When drink names go bad…

Someone’s running out of ideas for new drink names methinks!!

Neat view of Tokyo

Sorry guys for the recent inactivity, work has been hectic to say the least. Anyway, to get back into the swing of things I’ll start off by posting a photo which was taken in an observation deck of ‘toucho’ in Shinjuku. Toucho is pretty much just the Japanese way of saying Tokyo Metropolitan Government Centre, it might be an abbreviation but I can’t really remember properly lol! Anyway, the best thing about the observation deck is that it’s free, which is great compared to other places such as the Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills which charge around 1500 yen I believe.

The Pillows still rocking on

I’d like to share my 2 favourite songs from the well-known rock band, The Pillows. They’ve been around for a while and have really established themselves in the rock music scene here in Japan since their debut in 1989. Awareness of their music in America drastically increased after their music was featured in the famous anime FLCL. Since then they have played a few times in America and I’m sure they will return sometime in the future. Admittedly I haven’t heard much of their music, I will have to take the time out to listen soon! For now though, enjoy! (By the way,  Avex owns the rights to this music, unfortunately the record label took down the video on youtube a while back, but it’s reappeared, let’s hope it stays this time!)

Ladybird Girl

Scarecrow

Super cool temple in Aoyama

I don’t know the name of this temple or anything about it at all to be honest, but I thought it looked really cool so I really enjoyed capturing it on camera!

Interesting buses

It’s a well known fact that the Japanese have a love of all things cute, or kawaii. When you’re in Tokyo you even add taking a ride on a bus to your daily in-take of sugar-coated ‘kawaii-ness’ …erm, I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Jolly pig

This pig seems to be really enjoying himself! You can find him above an odd looking restaurant in Mita!

Gackt – the iconic star of Japanese rock

This man needs no introduction, but just in case you’ve been living in a cave for the past decade, I’ll give one! Gackt originally rose to fame when he was in a visual kei band called Malice Mizer, however in 1999 he decided to launch his solo career, and I think that really was a good idea because his solo music is much better than that with his former band (just my opinion! :P) Gackt is pretty much one of the most successful Japanese musicians and he has formed a solid fanbase outside of Japan. He’s also done his fair share of voice acting, being featured in Final Fantasy and the New Fist of the North Star, and he even got his own video game, called Bujinkai. Lastly he also wrote the script and starred in a movie called Moon Child (I’ve seen it and my honest opinion is that I thought it was shit, but hey, his music still rocks!) Here are my favourite songs:

This is the 6th day single version of Mizerable, I prefer it to the original:

The opening of Shin Hokuto no Ken (New fist of the north star) The song is called Luna:

This is an awesome live performance of Black Stone:

Last, here’s a brilliant live performance on piano of his great song, Last Song:

On a sad note…

Well, as you should all know, Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally out but alas, I don’t have a PlayStation 3 😦 I went to Akihabara today and the area is full of MGS4 related advertising, check out these pics:

One big store in Akiba (Asobitcity) is even selling the US version of the game, although stocks are very low now. I don’t know if I can buy a PS3 just before I leave Japan, I have savings for it but there’s a lot of travelling I’d like to do, ah well, I’ll have to wait and see, but I have to say that this is the first game which I can finally say is worth buying a PS3 for.

But on to a much more serious note- today was the first time I had been to Akiba since the horrific attack that happened there. The atmosphere was a bit sad and there was an area on the main road for people to pay their respects to the deceased. Obviously there are a lot more police in the area also. I consider myself lucky that I wasn’t there that day, I actually go to Akiba quite often when I’m free. I don’t want to bore you with all of my thoughts on this topic but I’ll just say that a lot more needs to be done in order to solve the problem that Japan is facing. There are some sick bastards here in Japan now (just recently one guy was arrested for pushing someone off the platform and into an on-coming train) and policing, whilst important for stopping these psychos, just isn’t enough on its own. There’s a serious problem with communication here in Japan, and I think that might be one reason why some people become a little crazy in the first place- there’s a build up of a lot of work related stress and other possible factors, and most people have no one to talk to about these problems. In school there’s a considerable amount of pressure on students to do well in their exams and a lot have to attend cram school (which I guess is another reason why a lot of students kill themselves). There also might not be enough communication within the family. Anyway, I haven’t done enough research into this problem to provide a solid opinion but what I can say for sure is that there needs to be some considerable change in Japanese society for things to improve.

HARD GAY! HOOOOOOO!

This guy is the legendary Hard Gay, originally a wrestler known as Razor Ramon HG but his gimmick and jokes about gay culture made him mega-famous in Japan about 3 years ago. He is my favourite comedian and I was hoping to bump into him here in Tokyo but alas he’s stopped his regular act as Hard Gay because he’s no longer popular. I believe he’s still wrestling though, but it’s worth mentioning that he’s not actually gay, he’s now married. As I said earlier I wanted to bump into him because he used to appear in popular tourist spots in Tokyo and used to do funny things, often involving the public. Here are some of my favourite videos. Please note that if you’re offended easily it might be better not to watch them, but at the end of the day he’s only playing around and having fun, not to be taken seriously!

In this clip Hard Gay tries to make the youth of Shibuya take the time to appreciate their fathers on fathers day:

In the next clip Hard Gay tries to help promote a Ramen shop:

In the next clip he sets about cleaning the streets of Tokyo and helping people:

In the last 2 clips Hard Gay attempts to get featured on the cover of an apparently famous Japanese magazine, The Television:

NHK Broadcasting Museum – an interactive history lesson

I recently went to the NHK museum of broadcasting and I was quite surprised it was pretty interesting. The museum doesn’t seem to be very famous as I have never seen it on any websites or in any guide books about Tokyo but I really recommend visiting if you’d like to learn about the history of television in Tokyo (and besides, it’s actually FREE!). The museum has information leaflets in English and also some of the information posted about the artifacts are also in English. I was surprised by the volume of equipment on exhibition – the vast majority of it consists of TV cameras, microphones, radios and television sets ranging from the earliest models from the 20’s right up to the 90’s. Some of the exhibits are also quite interactive – some of the cameras are set up to a TV monitor so you can see how you would turn out on TV, but one exhibit that stood out was a live camera which has been set up in front of the Tokyo Tower – you can control the camera yourself and play around with zooming or rotating the camera. The museum is also home to some costumes used in some of the NHK dramas and some posters used for promotion. There is even a small section dedicated to autographs of famous people and I was very happy to find Gackt’s autograph there! Probably the neatest thing about the museum is the top floor which is home to the ‘program library’ – you can use the computer terminal here and watch any NHK program out of an archive of literally thousands of individual titles, and the best thing is… it’s free! The only problem, and it can be quite a major one if you don’t know Japanese, is that most of the menu is written in kanji. The library does have instructions in English, but in the video archives there are not many English language videos. Lastly as to be expected, there is also the NHK Giftshop, but I didn’t see any merchandise worthy of mentioning.

By the way, the museum also happens to be conveniently located near the Tokyo Tower so if you have enough time, you can head to the tower from there. For more information about the museum check out the official site: NHK Museum Access Information