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?
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.
Twenty-seven years ago Ryuichi Sakamoto made his not-quite-so-thrilling acting debut in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, opposite David Bowie, Tom Conti and Jack Thompson. He also composed the soundtrack.
We’re not here now to talk dramatics, since Sakamoto let his acting career slide. It’s the man’s music, including many more film scores, that has continued to flourish.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence was actually the first movie for which I created music,” Sakamoto is quick to point out. “I’ve liked movies since I was a kid, but I never imagined I’d compose music for them.”
Well before techno and house music, there was Yellow Magic Orchestra - a Japanese trio subsequently cited in the same sentence as ‘70s peers Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Can, Throbbing Gristle and Tangerine Dream.
More recently they've been appearing on Japanese tellies to promote chocky treats Pocky, from local brand Ezaki Glico - first sold in 1966, the treat is a thin sliver of biscuit stick coated with chocolate, and you can check out the commercial here:
While these days YMO may be hawking popular snacks, three decades ago these above-mentioned bands improvised experiments with new-fangled synthesizers and analogue electronic gadgetry that eventually inspired a deluge of DJs, producers and bands across the globe to lay down the club sounds we now take for granted.
Sakamoto was a principle member of YMO, but it’s obvious he’s laid that legacy to rest rather than continue banking on yesterday’s glories.
“That’s in the past,” he confirms with a laugh.
“What can I say? There isn’t anything enlightening to add, except that my relationship’s still good with the other two members of YMO.”
After the wide-girth, experiential YMO years, conforming to a structured musical palette would be a difficult detour to take - something Sakamoto confirms.
“At the time I had no idea what I could refer to so I asked Jeremy Thomas, a British producer, and he recommended Citizen Kane. When I now contemplate Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, I’m not sure if the soundtrack succeeds as film music - but the director, Nagisa Oshima, encouraged me to produce it my own way without any inhibitions so it ended up rather like my solo music.”
Sakamoto subsequently scored three movies for Bernardo Bertolucci, starting in 1987 with The Last Emperor - for which he shared the Oscar with David Byrne and Cong Su - and winding up with Little Buddha (1993).
“When you create a soundtrack of course you care about emotion,” Sakamoto says, “but I’m equally intrigued with the actors and other elements within the movie - like the actor’s eyes, a slight movement of someone’s moustache; those things are vital to me. I want to paint the structure of the story through music even though this isn’t always required by a director.”
More recently Sakamoto composed the sound track for Women Without Men.
"It was awarded the Silver Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival," Sakamoto enthuses, quite obviously excited by the filmmakers.
“Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist, originally involved in the visual arts, and this is the first fiction film she’s made - for which I did the music.”
Given Ryuichi Sakamoto’s long-term experience, it would be educational to understand how one annotates a line between the creation of a soundtrack and producing one’s own music for an audio release. The man’s response reveals that this lineation itself is blurred; it’s the people involved who make a difference.
“Both are my music, so there’s not so much dissimilarity,” Sakamoto muses.
“However, when it comes to doing a soundtrack there are clients, such as directors, and what they require is of principle concern. In that case it doesn’t matter how much I love the work I develop - if they don’t like it, that score goes straight into the trash. This is the major difference. Then we also have different taste and preferences and things may not always gel, so there is quite the added tension. By contrast, if it’s my own music I make the decisions and never have to deal with this kind of stress.”
The collaborative fusion of the two is key, however.
“Bringing them together is enriching because the odd demands of a film score force you to think outside your usual comfort zone, in order to meet the challenge; this is an essential experience for me as a musician.”
On the new release Playing the Piano Sakamoto combines twelve of his best known pieces, much of the content film music from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor. It’s been rendered far simpler as the album title suggests - recorded from live performances in Japan by the man behind the music, utilizing just a piano.
The album even comes with a bonus disc, Out of Noise, which is Sakamoto’s first solo studio opus in five years. Comparing this with Playing the Piano is like comparing milk-based food products and soft, white, porous sedimentary rock; they’re that diverse.
Out of Noise is a complicated journey that’s at times sublime, ethereal and prescient; at others the mood is challenging and focused, like an icy exercise in yoga meditation.
While the ageing process causes other avant-garde musicians to lose touch - or to shift into safer parts of the mainstream - Sakamoto continues to bracket himself with current musical concepts, technology and ideology, and he’s embraced the digital age as much as he did its analogue predecessor 30 years ago.
Yet you have to backtrack further still to uncover Sakamoto’s favourite movie soundtrack.
Without a moment’s hesitation he selects Nino Rota’s score for Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954).
“That movie is fantastic and the music is superb,” he appraises.
Big thanks to Yoko for doing most of the work here, and to Filmink for organizing.
OK, I'll admit it - I'm hooked watching this anime series every Sunday morning from 8:30, and not only because it's my 4-year-old daughter's preferred eye candy.
HeartCatch PreCure! (ハートキャッチプリキュア!) is an infectious, disarming and super cute series that lacks the annoyance value of, say, Pokémon.
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 created by the 'mysterious' Izumi Todo - actually none other than an alias for the creative types at Toei Animation - and to my mind its definitely the best interpretation to date.
It all started up with our shy, upright heroine Tsubomi (Cure Blossom), swathed in pink, then she was joined by trusty neighbour and fashion-minded sidekick Erika (the all-blue Cure Marine). Today, five months into the series, the third heroine emerged with the gold enshrouded, androgynous Itsuki (Cure Sunshine).
For a young girls' romp, there's a surprising sense of patience in the development of the story-telling arc, there're surreal kaiju-style monsters every week, the villains ham it up, our heroes have a sense of humour, and the character designs are way cool.
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.
Here're the closing credits - the CG animation really doesn't do the show itself justice, but the infectious theme song by Mayu Kudou is being heard right now everywhere over here from kindergartens to keitai ring-tones.
The latest Doraemon movie hit cinema screens across Japan yesterday (Saturday 6th March) to much hoo-har on TV.
Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King (映画ドラえもん のび太の人魚大海戦, Eiga Doraemon Nobita no Ningyo Daikaisen) will quite possibly it'll surge straight to the number one spot in box office receipts in the very first weekend or two it plays here, if previous Doraemon outings are any indication.
This isn’t some recent-hit sensation and in fact the title has a history to roll up and perish for – or at least swoon over in gob-smacked new ways - in terms of anime. It's actually the 30th feature film in the series.
Doraemon (ドラえもん) started out in manga form in the 1960s, fashioned by Fujiko Fujio – a collaborative smoke screen coined by its real creators, Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko.
It did the big switch to TV in 1973, promptly fizzled, then was revamped by TV Asahi six years later - with character designs by Eiichi Nakamura (of Panda! Go, Panda!notoriety).
When you add in the two dozen odd theatrical movies, you're forced to realize that the franchise continues to be a sizzling property in this country over three decades later.
Doraemon hasn’t surrendered its grip on Japanese TVs or the Japanese everyman’s psyche; I swear that every person in this place can draw his happy face and and every third salaryman or office lady uses one of the series’ theme tunes for their keitai (cell-phone) ring-tones.
There’re Doraemon clocks, pop-up toasters, slot machines, turntables, beer-dispensers, ice-blocks, chocolates, drinks, and every other (in)conceivable merchandising possibility.
It's also the country’s second-longest-running animated TV show after Sazae-san.
When I interviewed the TV series’ producer Daisuke 'Dan' Yoshikawa at TV Asahi a couple of years ago, he was at a loss to explain the somewhat miraculous ongoing popularity of the animated mechanoid feline.
“Various elements – combined - made Doraemon a successful property,” he theorized. “But I think that it’s the storyline that makes it so special.”
So what’s that story about?
Our titular character is a blue, dysfunctional mechanical cat from the future (of course) that boasts a magical, four-dimensional pouch the envy of any self-prepossessing marsupial. He’s been sent back in time to sort out Nobita, a good-for-nothing schoolboy ancestor of the people who built him, sans ears, but usually instead complete mayhem breaks out – including subtle, ingenious anime references to Hollywood cinema classics like West Side Story and The Three Musketeers.
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.
Hapless schoolboy Nobita is not only a lousy athlete and an abysmal scholar but lazy, cowardly, and selfish to boot.
Despite Nobita’s faults, Yoshikawa believed that he’s “just like all of us! People can relate to Nobita, and his story captures a feeling everyone shares. Not all of us get 0% on tests, but we can understand that feeling.”
It’s Doraemon himself, however, who is the undoubted star of the series.
“People love that adorable, cat-like robot,” Yoshikawa confirmed.
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 tad rear-visionist in recent years: Nobita’s Great Adventure Into The Underworld (2007), for instance, may have been the 27th Dora-chan feature unfurled by distributor TOHO (of Godzilla notoriety; they do on average one Doraemon flick per year) but it’s in fact a rebake of the sixth in the series - released way back in 1984.
While he’s easy to sketch, he has a trademark profile and he’s a downright cute and often hilarious character, another reason for Doraemon’s popularity had for years been the quirky vocal effort of Nobuyo Oyama who did his voice all the way from 1979 until 2005.
After such a long haul, that year a bunch of the series’ seiyuu including Oyama and Noriko Ohara (Nobita from 1979 as well as the voice of Nobita’s mum in the 1973 original series) quite understandably bowed out of the series as both people were hitting the age of 70, and made way for new blood.
The transition annoyed some long-time fans of the series but overall passed relatively painlessly for TV Asahi and the show’s producers.
“The main characters are the same,” Yoshikawa said.
Besides, voice changes and exotic locations are not the big issue here, not anywhere 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 hit 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 tzelun.com website – just check out: http://tzelun.com/blog/2007/03/05/it%E2%80%99s-official-doraemon-is-cool/
By the way, we are kidding you. Really. It’s not quite as esteemed as all that.
This newsflash just in from the battlefront ‘burbs: Militant extraterrestrial frogs do dig anime, in particular the many series that happen to include Gundam in their title.
And when it comes to digging, let it be known that I love Keroro Gunso (ケロロ軍曹, aka Sgt. Frog outside Japan).
Mostly I think I'm enamoured with Keroro's erstwhile colleague and sparring partner, the battle-scarred Giroro - voiced by the sublime Jōji Nakata, an otaku fave who also provided the vocal workouts for Alucard in Hellsing and Roy Revant in Solty Rei; in addition Nakata dubbed Gerard Butler's Leonidis in 300 and Reverend Lovejoy in The Simpsons Movie.
My daughter Cocoa and I just now watched the latest installment in a series that kick-started before she was even born.
Keroro Gunso has been bouncing off the walls on TV Tokyo - via Gundam studio Sunrise Inc. - for almost 6 years now (it began in April 2004), adapted from the original manga by Mine Yoshizaki.
“You don't need to be logical to have fun,” stressed the show’s producer, Makoto Shiraishi, from TV Tokyo when I interviewed him for Anime Insider magazine a while back. “We thought both children and adults could enjoy this series.”
The emphasis here is that it’s not just kids who adore this seemingly innocuous children’s anime - it's also relatively consistently rated towards the the top in the viewing habits of Japanese otaku, if their message-boards and blogs are to be believed.
“Keroro is very cute,” says Harumi H, a self-confessed “hardcore otaku” salary-man from Tokyo who has his own blog and adores this show. He was once my student, so I get these quotes in a pinch.
"Keroro’s also a little stupid," Harumi goes on.
"It's funny that he’s supposed to be an invader, but instead lives with and sponges off the Earthlings, and then gets into the culture of Japan. For otaku, many of the parodies in the series concern Gundam, Doraemon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dragon Ball Z, Ultraman, Urusei Yatsura, Durty Pair, Macross, and so on; it's difficult to count all the parodies but it's very funny to find them!”
Shiraishi, the producer, agreed that the show’s success over the past few years in Japan related to its ability to transcend barriers.
“Though it was popular with otaku people in the beginning, it’s since also been embraced by children and their families,” he reported.
It’s basically the story of a slippery character called Keroro, an alien from a race of frog-like critters who set their sights on an invasion of the unsuspecting Earth.
Part of an advance party reconnoitering the local terrain, Keroro’s cover is blown in the Hinata family household, the invasion is called-off - and he’s stranded to the whims of the family’s kids.
Life for Keroro is no longer that of a globe-trotting master of menace, but instead filled with mundane activities like household chores and keeping the kids at bay, sorting out the various hangers-on from his destitute invasion squad – and putting together Gundam model kits in those precious few moments of freedom.
There's set-piece action still, and more recently the show has gone back to its spatial roots, but this is a Sunrise production after all, and more than half the cast and crew – including director Yusuke Yamamoto - worked on one Gundam off-shoot or another.
“I'm a fan – now,” Shiraishi said of the influential Gundam franchise itself.
“In the past I knew about Gundam, but I had no particular interest in it until I met Keroro. I became a big fan after that!”
Most of the other seiyuu are no slouches either: Keroro is played by Kumiko Watanabe (Shippo in Inu Yasha), Kururu by Takehito Koyasu (who voiced Shigeru Aoba in Neon Genesis Evangelion), while Tomoko Kawakami – who made a splash as the nun with a gun, Rosette, in Chrono Crusade – breathes life with equal panache into the character of Fuyuki Hinata.
“Overall, it’s not only a parody or a matter of great seiyuu, but a good story,” says Hosono, the otaku fan who also says he prefers Jōji Nakata in the Giroro role.
“Even if you don’t know the original manga you can enjoy what happens in the anime series. I think Keroro has charm enough for all ages.”
Copyright All rights reserved. Sunrise/KADOKAWA PUBLISHING CO.,LTD.
If Fuji TV wanted to kick off their 50th year on air with a sizeable bang, they certainly picked the spot-on anime series to do so: Michiko to Hatchin (Michiko and Hatchin) sizzled when it first hit screens back in October 2008, and at the time it promised to be a solid ratings-puller and critical smash for the terrestrial station that also airs Japan’s longest-running anime series, Sazae-san.
The new series proved to be one of the unexpected anime viewing highlights for me personally at the time, as much for its faux exotic locale (the principle action is set in a sun-drenched yet often all-too-noir Brazil) as for the rather cool cast and crew at play behind the animated cels.
On top of these elements it was an insightful spotlight on people of Asian (in particular Japanese) decent who live in South America, like the nikkei burajiru-jin: descended from a wave of Japanese workers who emigrated to Brazil a century ago, making the country home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan. Really.
But don’t think this series is some kind of travelogue. It’s a stunning mixture of styles and sounds, influences and moments, and the energetic, action-packed, sexy, funny, and strangely touching story of the burgeoning relationship between central characters Michiko Malandro and Hana ‘Hatchin’ Morenos: the former a wild criminal on the lam after a prison escape, the latter a girl oppressed by abusive foster parents. When the two hook up following a (literal) motorcycle drive-through and the discovery of identical tattoos, they begin a search for the same elusive individual - Hatchin’s dad, who happens to be Michiko’s old flame.
In between are an array of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly, including police officer Atsuko Jackson, and crime syndicate head Satoshi Batista, while the whole caboodle was ackaged together in mesmerizing fashion by Manglobe Inc. - the animation studio set up in 2002 by Sunrise producers, Takashi Kochiyama and Shinichiro Kobayashi, and the subsequent powerhouse behind Ergo Proxy and Samurai Champloo.
Shinichiro Kobayashi, the president of Manglobe, obviously wasn’t content to rest on the laurels of two previously revered anime titles. “I wanted to make a fusion of the road movie with diva action carnage, within the realm of a totally Latinized world,” he explains. Kobayashi also sees a clear delineation between this new outing and the two prior titles, which were both directed by men.
“This time it’s the female director’s view,” he says, referring to the head of an exceptional cast and crew.
Director Sayo Yamamoto has tweaked the storyboards on Eureka Seven, Death Note, Ergo Proxy and Samurai Champloo, and directed episodes of all of these classic series save for Death Note. So don’t think anything vaguely too girly here - some of the action and domestic violence encountered by our heroines is hair-raising, yet it tends to skip the voyeurism some of her male counterparts indulge in.
On script honors is Takashi Ujita, a writer who previously worked on an array of independent live-action movies, while character designer Hiroshi Shimizu moonlighted in key animation on FLCL, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Millennium Actress, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso. Mecha designer Shigeto Koyama was previously involved in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society as well as Gurren Lagann.
Then there’s the additional crew member’s name that jumps right out here, in the atypical role of music producer: Shinichiro Watanabe, the illustrious writer/director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, co-director of Macross Plus, and responsible for two segments from The Animatrix.
This series also just so happens to be a Japanese acting train-spotter’s delight, since most of the voice actors are themselves established and respected live-action actors.
Kanji Tsuda, cast in the role of Hatchin’s father, Hiroshi, is a veteran from classic ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano movies like Sonatine, Hana-bi and Dolls, and featured in movies by famed directors Yojiro Takita, Katsuhito Ishii, and Takashi Shimizu.
Yoko Maki (Michiko), who was cast in the American version of The Grudge, started her career in the 2001 remake of Lady Snowblood (renamed Princess Blade), while Suzuka Ohgo (Hatchin) popped up in Memoirs of a Geisha - in which she played the childhood Zhang Ziyi - then also costarred with Ken Watanabe in Kita No Zeronen (Year One in the North).
Jun Murakami (Shinsuke Rodriguez) was one of the stars in the ninja live-action movie Red Shadow (2001), and Takeshi Wakamatsu (Father Pedro) appeared in the far better ninja romp, Fukuro no Shiro (Owl’s Castle, 1999), starring Kiichi Nakai.
The skill of these people, from art and image through to dulcet vocal tones and spot-on dialogue, works nicely.
Dark and cute all at once, there are recurring themes throughout the series. There’s the search for Hatchin’s father (and Michiko’s former lover), Hiroshi, who abandoned his child and may be dead, but perhaps isn’t; there are the eccentric cameo inclusions, some heavy emotional development for the key characters involved—most strikingly the love-hate/mum-daughter relationship between our two heroines. And there’s Michiko’s ongoing hot water escapades, and the joyful obsessions with food, music and fashion.
“About the fashion,” Kobayashi reports, “We had an up-and-coming designer here in Japan do the fashions. For the art we practically went to Brazil, and that experience is reflected in the animated vision we created here. And for the music I invited on board Kassin, a very popular musician from Brazil. It’s a plus.”
There’s also the inclusion of teen romance, drug-addled hitmen, a doctor lugging fish out of people’s tummies, motorcycles crashing through windows, and one character’s attempts at bullfighting with a soup ladle - all of which up the ante and made this perhaps the best animated series I was going to watch well into 2009 and beyond.
And yet - I haven't.
After a lukewarm response from Japanese audiences and just 22 episodes, the series concluded (with a few unsatisfactory character resolutions) in March last year.
Located in Koto-Ku on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay, situated right next to the Odaiba area and Rainbow Bridge - ostensibly one of Tokyo’s most famous romantic viewing points - is the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, a massive structure more lovingly referred to by locals as "Tokyo Big Sight".
Officially, it’s Japan's largest exhibition and convention center.
But more importantly it’s also the place where all the major anime companies flaunt their new celluloid wonders every March at the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF), and the hallowed halls where Tokyo’s Comic Market (Comiket) rams together around 200,000 people including a fair portion of cosplayers and one helluva lot of manga, for the largest comic convention in the world.
The next of these is due to begin unfurling itself in just eight days, on December 29th.
Constructed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tokyo Big Sight opened its doors in 1996, and since then has welcomed more than 10 million visitors annually for the past several years, with the cumulative visitor count topping 100 million in July 2007, to an area measuring 230,873.07 square meters of floor space.
The building varies in height between three and eight stories, and has a cavernous underground parking annex that rather inanely draws to mind the Who song 'I Can See For Miles'.
The Centre itself is composed of three main areas: the West Hall, the East Hall and the high-tech Conference Tower. The main exhibition halls are located in the West Hall and the East Hall, and there are huge works of art interspersed throughout the center by artists like Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Michael Craig-Martin, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen.
But there’s a wee bit more to Odaiba than just Tokyo Big Sight.
While historically-speaking this area has a bit of a mundane past (the name “Odaiba” itself harks back to a string of six island fortresses built way back in 1853 in order to protect Edo - old Tokyo - from attack by sea), the area is considered the romantic hot spot of this 12-million-person metropolis, and it’s no real wonder why when you consider the scenic bay views and the somewhat picturesque Rainbow Bridge.
There are a multitude of all-inclusive, theme park like shopping malls such as Venus Fort, some superbly innovative architecture - the stand-outs are Fuji TV studio’s spherical building designed by Kenzo Tange, and the Museum of Maritime Science - and literally hundreds of restaurants, cafes, shops, and nightclubs.
There’s even a 115-metre-tall ferris wheel which used to be the biggest in the world, but is now ranked at #12.
At one time or another over the past few years, Odaiba has also played host to temporary installations like the superb portable museum entirely constructed of Cosco shipping crates, and the 18-metre, 35-ton RX-78-2 Gundam statue.
In summer, thousands flock to Odaiba for the local hanabi (fireworks) festival, and it’s standing room only - which is an issue in an earthquake-prone country like Japan.
As mentioned above, Odaiba is an artificial island built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay. Rumour has it that should the next big one hit this city with anywhere near the strength of the last big shaker in 1923, Odaiba will be the first place to sink beneath the waves.
It’s one reason I always pack a flotation device when I go visit.
