Since being here I’ve planned quite a few outings into Tokyo - the list of things to do and see doesn’t seem to be shrinking. Which is a good thing. One of those has been a trip to Tokyo Bay, and we finally got round to it this week. Good timing too, it was absolutely boiling and a perfect day to go and get some fresh sea air.

Tokyo Bay is pretty massive, and one of its most popular areas has to be Yokohama, which is technically not in Tokyo. In Tokyo itself there is however Odaiba a part of town built on reclaimed land and with a distinctive futuristic feel to it. Hell the main train station is called Tokyo Teleport!

As soon as we arrived, and after having read a bit of the guide on the way there, the first thing that hit me as we walked out into the sunlight is how similar this area is to the Docklands in London. Another reclaimed area, Docklands stands out amongst the sprawling London East End - not least because it is home to Canary Wharf. It stands out mainly because it’s so ‘clean’, nice looking and depending on where you go quite ‘futuristic’ in feel. Lots of big buildings and skyscrapers, lots of glass and reflective material, nice canals, shops and the only part of the London transport system which isn’t actually crap - the DLR, or Docklands Light Railway. An independent network of automated trains which take you all over the area.

Thing is while Docklands is definitely a nice part of town, it also feels quite alien. It just doesn’t feel like London, it’s too clean and nice looking. It’s an area built and designed primarily for businesses, and it feels that way. There isn’t any real human feeling to most of it (apart from a couple of nice spots here and there). And the further along you go into the Docklands, towards the so far less developed and regenerated areas (like Beckton or Woolwich), the more you start to see how all this futuristic niceness is encroaching over living areas, which are for the most part run down and ignored. How long that will last is anyone’s guess. When I first started going to the Beckton area when I was at uni it was a proper hole, nothing to do or see, but as the years have gone by it has started to become more and more developped, though the human feeling that you get in so much of London was still missing last time I was there.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: futuristic, odaiba, pictures, Tokyo

If you live in a massive urban centre, like say a capital, then one of the things you come to expect is convenience. While city life may have its drawbacks, it also has its advantages and the ability to do a lot of things more conveniently than you could normally, or the ability to just do them at all, is definitely one of these advantages.

In London this convenience came in various ways however since moving to Tokyo one thing has become quite clear to me. And that is that London has nothing on Tokyo when it comes to convenience. After 5 months I already struggle to think of anything that London offers convenience wise which Tokyo doesn’t. The only one that springs to mind is 24 hour transport, and even that isn’t so convenient when you consider the alternatives on offer in Tokyo at nightime.

Tokyo is a convenience city. I’m not quite sure how things are elsewhere in Japan, but from what I’ve been told a lot of the other big urban centres share many of what Tokyo has to offer, though as the capital Tokyo obviously takes the crown.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: 24h, conbini, convenience, Japan, Tokyo

One of the things that has striked me the most since living in Japan is the general feeling of safety. I can’t remember the last time I felt so safe in an urban environment.

It’s a commonly remarked and commented upon facet of Japanese society, yet it strikes you quite strongly once you actually experience it on a daily basis. Since the turn of WW2 Japan has been a pretty safe society as far as developed nations go, with a pretty low average crime rate, traditionally one of the lowest in the world.

Now talking about Tokyo in particular, the differences with other metropolis such as London or Paris is striking. In Tokyo it’s pretty safe to walk the streets at any time of the day or night, whether you’re a man or woman. This doesn’t mean that nothing happens, but if you live in London for example you know full well that past a certain time and in certain places you best keep your wits about you if you dont’ want anything funny to happen. In Tokyo that’s not the case at all. It’s true that women are warned to be more aware, especially on public transports where cases of groping and other weird sexual antics do happen, but by and large Tokyo is a safe city to be in. Which is more than can be said for a lot of metropolitan centres in Europe.

This sense of safety is omnipresent - after a few months, I’ve found myself doing things I never would back home. I’ll go to the shops and leave my bike unlocked. I’ll even leave my shopping in the basket while I go somewhere. The other day I forgot my house keys on my bike, realised about 40 minutes later whilst in the gym and after a minute of panic decided that I could rush out in the hope they would still be there or I could finish exercising, have a shower and walk out to find them still there. Which I did. It felt quite odd telling myself it would actually be ok.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: crime, Japan, safety, Tokyo

Went out of town for the Golden Week holiday back at the beginning of the month, and to be more precise we went to the Nikko area, which as far as I can tell is located about 2 hours north of Tokyo, in the mountains (or the beginning of the mountains anyways).

Nikko is a pretty popular destination - it’s home to a National Park, lake, big waterfall, free roaming monkeys, hot springs and the Toshogu shrine as well as being a long standing Shinto and Buddhist worship centre. A huge complex of shrines, mausoleums and gardens, The Toshogu is the resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and if memory serves me right the last shogun too. Not only is the complex massive it’s also the most lavishly decorated of all shrines in the country. All of which makes for much staring, gawping and going ‘look at that’.

The Toshogu Shrine is massive, and definitely requires the best part of a day to completely discover and see in its entirety. We only stayed for a few hours and still managed to feel pretty ’shrined-out’ by the end. There are other shrines and temples in Nikko, but we had to be out. Definitely a place to see once though if only for the sheer magnitude of the buildings and intricacy of the designs and decorations. Add to that the fact that most of the shrines and temples were apparently built without any nails, but instead by slotting pieces of wood together, and you’ve got a most impressive cultural sight and architectural achievement. What’s more it’s located in a beautiful and serene wooden location (well as serene as it gets with hundreds of people swarming the place, but you get the gist).

We also spent the first day of our trip in Kinugawa, the town next to Nikko and famous for its many onsens. The hotel we stayed in was great - nice onsen, decent food and a karaoke bar with the craziest selection of songs. I wasn’t expecting to find the Monty Python’s ‘Always Look On the Bright Side of Life’ in a karaoke bar anytime soon, much less underground and classic hip hop songs like Ice Cube’s ‘It Was A Good Day’, Dilated Peoples’ ‘Work The Angles’ or NWA’s ‘Express Yourself’ :shock: The instrumentals to all of which were actual cheap covers done on casio keyboards and with lyrics minced through an engrish mincer :lol:

Kinugawa is also home to some beautiful gorges, as we discovered on a scenic boat ride in the morning, as well as an Edo period amusement park complete with samurais and ninjas walking the streets. That was a bit dear though so we gave it a miss.

All in all it was a nice holiday, and I can only recommend a stop in Nikko to anyone visiting the country. It’s a little cliche maybe but definitely worth it, and we didn’t even see most of it. Gutted I missed the monkeys though.

Nikko trip - Golden Week 2007 - Flickr Set

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written by Laurent \\ tags: holidays, Japan, nikko, pictures

Finally some extracts from Captain Domino are starting to appear on youtube. Here’s the first one, which is of the excellent Domino World game, where contestants have to be like a certain Italian plumber we all know and love. This program is genius, hopefully there’ll be some more, and better, extracts appearing soon. Definitely the best TV game show I’ve seen in a long time.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrxO61Q0Io0[/youtube]

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japanese tv

With space at a premium in Tokyo, a lot of flats have to sacrifice areas like kitchens and bathrooms to offer more living space. And personally these are two areas of a flat I like to be comfortable. I’ve become accustomed to cooking in an area the size of a big sink but there’s one thing I really missed as soon as I arrived in the country - and that was having a proper bath.

While we’re lucky to have been put into flats with western style bathrooms, these are still incredibly small by most standards, with enough space to stand up and have a shower and use the sink. Anything more intricate and you’re banging on the walls. As for the bath, well for a gaijin short of 2 meters let’s just say that it’s nice as a giant foot bath or somewhere to sit, but I can forget all about bathing properly. I did try it once, a few weeks after arriving when I was desperate for something that wasn’t a shower and well being stuck in a plastic tub big enough for me to sit in and hold both legs with my arms and not be able to move isn’t really my idea of relaxing :???: .

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written by Laurent \\ tags: bathing, Japan, onsen, sento

Remember when you were a kid and the most basic toys could keep you entertained for days, or the most simple figurines could make your day? Now while collecting toys and figurines is definitely not limited to kids it’s not something I ever really got into so much since ‘growing up’, even if my inner geek as always craved for some.

And boy is my inner geek happy since I’ve moved to Japan and discovered the joy of gatchapons aka capsule stations. Gatchapons are small toys and figurines, which you get from a giant bubble gum dispenser style machine - put in some money, generally 200 yen, turn a big plastic handle and a plastic egg falls through holding your toy. And these machines are located everywhere - outside train stations, manga shops, video game shops, arcades, shopping centres… If you walk anywhere in Tokyo for 5 minutes chances are you’ll come across a set of capsule stations.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, gatchapon, Japan, Tokyo, toys

It’s been a while since I went out all night and raved till the early hours of the morning. But last week was a special occasion - it was golden week, my first holiday in four months, it was Ella’s birthday and I’d been invited to play at Back To Chill once more, and this time it was a special all night affair with the Japanese mad rave family taking over the second room at Club Asia, one of Shibuya’s main night clubs.

And it was a wicked night, as expected. The BTC crew squared off against the Zion Rise crew, with two rooms of electronic mayhem going on all night. It was a pretty weird mix on paper - breakcore, junglism, dubstep and more spread over 6 hours with DJs and live acts. The main room, hosted by Zion Rise, was host to Rotator from France, a pretty big breakcore artist (I wouldn’t know as it ain’t really my thing to be honest) on the Tokyo leg of his Japanese tour, Com.A, Melt Banana and Rebel Familia all playing live. While the second room was hosted by the Back To Chill crew, with Ske, Hyaku Mado, Goth Trad and Kaji Peace in full effect alongside guests Skyfish and myself.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: back to chill, clubs, dubstep, mad rave, raving, Tokyo

For anyone who has followed hip hop closely since the 80s, the name Stretch Armstrong will be a familiar one.

The legendary radio DJ and show host (who used to co-host the world famous Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito shows) has now been blogging for a few months, as is only right in a 21st century style of things. And this is good news because his blog, Konstant Kontact offers a plethora of links to some amazing radio shows, tracks and mixtapes (previously only available in tape format) from the 80s and 90s, when things for hip hop were, well a little better.

So if you’re fiending for some classics, or like me want to recover many mixes which you once owned (or still do) on tape but never digitized then get over there asap. I recommend checking the recent post about Quincy Jones guesting on his show.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: bloggin, hip hop

I first came across DJ Pain about a year or so ago, when my good friend Trick from the mighty Rhythm Incursions put me onto his ‘Day The Earth Stood Still’ mix, one of the most well put mixes I’d heard in a long time. Not only did it feature all sorts of tracks I’d been bumping for a while, it was also ladden with choice vocal samples from the movie of the same name and other sources, the whole thing lovingly mixed and put together over an hour of head nodding goodness.

As luck would have it, DJ Pain has just released a new mix, ‘Road To Oblivion’, continuing on the same track of delivering some of the best beats of recent years laced with choice samples and mixed the way it should be. And of course this wasn’t going to pass the Rhythm Incursion guys, so they’ve very cleverly decided to podcast the new mix. Like his previous, this is very much one of those mixes which is much more than just a bunch of tracks continuously mixed together, and instead takes the approach of telling a story of sorts and immersing the listener into the DJ’s audio world for the length of the mix.

So get on it, not now but right now. You can subscribe to the R-I podcasts here (and I seriously recommend you do as the guys have been putting through some incredible shows recently) or alternatively if you’ve still not got your head round podcasts you can download the mix directly here.

Seriously though I can only recommend you subscribe to their podcasts and check the regular weekly shows on Resonance FM (which are also archived at Samurai FM) as R-I is one of the finest radio shows in recent years, showcasing a wide range of music and beats for anyone who likes their shit a little different and most definitely banging.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: hip hop, podcasts, rhythm-incursions

I spent part of the day in Akihabara today - the mecca for all things video game, anime and geek. We’re talking serious business here. If you’re a geek for either games, electronics or anime, or all three, then Akihabara is where you want to die - cos you won’t wait long to go to heaven.

I’d been to Aki a few times before, but only quickly and to grab some bits for the house. Electronics wise the place is amazing. The main part of town is dubbed Electric Avenue - and quite rightly so, alongside multi-storey buildings offering everything and anything are little stalls selling their wares, and all next to each other in an area no bigger than Camden town. It’s total crazyness and as much of a sensory overload as Shibuya, but for entirely different reasons.

Akihabara is not all electronics though - it’s also gaming heaven. The biggest and best arcades in the country are there, with floors dedicated to one genre. It’s insane, and constantly packed as well as incredibly noisy as all the arcades boom out their respective audio. And amongst it all are countless otakus playing, including a high amount of seriously talented ones (I guess that talented part depends on where you stand when it comes to games). Alongside the arcades are tons of video game shops selling anything you can think of.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, arcades, geeking, Tokyo, video games

The Tokyo neighbourhood of Ikebukuro is the closest to my house, about 20 mins on a train. Often referred to as pikey or a bit cheap and dirty, Ikebukuro is actually an excellent little neighbourhood, with museums, cool shops and quaint little areas. It’s also home to some of the cheapest shopping in town and a massive, and quite tacky, entertainment and shopping area called Sunshine City, named after a giant building, 60 storeys high, under which is an also giant shopping mall - both of which are called Sunshine City (though the building is called Sunshine 60 to be exact).

I’d been meaning to go to Sunshine City for a while - I normally go shopping for my smoking needs in Tokyu Hands (a mental, giant shop with a few Tokyo locations). It turns out rizlas in this country are a bit of a rarity, and to get mine I need to go to the pipe and lighter section of Tokyu Hands where rizlas are to be found being a locked glass cabinet! Anyways, Sunshine City is behind Tokyu Hands, so on a sunny day off Ella and I went off to Ikebukuro and walked around, before heading to Sunshine City.

There we went to the observatory on the 60th floor of the building - crazy little fact, the elevator to the observatory is one of the fastest in the world, taking you all the way up in about 30 odd seconds. Not a pleasant feeling though. The view from there was amazing, looking out into the vast sprawling metropolis that is Tokyo. Buildings until your eyes can’t see. Skyscrapers blending with houses, parks, towers and more. An amazing view of Tokyo, as you can walk all the way round the floor, seeing everything and realising that Tokyo really is friggin huge. London’s got nothing compared to this. It’s also a little dizzying - I don’t suffer from vertigo that I know of, but I didn’t feel too good after a little while.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: ikebukuro, pictures, Tokyo

Ah the pleasures of a bike ride. So simple and enjoyable.

Since getting a bike, I’ve never felt so happy to get out and do things - even if it’s just picking up my laundry at the dry cleaners (recognise - I never used one in my life until I realised the ones in Japan are cheaper than buying alcohol for the night). Not only is the bike bringing me enjoyment, it’s also keeping me a little healthy - something I regularly combat by smoking while I ride. But hey, my legs are a lot more toned you know? :lol:

Shortly after getting the bike, Ella and I set off on regular trips in the area around Kiyose, realising the wealth of attractions within a short ride from our house. We might be leaving in ‘bandit country’ as my mate said, surrounded by vegetable patches and houses, but there’s still a lot to do and see. Something which never ceases to amaze me - we’re still in Tokyo (though our borough is on the border with the next prefecture) but we’re actually in the countryside, and able to enjoy the best of both worlds. City conveniences, and countryside relaxation and sights. Perfect.

A little while ago I bought an atlas of tokyo and the surrounding areas, which came in really handy when we set off on our trips, looking for things to check out and see. One of the things my friend pointed out to me after I got the atlas was that there were two lakes not too far from us (about 15km) and I soon made it one of my missions to arrange a bike trip to the lakes. Luckily, though I didn’t know it at the time, we kept putting it off until this weekend, the beginning of the Golden Week holiday (a week long Japanese national holiday).

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written by Laurent \\ tags: cycling, pictures, saitama, Tokyo, travelling