japan is fucked up!

Go to Shmbashi station (there's a nice little mini Tower Records in the basement concourse btw) walk up and out to the elevated walkways past the Ghibli clock and take the Yurikamome line to Odiaba, it's mostly all elevated so sit at up the front as the train is unmanned, it's like a gentle free rollercoaster.

Oops, that should read go to *Shiodome* tube station, then take the Yurikamome from the elevated Shimbashi station

thank you! that day, i went from yoyogi -> harajuku --> shinjuku ---> mejiro, then back to machida -> hon atsugo.
halloween in shibuya was pretty crazy yesterday.

Also Yanaka is a fantastic area for wandering, a fantastically huge cemetery and a high concentration of old buildings and temples/shrines, Nippori station is closest.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/02/01/music/akb48-members-penance-shows-flaws-in-idol-culture/

reading about yanaka -- this is fascinating:

The distinction between [Yamanote and Shitamachi] has been called "one of the most fundamental social, subcultural, and geographic demarcations in contemporary Tokyo." While the distinction has become "geographically fuzzy, or almost non-existent...it survives symbolically because it carries the historical meaning of class boundary, the samurai having been replaced by modern white collar commuters and professionals." Generally speaking, the term Yamanote has a connotation of "distant and cold, if rich and trendy", whereas "Shitamachi people are deemed honest, forthright and reliable". These differences encompass speech, community, profession and appearance. There is also an overarching difference based on notions of modernity and tradition The inhabitants of Yamanote were thought of as espousing modernising ideals for their country, based on Western models. The people of Shitamachi, on the other hand, came to be seen as representatives of the old order and defenders of traditional cultural forms.

Interesting stuff

And that idol story is sad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NcIGBKXMOE

Had a walk through Akihabara and suddenly walking down a road where loads of girls were standing around like in this video was very odd, I’d forgotten about it until watching that video.

Anyone recommend any golden gai bars?

https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/spike-hokkaido-2/lake-toya-the-billion-dollar-tower-of-bubble/

spikejapan maybe everyone knows it? but really fascinating exploration of the architecture and landscapes created by the bubble economy, giant empty hotels abandoned pachinko parlors in hokkaido and suburban tokyo

https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/amakusa-islands-of-dread/

Just read that first link, very interesting! Have been thinking about visting the north of Japan next year.

Wow, great find.
I suppose the phenomenon of ghost towns is common to any society that has gone through a global boom / bust cycle, but there's something about this in Japan that is somehow particularly sad and melancholy.

Reading the other article, fascinating stuff. Stayed in a hotel in the mountains, off season in the Naeba Ski Resort town, to go to the Labyrnith festival and there was a rather faded air about the place, great to get more context on that.

i went to okubo yesterday after coming across a reference somewhere to right wing sound trucks parked outside shin-okubo station calling for the expulsion or death of all koreans. it was an interesting neighborhood even if it will probaably become a place like yokohama chinatown where there are no actual chinese people living there -- i mean there are koreans there but clearly more recent waves of immigration have taken over maybe because rents are still impressively low. on rental agency signs that had text in chinese and vietnamese and english usually but not korean the average rent seemed to be around 60,000 a month. most of the side streets were clearly home to a large chinese community: lots of chinese dry goods and grocery stores, 2nd hand electronics, barbecue and quick takeaway joints, lots of massage places. language on the street was 50% southern-accented mandarin and southern dialects. barebones shoe stores and cheap clothes places with women from the indian subcontinent going through the racks beside chinese women speaking in fujianese. 2nd hand cellphone shops, moneychangers, low level sex industry. large muslim community also, it appeared. it was the closest thing to like the uncosmopolitan multicultural communities of guangzhou -- not quite taojin or xiaobei i guess but close. i have a mental picture of roppongi being a bit like this? but i should probably go see what it's like.

i also walked down toward shinjuku thinking about golden gai and calstars question and it was mostly an unappealing scene just as i had thought from my first walk through - maybe i saw the wrong part? i dunno? but i had good ramen at nagi and stumbled upon a festival at hanazono shrine for shichi-go-san and it was like a microcosm if that's the right word of shinjuku like foreign tourists and businessmen just off work eating chocobanana and cabaret girls in long cecil mcbee sweaters on their way to work and the dudes selling motsunabe wrists and necks covered in gold and folding dirty money into louis wallets. i saw a sideshow that the barker out front promised was one of a kind in japan and this was the only chance to see it before it was gone forever: a middle aged girl group that was backed up by a band that looked like dinosaur jr. but in period drama robes -- the highlights were: the host deepthroated a 20 inch long black balloon - energetic motown medley - a girl with a kappa baldspot wig put out candles on her tongue and drizzled wax on her face and then ate pieces of a wine bottle that an audience member was brought up to smash with a hammer.

your reporting is appreciated. sounds like an interesting time. how much longer do you have there?

couple more months at least. it's kind of an open ended thing at the moment.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/11/07/lifestyle/heart-darkness-nostalgic-tokyo-disappearing-amid-construction-boom/#.VksihnYrLIX

huh, can't quite picture a japanese xiaobei; trippy! how's yr conversational japanese going, dylannn? work/study/research/, or ...?

it's not exactly xiaobei--reallllly not even close. i guess glancing down the right alley at the right time, you get sort of the same feeling.

my japanese level is shit. i think it's easy to learn the sentence patterns to get through the day and easy enough to pick up the underlying structures that let you follow along with an overheard conversation, knowing sort of who/what is being discussed... "he went [probably a place name] to [unfamiliar verb] but [an explanation with a few familiar sentence particles in it]"... while still missing out on the majority of meaning. unlike china, there's limited opportunity to engage with strangers in the kind of chit-chat that quickly builds ability and confidence. extremely limited inquisitiveness on the part of the people i've met-- in china, after you went into the same store to buy a pack of cigarettes everyday, the guy behind the counter might ask if you live in the neighborhood, what you're doing there, blah blah blah-- and those that are interested often want to engage with me in english. apart from conversation, just day to day figuring things out is made much easier by being literate in chinese characters (this is of limited utility when trying to read something aloud as you can pick up on the japanese reading of chinese characters quickly but there are always numerous readings) and being able to usually decipher katakana, hiragana.

If you have a smartphone, there's a very good app called Kana Drills, just a simple multiple choice quiz thing, it might get you up to speed fairly quickly.

alright i got some kana drills app that is like choose between hiragana katakana, shows the character and has the full page of sounds to choose from. i find it useful.

you gotta go full rote on that otherwise you'll never remember i find

try http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

Also Yanaka is a fantastic area for wandering, a fantastically huge cemetery and a high concentration of old buildings and temples/shrines, Nippori station is closest. -- i've been around this neighborhood a few times now, walking from ueno to uguisudani to nippori, but i never took the extra trip over to yanaka ginza until today. the stretch from uguisudani to nippori is pretty TOKYO REALNESS, right below uguisudani station you cross over a kilometer across valley of rail lines and right below the steps to the south of the station are some smokey yakkitori places from 1964, grey condo towers with dirt courtyard parks below them, old ladies feeding cats, shitty little stores, couple blocks of love hotels with a few pink salons down narrow alleys. yanaka ginza was cute.

haha, yeah i mentioned that in one of the other threads of japan

that's yurakucho, it's below the tracks of yamanote line. we were hanging around there at 1am once and it gets kind of wild. probably the only japanese assholes you'll ever meet; drunken salarymen

Dylannn, reading your posts makes me wanna re-read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Japan-Journals-Donald-Richie/dp/1880656973

i followed a mainland chinese tour group through kabukicho a few nights ago. i caught up with them as i was walking back from golden gai. the leader of the tour was a humorless woman in a calflength lime green parka. she was stopping in front of, whatever, the big signs for host clubs and explaining: "in japan, many women are very lonely and seek companionship from these male prostitutes-- some of them spend thousands a month in these clubs and buying designer clothes for their favorite men," then, quieter, to several of the people directly beside her, "this is the type of men japanese women like, like women!" shouting at them at keep pace, she led them down a valley of love hotels to an intersection with several african touts working: "these black people come on fraudulent visas and engage in various illegal business in this area." the group she was leading looked incredibly bored, cameras stowed in bags, talking to each other and straggling along in groups of three or four. they looked relieved to be getting back on the bus.

what i mean is, i try to restrain myself from going beyond the simplest reporting of this is what i did and this is what i saw and maybe some of the more interesting things i've seen i'll keep it to myself because i don't want to look like the guy that says he never saw anyone play tekken without smoking a cigarette or like the woman in the lime green parka.

while blanket statements can reveal one's lack of experience and nuanced views, i won't sit through reading someone who doesn't think what s/he is writing is interesting. i mean, i'd feel like s/he's having us on.

personal experiences are always fun to read, though, because it shows the person's biases.

as an aside, it's such a canadian thing to "play it safe" and not say something controversial. in some ways, we, too, don't like to lose face

from my phone

http://imgur.com/kOI3tUC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jnePQ6r.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2dsGGUl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/I0fjKes.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gWOMWv1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8l76HOv.jpg

panty vending machines

LOVE HOTELS: dogenzaka in the first picture, just around the corner is STRIP LIVE THEATER which usually has a lineup by the time i check out from whatever love hotel i stayed in the night before-- the odakyu line ride into the city feels brisk and sometimes i'll even take the 各停 an hour and a half tour of east kanagawa into shinjuku but a) i can't handle taking the late train back into the city, b) everyone works late and everything happens late so things start to get going on even a weeknight around midnight. even if the plans are for the next day, asumi and i usually take the train to shinjuku when she gets off work, spend the night in a shibuya love hotel, or maybe kabukicho where golden gai which i've sort of warmed up to and i'm sort of into the memory lane 思い出横丁 alleys off shinjuku station, and in kabukicho i do like the spectacle which is actually quite unthreatening and wholesome compared to walking down the right street in dongguan or cruising the back alleys of luohu in shenzhen, and you can watch the tour groups of chinese unloaded from buses around where the godzilla peeking over the buildings statue is, and the love hotel stay rate is a good 1000 or 1500 yen cheaper than shibuya.

EASING MYSELF INTO MAKING BOLD SWEEPING STATEMENTS -- CHINESE PEOPLE IN TOKYO, MY OBSERVATIONS: in tokyo, if you only see areas around yamanote line stations, you can get the impression that the japanese economy is built on: selling bags to chinese tourists and salarymen rubdowns. the second item in a second but sometimes it feels like everyone around you on the street in shibuya is chinese. ride the yamanote line and look over a shoulder and someone is reading weibo or typing to a 福州人在东京 weixin group. i know a girl that works at shibuya 109 who unreliably estimates that 50% of their sales are to chinese customers. there are lots of americans in shibuya 109 but they just take the escalators up and down. like, all the kids in the 2nd hand stores in harajuku buying supreme backpacks are chinese. it's particularly interesting because japanese media on china seems to an outsider barely literate or fluent in the language to range from on one side internet rightwingers ranting about chinese to mainstream tv with reports about-- turned on the tv yesterday and saw two reports on the same newscast: * chinese with money but difficulty getting urban hukou are trying to invest in a new life in japan and the tone of the report suggested that we can expect a flood of not just uncouth billionaire 土豪 but middle class chinese burdened with a countryside hukou, * chinese in tokyo and osaka were running illegal boarding houses for chinese students and tourists and etc. and every day you're guaranteed to see a note about the chinese and american navies fucking around in the south china sea. even the whale meat restaurant near hachiko exit promises a chinese menu. and as i'm preparing a move back to guangzhou next year the topic of china sometimes comes up with people -- or usually it's a conversation reported back to me by asumi: "why would you go to china? it's so dirty and violent!" and even out here in the middle of nowhere suburban kanagawa, the chinese are a mostly invisible group. there are lots of chinese students going to the tokyo university of agriculture and a handful of other universities way out here but unless you pay attention, you'd scarcely notice their presence. shin-okubo is the only place i've seen a cluster of chinese businesses. one bonus is that the local suburban city library carries the latest copies of 十月, 收获 and 花城. THE CHINESE HATE THE JAPANESE BUT THEY AREN'T THAT SERIOUS ABOUT IT: the chinese hatred of the japanese... i mean, across most of china, you have people that lived through or were raised by people that experienced the japanese brutally occupy china and kill millions in brutal ways, including germ warfare, and go on to not be arguably not sufficiently contrite. the nationalist rhetoric in china that still sees the communist party as saving the people from 100 years of humiliation is often vile and silly and the party has stayed in power partly by manipulating anti-japanese sentiment and chinese popular media in recent years has produced lots of goofy violent portrayals of brave peasants chopping up hitler mustachioed jap infantry. but in my experience--and unlike where i'm coming from on japan, i am literate in chinese and have lived there for a number of years--the anti-japanese shit is mostly something that people separate from "this is what japanese people are like," ie. the fascist empire of the 30s and 40s is not japan today, even if the motherfuckers keep going to yasukuni shrine it's because they still don't get it and aren't willing to admit their mistakes but don't want to return to a cult of the emperor and occupying manchuria. the view of modern japan is more nuanced. far more chinese have visited or studied in japan than the other way around. it's understood that lots of advances in science and literature and the arts filtered into china through japan-- republican era literati half of them studied in japan, along with a good number of kmt and communist party elite. even in the age of xi jinping and tensions over artificial islands, average chinese are not virulent japan haters and will buy a camry and send their kids to study in tokyo. THE JAPANESE HATE THE CHINESE: i think. i forgive them less because japan is a democratic country with a free media. there seems to be quite a bit of treatment of the leadup to and events of world war ii even on mainstream tv programming (leaving aside the magazines you can get at family mart with like six glossy pages of 16 year old girls in bikinis and then an article entitled THE CRIMES OF FOREIGNERS beside revisionist history of the leadup to the second world war and right wing internet shit) and the tone seems to be about japan as a victim. the japanese in their own way seem to still see themselves as belonging to a superior race. the chinese are like a disease or an infestation but yes they used to be amazing a thousand years ago (i just went to see the terracotta warriors visiting the national museum in yoyogi park! the really amazing thing was the extensive look at qin dynasty plumbing).

I GOT DRUNK IN SHIBUYA: anyways, i think that picture is from yesterday morning. we went on a cruise of tokyo bay redeeming credit card points. asumi had her hair and eyelashes and makeup done and i met her at shinjuku station that afternoon after she went to get a face thinning massage which she swears made her eyes larger. she had her hair up and was in a tight dress and looked straight out of ageha magazine: big hair, fake lashes, short dress, heavy makeup. we cruised around the bay for a while and went under rainbow bridge and saw the big ferris wheel in yokohama. it's still warm enough on the right day in tokyo, was in the 20s again. there was free champagne and we were pretty lit. took the train back into shibuya with at least 5% of the passengers on the train wearing their own vomit and 80-90% visibly intoxicated. got back to shibuya and waited for a friend in a chain izakaya (we tried to go to hooters but it closed at 11:30) with the following groups: 1) a 50something salaryman type sitting across from clearly a kyabakura girl fast asleep drunk, he was trying to wake her up as midnight was approaching. i questioned her professionalism but asumi said it was his fault and she already got paid. 2) a group of 8 late 20s guys that looked like the sort of hip antidrug speech/breakdance team that should be speaking in a high school gym, exclusively wearing the following brands: avirex, rocawear, mecca, akademiks, southpole. 3) two guys and a girl with that wisconsin goth + silver skulls GHOST OF HARLEM style fashion, with guitars in cases. went to a club in shibuya where the dj played basically the mix ethan made for me in 2003 including what means the world to you rmx and smut peddlers. went back to love hotel. woke up in the morning and the lineup was already forming for STRIP LIVE THEATER (5000 yen entrance, 2000 yen for students, the elderly and women). then we went to ueno to eat oniony vinegary tsukemen at rokudaime keisuke's.

there's a noise board post about how japan killed teenage anglophilia in north america. in 2015, nobody gives a shit about japanese music--except ilx listens to YMO and occasional indie choices, i believe--or film or literature or even anime--again except 4chan bitch u ain't even kawaii nerds that are also heavily into DANDY niche av and weird cartoon porn-- or fashion--everyone wears uniqlo and harajuku style is now a few kids dressing like blossom or i dunno, michael alig on jenny jones, or wisconsin goths and hanging out at that corner of ometosando across from the park waiting for street fashion bloggers and shibuya is tight pink sweaters and black leggings all the way down. even if you go to trump room (this is my shorthand for a COOL TOKYO PLACE but i might be out of date here) it's kids dressing like it's 1999 basically and i think they're listening to YMO too. maybe europeans still care about japanese pop culture and fashion? maybe there's some kind of reciprocal trade agreement and that's why the japanese still think french things are cool and pledged to accept 50,000 european refugees in the wake of the paris attacks and creeping sharia.

everything should be okay but once you get into the narrative of japan as a country in terminal decline, economy and culturally and artistically bankrupt, slowly drawing in on itself.... nationalistic politics with no strong alternative. a disturbing obsession with youth as the country ages and the birthrate falls. population decline. unwilling to look to the outside world. barely tolerating even total assimilation on the part of the few temporary immigrants. right wing sound trucks calling for a new constitution. the oceans dead and poisonous, slowly starving and then submerging the coasts. i mean, it be okay but i do find that version of japan's present and future fascinating.

So to completely derail for a second.

I'm visiting Japan from Australia. Why is music so expensive? Like, literally everything involving music, gigs, cd's, merch, everything. I thought Australia was pricey but Japan is just next level.

Also, what should I do here? I'm in Tokyo for a couple more days. Already taken some suggestions from reading through this thread, but when it comes to live local music, where are the places to be?

http://www.tokyogigguide.com/gigs seems reliable and reasonably comprehensive

ilm favorite keiji haino on monday at heaven's door

Dylan your posts are great, really enjoying them

correction: the ferris wheel i saw was the one in odaiba not yokohama.

yeah, was gonna mention how'd you get to yokohama and back to tokyo in such a short time. sounds like you did a shit tonne of things in just a couple days.

dylannn you delivered. i've had similar thoughts and have talked extensively with my japanese girlfriend about art/culture in japan as just a slow death. but i did a lot of travelling in latin america and they share a similar thing: there's a handful of countries that think art/culture should mimic the usa. the more american something looks/sounds/feels, the better. the thing they don't understand is that 外人 are trying to get away from this americanisation/westernisation so opt for a more historical/japanese feel. it's why tokyo and osaka are no longer so popular amongst newly arrived migrants; a lot of them go off to kyoto

even momus moved to osaka.

dylannn this stuff is great, ty

in japan -- or... talking about tokyo, as someone raised in a boomtime for japanese pop culture and fashion and arriving in shibuya in 2015, i think we can say:

* there aren't actually enough kids to buy cool things anymore. back to 1950 levels, fewer kids than any country with a comparable population, consumers aging out of the market with no replacement. * all the kids in tokyo that had money to burn in the 90s and held onto their jobs grew out of engagement with pop culture/fashion + were lured by the appeal of discount shit as the economy kept circling the bowl * people actually use smartphones now and don't pay for cds or books anymore, if they can help it. * magazines were incredibly important for directing fashion and pop culture spending in a few directions and now nobody cares and the magazine rack is ageha, other gyaru subculture magazines and magazines for old people and porn. * kids stopped going to art school. * the economy is just shit, even if you live off the yamanote line.

so, you've got most people shopping at uniqlo and not buying music or books. and the consumers that shape the shibuya you see in 2015 or any hip district in the country are-- look at the magazine rack: ageha girls and gyaru subculture types, girls in kanagawa who work at kyabakura or dress like they do and have yankii boyfriends who dress like foxconn workers on their one day off a month. they have disposable income, maybe? you can still get a decent job in manufacturing or construction? but either way, the girls especially are still among the few people who define themselves by fashion and still take the train into the city to go shopping at shibuya 109, where the stores are 100% gyaru subculture/yankii shit, and they still read magazines (and romance novels on their phone and buy apps where they date princes of the edo or something and )! ///// on the culture side... i'm not really sure but i guess the above trends have sort of gotten rid of a huge market and those cultural elite artschool types that found jobs making cool stuff for a huge market whether it was fashion or anime or games are dead and gone. culture driven by the type of anime and idol shit that otaku are into according to 2ch aggregators.

that thin crust of hip tokyo consumers still shopping are still buying avant garde cool fashion/culture but it's not riding a wave of cool japan out of the country and nobody is threatening to open branches in manhattan or l.a. -- as i said, i think the reciprocal trade agreement with france that still sees japanese excited about the lamest euro shit... there must be some europeans still buying it-- they were really into the comme des garçons x frozen collab.

i don't think it's a lot to do with americanisation except like... japan following the american model of discount retail and fast fashion appealing in a shit economy? maybe??

add something here about korea, too. korean tv and music and fashion hit so big in china because they were very good at something the chinese with their conservative pop culture were almost completely lacking. i guess same with japan, which has become just as conservative, with a pop culture/fashion hollowed out by age/economic decline/feeding deeply conservative subcultures. i think the chinese caught up in a way? like, they took the momentum and it fed down into chinese fashion and music and it got more interesting?? (i'm not 100% on that statement) at the very leasst, the chinese were good at copying certain aspects of korean pop culture in a way that japan hasn't. if you go to geo or tsutaya it's still like half of the racks are still capped with [韓國].

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/25/experience-i-mine-for-denim

These podcasts are a few years old but there's some interesting discussion about Japan's slow decline, consumer culture, the upsurge of Gyaru/Yaanki culture and other bits and pieces.

http://neojaponisme.com/category-projects/podcasts/

Oops *yanki*

http://flashbak.com/tokyo-subway-manners-posters-1976-1982-46545/

nah, there's definitely more at play than american model of discount retail and fast fashion. even levis guy in your linke notes how much japanese will pay for symbolic americana. there's a tendency to romanticise and idealise american forms and even incorporate it in an updated form in their own culture.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-american-culture-and-made-it-better-180950189/

The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over. A long-standing obsession with things American has led not just to a bigger and better market for blockbuster movies or Budweiser, but also to some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan. It has also made the exchange of Americana a two-way street: Earlier this year, Osaka-based Suntory, a Japanese conglomerate best known for its whiskey holdings, announced that it was buying Beam Inc., thus acquiring the iconic American bourbon brands Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.

i've talked about this to a few japanese and they have mixed feelings about it. but they have bluntly told me they don't understand why i like the things i like about japan. i feel like every person i've talked to over there doesn't really like japanese movies, for example. i recall one woman, but she studied film and was into really old stuff, which i also agree is the best. but i sense that people who like new japanese movies are those girls who gush over the so-called jack-of-all-trades stud fukuyama masaharu finally getting married, reading gossip columns, but a lot of outwardly looking japanese people i've met want to go away from that attitude. yet in the west, we nominate like father, like son for a palme d'or. there's a definite disconnect.

korean dramas and music was getting big in japan like...i wanna say 10 years ago? and there are more koreans and zainichi shown in a better or at least neutral light in the public eye in japan lately; this without getting into the whole racism and cultural clashes between the two countries. when you hang with zainichi you kind of get to see another side of japanese people, which is not a very fair one. unfortunately the stereotypes of them working at pachinkos and being takumi-gumi's henchmen have not died out.

japan had a cd rental industry where piracy was a known aspect and cd rental shops actually paid a cut to copyright holders. not sure how that's transferred into our current digital world, but it was part of why compact discs were so expensive, and also the reason why japan releases tended to have bonus tracks where other countries would not.