tokyographers

Okay, so I haven’t updated in a while, and I still have half of my Japan trip to cover. Between preparing for the holiday season, working on my JET application, updating the main site, playing Final Fantasy XII, and a few other things, it’s been rather busy for me. But I’ll get back on track soon (unless I happen to find a Wii).

As for the site, I’m still working on a redesign, but for now I’ve at least added some things. The most notable is the listing for upcoming releases in film and music. If you haven’t noticed yet, check it out.

In other news, I’m loving the Nodame Cantabile drama series… It’s also made me rediscover classical music! I’ve listened to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (and several of the other pieces used) over and over since I started watching. The show is just brilliantly done, and it captures the feel of the manga well. Definitely my favorite drama of the season.

Tuesday morning: we get up early, finish packing our stuff, and check out of the Shinagawa Prince Hotel. We’re at the station about an hour before our Shinkansen train leaves for Kyoto, so we just try to kill some time. While there, we both pick up an ekiben (bentou sold at a train station) for the train ride, which is close to 3 hours long. Chuck’s planning to do some studying on the train, and I’m planning on listening to my iPod or re-reading the copy of Timequake I brought along.

I have to say, riding the Shinkansen is a very pleasant experience. It’s very comfortable and the ride is smooth (for the most part), and if you’re sitting by the window you can get a good look at what the Japanese landscape looks like outside of the major cities. Yeah, it’s pretty expensive to ride one, but at least if you’re a tourist, it’s covered by the JR Rail Pass. In any case, I ended up getting no reading done and instead fell asleep for most of the trip.

We arrived in Kyoto Station around 2:00, and we took an unnecessary subway trip from there to Gojo Station (one stop away on the Karasuma Line) because we thought it would be much closer to the inn we were staying in, the Chita Guest Inn. But it’s really not much closer, so consider that wasted time and money. Anyway, we eventually found the place, which wasn’t hard since the description said it’s right across from the Higashi Honganji, and that temple’s hard to miss as long as you’re on the right street.

As for the place, I really liked it. It’s a Japanese style inn, and it’s really clean and cozy, with perhaps the only problem being the somewhat steep stairs leading to the second floor and to the roof. The place has a common bathroom facility and a common shower, but I didn’t mind that. The rooms are spacious enough and are well-kept, and the rooms come with small TVs. Sleeping on a futon is pretty comfortable (though of course I still prefer a regular bed). In the current weather, the room had a tendency to get very warm, but there’s also an air conditioning unit installed so it wasn’t much of a problem.

The inn is managed by just a single woman, but she does an amazing job of keeping the place clean. She was really friendly, and we had fun chatting with her while we were there. She didn’t speak much English (and the website says so), but it still seemed the vast majority of guests who stayed there spoke very little Japanese beyond the bare basics. So I think it was also a welcome change for her that Chuck speaks a lot of Japanese, and I could at least understand some of what she was saying.

Anyway, we settled in and decided to do some laundry while finalizing our plans for the next few days. While our clothes were in the washer, we looked through some tourism magazines and maps in the common room (which has a big screen TV!). There was a lot we wanted to do, and trying to pack it all in within a few days was going to be difficult.

It’s been a busy week full of distractions outside of Tokyograph, but finally I can return to the story of my Japan trip.

Chuck and I had finished trekking all over Toudai, and we decided to check out Shibuya for the evening. Shibuya is known for its nightlife and as a popular hangout for young people. It’s also known as ground zero for the whole kogal subculture. Anyway, it was already dark when we got there (well, dark except for all the neon and electric lights), and unfortunately, it was raining again.

Right outside Shibuya Station is the famous statue of the dog Hachiko. It’s a popular meeting spot, so you can always observe lots of people there. Nearby is the Center Gai street intersection, a pedestrian scramble crossing that’s apparently known as one of the busiest in the world. It’s a rather impressive sight to see so many pedestrians crossing through the intersection simultaneously.

We crossed the intersection to reach a pedestrian street and took a look around. Chuck led me further down the street until we reached the part known as Spain-zaka, where the Tokyo FM station is. The guest schedule posted on the wall told us Yuri Nakamura of Garnet Crow was going to be on the air in an hour and half for an interview about their latest album. We thought we might as well check it out, so we needed to kill some time. Fortunately, there were plenty of shops and UFO Catchers to occupy us. We also found a family restaurant where we had some dinner (this is when I had the omuretsu with curry!).

We returned to the station, and a woman there was handing out paper numbers for people interested in watching the radio program. I guess we could’ve gotten numbers earlier, but as it was, we ended up with numbers 33 and 34. Anyway, the woman told us to go a little down the street and around the corner, where the line would be forming. At about this time, it started raining a lot harder, and I realized the cheap umbrella I had bought was slightly broken but still functional enough - it just now had one of its bars sticking out annoyingly above my head.

We were put in a two-person-wide line according to our numbers and led down the street to the station. There’s a window where you can see directly into the station and watch the people on air, but I guess for certain programs like this one, they pull out a sliding wall that blocks the view of the window. People are then brought into the space between the window and the sliding walls to watch what’s going on (no photography allowed there, unfortunately).

Anyway, I think they brought in 20 people at a time, so we were waiting in line for quite a while. They didn’t start bringing in people right at the beginning of the program, either, so I estimate we were in line for a good half hour, though it was probably even longer. It must have been rough on the guys right behind us who had no umbrellas - I was still getting wet even with one. In front of us was a man and a woman on an apparent date, and though I couldn’t really get a good look at their faces, it seemed to me like the girl was much younger than the guy. I imagined it could’ve been a case of enjo kosai, though I’m probably quite mistaken.

Well, we finally got brought in to watch the program, and the interview was already well underway. I can’t say I understood too much of it, but at least it was an experience. The girl that had been in front of us in line had actually brought a sign with her to express her Garnet Crow fandom, and when the radio host took a break to play a track from the new album, he and Nakamura stood against the glass with the sign in the background so that one of the studio staff could take a picture. I tried squeezing in closer, but who knows if I actually made it into the picture… Whatever.

We did a little more wandering through the stores in Shibuya, but eventually headed back fairly early to our hotel. We needed to get a little more rest that night because we were checking out the next morning and heading out for the next part of our adventure: Kyoto.

So I had a chance recently to listen to two new albums - one was the debut solo album of Miho Hatori (formerly of Cibo Matto), and the other was the debut album of the young singer/songwriter Ayaka.

My friend Nate picked up Miho’s “Ecdysis” at one of her performances, and he let me listen to it. He mentioned a comparison to Bjork, and that’s somewhat appropriate, but Ecdysis certainly has a different groove. Since the days of Cibo Matto, Miho’s sound has evolved into something much subtler and less poppy. Her blending of instruments works brilliantly with her vocals, and the overall effect is rather mesmerizing. I’m not very good at actually describing how music sounds, though, so I won’t try. But if you like Cibo Matto, I definitely recommend checking out Ecdysis. My current favorite is track two, “A Song For Kids.”

As for Ayaka, she’s one of my favorite pop artists at the moment. After having done the moving “I Believe” (the theme song for Rondo) and the catchy “Real voice” (the ending for Sapuri), I was really looking forward to hearing her debut album, “First Message,” and I wasn’t disappointed. She has a strong and talented voice that really carries her upbeat songs, while also giving a tender richness to her slower songs. I know I’ll be looking out for her releases in the future.

Chuck had wanted to see Toudai (aka Tokyo University), and I was curious as well. But we didn’t really know where it was or how to get there. So as we got off the Yurikamome, Chuck asked the station clerk for directions. Well, he didn’t really know either, so he made a quick phone call, and then he told us we could take the trains to the station at Nezu. What he didn’t tell us (and I guess he didn’t know) is that there’s a station right next to Toudai, appropriately named Toudaimae (meaning, “in front of Toudai”), as we later found out. But we took the trains to Nezu and had to make quite a walk to finally reach Toudai.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected it to look like, but it certainly looked different from it (I guess Love Hina and the likes gave me the wrong impression). Don’t get me wrong - it’s a very nice place. I suppose I just expected it to be more modern-looking, for some reason. But I guess that’s also a result of having gone to school in California.

One of my favorite parts of Toudai (at least the part that I saw) was Sanshiro Pond. It’s in the middle of the campus, but it’s surrounded by densely packed trees so you can’t really see it until you go down one of the paths leading to it. It seems like a nice place for a stressed out college student to just sit and relax.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from Toudai! I really don’t know why I didn’t take any. I should’ve at least taken one of the Red Gate, or the pond, or Yasuda Auditorium… Bah. I have to get better at being a tourist, I guess.

Anyway, we walked pretty much the length of the campus to the south end, then again back to the north end to Toudaimae station. On the way, we stopped at the Communication Center and Chuck bought a T-shirt. I think he would’ve preferred a sweater, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Toudai sweater - do they exist?

After our Jiro adventure, we decided to visit Odaiba again, now that everything was open and it was a work day. I got a picture of the main staircase:

The main stairs at Fuji TV

But of course we opted for the escalators. On the fifth floor, you can sometimes see show tapings in progress through a window, but the floor was closed for some reason that day. Disappointing. So we kept going up until the escalator ended at the seventh floor, where it opens up into a plaza. The whole structure is like two buildings, with one sitting on the roof of the other - the roof of the bottom building is the plaza. There was a cafeteria at the entrance of the upper building, and it was filled with students on a school trip. (How come I never went to a TV studio for a school field trip?)

Anyway, we went into the store inside the building. Most of the merchandise was for their anime programs, like One Piece. In one area, there was a photo sticker booth (with some students inside) and some UFO Catchers. Of course, Chuck had to play, and he ended up winning a couple things. Because I gave him some money to play, I got to keep the mini Ainori bus plushes he won (yay!).

We finished walking through the store and headed back down the escalator. There were a few more small shops on the bottom floor that we checked out, but in the end, the trip to Fuji TV was uneventful. But at least Aqua City mall was right across the street, so we had plenty more opportunities to do some shopping. It’s a pretty big place, and we spent a good amount of time there. At the top, there’s a World of Coca-Cola store/museum, where you can also get a nice view of the bay and Rainbow Bridge. (Another missed photo opportunity!)