Yum yum yum, who wouldn’t pay 400 yen for a sexy bottle of water? Wait, I forgot- a sexy/kawaii (cute!) bottle of Hello Kitty water? Boom, you’ve been suckered in, I knew it. All things cute and sexy, this way please: take off your cap, yes, ooh, be gentle, down the hatch, mmm, both sexy and kawaii in my stomach. Hello Kitty, you amaze me. Hello Kitty you amaze me!
Yoyogi Rockabillies
Sunglasses, pomade, gravity-defying quiffs, leather jackets, black gloves, check. 50’s music, party atmosphere, gyrating hips and waggling bent knees, chicks in preppy floral dresses, crowding camera-toting tourists- BAM!- welcome to the Tokyo Rockabilly club- Yoyogi chapter. Showing his gang colors- black, leather.
Kaze no To and Umi Hotaru, Tokyo Bay
From the 25th floor lobby of the Dentsu HQ in Shiodome there’s an awesome view across Tokyo Bay, taking in Hamarikyu gardens, Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge, and in the distance, fogged by pollution and heat distortion- a weird-looking dome-shaped structure out in the middle of nowhere. Weird dome, at 200mm zoom from the edge of Odaiba.
The Grand-daddy of all Love Hotels
The Hotel Royal haikyo is the grand-daddy of all love hotels, streaking 7 empty stories up into the big blue sky, a giant vermillion flag on the lakeshore calling out to all and sundry in a mega-watt alto- ‘Need some discreet time alone with your loved one? Come on down!’
The People in the Walls
The people in the walls are an infestation. They crowd around the living room in their inch-thin insulation space and watch me while I go about my life. Some of them have drilled peep-holes. I cover the holes with paintings I paint myself, and vases full of flowers which they sometimes steal and eat. I paint paintings of the people in the walls. I suppose they look a little bit like aliens. They have big and flat grey heads an inch thick. They look a lot like stick men. They are normally smiling stick-thin smiles, which creeps me out. I …
Barry Eisler (Author of John Rain)
Barry Eisler is the author of the world-wide bestselling John Rain hit-man series, now 6 books in total, translated into 20 languages, winner of multiple awards and plaudits. He was in town this past week for a sneak preview of the movie made from his first book- ‘Rain Fall’- to which he’d invited his Tokyo fans via his website. I found out about the preview the day before and just managed to snag a seat in the screening room, in the process briefly meeting the man himself: Me and Barry Eisler.
The Life and Death of the Sofitel Hotel
The Sofitel Hotel once stood on the Ueno park skyline like a bizarrely massive chest of drawers, at once a paean to modern design aesthetics and traditional Shinto values. It was demolished in December 2006 after only 12 years of offering 83 4-star rooms in central Tokyo, leaving a weirdly-shaped gap on the city-scape viewed from Shinobazu pond. Like the cherry blossoms that frame so many shots of the Sofitel, it was only a temporary beauty, one that serves to remind us of the short time we`re here, and how any one of us can be called away at any …
Harajuku Cosplayers
At the meeting point of the painfully fashionable Omotesando street and the city-looping Yamanote train line, triangulated between Harajuku`s ultra-hip boutique fashion zone Takeshita street, the soaring lines of Kenzo Tange`s 1964 Olympic Gymnasium, and the giant red tori gate at the entrance to the 88 year old Meiji Jingu shrine, you`ll find the Harajuku cosplayers. `Cosplay` is a Japanese popularization of a common concept: costume play. In other cultures such dressing-up has traditionally been reserved for Halloween parties, college toga parties, and masque balls. In Japan, cosplay is perennial- on the bridge outside Meiji Jingu they can be found …
Ginza Walkers
Goose Lady lives on the streets of Ginza and eats fried breadcrumbs dropped from the sweet-cream crepes of winter shoppers. At night she huddles up to the braziers outside Luis Vuitton and drinks cold mango lassi from the yaki-imo man. She sing songs beneath her breath of the days when the Emperor walked the streets as a God, with a red sun forever blazing over his head. Now she scurries and hides when the black vans roll round, beneath a park bench, in the guttering of a tall glass phone box, in the shadow of a koban. Goose lady watches …
Ashiodozan 3. Factory and Train Station
Despite 400 years of powering Japanese industry, of mining, processing and shipping one of the most essential early industry elements in some of the hardest and most dangerous conditions around, Ashio is remembered far more for its flaws than for its accomplishments. Ask any Japanese about Ashio, and they’ll give you a response straight from their high school history textbooks: in Ashio Japan learned the true cost of industrialization, that of crippling environmental damage, as sulfuric acid from the factory’s numerous smelter chimneys coagulated in the atmosphere and fell as acid rain, poisoning the water table and blistering the mountains …