I know I’ve been saying I was gonna start writing again properly for the last 4 months. So I’ll stop saying it. Instead I’ll do what every good blogger does, which is take inspiration from someone else’s work to knock up something of my own. Well kind of…

In this case I’ve actually been meaning to write about the cult of the cute in Japan for a while, but like most other things I haven’t gotten round to it. And considering I’m leaving the country in six weeks, I should really get my arse in gear and play catch up.

Back to the matter at hand. Japan’s love of cute, also known as かわいい　(pronounced kawaii - emphasis on the last i sound please). I was browsing the Sushimatic blog about an hour ago, and came across this post, which speaks for itself in terms of how far the whole cute thing can sometimes be taken in this country.

Thing is Japan really has this weird thing going on with cute. How a foreigner picks up on it depends on the person by and large, but regardless of your degree of ‘immunity’, sooner or later it really starts to stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not entirely exagerated either, as Sushimatic pointed out. There is probably a certain degree of difference depending on who’s speaking on it, but by and large Japan very much seems to hold dear the belief that everything can be ‘cute-d up’ and that making something cute can make it easier to ‘process’.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: cute, Japan, kawaii, signs, society

Came across this article on Japan whilst looking for something the other day. Aside from being an interesting read for anyone who’s lived here for a while or is thinking of living here, the author makes a very interesting point that I can relate to, even though I’ve only been for a very short time compared to his 20 odd years.

And yet beneath all the motion and excitement, something had caught inside me in Japan, and it was perhaps (I see now) all that I couldn’t explain, everything that I couldn’t put into tidy boxes and pinwheeling sentences. I had walked around a temple near the airport at Narita, during a morning layover, waiting for my flight back to New York, and something in the mild October sunshine, the gathered quiet, the shelteredness of the scene, took me back, unanswerably, to boyhood and England: Japan made me feel more at home than I’d been in a life of traveling the globe.

This sense of home he talks about is something I’ve felt on multiple occasions in the last year, and everytime I’ve struggled to fully understand it. I think the main thing I struggle with is that while Tokyo, and Japan, has this ability to make you feel at home, more than even home can, it’s also undeniably alien and very much an environment in which a foreigner stands out, regardless of linguistic skills or social integration.

Yet despite this, Tokyo can very much make you feel at home, make you feel like belong in a sense, or if not belong that you’re in a place where it’s ok to just be. This contradiction between being regularly estranged and feeling embraced at times is funnily enough another contradiction to add to a long list I’ve discovered since being here. Maybe it’s just because of the way the Japanese are, how the society functions and operates that lets you be able to feel that just being is ok, that you are, as strange as it may seem in such a, at times, foreign land, at home.

It’s definitely one of the things I’m going to miss the most once I’m gone, especially when I walk around Tokyo and just take it in: sights, sounds and smells. It’s also a reason I would recommend anyone try it out here once if they feel they got it in them and want to experience something different. It’s a mindset too, you have to be in the right headspace I guess, it’s not as simple as just turning up and waiting for it to happen. But for anyone who has any experience of living in a different culture, or wants to really try it out, then I think Japan in a weird way definitely holds something nowhere else really does.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Random, society, travelling, writing

Animosity between neighbouring countries isn’t really anything new. Growing up and living in Europe I’ve become accustomed to plenty of it, from funny stereotypes to nonsense bordering on xenophobia. One thing I’ve realised since working at a newspaper here though is how deep the animosity between Japan and China sometimes runs, and how far and low some people will seemingly act on it.

Like all good rivalries, it runs deep and both ways, but my knowledge of the issue isn’t that thorough if I’m honest. I know the Chinese hold a grudge, well one of the most recent ones anyways, against the Japanese for Japan’s WWII aggressions and past attempts at imperial expansion in Asia (google the rape of Nanking as a good starting point). As for the Japanese, I’m not actually quite sure where their grudge comes from, anyone with any enlightening knowledge please drop a comment. One thing I do know is that I’ve met my share of Japanese who have been vocal about their distrust of the Chinese and seeming belief that China and its people are up to no good (broadely speaking of course).

What’s been really enlightening and entertaining though is the Japanese media’s practice of jibing at the Chinese for anything they possibly can. The most obvious examples I see everyday are those at the newspaper I work at, which is the country’s second biggest, and also on TV. At the newspaper the Chinese jibes are literally everywhere it seems. I’ll be editing a story, and all of a sudden there will be a totally unrelated sentence making a remark, generally negative, about China. If it wasn’t so funny in the way it’s done, it would be scary.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, newspaper, Random, society, writing

It was trade show time again 2 weeks ago as the Tokyo Amusement Expo 2008 (aka Tokyo Arcade Game Show) rolled into town at the Makuhari Messe. Compared to the Tokyo Game Show, which is the year’s video game event by excellence, TAE is a much smaller affair spread over two days and taking in just one of Makuhari’s exhibition halls. When TGS rolls into town, pretty much the whole of Makuhari is taken over, and the majority of Tokyo’s geek community descends on the Chiba town. TAE was quieter and smaller, which didn’t necessarily make it less fun.

For one you get more space to stroll around, taking in all the glory of trade shows: the scantily-clothed ladies, the suits eyeballing people from the sides, the stall staff looking bored or scared, the geeks willing to queue 2h for a five minute blast on a yet to be released game and the hordes of pervy old men with big cameras chasing the aforementioned scantily-clad ladies. The arcade show had the added bonus of also being swarmed by hundreds of kids, dragging their parents to various stands displaying the latest wares aimed at the younger market, from card games to UFO catchers to… well, really weird shit.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, computers, Japan, society, video games

Had a good chuckle earlier today after reading this article in the New York Times I was linked to.

For those that don’t know, or can’t be bothered to read, the world-famous Michelin Guide, one of the things the French are most proud of, make no mistake, launched an Asian version of its guide for the first time last year. It chose Tokyo as the first city up for ‘inspection’ and came out with a stagerring amount of praise for the capital’s cuisine and its establishment, giving it more stars than both Paris and New York combined.

Which you’d think was good news for a city. But not for the Japanese it would seem, as the results were not just greeted with pleasure but also with a fair amount of discontent and disdain from some of the city’s top chefs it seems.

My favourite part as to be when chef Toshiya Kadowaki said his Nouveau Japonais dishes, which take inspiration from French cuisine, do not need a Gallic seal of approval. A lot of the disdain and refutal seems to either come from the belief that foreigners are not qualified to judge Japanese cuisine or that bragging, competition and awards go against the Japanese tendency to not stand out from the crowd, to fit in rather than stick out.

Which is all well and good, but when this comes from chefs in a coutry responsible for murdering foreign cuisine in new and unimaginable ways it’s a little funny… nah actually a lot funny.

Still que sera sera right, and whether or not they want to admit it, accept it or do whatever with it, the Japanese are responsible for some amazing cuisine and Tokyo definitely stands out as one of the major culinary centres for any self respecting foodie. It’s hardly surprising that Michelin chose to lavish that much praise on the city and its restaurants, as it is hardly surprising that some of the people reacted in the way they did.

No matter how good food can be in this city though, I still stand by my belief that some of the abberations Japan has come up with when it comes to interpreting foreign dishes is some of the most shocking stuff I’ve been unfortunate to see, smell or taste. Mentaiko spaghetti? Ughhhhh…

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written by Laurent \\ tags: food, Japan, Japanese Food, Random, society

It’s something we’re all accustomed to in this day and age and which we probably rarely give much thought about, unless it annoys us or grabs our attention. Advertising, and its evil twin sister/brother/father/whatever you want to call it marketing, is most definitely here to stay as capitalism continues its voracious global expansion. And while I tend to agree with theories and opinions that marketing and advertising are incredible wastes of money when you consider the sums poured into them in the last 20 odd years, fact is they serve a purpose in the world we live in. Whether or not you agree/like the purpose they serve is an entirely different barrel of fish.

When I lived in Europe I remember TV adverts were the things that irritated me the most - something I’m pretty much free of here, what with the fact that I don’t really watch TV anymore. The other thing that soon started to make me cringe and or despair was the increasing appearance of adverts on every available surface of everyday life. In London this took the form of adverts printed on the back of travelcards, bus tickets, people in the streets etc… Having studied marketing and advertising at uni, in one way I was interested by it, because it’s such a testament to the relentless push to shove consumerism in any way you can into every possible hook and crany of someone’s life, and in another I was also pretty pissed off - just because it’s annoying. I don’t need to be advertised to everywhere I look. I’m pretty selective in my consumerism, I knows what I wants and I goes and gets it, advertising rarely comes into it unless it’s talking to my inner geek/fan. It’s becoming difficult enough to browser the webanet with all the crap in it, I don’t need it in the real world as well.

Earlier on today I stumbled upon a really interesting article on the adbusters site, which details the plan of Sao Paulo’s current mayor to rid the town of all its outdoor advertising. Which when you take the time to think about it is pretty crazy/impressive/insert adjective here. As the article points out, this is the first non communist city to do so and while it might not be a bastion of capitalism, this move does have some interesting implications. Which got me thinking about Tokyo.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: advertising, Japan, musings, noise, society, thoughts, writing

Making the most of the last few days of my holidays, and deciding to brave the overbearing heat, I went off on a long overdue record shopping trip yesterday. I’ve been planning said trip for a while, having had to dig quite deep online to find some useful resources for record shops in English, but haven’t had the time to really do it properly yet.

Tokyo, and Japan to an extent, is a real haven for music fans and collectors. While most other countries seem to be quickly suffering from the increase in availability of digital formats, with physical sales suffering accordingly, Japan still has a strong market for physical sales - and not just new releases, but especially second hand releases. Second hand CDs and records (as well as tapes in some places) abound in Japan - they’re everywhere, and there’s a shit loads of them.

With regards to vinyl, Japan has long been known as a bit of a haven for DJs and collectors - Japanese only releases and re-issues always compete for high prices in the west, and when you’re here it’s quite easy to complete your collections. All you have to do is roll down to places like Shibuya and Shinjuku, which according to the lists I’ve found online collectively hold in excess of 80 vinyl shops, which is impressive to say the least. From new releases to classics and oldies, if you’re looking for it, chances are you’ll find in Tokyo, and with a bit of luck for dirt cheap too (and if it’s not cheap the current exchange rate should prove more than favourable).

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Music, record shops, shopping, society, Tokyo, vinyl

Here’s another little round up of things I’ve been thoroughly enjoying recently, this time not just limited to music. In no particular order I recommend you check all these out:

- Macha flavour Hageen Dazs ice cream (not sure if that’s available outside Japan but if it is jump on it)
- Ice cold Oolong tea
- Air conditioners :lol:
- Anno 1701 on Nintendo DS. Ian Banks couldn’t have been more right when he proclaimed Civilisation was the crack of the video game world
- New Kode 9 bits - Skeng remix, Den of Drumz, Dabrye remix http://www.myspace.com/kode9
- New Goth Trad bits - check http://www.myspace.com/gothtrad
- New bits from The Bug - check http://www.myspace.com/thebuguk
- Jahtari! http://www.jahtari.org
- Rinse Fm podcasts http://feeds.feedburner.com/rinsefm
- Alex Case’s TEFL blog http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/
- Cowboy Bepop - google that sh*t if you’ve never seen it
- Tongue, heart and rib Yakitori - bbq-ed food is the way forward
- Spannered, a great online music mag http://www.spannered.org
- Taiko No Tatsujin DS and Taiko No Tatsujin arcade, the most fun you can have with two sticks and a drum ever

Please be enjoying thank you come again

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, life, Random, society, things