag. Features a 30-page full color book spanning almost 14 years of the musical career of Andrez as he passes through his many incarnations as DJ, producer, author and family man. The book is a colorful collection of art, photos, adventures, and insights accompanied by enlightening text bits by Andrez himself. Also included with this package is a 2 disc collection of audio, remixes, and videos."

It's also only $25. Go figure.

Anyway, enough self-indulgent waffling! I tacked on some inane year-end Top 5 lists for you to sink your teeth into, but most of all... happy new year!!

TOP 5 ANIME MOVIES 2011

1. Drawer Hobs (d. Kazuchika Kise)
2. Macross Frontier – Sayonara no Tsubasa (d. Shoji Kawamori)
3. A Letter to Momo (d. Hiroyuki Okiura)
4. Broken Blade: Bastions of Sorrow (d. Tetsuro Amino)
5. Doraemon: Nobita and the New Steel Troops – Angel Wings (d. Yukiyo Teramoto)

TOP 5 TV ANIME 2011

1. Blood-C (Production I.G)
2. Un-Go (Bones)
3. Suite PreCure♪ (Toei)
4. Usagi Drop (Production I.G)
5. No. 6 (Bones)

TOP 5 JAPANESE LIVE ACTION MOVIES 2011

1. The Detective is in the Bar (d. Hajime Hashimoto)
2. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (d. Takashi Miike)
3. Once in a Blue Moon (d. Koki Mitani)
4. Karate-Robo Zaborgar (d. Noboru Iguchi)
5. Tormented (d. Takashi Shimizu)

Odd Bedfellows on a Plate

2011-12-10T07:58:00.007+09:00

If you grew up in the 1960s or ‘70s you’d probably remember a kids’ book by Dr. Seuss titled One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Alternatively, if you’re a child of the ‘90s you may recall an episode of The Simpsons titled “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish”.

It’s the episode in which Bart Simpson and family make a visit to a new sushi bar called The Happy Sumo, and Homer demands fugu while the chef is out canoodling Edna Krabappel on the backseat of her car.

Cue assistant chef’s stressful splicing and dicing of the deflating delicacy.

For those who may have missed this cartoon, fugu is the Japanese name for blowfish or pufferfish of the Tetraodontidae family, the majority of which have extremely high levels of a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin in their ovaries, liver, intestines, gonads and skin.

The Encyclopædia Britannica has labeled fugu the second most-poisonous vertebrate in the world and there is no antidote to the poison – a fact that doesn’t seem to faze Japanese consumers, however, since some 10,000 tons are eaten here each year.

When I first arrived in Japan in 2001 I really had no choice but to play Homer Simpson and indulge in the expensive dish, which can cost anywhere between ¥4,000 (US$50) and ¥20,000 (US$250) depending upon the restaurant, the quality of the serving, the size, and the kind of dish.

The most common way to have fugu is sashimi-style, sliced exceptionally thin and raw and served with a special dipping sauce called ponzu (a canny blend of citrus juice and soy sauce). Each piece is almost transparent and the texture softer than most other fish. The impression is that it discreetly dissolves in your mouth.

The delicacy is also deep fried or conjured up in a nabe (hot pot), and often combined with fugu hirezake: Toasted fugu fin served in hot sake. It smells a wee bit fishy, but has quite the celebratory kick to it.

You can usually tell the fugu eateries by the huge storefront tanks full of the fish: Swimming, carousing, looking a little the worse-for-wear, and occasionally floating listlessly upside down.

The allusion of those bottom-up types runs a little close to home when it comes to fugu.

Both in fiction and reality the fish has had a huge impact on the culture of this country and fugu is quite often lauded in traditional haiku. While its price sets the dish up as the foodstuff of kings (but not the emperor, who is not allowed to partake), many Japanese office workers with big annual bonuses aspire to tuck into the marine delight.

Even so there is a hint of the morbid and fatalistic involved. Fugu, while outrageously priced, could be viewed as the Russian roulette of the wining and dining set – and mortality is, after all, the great leveler.

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT TASTY FUGU, ALONG WITH HACHINOKO (BEE LARVAE) AND INAGO (LOCUSTS) IN THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Smile Precure!

2011-12-07T19:32:00.004+09:00

Well, it was bound to happen - Toei does it around February every year, and this will be the ninth time in succession.

I'm talking up the Precure anime, which I'll admit to having watched every Sunday morning with my daughter Cocoa for over two years now (her excuse is she's just turned six; I'm not sure what mine happens to be).

Every February Toei, the anime production house behind the series, revamps the cast and crew and reimagines the series.

In 2010 the best series screened - HeartCatch Precure, which was, in fact, my choice of anime series of the year for 2010 (something difficult to swallow since it's a shojo girls' show aimed at little kids) - and this year Suite Precure♪ has struggled to hang onto the coattails of its predecessor but isn't doing so badly now that characters Beat and Muse have jumped into the fray.

Anyway, the new line-up has just been announced, along with the customary annual name-change.

2012 will see Smile Precure! (スマイルプリキュア) hit the screens, replacing Suite Precure♪. The character designs do look cute, while still not in the same league as Yoshihiko Umakoshi's designs for HeartCatch Precure.

Well, as with all things Precure, only time will tell. And what else do I want to do every Sunday morning anyway?

Yumiko Kayukawa: Double-O-Something

2011-11-04T06:17:00.005+09:00

Let me confess here that You Only Live Twice is my favorite Bond film, slightly pipping Goldfinger.

While otherwise often maligned by Bond aficionados, I love so much about the film. There’s the rousing score (by John Barry, with Nancy Sinatra doing the vocal bit on one of the series’ most memorable songs), and Little Nellie remains one of Bond’s most quaintly unprepossessing technological contraptions.

On top of this, it was set (and much of it filmed) in 1960s Japan, so we get often hilarious doses of sumo, ninja, sake, a Shintō wedding, exotic pearl divers, devious salarymen, and Himeji Castle. Siamese vodka and piranha are also shoo-ins.

I first saw this movie on the telly back in Melbourne, when I was still in primary school. It was my first dose of ‘Japan’ – and is probably one of the minor and/or subliminal reasons I moved to this country 10 years ago.

So when I saw the painting, above, that leads into this article, along with the one of two pearl divers, by Japanese artist Yumiko Kayukawa, I was hooked. Kayukawa’s also did a brilliant Bond image (below) that captures the atmosphere of the '67 film along with several key elements, and it’s just so – Pop Art, a movement that also had its genesis in the 1960s.

There’s something quite magical about Yumiko’s style – a heady, often surreal blend of Western and Japanese elements in which voluptuous, too-beautiful girls share space with ukiyo-e tsunami, pink flamingos, and kimono imprinted with hyenas.

Luckily for me she also turned out to be a friendly, approachable, funny individual who was ready to indulge me with her time when I hit her up out of nowhere for the following interview that appeared today online over at Forces Of Geek. Just click on the title (left) to have a gander.

The Flawed Mountain Goat

2011-10-22T07:51:00.003+09:00

Just got a GREAT review from Marcus Baumgart @ The Flawed Mind. Here's a taste:

"Andrez offers us one imagined future for Melbourne, and it has to be said that things don’t look so good. The dystopian Melbourne of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, pitched at some distance into the future, has the unique distinction of being the only city left in the world. Unfortunately, things are not going terribly well in terms of civil liberties, the political climate or the environment. In fact, things are comprehensively fucked up on all fronts, and the portrait painted is of an overcrowded, polluted metropolis groaning under the control of a government vested in corporate interests and busy herding non-conformists and misfits into extramural death camps styled as ‘hospitals’.

"Despite this undeniable grimness, the novel is also pretty amusing, and it mines the noir vein with gay abandon, to use an old-fashioned phrase. Andrez wears his pop-culture influences on his sleeve, and the result is a compote that mashes up a plethora of fictional frameworks into a believable, seamless whole. Readers who know Melbourne will enjoy seeing the geography of the city rezoned and remapped, polarised by the presence of a dome over the CBD that shelters the wealthy elite. And god help you if you find yourself in Richmond, which Bergen transforms into a demilitarised wasteland; Abbotsford and other inner suburbs don’t fare much better.

"I for one appreciate someone taking the time to imagine an Australia of the future, as it is a welcome change to the ubiquitous North American setting of much popular fiction, and science fiction. Nevertheless, that wouldn’t be enough to recommend it. Happily, TSMG is also a ripping yarn in the best dystopian, gumshoe tradition.

"Oh, and on a final note, you will thoroughly enjoy the company of the protagonist, Floyd Maquina – he is ruggedly handsome and generally ruined; witty, self destructive and self-effacing with his air of gracious defeat..."

You can check out more at Marcus' website.

We have a swag of other review and interviews up at the Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat website HERE.

Personally speaking, this is wunderbar encouragement since I'm currently in the middle of writing the next novel, which goes under the acting title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. More about that shortly, or you can check out the Facebook page (I got in early) here.

Genji: Modish Millennium Man?

2011-10-14T05:43:00.005+09:00

As outlined here a couple of entries back, I recently slunk back to Tokyo after three of the most über-intensive days’ traveling in my life, down in the grand old capital city of Kyoto.

Despite a decade living in the newer capital (Tokyo) I'd never actually been to Kyoto before - as inexcusable as that sounds—and it was one of the best jaunts I’ve had in recent years.

At the same time I’d also started to attack a new novel, which has the current title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. This is, I stress, the interim title only and - yes - it is partially a cheeky reference to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (shhh), though the main character in the novel is a centenarian and there’s a lot of change going on. If I get a letter from Señor Márquez or his lawyers I’ll probably consider also changing the name of the bugger.

Concurrently in my other job (teaching English) I’ve been yacking with a lot with students and friends about a famous 1,000-year-old Japanese tome called The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji Monogatari), and have been itching to run something about it with my mates at Forces of Geek.

Anyway, as they conspire to do, these various things got together and chewed out my brain a bit, resulting in a novel that’s shaping up - in the early stages at least; I’m only up to page 67 - as partially an inane travelogue.

I’ll probably shaft some of the passages, ditch others, find a ghostwriter, and rewrite the remainder. By the way the ghostwriter reference is a pun since a dead man narrates the story. One Hundred Years of Vicissitude is possibly going to be a five percent sequel/prequel of my other novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - and 95 percent something else entirely.

At the moment, in the existing manuscript, this is a section/riff that gets across the whole background of The Tale of Genji so I thought I’d snatch that and share it with you, instead of writing up a fresh article from a journalistic perspective.

To be honest I also hope you don’t mind plodding through to uncover the historical morsels. This is barely edited and unnaturally long-winded stuff at times, plus I’ll probably toss out some of the dialogue/asides if I end up using it in the novel - at all.

If curious and/or at all interested, you can read more @ FOG.

Tokyo Disneyland: Rodents Galore

2011-10-09T21:28:00.005+09:00

You might know Disneyland. Then again, it's possible you may not.

The keys to this particular magic kingdom have been handed into the care of an organization of amalgamated Japanese companies best known under the alias of the Oriental Land Company (or just plain OLC), which originally contacted the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s with plans for an amusement park - but were knocked back.

The company reapplied a decade later, and this time succeeded in arranging a licensing contract.

Tokyo Disneyland opened to the general public on April 15th, 1983, and has developed into the most frequently-visited theme park in the world – with over 17 million visitors a year.

Now, with over 45 rides covering an area of 115 acres, Tokyo Disneyland continues to experience larger crowds by the day - aside from a few weeks after the March 11 earthquake, which damaged some of the carparking area - to the point that there’s barely room to breathe, let alone stroll, and queues of up to three hours are often the norm on weekends and public holidays. Right now they have the whole Hallowe'en thing happening there and it's an extremely popular time of year.

One time in October three years ago we were forced to queue for over two hours for one of the older school, more humdrum rides - Snow White's Adventures.

Tokyo Disneyland is pretty much modeled on L.A. Disneyland, except for one important omission – there’s no Matterhorn - while the Haunted Mansion here is located in Fantasyland and has the same facade as the one in Walt Disney World in Florida.

There are also attractions unique to Japan’s visitors: the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, which features Disney villains, and Pooh's Hunny Hunt - which is a surreal and hilarious spin-out of a ride that just begs to be experienced.

And where else will you experience swash-buckling Pirates of the Caribbean rabble-rousing and carousing... in gruff jidaigeki-style Japanese voices?

If all this isn’t enough, right next door is Tokyo Disneyland Resort's second mega-attraction: Tokyo DisneySea, opened in 2001, and boasting its own array of rides, shows, dining, and so on – including Journey To the Center of the Earth, Sinbad's Storybook Voyage in the faux Arabian Coast area, Storm Rider, Ariel's Kingdom, and the Indiana Jones Temple of the Crystal Skull ride.

And, dammit, as much as I despise Mickey and I don't want to dig the place, it's downright fun.

Kyoto 京都

2011-09-22T11:58:00.008+09:00

I just got back from three rather intensive days in the grand old city of Kyoto.

In fact I skipped out on a rather legendary contemporary music festival (Labyrinth) to douse myself in some old school culture down in the former capital. Why? Well, even after a decade living in Tokyo I'd never actually been to Kyoto (crazy and inexcusable, I know).

I'd always wanted to spend more than a week down there to really experience it, but a group of my favourite students decided to take matters into their own hands - and treated me to three of the best days' traveling that I've had in years.

There was, of course, Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, above left), also known as Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺 Deer Garden Temple). You've probably seen the postcards of this baby, or you may even have read Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion ...or you might've just glimpsed the photo in the desktop picture art of Apple's OS X computer operating system (shh!).

Anyway, it's a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto established back in the 14th century.
The current Golden Pavilion, however, was built far more recently (1955) since the original was burned down by a mad arsonist monk in 1950 - the subject of Mishima's novel.

That doesn't stop the place being so damned stunning, however.

Aside from 13 other temples and shrines, plus assorted rock gardens and Nijo Castle, we also took time out to investigate Gion (祇園) on Saturday, around dusk.

Gion is of course the home of maiko, geisha, ochaya (tea houses), kaiseki (multi-course dinner restaurants) and okiya (geisha/maiko lodging houses). Plus a swarm of tourists like me soaking up the atmosphere and trying to spy a maiko (an apprentice geisha, the flashier ones).

I took more than 250 photos on the trip, and sorry to share just two of 'em - but, then again, I don't want to bore you senseless with my own happy snaps. Make sure you get over to Kyoto to take your own. The city is brilliant.

Not-so-Oblivion Island

2011-09-14T14:04:00.005+09:00

Production I.G's first 3D-CGI feature film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror has received a slew of recognition thus far as Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Prizes, Jury Recommended Work in the Animation Division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival (2009), the Nippon Cinema Award at the Nippon Connection Film Festival (Germany), the Visual Technology Award for the animation section of the 9th annual Video Technology Awards, the Digital Content Grand Prix 2010 - DCAJ Chairman Prize, Feature Films Competition Special Jury Prize at SICAF 2010 (South Korea), the Jury Special Mention at Fantasia 2010 (Canada), Jury First Mention at Expotoons 2010 (Argentina), and Jury's Special Mention at the 18th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film 2011 (Germany).

Now add the Gold Kite for the Best Feature Animation Film for Young People and the Signis Argentina Jury Special Mention at the 10th annual International Film Festival "Nueva Mirada" for Children and Youth, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from September 1 to 7, 2011.

Otherwise known here in Japan as Hottarake no Shima - Haruka to Maho no Kagami (ホッタラケの島〜遥と魔法の鏡〜), you can check out the official website here.

Great news for I.G, the people behind the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

The animation direction is by none other than Naoyoshi Shiotani (the director of the South Korean SICAF 2008 Grand Prize-winning Tokyo Marble Chocolate) and it's directed by Shinsuke Sato, the writer/director of Princess Blade (2001).

To fully appreciate the controlled, irreverent madness here you'll need to brush up on your basic knowledge of Inari shrines - plus a re-reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-screenings of Spirited Away, Toy Story, The Empire Strikes Back and the Rankin/Bass-produced 1964 stop motion version of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Here's a taster:

Prima donna plastic-fantastica?

2011-09-09T06:02:00.004+09:00

Licca-chan (リカちゃん) was born on May 3, 1967 to Orie Kayama, a Japanese fashion designer, and Pierre Miramonde, a French musician. Her papa Pierre apparently liked his wife's family name (Kayama) so much that he adopted it as his own surname.

Licca’s favorite books are Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess – both extremely popular girls’ titles in Japan and themselves made into anime series. As it turns out, Licca-chan not also loves dogs, eating Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and reading the manga series of Doraemon, but also likes cross-dressing and role-playing.   

For instance there's Choro Q Licca, aka Race Queen Licca (who has her own racing car) and quite a few Hinamatsuri (Doll's Festival) Licca-chans worth up to ¥289,000 (US $3,750).

Then there’s bridal Licca, Chukyo Women's University High School Licca-chan, fast-food chain Mosburger Licca, the über-tanned Loco Neo Licca, Super Doll Knight Licca, and rollerskating Licca-chan; back in the ‘90s there was even Street Licca – who was a DJ in pink Converse runners carrying a très cool Rough Trade record bag – as well as a special ice-skating Licca for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. And in 2001 a pregnant adult version of Licca-chan was introduced to coincide with the birth of Aiko, the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako.

Here's the original 1967 commercial:

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT LICCA-CHAN @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Melbourne book launch of TSMG

2011-08-20T07:33:00.022+09:00

So I'm now back in Tokyo, after a two week sojourn in Melbourne - the more prominent Melbourne in Australia rather than its silly namesake in Florida, which is 32 years younger. I get parochial about this because the Melbourne in Australia is my hometown, and also the setting for my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

I went down this time not only to rendezvous with friends and family, nor just to soak in the sights, sounds, smells and brilliant foodstuffs that the city does indeed boast. Because the novel was only recently published, it was high-time I did a book launch there; any excuse to have a party, and all that jazz. Anyway, we ended up doing the propaganda jaunt at a superb 1853 blue-stone abode in the city called Miss Libertine on Wednesday 10th August, and the turn-out was brilliant.

Suitably enough it was also pissing down with rain that evening.

I got in early to cut my teeth with some beer; I also cut up wads of cheese and a smoked sausage that, in Australia, we call cabana (suitably kitsch old school '70s art exhibition style, and far cheaper than serving up sushi!) plus we had salt and vinegar chips and chocolate teddy bears since they appear in the novel.

There were hiccups - the three-hour background score I'd put together, which included musical influences, soundtracks from appropriate films, my own hack Little Nobody muzak and some self-indulgent ditties, failed to fire-up. We also had technical problems with the DVD projector so we couldn't screen most of what I wanted to show. I skipped out on doing a book-reading - a part of me thought that a wee bit too pretentious in the circumstances - so I opted to opening myself up to an informal Q&A instead.

The only problem was that between the hob-knob of the occasion and scrawling inane messages on copies of the book, I had to remember names, catch up with mates and family members who showed up, and generally remind myself to make time for a sip or two of ale squeezed in between gas-bagging - so the Q&A fell on the back-burner a bit.

But management at the venue were wunderbar (thanks, Bo!), the vibe was fantastic, I had a couple of great happy-snappers (in particular Jason Maher) and no minor problems seemed to matter anyway.

Massive thanks to everyone who showed up and thereby created the vibe I talked up a sentence back - you all rock. While I'll admit to having been a bit stressed before the event, during and especially after I had a ball.

That's Melbourne (Australia) for you.

I forgot how much I missed the place, even now - a decade after I left - and it just seems to improve with age. I think anybody who bothers to read this blog (hello? Anybody?) might've noticed I like to talk up fine wines, and there're some nice drops to be found in Australia. So the image of Melbourne aging away in a dank cellar - since I love my vintage stuff - is actually a positive one.

We're not talking dusty, damp and archaic, though there's plenty of gorgeous Victorian architecture to be found in this city with its fair share of mold. Melbourne has a comparatively short history but has hung on to a lot of that, while at the same time developing new twists and turns as it goes.

But I think being away gave me the detachment necessary to set my novel in a post-apocalyptic Melbourne in which the proverbial shit has hit the fan.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I left again, going straight from around 6°C in the early morning in Melbourne to 36°C and humid here in Tokyo - nice and sizzling in the sun; steaming in the shade.

And I'm buggered, but it's brilliant to be with the girls again. And missing Melbourne already - what a city.

Now I just need time to recuperate.

Photos by Jason Maher & Andrez Bergen. You can check out more happy-snaps at the TSMG website.

Tsukiji: Big Fish out of Water

2011-07-31T07:09:00.004+09:00

Stats have it that there’re almost a hundred centralized wholesale markets in 56 cities across Japan: 50-odd for fish, 19 for flowers, and 10 for meat. Tsukiji, here in Tokyo, is the heftiest of the lot; in fact it’s the biggest fish market in the world. Remember the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the U.S. government stores the Ark of the Covenant at the warehouse that stretches off into the horizon, without apparent end?

Tsukiji (東京都中央卸売市場) is just like that.

Also known as the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market and as “Tokyo’s Kitchen” - or more simply Tsukijishijo in Japanese - it everyday handles somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 to 2,900 metric tons of seafood, dabbling in over 400 varieties of aquatic vertebrate, crustaceans and cephalopods (this includes 300 kg slabs of tuna).

Employed to oversee the whole circus are around 65,000 people. This in effect makes Tsukiji the largest fish graveyard on the globe, as well as one of the bigger wholesale food markets in general.

It’s located near Ginza, just a quickie stroll from Tsukijishijo Station on the Toei Oedo Line or via the Hibiya Line’s Tsukiji Station.

Inside the market they have auctions in the wee hours, and the best time to be there is around 5:30am - though don’t wear your best footwear as parts of the place are awash in fish blood and hosed-down produce. It’s not really for the light-of-heart or vaguely animal rights-conscious, let alone people on the cusp of vegetarianism for ethical reasons, as you’re going to see a lot of sea creature carcasses, guts, squirming eels, and very big live craps tied in shoddy Gordian knots.

But you also get to witness people practicing their slice-and-dice techniques on both frozen and fresh tuna and swordfish, using intimidating sword-like shivs of their own that’re over a metre in length - just steer clear of the gas-powered go-carts and the guys lugging around huge blocks of ice, as they’re even more dangerous.

Set up early on in the 17th century by shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, this sprawling hub was originally a more humble affair located near Nihonbashi Bridge, not far from the current Tokyo Station.

But after the general destruction of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, the market was shifted to reclaimed land in the Tsukiji area - right next to a small Shinto shrine called Namiyoke Inari-jinja, built on the water’s edge of Tokyo Bay (before land was reclaimed from the sea to eventually house the market) in the mid 17th century.

Inari is apparently quite the chipper deity in Japan, with around 32,000 shrines (over a third of Shinto shrines in this country) dedicated to the Japanese kami of fertility, rice, agriculture, industry, worldly success - and foxes.

Thus the shrines are usually decked out with not only vermilion-coloured torii-gates, but also a bunch of statues of kitsune (foxes) who may or may not be messy eaters since they have bibs tied round their necks.

Namiyoke Inari-jinja itself also goes for much dragon and lion iconography, since the original attempts at land reclamation, commenced in the 17th century by the Tokugawa government, were often washed away in storms. When success was actually achieved, people celebrated by lugging round dragon floats - symbolizing control of the clouds - and a huge shishi lion’s head, renowned for its oddly calming roar that was probably aimed at virulent nature itself.

After the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market was relocated next door, Namiyoke Inari-jinja became the unofficial guardian shrine of the marketplace, and it’s dotted with memorial plaques and statuettes donated by several of the market’s trade groups.

In June every year, the shrine plays host to the rather wild Tsukiji Shishi Matsuri festival (see video below) which harks back to the original purpose of Namiyoke - lions, dragons, and all - and in turn underscores the more recent relationship with the neighbours, as many of the market’s traders are those people sweating under the mikoshi.

But Tsukiji isn’t just festivals, shrines and fish.

It was the star of the 2008 film Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime (築地魚河岸三代目, also known as Third Generation Tsukiji Fish Market Man or The Taste of Fish), directed by Shingo Matsubara of Ultraman: Tiga fame, and based on a 2000s manga series by Masaharu Nabeshima and Mitsuo Hashimoto; then again, the story here centers on a businessman who quits his high-flying bank job to work for his father-in-law at the fish market.

Tokyo’s Kitchen also pops up in the ‘90s manga version of Shota no Sushi (将太の寿司, Shota’s Sushi or King of Sushi) by Daisuke Terasawa, and - while I’m unsure if it appears in the live-action spin-off that played on Fuji TV in 1996 - I have it on good advice that the market features in Haikei, Chichiue-sama (拝啓、父上様), a.k.a. Dear Father, starring Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima, and the voice of Kuro in Tekkonkinkreet), which was broadcast on the same channel 11 years later.

Japan Sinks author Komatsu passes on

2011-07-28T18:27:00.006+09:00

Just found out that the great Sakyo Komatsu, author of the novel Japan Sinks (日本沈没 Nihon Chinbotsu) passed away on 26 July, at the venerable age of 80.

"Japan Sinks" might fittingly apply to this country itself in 2011 with the slew of disasters since March. Five years ago it was adapted as a fairly mediocre SFX/romance yarn starring Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (from J-pop group SMAP) and Kou Shibasaki (Battle Royale, 47 Ronin) in which - racked by earthquakes, firestorms and volcanoes - Japan is slowly sinking into the sea.

Much better was the 1973 version (also called Tidal Wave) directed by Shiro Moritani, starring Keiju Kobayashi (Samurai Assassin) and Kunihiro Fujioka (the first Kamen Rider), along with a soundtrack by Masaru Satō - who scored the Akira Kurosawa films Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo and Sanjuro.

Komatsu even makes a cameo at the beginning of the movie.

Less renowned in the West is the entity alternately known as Sayonara Jupiter (さよならジュピター) or Bye Bye Jupiter - a novel he adapted himself for the somewhat ill-conceived trilingual 1984 Toho movie directed by Koji Hashimoto (Godzilla 1985: The Legend Is Reborn).

That outing is just plain bizarre, yet worth another ride into the imagination conjured up by one of Japan's more creative writers. As a tribute, here's something a wee bit oddball: the Russian-dubbed trailer for the 1973 version of Japan Sinks.

Heavenly Spirits?

2011-07-25T06:27:00.013+09:00

In the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, there’s an essential exchange between our globetrotting British spy (Sean Connery) and his Japanese counterpart Tiger Tanaka (played by Tetsuro Tanba but voiced by Robert Rietti).

This moment comes just after Bond is offered the rice-based alcoholic beverage sake, instead of his usual dry vodka martini. He surprises all when he graciously accepts, saying that he enjoys the Japanese drop – especially when it’s served at the ‘correct temperature’, 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The moment is something to drink in, and 98.4ºF would sound fair enough to most people since, in common Western perception, sake is doled up piping hot to wash down raw fish. But for those a tad more in the know about Japanese cuisine a rumour has circulated over the past 44 years that Bond got it wrong; that sake served at this temperature – 37ºC for those like me who are Fahrenheit inept – is invariably inferior in quality.

In truth that might have indeed been the case in the mid ‘60s, around the time of the making of You Only Live Twice, as many breweries fortified their product with distilled alcohol – a hangover from Second World War rice shortages. Serving it steaming helped mask any of the sharp or unbalanced flavours.

But in the intervening period brewers have been able to return to the prescribed method of naturally brewing pure rice sake, with no shoehorned artificial alcohol, to recreate mixes that are refined and pure enough to serve chilled.

Even so, we don’t need to take sides here.

Bond wasn’t wrong – and neither were the rumours. 98.4ºF isn’t exactly the ‘correct’ temperature for sake, but it’s perfect for Ozeki One Cup and some more expensive premium blends; the Japan Sake Brewers Association reports that this drink can be enjoyed anywhere within the range of 5ºC (41ºF) to 55ºC (131ºF), depending on the concoction.

Then there’s the Holy Grail of modern day nihonshu (which is what the Japanese tend to call sake).

Myouka Rangyoku (‘heavenly flower’) has been touted as the world’s best sake at urbansake.com and in the pages of The Japan Times newspaper – and like all chart-topping, divinely-inspired beverages this one comes with a healthy price tag: A 720 ml bottle retails upwards from ¥12,600 (about US$150).

“As a brewery, we do our utmost to create a truly great and perfect sake with Myouka Rangyoku – made according to a totally new concept, both as regards the flavour of the sake and the design of the bottle – and therefore we have been able to have a sizeable impact.”

So last year I was informed by Ad G. Blankestijn, the Director of Overseas Marketing and Sales at Daishichi Sake Brewing Co., Ltd., located in Fukushima, 230 km northeast of Tokyo.

Unfortunately this placed the brewery slap-bang in the middle of the massive March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, and they're located 60 km from the ongoing nuclear reactor debacle at Fukushima Daiichi.

On their website they strive to be reassuring:

"The walls of the brewery consist of 25 cm thick concrete. In addition there are fire-resistant tiles and hollow concrete blocks, making a total of 32 cm of protection from the outside. The sake storage area has even thicker walls in order to keep the products cool. No radiation can penetrate these walls.

"When we heard about the nuclear problems on March 11, we have immediately stopped air conditioners and ventilators and covered the windows and air ducts in plastic sheets to keep the inside of the brewery and storage areas airtight.

"Sake brewing is almost finished and the accident has had no major influence on our activities. Products being shipped now are vintage 2008-2009 sakes, and 2010 for the plum sake. These products are completely free from any influence of the nuclear accident."

I haven't spoken to Blankestijn at the brewery since I interviewed him last year, but the nuclear crisis is in no way going to deter me from my aspiration to (one day) road-test this particular drop.

Even bottles matter to these people and theirs is a classic (see below); the brew itself has been dubbed ambrosial by critics far more canny than myself.

“Most exclusive sakes are made with a modern, simplified process, but ours has been made with the ‘Kimoto’ method, the most traditional, laborious and time-consuming way of brewing a handcrafted sake,” Blankestijn said.

“The result is that it tastes very pure while at the same time possessing much complexity and depth. In contrast to other exclusive sakes which have to be drunk relatively young, Myouka Rangyoku is very slowly matured, so that over the course of many years it ripens into a rich and beautiful sake that we do not sell every year; we only make it in good years when we can attain the highest level. And even then, we only make it in a limited quantity. Of course, we are happy with the very positive judgment of many sake specialists, as well as the fact that it is often selected by the Japanese government for important diplomatic events – such as at the G8 Summit in 2008 in Hokkaido.”

While it's kind of tricky to hope that the nuclear crisis gets nipped in the bud overnight when people like Prime Minister Naoto Kan mutter that it'll take somewhere in the vicinity of two decades to clean up, I have several fingers crossed that essential Japanese sake brewers like Daishichi can get back into the groove of their handicraft as soon as possible.

Only final final word needs to be uttered here. Kampai! 乾杯

Hot under the (shirt) collar

2011-07-17T11:23:00.006+09:00

It's been baking in Tokyo over the past couple of weeks or so.

As I teach my students new adjectives to replace the just plain inadequate 'hot' (think roasting, cooking, etc), I'm enjoying the weather.

When I first came to Tokyo 10 summers ago, it was overcast, humid as heck and sticky. The kind of heat we're getting now, while it occasionally tumbles back into that Tokyo cliché, is more like that I remember from Australia: a blue sky, sizzling sun and high temperatures.

I other words I love it - except when I have to go to work, wearing a darn tootin' suit. Ack.

The problem may be that other people, not quite so fond of the scorched-earth temperatures and affected by the power shortages caused by the loss of power from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant (and others since shut down), will find it hard going and health concerns like heat stroke are already in play.

The Japanese government has appealed for people to save on electricity by raising the temperature settings on air conditioners to a minimum of 28°C.

Most people are also hesitant about heading off to the local beaches since there's that nuclear hazard still pumping away up north-east, and related "hot-spots" (of the radioactive rather than sun-related kind) popping up around the city.

Last summer went on record as Japan's hottest ever; now we have summer 2011 to look forward to. P'raps luckily I'll be whizzing down to Melbourne in August for a couple of weeks, to torture myself with a temperature about 30 degrees lower.

Then again, give me the sun, a t-shirt (sans witless collar) and shorts, plus a chilled beer in a park, and I'll be fine. Maybe an el cheapo wading pool to dip my feet in would just add to the attraction?

Captain Funk: Versions 2011

2011-07-10T17:43:00.004+09:00

Before I came to Japan in 2001, I was already a bit obsessive/compulsive about Japanese electronic music - I loved Yellow Magic Orchestra's back-catalogue as well as that of Mo' Wax contributors Major Force West Productions and DJ Krush, not to mention techno-meisters like Fumiya Tanaka, Takkyu Ishino, Co-Fusion, DJ Shufflemaster and Captain Funk.

As it shaped up I've since become mates with some of these people, in particular DJ Wada from Co-Fusion and Captain Funk's Tatsuya Oe. Both guys graciously did remixes of a couple of my tracks - Wada renovated 'Compulsion', while Oe had a shot at 'Cocaine Speaking', both of which appear on a recent CD ('Commix') through Japanese label Fountain Music - and I'm a huge fan of both gents as much for their wunderbar temperament as their talents behind rack-mounted machines and music-making software.

Anyone who's bothered to peruse this wayward blog (and with a long memory to boot) may recall my piece on Star Trek's impact in Japan - or at least lack of same - back in 2009. Tatsuya was one of the contributors there, and in fact I often call on him for his two or three cents on different silly articles I do as he's always into it and forever patient.

Anyway, he just emailed me to let me know that he's doing likewise fine here in Tokyo despite the recent spate of shakes, and is is about to unleash his Captain Funk "Versions 2011″LP worldwide tomorrow (July 11th in case you don't have a calendar handy).

Tatsuya's style has come a long way since those '90s inroads I mentioned above, and he's become one of this city's most in-demand DJ/producers, so it's definitely worthwhile checking this baby out. You can find out more by heading to his website.

Meanwhile, for those far more adept at foreign languages than I am, here's the Japanese propaganda bomb:

Captain Funk の新作”Versions 2011″ が7月11日にリリースされることになりました。

収録内容はロック色の強い新曲”Endless Possibilities”に加えて、これまでのCaptain Funkのリリース楽曲を2011年版として大幅にアレンジ改訂した”I’ll be There”と”Just Wanna Get You Tonight”の２曲、そしてこの数年Ne-YoやPhonat, Kavinsky などのリミックスで注目が集まっているフランスのプロデューサーBestrack Production (http://www.myspace.com/bestrackprod) による”Piece of You”（原曲は米国Forver 21のプロモーションで使用）のリミックスの４曲になっています。

このリミックスも含めて、それぞれ新しいオリジナル楽曲と同等の「2011年最新バージョン集」としてお楽しみ頂けるのではないかと思います。

どの曲もいつも通りファットでブライトなサウンドに仕上がっていると思いますが、特に”Just Wanna Get You Tonight” 2011年バージョンは “Weekend (kissing, touching, tasting, loving)”の流れを汲む、夏らしくダンサブルなアレンジになっていますので、これからの季節に向けて是非チェックしてみて下さい。

（Reverbnation のCaptain Funk ページにて各楽曲の試聴サンプルをアップしました。そちらもご参照下さい。)

尚、今回のリリースは米国のディストリビューションを通じて、日本を含めた各国のiTunes, Amazon, Beatport その他のMP3ストア、Spotify, We7などのストリーミングサービスで世界同時配信されます。

Crow Castle in a Flap

2011-07-08T05:05:00.004+09:00

Just a three-hour drive east of Shinjuku on the Keio Line Bus is Matsumoto, in the mountainous Nagano Prefecture.

This is the sister-city to Utah’s Salt Lake City and Nepal’s Kathmandu, and is one of the best places to try basashi (raw horse meat) and soba (buckwheat noodles).  

The city itself is located on an open plain in the Japanese Alps, just over half an hour from the historic watermills at the nation’s largest wasabi farm – Daio at Azumino – where Akira Kurosawa in fact shot part of his epic movie about his own fitful Dreams (1990).

But the standout here is Matsumoto Castle (松本城), and it’s actually a genuine keep unlike the faux fort closer to Tokyo at Odawara.

Matsumoto Castle is a gorgeous and immaculately maintained building that dates back to the Sengoku (Warring States) era prior to the 17th century. It’s locally dubbed 'Karasu-Jo' (Crow Castle) because of the somewhat sinister black lines, but for me (I’ve visited twice) this is a stunning place that lives up to its confirmation as a National Treasure of Japan in 1952.

It’s one of only four castles in this country to receive the honour.

But 2011 hasn’t been kind to Japan.

Unless you’ve had your head buried deep inside one very big sandpit, you’d know all about the huge earthquake and follow-up tsunami on March 11, followed by worrying ripples in the economy and a continuing radioactive crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 230km northeast of Tokyo.
We’ve had thousands of aftershocks and earthquakes across the country over the following four months, and one of these earthquakes – with a magnitude of 5.4 – rocked Nagano on Thursday June 30.

Aside from minor injuries to local residents – although I’m not sure if the people themselves would call broken bones trivial – the quake caused around ten large cracks in the inner walls of the main tower of Matsumoto Castle.

After 400 years successfully circumnavigating civil wars, neglect, deconstruction, renovation and tourism, let’s hope Karasu-Jo’s earthquake damage isn’t so serious and – like the rest of Japan – it makes a complete recovery.

(This is part of an article that appears on the Forces Of Geek site - you can read more of that yarn here.)

The Goat in the Sky

2011-07-03T11:31:00.006+09:00

There's now an in-depth interview of my editor Kristopher Young and me - by the cool Martin Garrity - online @ Solarcide, regarding Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

Martin writes:

"TSMG is an odd sci-fi tale of corruption in a dystopian future, set in Melbourne, Australia. (Bergen is himself Australian, though he now lives in Japan) It features an immediately likeabe protagonist, Floyd Maquina, who is a government endorsed ‘seeker.’ Floyd’s job is to hunt the deviant menace that threatens the future of the last inhabited city on the planet. This could almost be a special edition, Vegemite-flavoured version of a certain Philip K. Dick story.

"But that ain’t even the half of it.

"TSMG is also homage to the golden age of film noir. It’s a cigar puffing, whiskey sipping, piano playing, bar lout, and the book may very well stir up memories of a black and white nature. Andrez makes a million and one references to movies (The Third Man and The Maltese Falcon, in particular, are heavily drawn on) and the settings are stuffed to the margins with inspiration from this classic era of cinema."

I actually really dug doing this interview; Martin was great to yack with and he asked some canny questions - and I really loved the head-to-head between he and Kristopher.

Anyway, you can read it if at all interested HERE.

Cheers, Martin! ;)

Monitoring the Microsieverts

2011-06-26T12:00:00.006+09:00

I'll be the first to admit it - I'd never even heard of microsieverts, and I grew up during the Cold War, until a couple of months ago when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant blew its lid post March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Given that I live in Tokyo, we're said to be far safer than residents in Fukushima itself, since we're 230km from the ongoing fiasco. Mostly I like to believe that, but it's tricky when you harbour some suspicions about TEPCO, the owners of the plant, and just how much information the Japanese government is giving out.

Things like bunnies born without ears, irradiated tea, and YouTube clips of Geiger counter readings in playgrounds in nearby Kashiwa, here in Tokyo, do cause you to fret just a wee bit. The only thing to do is to keep a baker's dozen of eyes on all sources of info - official and hysterical - and draw a line somewhere down the middle.

That and a lucky rabbit's foot will hopefully see things through. Right?

Battle Royale (2000)

2011-06-24T06:31:00.007+09:00

This violent, often wildly hilarious - and disturbing - gem is p'raps not quite so obscure now, eleven years on, as when it was first released in Japan.

And the truth is that Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル) would've made a far more fitting obituary for director Kinji Fukasaku rather than its lesser sequel three years later... which in fact his son Kenta polished off after the director's death at age 72.

You certainly couldn’t take style, content and inspiration any further a field from Fukasaku senior's earlier action-adventure romp Legend Of 8 Samurai, nattered about in this blog a while back.

So clear your frazzled silly-season brain. It’s a not-too-distant future. Japan is again a fascist state. An arbitrarily-chosen bus full of high school kids are knocked out with sleeping gas, kidnapped, then shipped on to an isolated island - where they’re informed by their embittered former teacher Kitano ('Beat' Takeshi Kitano) that the only way they will leave said island is by killing all their classmates – or by ending up in a body-bag themselves.

In order to enforce this mandate, each student is shackled with an exploding collar, à la Wedlock, and Kitano punctuates the students’ plight with a well-aimed penknife to one of the girl’s foreheads, thereby launching a battle for self-preservation.

Shuja (Tatsuya Fujiwara, more recently the star in the live-action Death Note franchise) and Noriko (Aki Maeda; she’s appeared in both Gamera and Godzilla movies, did the voice of Yuki in the Studio Ghibli anime The Cat Returns, and worked with Kiichi Nakai in Samurai Gangsters) team up, then are later aided and abetted by mysterious transfer student Kawada (Taro Yamamoto, who appeared in Seijun Suzuki's musical romp Princess Raccoon (2005), with Hiroko Yakushimaru from Legend Of 8 Samurai).

There’re some hilarious acting histrionics and amateur execution techniques along the way, and the true stand-outs are Takako (played by Chiaki Kuriyama, a.k.a. Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill: Vol. 1), Yuko Miyamura (who does the hyperactive and chillingly genki Training Video Girl, and previously voiced Asuka Langley Sohryu in the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion) and – of course - Takeshi Kitano.

While he previously popped up in a not-so-memorable English language role in the Keanu Reeves vehicle Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Kitano was outstanding in his own movies Sonatine (1993), Hana-bi (1997), and Zatoichi (2003). Here the actor underpins the rancorous teacher - with a 'pen' chance for revenge - with a whimsical ease and blasé humour that’s gloriously disturbing.

Some incongruous orchestral music by Johann Sebastian Bach is thrown in for good measure, as well as an overall soundtrack by Masamichi Amano – who previously scored the ultra-violent anime Legend Of The Overfiend (1989).

Last summer I went in search of the Tsurugizaki Lighthouse that was used in Battle Royale.

I took a swag of happy snaps of said light tower, got sunburned, walked for several hours, and discovered some obscure fishing villages as well as a cliff-side walkway that was more dangerous than fun.

It was also crawling with those beach cockroaches I mentioned in earlier entries (Shikinejime, for instance).

But honestly? I had one of the best times of my life.

Mutant Cherries (Japan)

2011-06-20T05:13:00.015+09:00

When I was a kid I grew up on Marvel Comics from the '60s (sourced from my older step brother's horde) and the '70s, and via The X-Men - as well as the 1970 movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franciscus and Charlton Heston - I learned early that radiation causes mutation.

In the case of The X-Men the process granted them some pretty nifty powers; in Beneath the Planet of the Apes the mutants might've been able to read minds, but it seemed to me at the time that they were also bludgeoned with the ugly stick several times over.

Being a Cold War kid meant you seriously expected the end of the world to come from nuclear warfare (since there were something like seven missiles aimed at every major city in the world) and/or the radioactive aftermath.

Mother Nature was another matter entirely.

I grew up being wary of bushfire risks in Australia, and we once caught a Greyhound bus south from the Gold Coast with flames on either side of the highway, but I'm too young to remember it and my mum paints her own memory vivid.

And yet while the earthquake and tsunami here were scary tastes of nature at its most volatile, nothing really prepares you for big business gone incompetent.

These are two cherries we got in a batch as a gift yesterday from a friend.

They're sourced from the prefecture next to Fukushima, where the nuclear plant is still spewing radioactive stuff while the inept owners (TEPCO) blunder on and refuse to give clear details about very much at all - including accurate reading updates regarding the levels of caesium-137 et al that are slipping out and across the country.

The cherries are seriously deformed; it's like those three cherries on top of the TEPCO logo were sent back to DNA design school but dropped out too early.

I went cherry picking when I was 18 back in Australia and in a week of plucking the buggers I never came across anything like these. The Siamese ones are particularly striking, but my daughter says the other one, with a poking out appendage, has an eye.

Speaking of eyes, it all reminds me of the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons.

Worrisome? Hmmm. I'll get back to you on that.

Perc Trax vs. Blank Records

2011-06-18T08:35:00.005+09:00

Wunderbar news, this.

Two of my favourite Japanese DJ cum producers are getting together with a certain UK industrial/techno enfant terrible named Ali Wells - better known as Perc - here in Tokyo at Module on 24 June.

Ali runs the appropriately-named Perc Trax, which has been one of my preferred labels over the past few years, and I recently interviewed him for the Techno How? site.

The two Japanese guys are Jin Hiyama and his brother Go. Jin is a good mate of mine (he played at my book launch in March), and I interviewed Go a couple of months ago here.

This should be an absolutely brilliant gig; shame is that it shapes up I may not be in town to actually appreciate it...

Address: 150-0042東京都渋谷区宇田川町34-6M&IビルB1F/B2F
Cost: ¥3,000 on the door.

Kanji Can-Can

2011-06-11T06:18:00.008+09:00

I think it’s high time that I talked up kanji in this wayward blog.

While I’d like to assume that most people know precisely what I’m on about, I guess I should throw in a morsel for those people not so interested in things Japanese: In case you don’t know, kanji is the stuff you see on scrolls and painted in big black letters on banners – logographic Chinese characters used in the modern Japanese writing system.

Sometimes in movies you see people dabbing big brushes in ink and artily doing strokes across washi paper.

Kanji is grammatically flexible – it can twist itself into nouns and adjective and verb stems – and personally I have a delight/despair affair with the beasties. It’s a bugger to remember the thousands of characters and their various pronunciations, let alone acquire the talent to reproduce the multitude of lines.

To make things trickier, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words, and deciding which one depends on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and/or sentence location.

While I’ve loved the simpler Japanese katakana lettering since I was a kid (when I first saw neon Tokyo signage through the eyes of Cubby Broccoli’s film crew in the Sean Connery-James Bond flick You Only Live Twice), I’ve had a more cautious, developing relationship with kanji that probably started with Akira Kurosawa’s Ran in my early 20s.

So the funny thing is that kanji, not katakana, made such a big impact on the novel I published last month – which is based in Melbourne, Australia, not Tokyo, Japan.

The first completed treatise of what’s now known as Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat was completed in 1992, while I was living in Richmond, an inner city suburb of Melbourne, and there was nothing Japanese about it whatsoever.

But when I moved to Tokyo in 2001, the seepage began to set in.

I wrote up a redux of the decade-old tome the following year – and thereafter again let it sit pretty, collecting dust, for the five years leading up to 2007. Then I did a major reboot, was accepted for publication through Another Sky Press in the U.S., and rewrites and editing took the better part of the next three years.

Somewhere along the line inserting kanji into the text became a big part.

As I mentioned, in 1992 there was none, not even mention of our protagonist Floyd's tattoo fuyu (‘winter’) – probably because I didn’t get it myself until 1994 in a particular winter of discontent; that’s something Floyd and I share, aside from drinks.

Likely the kanji settled itself in my brain 15 years later, after I’d watched in excess of a dozen Akira Kurosawa movies on the trot (all within one week) at the beginning of 2010.

While I do love Kurosawa and would readily volunteer myself to sit through this process another time round, there was a reason for my committed viewing: an article I was writing for Australian magazine Filmink to celebrate the centennial since the great man’s birth.

In Kurosawa films there’s occasionally kanji that dominates the screen all by itself – accompanied by a sparse, minimal score by a composer like Fumio Hayasaka or Toru Takemitsu – and it's powerful stuff even if you can’t understand what the devil it says.

So in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat I decided to do a Kurosawa and throw in meaningful kanji, some of which isn’t even explained in the text – meaning that anyone who scoots through this piece will have a wee bit more insight than anyone having read the book.

IF VAGUELY INSPIRED, YOU CAN READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE @ FORCES OF GEEK.

AWOL: Sanja Matsuri Festival, Asakusa

2011-06-08T19:55:00.010+09:00

'Matsuri', the Japanese word for festival, has a special meaning in this country that beats (hands down) the notion of a festival in a lot of other countries.

As my insider at anime studio Production I.G once told me, albeit sarcastically, “Japanese love their matsuri” - and he was spot on.

That affection usually doesn’t get much bigger than this: Sanja Matsuri Festival (三社祭), literally the Three Shrines Festival, in Asakusa. It's one of the three more over-the-top annual Shinto matsuri here in Tokyo... and also happens to be considered the wildest and weirdest.

Purportedly established to honor the triumvirate that set up Senso-ji, the ancient temple at Asakusa almost 1,500 years ago, the festival actually kicks off at the adjacent Asakusa Shrine on the third weekend of May, and has done so since the early Edo period (1603-1868).

That is, it usually has every year but was cancelled in 2011 as a direct result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami up north-east, and the subsequent power supply problems (related to the travails at the Fukushima nuclear power plant) that have gripped the region.

So May came and went without any dose of this festival, and that's just plain sad.

It usually takes over the entire district, involving hordes of locals, hundreds of thousands of spectators, and a dozen or more mikoshi (portable shrines) lugged along by chanting, sweaty bearers of all ages, many of whom also happen to be members of the yazuza clad in happi jackets and exceptionally short pants.

There’s also taiko drumming, shamisen, other kinds of traditional music, performance art, a highly-charged atmosphere, beer, Ozeki One Cup saké aplenty - and geisha. Well, not quite the spectacular apprentice geisha (actually called maiko) in Kyoto, but more of a working-class, downtown, down-to-earth Tokyo variant with subdued kimonos and middle-aged lady-next-door looks.

Anyway, here's to seeing the matsuri up and running again next year, and my #1 tip for anybody planning to go: after a cursory look, steer clear of the main drags and investigate the more honestly lively side-streets instead.

Demise of a Classic Old Tokyo Manor

2011-05-30T19:22:00.011+09:00

Two evenings ago I was walking home in the rain from Jiyugaoka Station, and spotted about 10 fire engines, a horde of people, and a huge billow of smoke that drifted up into the sky in spite of heavy rain from an approaching typhoon.

The sad fact was that a classic Taishō period (1912-26) mansion was up in flames, and the firefighters were struggling with a huge blaze that consumed a wonderful, historic wooden building.

Today I went back to see the outcome.

The photo (right) was taken just over the front gate, where a wheelchair was disturbingly left and police tape wound across the entrance. The destruction is pretty intense - the whole building is a skeleton now, with the refuse of burned telephone books, kimono, furniture, a TV, and even a coveted old reel-to-reel tape player parked on the small roof above where the front door used to be.

For Okusawa, a generally wealthy area, this is an incredibly big space. And sadly it was probably the largest old house I'd seen in Tokyo - till now.

This is the way the place was 18 months ago.

The trees surrounding the huge property made it difficult to get a decent shot from the street; I always intended to climb the wall (discreetly!) and get a couple of good photos. Now, sadly, it's too late.

I just hope the people got out of there safely.

Yamataka Eye 山塚アイ of Boredoms

2011-05-21T05:59:00.002+09:00

With scraggly hair and a raucous character, Tetsuro Yamatsuka (left) is not the best candidate to hustle home and greet sheltered parents.

Despite Yamatsuka’s predilection towards changing his DJ and production names, he’s best known as Yamataka Eye, and as a member of Boredoms - one of the greatest noise rock bands in a country equally renowned for Melt-Banana and Merzbow.

Formed between 1982-1986 and likely inspired by The Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten, Boredoms have rotated their membership while keeping Yamatsuka in the role of front man.

Known for his atypical vocal workouts and post-production prowess, Yamatsuka was a pivotal player in the band’s most enduring album, Pop Tatari (1993), which still stands strong 18 years on.

Beyond Boredoms, Yamatsuka also recorded an EP with Sonic Youth (1993’s TV Shit), worked with Bill Laswell’s band Praxis, John Zorn’s Naked City and released two brilliant live LPs in 1995 with experimental composer Yoshihide Otomo (under the underplayed alias of MC Hellshit & DJ Carhouse).

Thrown together in disseminated ways, Yamatsuka is a rock kami unto himself—hair awry and all.

** Excerpt (my hack bit) from a Metropolis magazine article dedicated to Japanese rock gods, published yesterday - hit HERE for more.

Kuramae 蔵前: Downtown Tokyo

2011-05-18T19:40:00.012+09:00

I thought it was prime time to get off my self-indulgent corporate head-butting now that I've let off a bit of steam and come to understand these things are little more than storms in teacups in the grand scheme of things. ;)

Anyway, the other day I was in the Kuramae (蔵前) district of downtown Tokyo, conveniently packing my camera, and took some happy-snaps of what is quite an inspiring older area of this city.

It's located on the west bank of the Sumida River, near Asakusa, and apparently used to be the site of the government rice granaries in the Edo period; it's still to this day a warehouse/wholesale area and there're some amazing old buildings to be found.

The area offers up a great view of the almost-finished Tokyo Sky Tree, and it turns out that, up until 1984, this was also the home of post-war sumo - namely the Kuramae Kokugikan (蔵前国技館), a building erected by the Japan Sumo Association in 1950 since the previous, bomb-damaged Kokugikan had been taken over by occupying Allied forces after World War 2.

Tournaments were held in Kuramae until September 1984, and in January 1985 the new Ryōgoku Kokugikan was opened nearby.

Kuramae still has a few interesting toy shops, smaller shrines and temples, some signposted in English, and a number of smaller shops that look unchanged since the Edo era (1603-1867) selling everything from cleaning materials to sumo-related goods.

And then there are the exceptionally old school toy shops and the book shop pictured here (see top of page).

Kuramae Station (蔵前駅) is a subway station on the Toei Asakusa Line and the Toei Ōedo Line, in case you feel like checking it out when/if you come here.

I happen to teach at a kindergarten in Kuramae on Mondays, so on this occasion wandered around a bit post-lessons.

Ace. I loved the snakes-in-a-box (right), and the area is an absolute treat.

Facebook: Inauthentic Name - Temporary Block

2011-05-14T06:31:00.011+09:00

Yesterday, when I tried to log-in to Facebook, I realized I couldn't - for one of the first times in almost four years online with this social network thingy.

When I do try to log-in, I get a very interesting message.

It comes up with the enticing headline "Inauthentic Name - Temporary Block", then tells me in finer print that "Unfortunately, the name you entered was not approved by our system. Please wait 10 minutes and then try again." Having waited 15 minutes (that extra five as a buffer), I followed this sage advice, and got the same message again - this time with the warning that "Please note that if your next attempt is also unsuccessful, your account may be disabled."

I then waded through the maze that is Facebook Help, and finally discovered a portal via which to contact them, explaining that this is my real name, and not in fact inauthentic as the system now seems to believe.

I received this automated response: "Your account has been temporarily suspended because your profile does not list your real name. Facebook requires all members to provide their real first and last names."

Which is weird, because my name is Andrez Bergen, and that's the moniker I use on Facebook.

I don't remember having to provide legal proof or ID in order to first join Facebook three or four years ago, so I tested the waters on this and just went and signed up under an alias - and, hey presto! No problem. Easy as cooking boiled eggs.

Also, if they're so strict about real names being used, how come there are so many completely obvious aliases allowed on Facebook for DJs and band members? So, I read the automated email further and it says:

"Nicknames can be used, but only if they are a variation on your real first or last name, such as 'Bob' instead of 'Robert'. Which is, I guess, what 'Andrez' is - a nickname variant of 'Andrew' from when I was a teenager that I've adopted on a permanent professional basis in journalism, music and for my novel. I also have it on all my business cards - copies of which I sent through to Facebook.

This morning a real person, Pat, wrote back from Facebook but in no less automated a manner. She didn't address me personally, and added that "the only way we will be able to verify ownership of this account is if you reply to this email with an attached color image of your government-issued photo identification confirming your full name and date of birth. Rest assured that we will permanently delete your ID card from our servers once we have used it to verify the authenticity of your account."

Which prompted me to contact the Australian Embassy here in Tokyo - who strongly recommended against my sending any photo of my passport to anyone on the Internet due to concerns of fraud. I'd agree with that.

So I've contacted Facebook once again, advising this and again sending copies of my business cards to show that 'Andrez Bergen' is no sham moniker. It would be great to understand why I'm suddenly, without warning, being forced to prove my identity after more than three years on Facebook, and even when I do try to do so they decline to believe me.

All of this probably sounds like a complete waste of time (it does to me!), but I use this account not only in relation to my journalism work and for networking in business, but with friends and family on the other side of the world - who'll be even more unnecessarily worried on top of the ongoing concerns about earthquakes and the nuclear problems at Fukushima power plant.

Start from scratch with a new account?

Sounds tempting, but I put so much effort and time into the existing one, and when there's a cause to fight against a pig-headed bureaucracy, I can't help myself. No doubt I'll lose, but I'll go down fighting in an equally pig-headed manner! ;)

Production I.G slides out Drawer Hobs

2011-05-04T09:55:00.003+09:00

I’ve also had a great relationship with Production I.G over the past six years or so thanks, chiefly, to Francesco Prandoni at the International Operations division.

We’d done stuff together before on Tokyo Marble Chocolate and Mamoru Oshii’s Assault Girls, and two months ago, just before the earthquake kicked this country in the stomach, I had the absolute pleasure of working again with Francesco on the English subtitles for a brand new anime feature from Production I.G.

It’s called Drawer Hobs (Tansuwarashi たんすわらし in Japanese), and what it lacks in the action/mecha quotient the story more than makes up for with a playful sense of humour and a refreshing, quirky and whimsical look at contemporary life in this city – giving even more clarity post-tremblor.

Plus it has a range of oddbod kids that reside in a chest of drawers and do such offbeat chores as checking earthquake safety (ironic), cooking up feasts, drinking beer, and wild girls’ makeovers.

But the power here is not just in the visual content or the surreal nature of the yarn – both of which are superb, by the way. It’s the real people involved here who take the venture into lofty territory.

You can read more about I.G's plans for world domination @ Forces Of Geek.

DRAWER HOBS © 2011 Kazuchika Kise/Production I.G/Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs

Tobacco-Stained & Out There

2011-05-03T12:33:00.000+09:00

Well, the novel is now out - in fact it has been for a month now - and slowly starting to garner the occasional review like the one at Forces Of Geek.

My publishers are currently putting together the digital versions for iPad and Kindle (stay tuned), but in the meantime the classic old school paperback - sorry, trees! - is up on Amazon UK, Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon Japan, and Alibris.

Even better, you can order direct from my cool cat publishers Another Sky Press, where the price for the paperback is much cheaper ($4.74 plus postage), and you also get bonus glossy bookmarks (see above) featuring the cover artwork on both sides.

If you feel like it, while online @ Another Sky you can contribute more so that the publisher, the cover artist (Scott Campbell) and I actually make some dosh in the long run.

The funky postcard is not yet available except here in Japan, but I'm working on it, and eventually hope to achieve world domination with bumper stickers, a Scout patch and iPad apps... even if I don't have one of those darn tootin' gadgets yet myself.

Bah; humbug.

Little Nobody interview (in Japanese)

2011-04-30T06:21:00.006+09:00

There's a new interview up at Japanese site Clubberia, which is ostensibly there to focus on an upcoming gig I'm playing @ Unit in Tokyo called Charter the Top Number.

It's set to happen on Saturday 7th May, is being put on by the cool cats at Fountain Music/Plaza In Crowd, and features other DJ/producers Shin Nishimura, DJ Wada (Co-Fusion), Hiroshi Watanabe, Foog, DJ Sodeyama, Dublee, Temma Teje, etc.

You can find out more about the party HERE.

If you just so happen to be in Tokyo that weekend, I definitely recommend it as these guys are the cream of what's happening over here in Japan in the techno/house/electronica scene; I just happen to be riding roughshod on their coattails.

In the meantime, if you do happen to speak a smattering of Japanese (日本語) or are just plain curious, you can check out the Little Nobody interview/waffle HERE.

There's stuff about the new album, the novel, and the recent disasters in Japan - from a more positive perspective, methinks.

Qantas: the Fillet of Australia?

2011-04-29T07:33:00.011+09:00

I hate to be somewhat moronic here and spin a droll comment on a corporate logo - that's done enough in this world on cantankerous blogs as much as in the 'professional' media.

It's also a bit passe. But I'm a little angry, and whether or not a concept is old hat or not doesn't really swing for me at the moment.

The thing is, if Qantas truly is the Spirit of Australia, then the email I just got from them is a sad state of affairs and makes me ponder swapping citizenship.

Regardless of whether or not you've read anything else in these pages, most people would know about the March 11 earthquake in the Tōhoku region of Japan, and the resultant aftershocks and problems with the Fukushima nuclear power plants.

Obviously these have been of a tiny bit of concern to even those of us here in Tokyo, though we're 230km away; the water supply was briefly (and marginally) effected by radiation, and while things now seem to be coming under control, for a few weeks there no one knew what to expect.

During that time my family and I discussed options, including the possible need to fly out of the country.

I've been a member of Qantas Frequent Flyers since the mid 1990s, and a Qantas aficionado since flying as a wee tacker with the old TAA domestic airline in the 1970s (it was incorporated into Qantas). In English lessons I teach, Qantas occasionally comes up and in those moments I've got all star-struck and proudly mentioned the airline's longevity (it's the third oldest in the world), good safety record and the origin of its acronym (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services).

So, being a bit of a fan and veteran frequent flyer, I decided to check how many points I had on my Qantas account - and discovered there were zero.

This was news to me. If they don't want to pay postage costs to Japan (and fair enough to), then the company could at least email me (free) to advise that they're deleting in excess of 10,000 frequent flyer points, with a reason as to why.

But I'd heard nothing.

Being a long-time customer, a fellow Aussie, and in a potentially diabolical situation, I wrote to Qantas early on in April as follows:

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is Andrew Bergen, an Australian based in Tokyo, Japan, for 10 years now. I hope you can help me to sort out a matter of surprise and relative discomfort.

I have been a long-time member your Qantas Frequent Flyer program, and while I may not fly so regularly now (I have a young family with a five-year-old daughter), we are preparing ourselves for the worst here in Japan, and looking at flying out if the situation with the nuclear reactors happens to worsen.

I was under the impression that I had 10,000+ points on in my Frequent Flyer account, but when I checked just now it appears that I now zero points - because 10,169 points were deducted from my account on 28 February 2010, but I was not warned about this in advance, or otherwise advised of the deduction, until I checked today.

Is there some time limit imposed on points? I wasn't aware of any expiration date on points.

And in the circumstances, would it be possible to waive such time limits? These points would certainly help us (in a small way) to pay for the three tickets we will need to leave Japan in an emergency.

I hope you can help us further,

All the best,
Andrew Bergen

Almost two weeks passed before I received the courtesy of a reply, so I'm grateful that the reactors up north have been as patient as we have.

Unfortunately it wasn't quite what I'd hope to hear. While I'm no stranger to bureaucratic corporate policy trumping basic human decency, it's still sad to see long-time loyalty to a huge, profitable company respected... with nothing at all except a notion of brushed-off indifference:

Dear Mr Bergen,

Thank you for contacting The Qantas Club and Frequent Flyer Service Centre.

I'm unable to reinstate your points that expired in February 2010.

Your points expired because there wasnt any activity on your account over a three-year period. We make every effort to let our members know the status of their points through their online Activity Statements.

If youd like to know more about the Frequent Flyer program, please visit qantas.com/frequentflyer where youll find full details of your membership benefits, along with our latest news and offers.

The Spirit Of Australia my arse - and for god's sake get a spell-checker next time you mail me.

Coincidentally, two days ago I lost a few cards while on my way to work in Kanagawa. One of those cards was my worn out old Qantas Frequent Flyer Card.

To whomsoever finds it: keep the thing. Souvenir it. I don't need the card now, and certainly won't be replacing it.

Hardboiled Little Nobody

2011-04-25T07:19:00.004+09:00

You know, I just looked up the word ’schizophrenic’, probably on the worst possible resource (Wikipedia), and it says that it’s “a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.”

Commonly, however, most people think of schizophrenia as related to those people on the train, bus or tram who’re seated there talking to themselves, quite often in heated debate, which is what I decided here to try out for size: Yacking with myself about myself. You know, a bit of me, myself & I. Weird concept, for sure, especially before breakfast.

It’s occasionally interesting (and some optimistic types would suggest insightful) to read what people write on their personal soap boxes across the broad spectrum of social networking sites – a form of schizophrenic propaganda bomb, since these diatribes are usually inscribed in the comfort of one’s own home and head space.

Then there are mine, which somewhat fizzle.

In my ho-hum bio on Resident Advisor it says “Australian expat Andrew Bergen (a.k.a Andrez) has been making music as Little Nobody since 1997, and relocated to Tokyo in 2001. Formerly from Melbourne, Bergen helms Melbourne/Tokyo label IF? Records. He’s played live in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Beijing, Windsor (Canada), in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and especially Melbourne.” Yawn. I can’t actually remember when I hacked together this vacuous claim-to-fame – I think in about 2006 or 2007, around the time that I did a more churlish one for MySpace, which now sits pretty on Soundcloud: “Entrenched in Tokyo, Andrez likes to steal furtive glances in a pseudo-metaphysical rear-vision mirror, greedily brushing up on the ‘found art’ chapter of the Dadaists’ handbook – all the time stimulated by Marcel Duchamp’s display of a toilet urinal. Blah, blah. Oh yeah, and he also happened to run IF? Records.”

(By the way, that MySpace site is a chaotic mess; soon I’ll get around to tidying it up, but these days… does it really matter?)

The platform on Facebook for Little Nobody is just plain sad: “Little Nobody is the 14-year musical itch of Tokyo-based Aussie expat DJ/producer Andrez Bergen, also known as Funk Gadget, DJ Fodder, Schlock Tactile, Conversational Dentures, Atomic Autocrac, and a member of the LN Elektronisch Ensemble.”

Insightful my arse.

Insight probably better comes via the music itself I purport to make, and let it be said right here and now that making music is for me a hobby rather than a profession – something I like to potter over in the wee hours or in those moments when my wife and 5-year-old daughter aren’t home. I do often play the half-finished tunes to my daughter (she’s one of my best critics), but the act of making music in this day and age is hardly one that’ll support family livelihoods, so I have a rash of other jobs that actually pay the bills.

Also I have a deliberate tendency for waywardness in my music that tends to make chart-action unhappy. See, I was brought up listening to jazz and Gene Krupa, and discovered Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, and a post-punk mentality in my late teens; my Melbourne Uni thesis was about the industrial music putsch in Britain in the 1970s. This madness just has to have some kind of disruptive effect on any kind of attempt at ’stream-lined’ music or the quintessential smooth groove.

Other people tend to be more tactful, which is nice. Sebastian Bayne, who took over IF? Records last year, in promoting my new album Hard Foiled wrote that “Little Nobody and his unique take on the regions between house and techno can be often times raw, with a swinging groove yet never formulaic; he treads a path that would be considered unsafe by other artists, letting nothing get in the way of creativity.”

That sounds far better than anything I’d tend to ‘fess up here, so let’s stick with this theory.

You can read more of this somewhat schizophrenic and completely self-indulgent waffle on the Techno How? site.

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 1

2011-04-21T07:10:00.004+09:00

Something lighter here, as life appears to be edging back on track and into the realm of normality, at least for those of us in Tokyo and elsewhere - at a distance from the smoldering nuclear smoke-stacks at Fukushima.

Personally, I have a lot of reasons to celebrate.

One of these is my family, and my five-year-old daughter Cocoa, who is a just plain god-send. She's funny, talented, and growing up way too fast!

Another is my first novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which was officially released through Another Sky Press at the beginning of April and is now available on Amazon. Yep, it's on Amazon (the UK, USA and Japan versions) and I keep clicking on one of these everyday to peer at the wayward tome and sigh - silently, of course. I don't want people to concern themselves too much with my mental state.

It just got reviewed by Forces Of Geek today, and the reviewer, Tony Pacitti, seems to completely "get" where I was coming from. I love what he writes, even the negative. You can check it out here. Wow.

Another reason to be cheerful is my new Little Nobody album, Hard Foiled, which is finally being released today. It's a collection of electronic/techno stuff I've cobbled together over the past couple of years and is being released through IF? Records.

There's a digital version via Beatport as well as a limited edition CD (with less tracks, but still clocking in at 70 minutes) via Lulu.

Last reason? I live in Tokyo. And I love Japan. This is my home.

Japan Relief Compilations by Elektrax

2011-04-13T10:17:00.004+09:00

One of my favourite labels in Australia over the past three years has been DJ Hi-Shock's Elektrax imprint, which includes side-labels Gynoid Audio, Android Muziq, Darknet and Hypnotic Room.

The people at Elektrax are doing a series of benefit compilations for the victims of the disasters over here in Japan, and I think they warrant full support. Besides, there're some way cool artists involved including many from Japan itself.

Think Satoshi Fumi, DJ Wada, Cut Bit Motorz, Jin Hiyama, Captain Funk and Takashi Watanabe.

International Artists across the three comps are a who's who of contemporary and veteran electronic and techno producers: Dan Curtin, Thomas P. Heckmann, Bas Mooy, Angel Alanis, Si Begg, DJ T-1000, Donor & Truss, Truncate, Steve Stoll, Damon Wild, Beroshima (Frank Mueller), Mijk van Dijk, Dave Tarrida, Ben Mill, Alkan, Martin Mueller, Claudio Masso, Peder, Mattias Fridell, Paul Mac, Octave and DJ Hi-Shock.

The label released this following press statement:

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the people affected. The people of Japan need our help, and we hope that we can do our part through what we love most – the music – and we’ve decided to call this benefit compilation ‘Kibou’, the Japanese word for hope.

This is a combined project of many of the Elektrax Music artists and close friends of Elektrax, who have generously provided their tracks gratis, and it has been put together with the inspiring assistance of our label representative in Japan, Takashi Watanabe.

You can read more here at the Elektrax site.

Worthy stuff indeed - with all proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross to help victims of the earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear reactor disasters - and Number Two in the trilogy came out yesterday.

It features Bas Mooy, Si Begg, Steve Stoll, Justin Robertson, Martin Mueller, Hi-Shock - plus one of my hack Little Nobody tracks.

Anyway, it's online as a digital release exclusive to Beatport, and show your support if you can.

Respect to the labels and all artists involved.

Blood-C: Production I.G gets the CLAMP

2011-04-10T21:59:00.006+09:00

Just got this rather brilliant news from my insider at Production I.G here in Tokyo: there's going to be another take on the Blood anime franchise.

According to the teaser press-release notes I received, Blood-C is a creative collaboration between Production I.G (the people behind anime classics Ghost in the Shell and the original Blood: The Last Vampire) and all-girl artist group CLAMP (they did the original manga of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHOLiC) - supervised by Junichi Fujisaku, one of the key people who developed the original concept for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and later directed the spin-off TV series Blood+ (2005).

This baby's slated as a TV series that'll be aired in Japan on MBS/TBS starting from July 2011 (see here), and also a theatrical feature film set for 2012.

The TV series will be directed by Tsutomu Mizushima, who helmed the xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer Night’s Dream feature film, based on CLAMP’s manga and also produced by Production I.G.

Anyway, enough cheating off the promotional notes. I'll let you know more when I do, but in the meantime I'm pretty darned excited about this.

I love my I.G.

This (below) was the trailer for the 2000 original.

IMAGE: © 2011 Production I.G, CLAMP / Project BLOOD-C TV

Nihonbashi 日本橋: Japan Bridge

2011-04-07T08:22:00.004+09:00

It's funny how you can live in a place for a decade and miss a lot of what's right there nearby.

It's spring, the weather's been glorious here in Tokyo, and the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom.

A couple of days ago I was on tight writing deadlines, but it was superb weather again so I decided to skip out and finally go explore the area in central Tokyo around the Nihonbashi (日本橋), literally Japan Bridge - which was built a century ago this year, but rests on what has been a vital conduit spot for this city since the 17th century.

And I'd never even seen it before now.

Apparently it's also the point from which the Japanese measure distances: highway signs that report the distance to Tokyo actually state the number of kilometres to Nihonbashi.

Just before the 1964 Olympics, an expressway was built over the top of Nihonbashi, obscuring the classic view of Mount Fuji (and just about everything else) from the bridge.

To mark its centenary this month Nihonbashi recently underwent a bit of window-dressing - the removal of decades of soot and grime to showcase the granite sidewalls - and it does look rather spiffy.

There are also some jazzy lion and dragon sculptures perched on its walls.

Incidentally, Japan's first department store, Mitsukoshi, is on one side of the bridge, and there's a monument to the Edo-era fish market which was formerly in Nihonbashi - the predecessor of Tsukiji fish market.

Meiji Shrine: 明治神宮

2011-04-05T23:19:00.008+09:00

It's located conveniently close by the massive Yoyogi Park as well as the Harajuku shopping precinct in central Tokyo, just minutes from Shibuya.

Meiji Jingū (明治神宮) is the Shinto shrine dedicated to the divine soul of Emperor Meiji, the second son of Emperor Komei, and the royal instigator of the much-touted Meiji Restoration - which brought Japan out of 300 years of feudal isolation.

When he passed away in 1912, the emperor was in fact buried in the Fushimi Momoyama Ryo in Kyoto, but his soul was enshrined in Meiji Jingu here in Tokyo once the shrine was constructed on November 1, 1920.

Surrounding the huge shrine complex is a 700,000 square-meter evergreen forest of some 120,000 trees, boasting 365 different varieties.

Literally millions, jammed together, visit over the first few days of each New Year, and seijinsai (the coming-of-age ceremony for girls) is celebrated here, just as it is at other shrines in Japan, in January.

People get wedding pictures here, and kids celebrate shichi-go-san (traditional rites of passage for three- and seven-year-old girls and three- and five-year-old boys). We took our daughter here for her third birthday.

But there are some more vital events held in Meiji Jingu.

During the Spring Grand Festival at the end of April, bugaku (a traditional form of ceremonial dance and music), noh (traditional theatre), sankyoku and hogaku (traditional music), hobu (traditional dance), and kyudo (a Japanese variant on archery) are performed.

During the Autumn Grand Festival in early November, in addition to the same events as the Spring Grand Festival, yabusame (horseback archery), budo (martial arts), and aikido are also showcased.

My only complaint is that it's a long stroll across gravel surfaces from Harajuku Station.

Hanami Hitch

2011-04-02T09:27:00.012+09:00

It's now been over three weeks since the now so-called Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. That's what it's called on Wikipedia, and it's funny how they create media-friendly monikers for these things.

It's like the ironically named Great Kantō earthquake that hit Tokyo in 1923. It was only great in terms of the number of people it killed (over 100,000).

It's now spring in this city, and the cherry blossoms are beginning to unfurl. Usually at this time of year millions of people would start to unravel their mats in crammed public spaces for the hanami – literally “flower viewing”.

Japan's famous for it.

There’s an ethereal quality to the canopy of subtle pink plumage that surrounds you in leafy places in most parts of the country, and the petals drifting on the breeze is like something spun from the reel of a classic Japanese movie... which is, well, just what you’ve probably seen, in anything from the whimsical musical romp of Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon (2005) to the dramatic demise of Ken Watanabe’s character in The Last Samurai (2003). They're also stunningly used in Makoto Shinkai's anime 5 Centimetres Per Second (2007).

It’s a remarkable sight quite unlike anything you will have encountered anywhere else in the world. While there may be the odd cherry tree that sticks out like a sore thumb in front yards from Washington D.C. to Melbourne, here in Japan these woody perennials are cultivated, pruned and spaced to perfection.

What makes the seasonal phenomenon even more special is the fleeting nature of the blossoms themselves, prompting the Japanese to use them as a metaphor for life and its brevity.

Which brings us back full circle to the Tōhoku earthquake on March 11, and the continuing woes at the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Around 25,000 people are assumed to have been killed across 18 prefectures to the north and north-east of Tokyo, while hundreds of thousands are homeless, without basic essentials like water and electricity.

TEPCO, the people who run the nuclear power plants, have put on a carefully orchestrated stage show of ineptitude, and according to some reports may be endangering the lives of their rank-and-file staff by sending them into the reactors to fix the job that management stuffed up in the first place.

Crocodile tears from TEPCO spokesman and head honchos on the TV just don't cut it. I think the entire board of directors should be rounded up and sent in to Fukushima to replace the workers, and try to fix the plants themselves.

Meanwhile we're collectively treading water, waiting to see what happens.

Of course we hope for the best, and in my case I occasionally pray to an empty mead hall of Norse gods that the nuclear crisis will soon be a thing of the past. But no one seems quite sure what will transpire.

Most people here are dealing with it regardless, and going on with their lives in the best way possible.

There have been exceptions - like one of the talented artists on my old record label, who seems to have embarked upon a sad descent into a petty, self-centred, money-grabbing kind of madness since the crisis began, and I've lost a mate as a result - but I guess people deal with the subliminal stress in different ways.

Me? I really miss my two girls, who have been down with the in-laws in Fukuoka for two-and-a-half weeks now, until this thing blows over (er... poor choice of words) or is resolved, and we know more about the radiation issue in Tokyo. Having a five-year-old daughter makes things a little more complicated as my wife and I are far more worried about her future health than our own.

Every day I wake up in an empty apartment and go through the somewhat surreal notions of going through life and working like nothing's changed, yet in a subtle sense everything has. As I say - surreal.

And now it's spring, the cherry blossoms are on their way, and I think everyone's wondering the same thing: Is it appropriate to just let our hair down and celebrate, with all that's happened recently and that which continues to unfold up north?

Why am I even bothering to write about this here? Isn't it so damned trivial in the grand scheme of things?

To be honest I haven't got the faintest idea, but I find myself beginning to believe that to celebrate would be some kind of collective catharsis. Perhaps not partying quite so hard - in normal circumstances hanami banquets often stretch from daytime into the night (when the name of the jaunt is changed to yozakura, or night sakura), and lanterns dangle all about for people to continue drinking and warble prolific - but all the same sitting with friends, having a drink or two, and just plain celebrating the here and now could be a godsend.

After all life, as it turns out, can be as fleeting and transient as the cherry blossoms themselves, which often bloom and fall in the same week.

Besides, I'm going to throw in my favourite (anonymous) haiku here. When it's hanami season you need sake, and the two combined are part of what makes Japan truly special - especially at times of adversity like these (currently) are:

酒なくて
何の己が
桜かな

Without sake
what is the use of
cherry blossoms?

Rascally Raccoons

2011-03-31T22:57:00.007+09:00

Tonight, while out on our balcony, I saw a raccoon dog, called tanuki (狸) over here, crossing the road 20 metres above the ground on an electricity cable... in the middle of Tokyo.

This isn't the first time. I also saw one around the corner a few months back, though most of my Japanese mates poo-hoo the thought since we live just 15 minutes by train from Shibuya. Others say tanuki do in fact live here in the city because it's warmer and there's more food, and I'm pretty sure I know what I saw.

For me these are the coolest critters, when you grow up (like I did) back in Australia with possums and their guttural noises, though I know raccoons are just as disregarded by many North Americans.

Still, they're better than squirrels. Having been bitten by a particularly cute squirrel in Central Park, one that looked like a hand-puppet but was actually an evil little tyrant, I think I have a good grasp on the comparison.

Here in Japan the local raccoon dog is historically regarded a little differently. For starters the wild tanuki has disproportionately large testicles, a feature that has inspired humorous exaggeration in artistic depictions.

In old stories (and some more recent brethren) they're reputed to be mischievous and jolly, a master of disguise and shapeshifting, but somewhat gullible and absent-minded.

For starters there's the yarn "Kachi-kachi Yama" which features a tanuki that wallops an old lady and then serves up her to the unsuspecting husband as soup.

To get a good feel of the raccoon in Japanese culture, check out Seijun Suzuki's whimsical musical Princess Raccoon (オペレッタ狸御殿, 2005) or the Studio Ghibli anime Pom Poko (平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, 1994).

I picked up my copy of the latter from Madman in Australia.

Ahhhh, the little rascals.

Tobacco-Stained Book Launch

2011-03-27T23:31:00.005+09:00

Well, we actually did go through it with on Friday, and truth is I'm still recovering as we went right through from 6:00pm to 6:30am.

It was bloody brilliant, too.

Aside from the novel launch per se, we had screenings of The Maltese Falcon and The Third Man interspersed with anime gems like Tokyo Marble Chocolate and Mamoru Oshii's Tachiguish-Retsuden; heck, we even showed The Karate Kid.

And the music - from DJ Wada, Ko Kimura, Jin Hiyama (pictured), Eri Makino, Cut Bit Motorz, Toshiyuki Yasuda, Devin Wine and Paul McQuade - was sublime.

More please... once I recover.

TSMG: the published tome!

2011-03-25T11:33:00.004+09:00

One hefty element of happiness is... getting the printed, bound and published version of your novel for the very first time in your mitts!!!

They're here - ZOUNDS!!!!

Talk about insanely cool timing, since we're doing the Tokyo launch party for the novel tonight at the Pink Cow in Shibuya (see post below). Up to this point we were thinking it'd be a paperless affair (weird for a book launch party, I know), but the gods - whomsoever they may be, and regardless of whether or not the blighters actually exist - have been kind.

The biggest ever possible thanks to Kristopher, Bob and everyone else at Another Sky Press for their tireless work, belief and madly cool assistance on this beastie - it's their baby as much as is mine. And cheers to family and mates for all their support and encouragement over the years it took to finish off the yarn.

Here's the back cover, with the barcode - and we even have a darn-tootin' ISBN number! x

I think I'm still a little bit in shock, really - so I'll stop gabbling here and sit down with a strong coffee to pore over one of the copies I have beside me.

If you're interested in checking out more about the novel, head on over to the Tobacco-Stained Another Sky site (just click the highlighted bit).

WOW. Bliss.

Tobacco-Stained Party, Tokyo 東京 25/3

2011-03-24T19:47:00.002+09:00

These are strange times here, for all too obvious reasons - and sometimes it feels like we’re collectively treading water awaiting the next Big Thing to transpire. Meanwhile the reactors still belch scary looking clouds and we get shaken by dozens of aftershocks everyday.

I know this cuts a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but a high percentage of events and parties have been cancelled here in Tokyo, and attendance is lower than usual at the places that're still open.

A lot of the DJ/producers I know are spending most of their time at home, creating tunes – or putting together worthy benefit compilations, like the ones coming out through Shin Nishimura’s Plus Tokyo label and another called Kibou that’s being put together by Japanophile DJ Hi-Shock through his Elektrax label – which features contributions from a wad of Japan’s finest techno bods.

It’s been mad timing for my new novel to come out; teaches me to write a yarn that’s been described as “post-apocalyptic noir.”

I’m supposed to have the Tokyo book launch this Friday 25th March (in other words tomorrow) at the Pink Cow in Shibuya, but the postal service is all screwed up so there's a big chance I won’t be getting the books themselves in time from the U.S.

Not through lack of trying by Kristopher and Christine @ Another Sky Press, but, as I say, our timing has been a wee bit out-of-whack with nature.

I'm still praying to an empty mead hall of Norse gods that UPS will be able to get the books out of Japanese customs - where they've been since Monday - and here into my lap in time. Hell, if not for the party itself, I just want to hold and stroke the beastie that's taken so much time of my life to complete!

Anyway, after much soul-searching, mood-swings, flip-flopping and so on, we’re doing the launch party, regardless of earthquakes and/or radiation levels.

READ MORE HERE @ TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT BLOG.

Tokyo Alleyways

2011-03-24T11:33:00.009+09:00

One of the things I love about this city, but which are increasingly difficult to track down intact, are the aged alleys in older parts of town.

These are the vanishing places in which Taisho-era (1912-26) or early Showa period (1926-89) wooden buildings lean in disarray, and you actually feel like you've been transported back to one of Yasujiro Ozu’s or Akira Kurosawa's domestic dramas from the 1950s.

About a year and a half ago in this wayward blog I got cantankerous about the disappearing old buildings in the area of Tokyo (Okusawa) that surrounds our apartment - more about that here.

I also waxed a wee bit pessimistic over at Forces of Geek on a similar theme.

Don't get me wrong; I completely understand progress and change and I embrace it in many ways.

I'm also often knocked out by a lot of the contemporary architecture going up in Ginza, Harajuku and Odaiba.

I just hate to see this historical aspect disappear - some of these alleyways and the abodes within are absolutely mesmerizing.

Today I visited one of these rare gems in Ōokayama (大岡山駅), about 15 minutes' walk from our place.

In much of the surrounding area there're new apartment buildings, but some of the shops and houses sandwiched in between are classic vintage numbers - including this alley.

Tuckedjust around the corner is also a gorgeous little inari shrine.

It's cheap thrills like this that make my world go round.

The Currently Conflicting Faces of Tokyo

2011-03-20T21:54:00.028+09:00

Strange times here in this city, for all too obvious reasons.

Today the weather was beautiful and I went to work in Shinjuku; really weirdly everything felt as it normally should.

But on the way home I dropped by Shibuya. If anyone has ever been there - or just watched Lost in Translation - they'd know about the big video screens outside the Hachiko Exit of the JR Station.

Tonight they were switched off, as one way to save on electricity, and the place was... well, darker than usual; more like a regular city elsewhere. Which may be a good thing, really, when you seriously think about the environment, but Shibuya just isn't the same without 'em.

I also dropped into the local Tokyu supermarket near my place, to find less food (and beer) than has been the norm over the past few days. There were absolutely no eggs as you can see from this happy snap, and I'm not sure whether they'd been commandeered to send up north to help the survivors of the earthquake and tsunami, or because eggs actually usually come from those areas.

No official "get-out-of-Tokyo" warning from the Australian government yet, although they have recommended that people leave "at their own expense" (a nice, penny-pinching way to look at things - thanks, mates!) and I'm trying to do this crazy balancing act of attempting to to keep a close eye on things from various angles both local and international.

Honestly? I do think the foreign press is over-blowing events and occasionally indulging in just plain sensationalism. Some of the stories about the atmosphere and situation here are just miles wide of the mark.

It's nowhere near desperate, at least in Tokyo.

People are going on with their lives and are quick to share a smile, and there's a stunning senses of camaraderie that prevails. My respect for these people has increased ten-fold over the past week.

That said, I also don't quite believe all that the Japanese government and media is announcing to be is the big picture either... As I say, I'm trying to balance it all and draw the line somewhere in the middle.

But I feel a sense of obligation to a place that's been an amazing home over the past 10 years and given me so much, so I don't just want to run out of here without doing my minor bit to help first, whatever it may be.

One way I'm trying to do that is by aiding and abetting a couple of techno labels with benefit compilations they're putting together - one from Elektrax in Australia and the other from Plus Tokyo. These guys are doing grand things, and should be roundly applauded for their efforts.

And the situation does seem to be on the mend at the moment, which is a relief, and a good sense of humour and a touch of optimism helps to clear the shoals.

Then again, this morning when I first woke up I was parched and indulged in a sizable glass of tap water; straight after I switched on the computer and found a big headline that declared that radiation had infiltrated the Tokyo water supply - just before reading the fine-print that the level itself was negligible and within safety standards. Ye gods.

Which brings me to the conflicting face thing mentioned in the header to this waffle.

I also dropped in tonight for a couple of drinks with mates at a bar in Shinjuku, and the vibe there was just plain uplifting - people chatting, sharing yarns, laughing and living. You'd never even know there was a disaster or three on the edge of our doorstep, and this is not to say that they're zoning out on the problems at hand.

It was awesome, in that sublimely effortless Tokyo kind of way. It's experiences like this that remind me of what's so special about this place and why it will overcome the current travails.

But don't worry - I've got somewhat nifty plans to self-extract at the slightest whiff of (more) danger... even if the Australian government niggles about the cost of an airfare.

Yikes!! xx

Kuhonbutsu Temple

2011-03-18T20:31:00.005+09:00

There's nothing like a disaster - or an ongoing rash of 'em - to make you appreciate what you have and where you are.

In my case where I am is Tokyo, and this is one of my fave temples, a sprawling and (mostly) unknown treasure called Kuhonbutsu Temple (九品仏浄真寺), located near the appropriately named Kohonbutsu Station, two stops from us on the Oimachi Line.

It's about 20 minutes from Shibuya, but there's a world of distance between the two places.

Kuhonbutsu is also sandwiched between Futako-Tamagawa — rated the fourth most popular place to raise children in Tokyo — and Jiyugaoka... the fourth most preferable place to live single, footloose and fancy-free.

Aside from this odd sense of spiritual displacement on either side, that which sets this consecrated turf apart from the other local shrines and temples in this city is the sheer size and spaciousness of the sanctuary, as well as three wonderfully renovated, historic main halls that house a set of nine massive statues of Buddha, captured for posterity in subtly different poses.

These affectations are s'posed to have some special meaning, though I haven't any idea quite what these may be and haven't bothered to check the significance out online.

It's like Madonna, circa 1989, if she were tastefully cast in bronze.

According to the brochure Kuhonbutsu Temple was constructed several hundred years ago on the grounds of the old Okusawa Castle, and sections of these aged foundations can still be discovered if you look hard enough.

The stand-out is the photogenic bell tower (sho-ro), built in 1708, roofed in copper and adorned by a huge clapper that was cast in honour of the two great bodhisattvas (Kannon and Seishi) - fittingly designated a national cultural treasure.

I went here again two days ago, just to breathe in the silence and tranquility away from the non-stop newscasts about aftershocks and radiation, and it was genuinely moving. Funny that. I'm normally so easily moved.

Man, I love this city.

More Ado About Japan

2011-03-17T10:01:00.004+09:00

Mad.

Unless you’ve had your head buried deep inside some sandbox in a place a million miles from the nearest social network or wireless connection, you’d already know precisely what I’m leading into - or if you'd bothered to read the entry immediately beneath.

So let's get straight into it.

On Friday March 11th, at around 2:45pm local time, the east coast of Japan was hit by an earthquake that tipped the scale at around 8.9 – 9.0 on the Charles Richter magnitude charts.

I’ve since learned that we survived the fourth or fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history, and the worst ever in Japan – which is one of the world's most seismically active places.

But Tokyo was lucky compared with other places in this country just north of our city, like Miyagi Prefecture.

Straight after the earthquake there were tsunami waves of up to ten metres (33 feet) that struck the Pacific coast north of Tokyo, ploughing inland up to a dozen kilometres – sweeping away the towns and cities along the way.

The footage has been so surreal: That tsunami rapidly filling the streets of the city of Kesennuma as people watched (and filmed) from atop hills; cars and air-conditioning units bobbing and floating by, followed by houses that started moving and weaving between overturned boats; the aftermath with ships and trucks on top of highways and houses. It was like looking at The Day After Tomorrow rolled up into Dante's Inferno.

But the sad truth is that it isn’t surreal at all. This is no dream. It’s been neither fiction nor the unrealistic segment of a disaster movie – it's cold, hard reality.

Somewhere around 10,000 people have been killed, though no-one knows the true extent of the fatalities even now – at the time of writing this – seven days after that initial disaster. Our thoughts go out to all the people affected.

But I say “initial” disaster, because we’ve since suffered aftershocks numbering in the hundreds and varying in intensity depending on the area. The other night night in Shizuoka, near Mt. Fuji, there was another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4.

I got woken up by an aftershock at 5:00am yesterday morning - rattling doors and shaking bed. When we went to the supermarket almost half the shelves were empty as people are stocking up in case of another emergency.

And yesterday my daughter and wife flew down south to join the in-laws in Fukuoka.

It makes me far happier to know they're safe(r) - especially since there are the melting-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima, 170 miles north of Tokyo.

These babies were initially damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, and are currently out-of-control, spewing forth radioactive particles that are being felt as far south as, well, here in Tokyo.

This past week has been a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.

It’s eerily like the plot in Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) – I saw both the spin-off movies made in 1973 and 2006 – but defies the page or the artificial image of a viewfinder.

Real people have died, and thousands of other bona fide human beings have lost loved ones and friends. They’re destitute, lacking basic provisions, and braving up to zero-degree temperatures up north.

This is going to take a long time to clean up and forget.

And while the Japanese people here have been astoundingly resolute – not here the looting and general mayhem on the streets you see in other lesser disasters elsewhere in the world – it's a mind-numbing situation and an emotionally debilitating one to see this country and these people go through all of this.

In the meantime the best thing to do as hang onto the coattails of a sense of humour about it all – and gaze somewhat wistfully at the Japanese kanji "kibou", which means “hope”.

Which brings me full circle to some untimely, self-indulgent navel-gazing... but I guess that's what blogs are all about, especially ones like this which have only a couple of entries anyway.

Amidst all this madness I'm releasing my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is coming out through Another Sky Press in the U.S. on 31 March.

As previously mentioned here it's a sci-fi/noir tome that's set in Melbourne, Australia, but mostly rewritten here in Tokyo and heavily influenced by my 10 years in Japan.

I'm going to stop with the hype right now. It tastes wrong. If you're interested at all in checking out the novel, fantastic - thank you. If not, that's cool too - but please think in some way about how, in whatever small or seemingly inconsequential way, you can assist Japan. It all helps.

Rant out.

Japan Quakes

2011-03-12T07:25:00.005+09:00

OK, so I've seen my fair share of Japanese disaster flicks; in fact I'm a fair bit of a fan.

I loved Godzilla movies when I was a kid - the way in which he walloped little balsa-wood versions of Tokyo and Osaka - and I still DJ out the awesome theme song to Mothra (モスラ, 1961), written by Yuji Koseki and sung by The Peanuts.

But yesterday was a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.

Just before 3:00pm yesterday I was with my five-year-old daughter at her music class, in a building several storeys high; that's when the first quake hit - and it was the worst tremor I've felt in the 10 years I've been living in Tokyo.

The place was literally bouncing and rocking like a small boat in a very big storm. Women were sheltering their kids and diving under tables, but the staff handled it all with aplomb, handing out blankets and helmets as we went through another couple of big aftershocks.

Thank god my wife was OK too and we all got home safely.

My mate Devin tells me we just survived the fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history. Zounds. This doesn't make any of the sights and signs on the news easier, however.

From the 24-hour televised images we're seeing of Miyagi, it's like The Day After Tomorrow rolled up in Dante's Inferno.

Awful stuff.

On the Printing Press Thingy

2011-03-04T05:52:00.004+09:00

Well, the novel is done.

After a couple of years of slugging it out, nutting it out, pulling ideas from our collective buttocks, head-butting grammatical rules, ditching my beloved semi-colons and ironing out my wayward non-standard dialogue tags, it's done.

Big, big thanks to Kristopher, Bob, Christine, Justin and everyone else at Another Sky Press, along with Scott Campbell on art duties.

The next announcement on this blog will be the one that it's now available; we're just awaiting the test-pressing of the finished tome, but in the meantime if you're curious you can check out more and/or pre-order here.

Strangely enough I haven't had a chance to enjoy this moment.

Instead I've been sick as a dog since the very next day after we wrapped the project, with some weird virus/flu/bronchitis collaboration that's completely knocked me out and I've been woozie for a week and sleeping most days. Here's a picture, left, of what the über-bug might (or might not) look like up close and personal.

I like the star on it. Looks like Captain America's shield.

I know I pushed myself way too hard over the past couple of weeks (or should that read years?) with the novel, plus I had a huge story on sake that I was writing at the same time, a swag of techno industry interviews I'd stupidly committed myself to doing, an anime subtitles project, plus some music EP/album stuff... so this is prob'ly just desserts.

Likely my body is saying sod off.

Oh yeah, and I had an odd, rather feverish dream last night that a talking octopus was my pet, it called me "papa", and was otherwise downright cool. I made it a house in my kitchen blender (sans blades, of course!), and I don't think I can eat octopus sushi again for a bit.

Damn.

Dire Cup

2011-02-19T10:42:00.004+09:00

I'm currently putting together a big article on sake for the Japan-i magazine and website, expanding upon and updating the merry one that used to be stored within this blog.

That baby should be tarted up and online at the end of next month.

In the meantime, here's something I won't be talking up in the article since their publishers and advertisers would likely object.

It comes in the form of a warning.

There is one sake that you should avoid at all costs – even if those costs are one of the most meagre in Japan.

Its name kind of gives the game away if you say it out loud in English: DIA CUP, a ¥100 vending machine special I’ve stumbled across only once, in Kawasaki. While the taste is forgettable, it left me feeling rather ill after only half the contents.

Sadly I tossed the rest in the bin.

Unchain My Heart (Catch)

2011-02-05T21:50:00.005+09:00

This past week something special ended for me, and while I wouldn’t quite put it in the same league as the final episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess or Battlestar Galactica, it still feels like a kick in the gut and has left me feeling strangely down in the dumps.

I’m talking about the 49th episode of anime series HeartCatch PreCure!, which was broadcast on Sunday morning here in Japan. HeartCatch is the seventh version of the long-running girls' concept created by the “mysterious” Izumi Todo – actually none other than an alias for the creative types at Toei Animation.

I've known all along that production house Toei reinvent their Pretty Cure anime series every February, and that they'd done so seven times already since 2004, so I could see the writing on the wall for this particular incarnation from the moment it started in February, 2010.

Each year there’s a new super-team of Pretty Cure girls to battle baddies and dress in glitzy new ways, taking the baton from Sailor Moon but at the same time making that predecessor seem underplayed.

You can read more of this rambling yarn and about the end of HeartCatch @ the Forces Of Geek site.

Now for new incarnation Suite PreCure ♪ tomorrow.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
© ABC 東映アニメーション

Cut Bit Motorz Takes the Wheel

2011-02-01T07:11:00.006+09:00

One of my preferred emerging Japanese artists at play here in Tokyo over the past couple of years has been the somewhat enigmatic Tsuyoshi K.

He doesn’t tell anyone what the ‘K’ stands for.

Tsuyoshi started out making fringe, left-of-centre electro-pop stuff as Gadget Cassette but last year scrapped that and changed name to Cut Bit Motorz – at the same time as he began pushing through more tech-house related sounds.

Funnily enough, even though we lived in the same city and customarily did the email thing as well as having remixed each other’s tunes, we didn’t actually meet up until last month – when yours truly was quite tanked (that’s the Christmas/bonenkai season for you in Japan) and... er... embarrassingly played a hack set at his party.

The lack of personal acquaintance before that jaunt didn’t stop me from releasing last year in August a digital slab of remixes of Tsuyoshi’s tune ‘Dry Fruit‘, albeit in a limited manner, through IF? Records. We got on board some of the man’s more experienced Japanese peers – DJ Wada (Co-Fusion), Toshiyuki Yasuda (Robo*Brazileira), Takashi Watanabe (DJ Warp) and Tomi Chair – to do the rejigs, making it an entirely Japanese putsch that crisscrosses eclectic, tech, electro, house and (dare I twist it) a marginally more progressive stance.

Even after putting a face to a name – and in spite of my sadly wayward set at that gig in December – Tsuyoshi seems to have forgiven me for the musical mayhem and is keen to do more together. This guy is an absolute gem to work with.

If your stunted attention span is still somehow focused, you can read more about Tsuyoshi - plus the interview questionnaire itself - at the new Techno How? site here.

Alan Oldham Gets Beyond Djax

2011-01-29T15:55:00.003+09:00

Back in the mid 1990s in Melbourne when I used to buy most of my vinyl from my mates at Octave Records, the stand-out 12-inches on the shelves were the ones by Djax-Up-Beats, the Dutch label run by Saskia Slegers (aka Miss Djax).

A stand-out not just because the music sitting pretty on this wax – sourced from the likes of Mike Dearborn, Steve Poindexter, K. Alexi Shelby, Claude Young and Thomas Heckmann – was sensational, but because the actual record labels on each one of those 12-inch releases were even more gorgeous. Turns out they’d been lovingly designed by another essential musical contributor from Detroit, Alan Oldham (DJ T-1000), and he even took up the time to draw up a few thumping action-based comics for Djax as well.

Seventeen years on Oldham is still making essential tunes and in fact has a brand new LP on the cards. Funnily enough it’s called the Beyond Djax LP, it will be coming out in March 2011, and in the promo notes it’s listed as the companion CD to last year’s sold-out art show in Amsterdam.

“I had a gallery show late last year, at a venue in Amsterdam that also sells limited-edition toys,” Oldham related in an email interview I did with him this week.

“I was in the middle of a tour, so I was present for the opening, and it was attended by such friends as Dave Clarke, DJ Bone, DJ Kammy, Ritzi Lee, Shinedoe and other friends and art lovers who came in from Dresden, Paris, Berlin, and London. It was a very successful show. Ben Sims bought two pieces right off the wall! I was in A’dam for a week, so I painted new pieces to replace the ones that sold, and they sold too. There were only two or three pieces left over at the end of the show, which lasted a month. The CD digipak will contain pics from the opening! There’s also a hardcover art book to go with the event.”

On the new LP, ‘Theme From Vectra’ is cited as a score for Oldham’s comic-book, Vectra: Black Girl From The Future. That comic, like much of the man’s artwork, has a clear nod in the direction of Japanese manga.

“Well I was into anime and manga years ago, before they were so available in the United States,” he says.

“Although we had Speed Racer when I was a kid, anime didn’t really make an impact with me stylistically until Macross came to America as Robotech. Then, I met a girl in college named Reiko, who gave me a few original manga from Japan, which I still have in storage. That really opened my eyes. I then changed my superhero-type art style to a manga-inspired one, and created Johnny Gambit. It was one of the first American manga published in the USA, along with Reggie Byers’ Shuriken and Doug Rice’s Dynamo Joe. Wow, that was long time ago – before I got into electronic music.”

The track ‘Theme From Vectra’ is futurist electronic tech stuff that somehow captures the essence of the speed, style and colour of the comic.

You can read more of this interview over on a new blog thingy I'm doing for the Elektrax label on electronic music; it's called Techno How? ...get it? ;)

The National Diet Building

2011-01-25T05:24:00.009+09:00

No, it has nothing to do with calorie control or losing weight, not even in the current global financial straitjacket - but has everything in common with the U.S. Congress and British Parliament, both of which have been adapted, to some degree, into the system of government here.

We’re talking about the Diet of Japan (locally known as Kokkai 国会), which like its British, American and Australian equivalents includes two legislature: the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors.

They meet in the National Diet Building (Kokkai-gijidō 国会議事堂) in Chiyoda-ku, fairly close to the Imperial Palace and right next to Nagatacho and Kokkai-gijidō-mae stations on the Tokyo Metro.

As of August 31, 2009, the place has been rather shaky thanks to the electoral overthrow of the Liberal Democratic Party - which had ruled virtually continuously since its inception in 1955.

The "new" government (formed by the similarly named Democratic Party of Japan) is a thing most Japanese are still trying to get accustomed to as they've already churned through two prime ministers - Yukio Hatoyama, and the current incumbent Naoto Kan.

But the rocky political road has been pretty much continuous since Junichiro Koizumi served five years in office up to September 2006; since then there've been five PMs.

Perhaps it all has to do with the hidden side of the diet building - the fact that this is also the place that Princess Hinoto lives beneath in the CLAMP manga classic, X - which was made into an anime movie by director Rintaro in 1996 and later ran as a Madhouse TV title thanks to Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll).

There’s more to the National Diet Building, however, than its laid-to-waste fate in a couple of Godzilla movies and in the 2006 disaster flick Japan Sinks.

The structure itself has a far-flung history and international input that began with initial designs by German architects in the 1880s, right up to its completion as a finished structure in 1936 - to a plan by public competition winner, Watanabe Fukuzo, some input from fellow winner Takeuchi Shinshichi, and a nod in the direction of the original Germanicic concepts.

It’s a majestic building, with the lofty architectural ideals supported by stained glass, flowing drapes, and marble throughout.

Suiting the reputed punctuality of both Germany and Japan, who shared a hand in the design, there’s a tour of the building every 60 minutes - right on the dot.

Doraemon vs. Mobile Suit Gundam?

2011-01-18T21:27:00.008+09:00

The latest Doraemon movie will hit cinema screens across Japan in early March, when I'm fairly certain it'll surge straight to the top in box office receipts in the very first weekend it plays.

That process is actually like clockwork every year in this country.

But despite the fact he isn’t at all well known in the Western world, this isn’t some recent-hit sensation – and the title has a history to die for (or at the very least to swoon over in gob-smacked new ways) in terms of anime.

For starters in 2002 Time Magazine dubbed Doraemon the cuddliest hero in Asia, and in 2008 the Japanese Foreign Ministry appointed him their first anime cultural ambassador.

Doraemon started out in manga form in the 1960s, fashioned by Fujiko F. Fujio – a smoke screen coined by its real creator Hiroshi Fujimoto.

It did the big switch to TV in 1973, promptly fizzled, and then was revamped by TV Asahi six years later.

Doraemon hasn’t surrendered his grip on Japanese TVs over the three decades since, or the Japanese everyman’s psyche; I swear that every person in this place can draw his happy face.

And yet while you might be forgiven for thinking this show must set some sort of TV animation record (The Simpsons is a decade younger), it in fact comes in second to another Japanese series, Sazae-san (40 years on air).

Then there are over two-dozen theatrical movies, including the latest, which is titled 映画ドラえもん新・のび太と鉄人兵団～はばたけ天使たち～, or just plain Doraemon: Nobita and the New Steel Troops: ~Angel Wings~.

Regular readers here, if you indeed do exist, have probably picked up that I’m not a fan of these squiggly “~” things that Japanese animation companies just love to use when they translate their titles from Japanese to English. I know I whine about it often enough.

But grammatical aesthetics aside, the film looks to be a wonderful piece of robot-army-invading-Earth-mayhem, and in the Doraemon universe this promises to be a hoot rather than anything bone-chilling like Michael Bay‘s disgraceful work on Transformers.

So what’s the franchise fuss all about, anyhow?

Doraemon, it turns out, is a blue, dysfunctional mechanical cat from the future (of course) who has no ears but boasts a magical, four-dimensional pouch the envy of any self-prepossessing marsupial.

He’s been sent back in time to sort out Nobita, the good-for-nothing school kid ancestor of the people who built him – but usually instead of accomplishing his task, complete madness breaks out that includes subtle, often ingenious anime references to domestic culture (Mobile Suit Gundam is cheekily alluded to in the new movie) as well as Hollywood classics like West Side Story.

The saga also has some serious psychological eccentricities: for starters, aside from regular panic attacks, our motorized feline suffers from an ongoing musophobia that stems back to the future – to a time in the 22nd century when his ears were consumed by a robotic mouse.

While the TV show focus on Nobita’s bizarre everyday family life and neighbours, the movies go for a more exotic, adventurous edge, but they’ve been a bit rear-visionist in recent years: Nobita’s Great Adventure into the Underworld (2007) may have been the 27th feature released by distributor TOHO (of Godzilla notoriety, who do on average one Doraemon flick per year), but it was in fact a rebake of the sixth – released way back in 1984.

Besides, exotic locations are nowhere near as appealing as Doraemon and Nobita themselves, their time traveling exploits and outrageous futuristic devices, their essentially whacked-out neighbourhood buddies, and an insane overriding story arc.

These have made Doraemon a smash also in China and South Korea, yet he remains a largely unknown entity in the English-speaking world – a happenstance that I truly believe to be bordering on unforgivable ignorance.

Just look at the evidence – our fave feline was voted “cool” by 19 votes to 10 (three people opted out ‘cos they didn’t know who Doraemon was) in a two-month poll at the highly esteemed Doraemon Is Cool website.

By the way, I am kidding you. Really. It’s not quite as esteemed as all that.

At least The Orb got it right. As much as I rarely champion their music, they did a very cool video clip to their track ‘From a Distance’ (on the Bicycles & Tricycles album, 2004) that tracks the printing up of a Doraemon manga – then embarks in some trippy cut-ups of characters and images from the series.

Doraemon © FUJIKO PRO

Toshiaki Karasawa: 21st Century Boy

2011-01-16T20:38:00.004+09:00

Toshiaki Karasawa has this week been doing Wonda coffee commercials on TV and on billboards around Tokyo, including a huge one I saw today at Shinjuku Station - which reminded my frazzled mind to put a link here to an article on this way cool guy that I recently tossed together for Forces Of Geek.

Karasawa is one of my favourite contemporary Japanese actors – alongside better-known types like Ken Watanabe, Kiichi Nakai, Koji Yakusho, Yusuke Iseya, Kenichi Matsuyama and Koichi Sato.

As I mentioned above, like most Japanese actors Karasawa has no qualms about appearing in advertising on tellies over here, and he’s popped up in some hilarious commercials for muscle-fixing shippu (a cold-patch reminiscent of the pain paste Deep Heat that's best known back in former Brit colonies like Australia and South Africa), and he sometimes gets into weird superhero garb to sell houses.

Now he's doing a coffee run. You can check out the commercials here.

Anyway, you can also read more of my wayward homage/diatribe, editorial errors and all (sorry, I hacked this together over New Year, so you can guess where my head space was), courtesy of FOG at Toshiaki Karasawa: 21st Century Boy.

Freddie Mercury is Alive and Well and Doing Cup Noodle Commercials in Japan

2011-01-10T05:09:00.005+09:00

I think there's not really much more I could add here - the tag-line above says it all.

Seems that news of Freddie's death in 1991 was untimely, at least here in Japan where his solo number “I Was Born To Love You” has now been rebooted as the theme song for local brand Nissin's infamous snack-in-a-cup.

Here's the proof:

I just saw this on TV last night. Hilarious, if a bit bizarre.

Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings

2011-01-08T08:05:00.012+09:00

If the image (left) doesn't grab you straight away, take my word for it - as cheap as it sometimes is.

This was was an interesting series. I always love my Production I.G stuff, and it's great to see it getting the attention it deserves outside Japan.

The complete first season was released overseas towards the end of last year by FUNimation Entertainment in the USA, and it's also out through my fave chaps at Madman in Australia.

I did an interview with the series' character designer and chief animation director, Toku Okubo, back in 2009 for the late Geek Monthly magazine, and it went something like this (well, actually, a lot like this since I just cut and pasted):

Sans Wikipedia, you’d be forgiven for not immediately guessing when the Sengoku Period took place.

So let’s indulge in a quickie history lesson here.

Also known as the Warring States era, the Sengoku Period covers a time of dramatic political and military flip-flop that gripped then-divided Japan, from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th, when shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu took charge.

Think something akin to the barbarity of Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), minus the religious hogwash but with occasional earthquakes added into the mix, and you may begin to get an accurate picture.

357 years, two months and six days after the peace treaty that ended the European equivalent of complete chaos (in other words, on July 21, 2005, just to save you wearing down your fingers), Japanese videogame producer Capcom - the makers of similarly rough-and-tumble games like Street Fighter, Captain Commando and Resident Evil - released Sengoku Basara (戦国BASARA, aka Devil Kings) for PlayStation 2.

Obviously the game’s specifics revolved around the mayhem of the Warring States period, and it starred three real-life historical warlords as the central cast: Sanada Yukimura (once dubbed the #1 warrior in Japan), Date Masamune (nicknamed the One-Eyed Dragon, for obvious reasons.), Takeda Shingen (the Tiger of Kai), and Oda Nobunaga (the Devil King himself), a man who conquered much of Japan before committing seppuku in 1582.

Given the ever-popular combination of the slice-and-dice action format with samurai iconography (it sold 1.2 million units in Japan alone), this baby was always destined to reach screens other than PCs, and play on machines dedicated away from games - which is where veteran anime studio Production I.G (of Ghost in the Shell franchise fame) became involved.

Their resultant series, released on TVs here in Japan from April [2009], is not directly based on dusty facts from antiquity, but sets its sights on “paying homage to history” - which gives them plenty of leeway to be creative, especially in the character stakes.

Think contemporary brooding flair and surly, somewhat streetwise youth-culture antics that rest at home in the 21st century living room, rather than the blank, honor-bound rural rigidity probably present four centuries ago.

“It also has a high-octane story arc and fantastic action throughout the whole series,” assesses character designer and chief animation director, Toku Okubo. “I think we’ve created a whole new genre that didn’t exist before!”

While this is Okubo’s first major foray into character design, he previously worked on key animation on Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, as well as on the Ghost in the Shell TV series and Immortal Grand Prix, and was the animation director on several episodes of Blood+.

Also on board for the I.G ride is director Itsuro Kawasaki, who helmed the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle movie and did episode directing chores on Ghost in the Shell and Noir on TV. Scripting the armoured descent into anarchy is Yasuyuki Muto, responsible for the movie Afro Samurai: Resurrection, costume romp Le Chevalier D’Eon, and ninja-actioner Basilisk.

Okubo’s own involvement, however, had quite unusual origins.

“Everything started when the producer, Tetsuya Nakatake, held an in-house competition to establish the character designer for this new series. I‘d worked as a key animator many times, but never designed the characters for any project thus far. I thought this was going to be a good opportunity, and I took on the challenge.”

Luckily for us he was successful, as the character designs here are sensational - although Okubo is keen to pass around the plaudits.

“Each artist added his personal touch in creating the spectacular animation for each character’s fighting technique,” he raves.

“And the background art is beautiful. It perfectly matches with the colour palette used for the characters, and this gives a distinctive realism to the animation as a whole.”

The action here is as vital as the rapidly changing story and the range of unique characters involved, and Okubo is quick to make his pick of the cream of the crop of historical figures at play in the series.

“Takeda Shingen,” he blurts out. “He’s a real dandy, and he can fill the screen by just being there.”

With Okubo himself doing all the cast compositions, Shingen most certainly does - it helps when your own design god goes to bat for you.

Here's the opening montage to the series; you'll have to pick up and watch the rest:

© CAPCOM / TEAM BASARA

TSMG: the promo video/trailer/teaser thing

2011-01-06T21:06:00.004+09:00

Here's a YouTube teaser for that upcoming new novel I'm going to be a heel and shamelessly flog hereabouts over the next couple of months. Hell, it's my novel, I've never had one published before, and of course I'm completely over the moon about the upcoming publication date. Self-indulgent propaganda shells are to be expected.

Pre-order for this tome is available directly from the publisher, Another Sky Press, in the U.S. by clicking this link. There's also a free download feature there for the first 2 chapters (shh!).

Hyperbole out. For now.

Suite PreCure♪

2011-01-02T07:12:00.007+09:00

Well it's 2011 and I have no new moxies to report. Besides, you're s'posed to keep these things private, aren't you, like birthday wishes?

But perhaps a steady eye on the future with a smattering of realism might be fun.

I'll admit it - often I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but in this particular case I think it may've been an unconsciously imposed disposition. I've known all along that Japanese animation production house Toei reinvent their Pretty Cure anime series every year, and that they'd done so seven times already since 2004.

But me and my five-year-old daughter Cocoa had grown so attached to the current incarnation, HeartCatch PreCure! over the past 40-odd episodes, and it's been so wildly popular here in Japan, that I fooled myself into believing Toei would change the rules this time round and continue the storyline romps of Blossom, Marine, Sunshine, Moonlight, et al.

You might recall that this was, in fact, my choice of anime series of the year for 2010 - something difficult to swallow since it's a shojo girl's show aimed at little kids. Here's an action shot of all-pink Blossom, however, for posterity:

But now, regardless, we've stumbled across the truth: as per usual, Toei will sink the current series and introduce a new one from next month, actually from February 6th.

It's called Suite PreCure♪, or Suīto PuriKyua♪ (スイートプリキュア♪) in Japanese.

Given that this duo, Cure Rhythm and Cure Melody, have powers that revolve around music, you'd think I'd be the first to be won over - but when Cocoa and I first saw their character designs last night and my wife Yoko (less a fan of the whole Pretty Cure thing) asked us what we thought, my daughter and I both let out a cynical "Hmmm..." at the same time.

Quite possibly this will change; the wavering optimist in me hopes so. Cocoa's already today saying how cute Rhythm and Melody's costumes are.

In the meantime we have just four more episodes of HeartCatch PreCure! to say sayonara.

Check out this clip from an episode a couple of weeks back when Blossom's grandma briefly became the all-powerful Cure Flower. Grand stuff indeed!

In the meantime - happy new year!

© ABC・東映アニメーション

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - 2011

2010-12-29T09:35:00.008+09:00

Hey mates,

I'm dead sure there's a separate entry somewhere here in this blog to stick this update, but I'm chilling out with La Familia as the New Year wind-up and beginning is more important in Japan than Christmas (in my case I get to celebrate both!), so in the meantime I'm putting this here in case anyone's at all vaguely interested.

My debut novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat will now definitely be published, through US label Another Sky Press, at the end of January 2011.

It's a bit of a cut-up fusion of genres and cultures (blame 10 years in Tokyo and the rest in Melbourne, aside from six months in London and a little bit of time on the Gold Coast).

My editor (Kristopher Young, who penned Click), when pressed, put it thus:

"The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really - noirish, subtly sci-fi, hard-boiled, futuristic; Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or The Third Man. And a shot of bourbon."

Anyway, though I'd struggle to insert my own work in the same sentence as these cool people (a list that includes Kristopher himself), I like to believe that's what we've at least fractionally achieved...

While we're still in the edit on the book (mostly cleaning up and organizing the cover artwork - front and back both done by the insanely cool Scott Campbell), we have a sneak preview of the original, unedited first two chapters here, plus you can pre-order the beastie if that insane compulsion grabs you - it's retailing at only US$4.50 plus postage.

Cheap is always good.

Plus we've got some great feedback to the tome from magazines, newspapers and blogs like The Age, Vice, Filmink, Forces Of Geek and Impact.

You can find out more plus peruse the better-tuned propaganda and info online at
Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Anyway, I'm obviously over the moon about publication of the bugger in the new year and hope you have the inclination to check it out. If you do find the time to potter over something a little different... read away.

I'd love to know what you think!

Otherwise, two wise last words here: HAPPY NEW YEAR. Oops... them's three, not two.

All the best,
Andrez

TOP 10 JAPAN!

2010-12-23T21:52:00.008+09:00

Well now, ‘tis indeed that time again – the hilariously silly, completely self-indulgent Yuletide season that rounds out yet another year passed by; a few weeks in which people reflect and wax nostalgic over the past 12 months, bandy about inane Top 10 lists, thank-tank the best and worst, and drink way too much at rabble-rousing Christmas parties.

Never quite one to be left out of a bit of wining, dining, carousing, or making twee judgment calls myself, I here get to ruminate over Japan’s celluloid offerings in 2010 and in general. Read on and/or weep.

2010’S BEST ANIME TV SERIES

Honestly?

2010 been an absolutely dire year for TV anime, with most of the more innovative studios (Madhouse, Production I.G, Gonzo, Studio 4°C) seemingly in hibernation over the past twelve months – or at the very least keeping their claws sheathed.

While Madhouse did pull off something nifty in the Redline feature movie directed by Takeshi Koike, and Keiichi Hara’s anime movie Colorful was one of the cinematic highlights this year, the medium was lacklustre on the tellies.

It’s quite clear that the Japanese anime scene is going through a rough patch right now, very much like that which has crippled the newspaper/magazine and music industries, which may (or may not) have much to do with either the Internet or the global financial downturn or both; I’ll leave that appraisal to better qualified people.

So, it may come as some surprise to discover the series that rates as the best animated program on Japanese tellies this year.

But with all disclaimers aside, I'll readily admit it – I'm hooked watching this show every Sunday morning at 8:30, and not only because it's my four-year-old daughter Cocoa's preferred eye candy.

HeartCatch PreCure! (ハートキャッチプリキュア!) is an infectious, disarming, super-cute kids’ series that lacks the annoyance value of, say, Pokémon and has enough humour and action quotient (they kick giant monster arse every week) for adults to lose themselves in it as well.

Having kicked off on TV Asahi (Channel 10) in Tokyo back in February this year, HeartCatch is the seventh version of the long-running girls’ concept series created by the 'mysterious' Izumi Todo – actually none other than an alias for the creative types at Toei Animation.

To my mind the current is the infinitely better interpretation to date; last year’s, for example, called Fresh Pretty Cure!, was just plain bland.

By contrast, for a young girls' romp, there's a surprising sense of patience in the development of the story-telling arc of HeartCatch PreCure!, there're the surreal kaiju-style monsters every week, the villains ham it up, our heroes aspire to fashion, and the character designs are exceptionally cool.

What’s it all the fuss about, anyway?

The yarn started up with our shy, upright schoolgirl heroine Tsubomi (Cure Blossom), swathed in pink, then she was joined by trusty neighbour and fashion-minded sidekick Erika (the all-blue Cure Marine). Five months into the series, the third heroine emerged with the gold enshrouded, androgynous Itsuki (Cure Sunshine) – who dresses in boys clothes but shines in her girly PreCure persona. More recently the mysterious, reticent senior high school student Yuri was revealed to be the somewhat bitter Cure Moonlight.

While it's obviously aimed at the purchasing powers of the parents of the target demographic, there's something for everyone – even the more critical expat foreigners and their open-minded kids.

And it’s hands-down the best anime thing to screen on TV in Japan this year.

TOP 10 LIVE-ACTION & ANIME MOVIES 2010

1. Thirteen Assassins (d. Takashi Miike)
2. Redline (d. Takeshi Koike)
3. Colorful (d. Keiichi Hara)
4. Villains (d. Lee Sang Il)
5. Space Battleship Yamato (d. Takashi Yamazaki)
6. Cold Fish (d. Sion Sono)
7. Assault Girls (d. Mamoru Oshii)
8. The Last Chushingura (d. Shigemichi Sugita)
9. Caterpillar (d. Koji Wakamatsu)
10. Zebraman: Vengeful Zebra City (d. Takashi Miike)

HEARTCATCH PRECURE!
© ABC All Rights Reserved

Yakuza Hunters

2010-12-19T07:34:00.011+09:00

Actually released last May but currently doing the rounds of the cinema circuit (including the recent Tokyo Film Festival and the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival before that), the Yakuza Hunters calls itself “a new action, violence, and gore-packed film series that stars Asami - considered the new muse by the Japanese action movie directors of today.”

I’m guessing that they mean directors more inclined toward action of the violent and gore-related variety, since Noboru Iguchi cast the undoubtedly gorgeous adult video “muse” (real name Asami Sugiura) in RoboGeisha (2009) and The Machine Girl (2008).

Which can only be a good thing, really, since anybody who may've distractedly wandered into the pages of this digital limbo should have cottoned on to the fact that I’m a wee bit of an Iguchi fan.

For the two-part Yakuza Hunters, the directorial team Towa Eiken (Kazufumi Nakahiira and Shinichi Okuda) asserts in propaganda notes that they’ve created the coolest possible heroine for 21st century sensibilities – which is quite possibly correct but depends in large part on where those personal sensibilities lie.

In the plus column – aside from, of course, Asami – they’ve also got on board Yoshihiro Nishimura (the director of Tokyo Gore Police) as special gore FX chief, and Tsuyoshi Kazuno (The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha) in charge of VFX.

The synopsis I got from the people at CREi Inc. (formerly known as Media Shogun Ltd.) here in Japan tells the storyline far better than any of my own rambling attempts:

“Asami plays a legendary Yakuza Hunter, always out for revenge against yakuzas who kill with no mercy the people dear to her. Usually, she is cool and calm, but once the flame is set on fire, Asami is invincible! The over-the-top action scenes – all done by Asami herself – are absolutely breathtaking, and when she saves the day it’s a guaranteed standing ovation from the audience! Are you ready to witness the birth of the coolest heroin [sic] in high heels??”

In Part One, called appropriately enough The Ultimate Battle Royale, Asami takes on former fellow gang member Junko, a traitor who's swapped allegiances to join a dastardly yakuza gang that dabbles in drugs and prostitution – and eventually kills members of Asami’s group.

Hence obligatory all-out, yakuza-destroying mayhem.

Part Two, dubbed The Revenge Duel in Hell, sees Asami’s return from the yakuza-destroying battlefront to visit Inokuma, the man who taught her the skills of being a Yakuza Hunter in the first place.

What she finds instead is a district panhandled by more diabolical yakuza types who are planning to build a casino; they’ve also called in cold-blooded killer Akira for protection.

After several friends are systematically slaughtered, Asami steps in to take down the lot.

While the violence quotient gets a bit much, these movies are still a downright hoot, packed with drop-dead girls in an array of skimpy costumes and hilarious Japanese gangster stereotypes.

And there’s some history here – the Yakuza Hunter concept makes tongue-in-cheek references to the Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion movies from the early ‘70s, starring Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood)... themselves based on the classic manga by Toru Shinohara, claimed to have inspired Kill Bill, remade as Sasori by Hong Kong director Joe Ma in 2008, and also homaged in Japanese director Sion Sono’s quite brilliant Love Exposure.

© 2010 YAKUZ BUTING GIRLS Film Partners

Flash in Japan?

2010-12-11T04:34:00.007+09:00

Anyone who's wandered through this rambling depository has possibly come up against the continuing enigma that is HeartCatch PreCure!, the seventh (and easily best) in the girls' anime concept series developed by Toei Animation to lasso young girls' hearts, their mums' wallets, and the imagination of otherwise cynical types who once dug Sailor Moon.

For the first 24 episodes after the show kicked off in February, the closing titles theme song was 'HeartCatch☆Paradise!' by PreCure regular Mayu Kudo - and as the YouTube gems below vividly display, it's been quite the hit here in Japan for the rather eccentric dance moves as much as for the groove (the first one is the real McCoy).

I think my favourite is the Blues Brothers inspired number.

A couple of months ago, however, as of episode 25, Toei up and changed the ending theme to a gospelly number (I guess as a reboot to incorporate the two new heroines, Cure Sunshine and Cure Moonlight). Repetitively titled 'Tomorrow Song 〜Song of Tomorrow〜', it's also performed by Kudo but this one has been slower on the fanbase - although it does seem to be picking up of late as you'll see below: