Ginza is the bustling beating heart of high class fashion and commerce in Japan, a labyrinthine grid of broad and narrow streets bristling with corporate headquarters, flagship stores, and chic designer boutiques, sprawled over several square kilometers just a few stops from Tokyo station. Amongst its ultra-elite avenues and alleyways are some incredibly bold front-facade designs, ranging from tie-stores built out of solid glass bricks to port-hole crazy office towers. This is the first in a 2-part series- the second is ‘10 Office-Front Facades‘, coming soon.
Final Fantasy: Dissidia Potions
Dissidia is the latest mano-a-mano fighting game in the Final Fantasy continuum, to be released by Square Enix on December 18th. It sounds totally cool. There is no chance I will buy it and play it. It features awesome heroes like ‘The Onion Knight’ whose special skill is emanating onion fumes so his enemies weep uncontrollably, ‘Zidane Tribal’ who kicks pig’s bladders at his enemies, and ‘Cecil Harvey’ who gives history lectures so dull they’re like a protective shield of ennui around his body. In cooperation with Suntory, Square Enix unleashed (not for the first time) the full power of …
13 views of Fuji Terebi, Odaiba
13 views of Fuji Terebi, Odaiba, mimics a well-known tradition in Japanese art: collected ukiyoe (wood-block) paintings of Mt. Fuji from multiple locations and angles, in varying weather conditions. This style of art became famous with a collection of 36 prints from artist Katsushika Hokusai around 1830, copied many times by many different artists in many different styles. Here- I add my take on it, with the Fuji Terebi (television) building in Odaiba.
Sarah Jessica Parker Coke
They love Sarah Jessica Parker in Japan. When Sex and the City came out in Tokyo the city was fire-stormed with an advertising campaign pimping the four women and their lifestyle everywhere you looked, in fashion magazines, food magazines, on buses, on big LCD-and-loudspeaker-packing humvees parading around Shibuya, on TV shows, in books, everywhere. Did you see Sarah Jessica Parker on a Coke can though? The chances are you didn’t, as to my knowledge these cans were never released for commercial sale- only used as giveaways and incentives for raving Sex and the City fans.
Superior Japanese Knives
Sometimes you just have to know where the knives be at. Sometimes you’ll be cooking a goose, and need to trim that darn bird. Othertimes you need to sew your pants up and you need a darn knife to cut a thread. Other times you just need to stick a knife in a darn tomato and carve it like a jack-o-lantern. So when I saw this crazy ad in the Shimbashi Caretta mall tourist zone, alongside ads and directions for 100-yen stores, limousine buses, and foreign exchange spots, I knew that something had gone very right in the world. A …
Pepsi Yoghurt: The Test!
For the past week everybody has been blogging about Pepsi White, Pepsi’s new Yoghurt flavored Pepsi drink. It appeared on conveni store shelves on Wednesday, and there were blog responses to it within minutes- but how many of those people actually TESTED the drink? The answer is, none! So here I am, with a light-hearted taste comparison test. Here is my hypothesis:
Shimoda Beachites
Shimoda has some of the most beautiful and pristine yellow-sand blue-ocean beaches in all of Japan. Commodore Perry certainly picked a choice spot to roll up at in his black ships- further up the coast other trade envoys were met by steel-toting Samurai’s stood on the grey-sand grey-ocean cock-roach infested trash-havens of Enoshima and Kamakura. Not for Perry though, and not in Shimoda. Shirahama, Tatadohama, and Ohama beaches are gorgeous, sun-kissed, and every time I’ve visited them- about 50% empty.
Japanese Space Food
You’re in space. The trip up took 8 hours- most of which involved you sitting sideways strapped into a second-hand shuttle waiting for air traffic control to give you the all-clear, with no option to get up and go the bathroom (yep, adult diaper). Now you’re on board a creaking old Russian hybrid rust-bucket where everything stinks of Ozone, you’re losing bone mass on a constant and permanent basis, the weather outside sucks, you can’t relax for a second without strapping yourself to a wall because your limbs float off randomly in zero-G, you can’t go to the bathroom without …
Hiratsuka Beach Skimboarders
Skimboarding is a lesser-known cousin to surfing, though quite different in the approach. Where surfers go from the sea to the beach under the sea’s power, skimmers go from the beach to the sea under their own power- which is to say, basically they run at the sea carrying a short board, drop it in the shallows, and jump on. Perhaps then it’s more like skate-boarding than surfing.
Vegetable Chu-Hi Cocktails
Japan-based companies Asahi (the brewer) and Kagome (the fruit and veg juicer) have teamed up to present us with a new and unique product: a range of fruit and vegetable sake cocktails. No longer will you have to choose between getting drunk cheaply or drinking a healthy vegetable juice mix, you can now do both at the same time. It sounds like a strange concept, and it is- the marketing ploy behind it must take its inspiration from the recent upswing in the number and variety of vegetable juice drinks available on convenience store shelves- but I have to wonder, …