It seems like an age since I was lining up at the discout ticket booth for a ticket to see the Nanoha movie. But that time is long past and now all it leaves in its legacy is a warm fuzzy feeling in the bottom of your stomach. Oh, and this comic series.

Despite the possibly errant plural, MSLNMMF – The Comics doesn’t actually cover the movie, rather (like all the other Nanoha comics out at the moment) it covers that part which we all wanted to see – what happened after the movie (and before MSLN A’s). This alone should make it worth reading. Add to that the fact that the artist has improved signifcantly since he drew A’s and StrikerS the comics and you have possibly a winning mix.

Well, I did pretty much ignore StrikerS the comics, but I think that’s a given.

The Story

I don’t think I have to review the characters – I know and you know they are all already awesome. With the possible exception of Yuuno.

The story starts briefly recapping Nanoa’s first season (and movie). In about 1 chapter. Well, if you’ve seen the movie, then that’s all you need! Possibly the most interesting part is where Nanoha overclocks her awesome subconsciously to protect Arisa from getting owned in the face by a baseball. You see, Nanoha was awesome even before she invented her Friendship Maker *ahem* I mean, Starlight Breaker. Oh and for some reason Nanoha goes out to howl her loneliness at the moon because she feels lonely even though she is surrounded by good friends. Apparently puberty hits early in magic users.

Then we switch over to Fate’s background and her and Lilith’s memories of their childhood together, including an essay that Fate wrote about how much she loves her mother. Aww. But the saddest thing is that now her mother’s too busy even to give Fate a second glance, let alone go on a fluffy yummy picnic with her and that makes Fate sad. Actually, this was probably the best part of the comic – showing that Precia actually wasn’t just a mad bitch and tat she actually had a heart once…though since it doesn’t mention Alicia passing away, one can assume that that picnic was probably an implanted memory of hers. Poor Fate – even her fluffy childhood memories aren’t real.

Then Lindy has one of her great ideas. Even better than Green tea with cream and sugar. How about we grade the two new mages we have by pitting them against each other in a high speed battle to the death? Good idea all round I think. Needless to say, Arf thinks Fate has this in the bag from the get go, but Nanoha pulls together all kinds of awesome to draw level. The battle is yet to reach a conclusion by the end of the first volume but one can make a pretty safe bet that someone is going to be on the receiving end of a very big Friendship Maker by the end of it.

Overview

No Nano/Fate fuzzies in this volume – this is Nanoha finding her soulmate but then discovering that the only way she’ll listen to her pleas for friendship and a bit on the side is if she hammers it home with a Divine Buster through her skull. It’s OK – we all know Fate is going to end up being the Uke in this relationship anyway. The fact that Nanoha was emo, yet awesome before she even discovered magic is a nice touch. I have to say – emo Nanoha is really out of character for her and is a little jarring. Fate’s background is litle embellished in the movie and so the little background we get here is well called for and nicely done. And the fighting? The fighting is seven kinds of awesome. Makes we wonder if they’ll make a MSLNMF-The Comics Movie. Probably not.

The art is OK – it’s not luscious but it’s not pedestrian by any means. Fate is as skinny in her barrier jacket as I remember.

Rating – 4/5

Not perfect, art is moderate but story is well thought out and full of action. Fate slowly coming to realise that the only reason Nanoha has practiced every day is so that she can talk to her with her fists (so to speak) will make the end of the fight a little more than interesting. Only thing is – I’m not sure where they’re going to go from the end of the fight – Nano/Fate make-up sex scene? You bet your furries’ ass.

MSLNMF – The Comics is being scanlated by ZSS scanlations and is serialised in Megami magazine.

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So I get the feeling that this site is going to end up being mainly reviews of yuri manga and doujinshi that I come across in Japan from now on. Just to let you know – mainly because I’m lazy and that.

This manga is by Asagi Ryuu who also wrote “I Fell in Love for the first time” which is translated over at Lililicious. He writes regularly for Comic Penguin CLUB (a monthly mangazine of questionable content) and is now almost exclusively yuri. His previous works were mainly hetero in nature, but since the aforementioned series, he seems to have devoted himself to cute girls sexing the bejesus out of each other.

Story

This manga centres on two couples, Yuna and Hazuki and Takanashi sensei and Orisaku (thank god for WORKING! or I’d never have been able to read that teacher’s name) The story is set in an all girls’ school (original there, sensei) and specifically around the Tennis club. Yuna and Orisaku are the two stars of the tennis club and are playing in the upcoming autumn tournament. Orisaku is the ojousama/refined type of sporty girl, whereas Yuna is more the strong and butch type. Hazuki is a short girl who is a junior in the club and Takanashi sensei is the school librarian.

The story starts with Yuna being mean to Hazuki at practice. It appears she’s always mean to Hazuki, making her run laps and clear up after practice is over. However, finally, in the showers alone together, Yuna loses control of herself and starts to feel Hazuki up and it’s revealed that (predictably) the bullying was just a cover for her inappropriate feelings to a junior club member. Luckily though, Hazuki secretly loves her two and the two of them have happy shower sex.

In the other corner, Orisaku and Takanashi sensei are having sex in the library. Apparently, Takanashi sensei is quite the vixen and has been through more than her fair share of girls in the academy. Rightfully, then, Orisaku is scared that she’s going to be discarded just like the other girls but at this point, she doesn’t really care and lets Takanashi sensei twiddle her skywards.

But as the two relationships deepen, there’s trouble brewing. Kawai- the president of the tennis club hates lesbians and suspends Yuna from the club as she sees her walking hand in hand with Hazuki around town. At the same time, Hazuki finds out that when Yuna started school, she too fell into the clutches of the evil witch…ahem…I mean Takanashi sensei. Thankfully, after a touching scene by the poolside and some hot sex, the latter issue is resolved and the previous is also when Yuna discovers that Kawai is going out with her brother (who couldn’t care less that his sister was a carpet muncher)

Takanashi sensei falls helplessly in love with Orisaku to the point that she decides to quit the school to pursue her on legal terms. She starts research back at her alma mater instead.

The last chapter shows the gakuensai where all the characters are cast in a play – predictaly Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The play isn’t really focussed on, but afterwards in the classroom, all four of them have hot raw unbridled lesbian sex – everyone knows a story should end with a group scene after all.

The last chapter is a continuation of “I Fell in Love for the First time” where it’s revealed that Hitomi’s sempai at university is actually Takanashi-sensei and the happy couple go for a picnic date.

Review

The characters and setting are pretty usual for yuri. The girls school and the tennis club are all fairly standard fare. The character development throughout the story is nice and there’s a sense of warm fuzzies that the couple aren’t beating about the bush (so to speak) like some series I could mention (*cough* Sasameki *cough*). The art on the other hand is luscious. Bodies and naughty bits are faithfully drawn with a lovely flowing style – breasts actually hang nicely, expressions are varied and sexy and having an artist like this is a godsend for the yuri world.

Fetish wise, if you’re not into omorashi (watersports) then you might want to avoid this one. His usual stuff isn’t very fetish heavy, but omorashi-play features fairly heavily in this book so watch out. It’s pretty hot though.

Overall: 5/5

I like to start reviews on a good note – This is pretty much what I love about yuri all rolled into one. Cute storyline, cute characters, character development and wonderful art with a dash of fetishism. Even a tiny dose of emo. The only nitpick I have about it is that Asagi sensei draws Yuna and Hazuki’s breasts about twice as large on the cover. Don’t be misled – they’re actually normal size inside ^_^;;

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Ecchi nano ha ikenai to omoimasu!

So yeah, another post just days after the last – what’s wrong with me?!

Let’s face it – it’s been a mediocre season for anime – Summer is always scarce and last week without Kuroko Narrator-san’s old-ladyish monologue in Ookami-san to shichinin no Nakamatachi I was pretty much caught between watching K-ON!! slowly fade into obscurity and 4 part episodes of “Masterchef – New Zealand” (why did the BBC not put up Masterchef UK on the internet?!)

Then over the weekend I decided to catch up with Highschool of the Dead.

I wouldn’t say I was instantly hooked as I’m not an enormous fan of zombie apocalypse anythings (though I played Left 4 Dead a fair amount). Let’s look at it fairly – it’s unoriginal, it has an annoying, emotionless hero and a whiny over-oestrogenic heroine who just happens to be handy in a fight (hey, it’s beginning to sound like Final Fantasy!) The other characters are your typical “Twin tailed Tsundere bitch” (character type 2), “MILF airheaded nurse” (character type 1-8b), “Strong cool sempai in the kendo club” (character type 8-8a). Oh and gun otaku guy who is AWESOME. (Why is he not the hero?) The storyline has nothing (actually nothing) that puts it apart form any other zombie apocalypse story. I mean…even Left 4 Dead had a more original take on zombies than this – and that didn’t even really have a story! Realistically (yes I am aware of the irony of using that word here) – zombies that weak and slow would not stand a chance against even the tiny amount of guns and weaponry that the police and army keep around in Japan. And it’s only spread by biting?! It takes more than that to send the world into disarray matey…(I’m probably missing something key here…)

So what makes Highschool not make one want to kick the TV in frustration every time TwinDere throws another hissy fit or Boobnurse falls on something again and is cushioned by her breasts (so big they have their own set of sound effects)? Well…

• Breasts
  
  Yes, obvious I know. Even Twindere has huge ones – and that’s unusual on a tsundere. Boobnurse’s are so huge that whenever they’re on screen they take up half the camera shot. I could go so far as to say that I don’t think there’s another apocalypse type manga with this level of fanservice…
• Panties
  
  In short – Twindere wears striped panties. This anime has almost as many panty shots as Ikkitousen and that’s saying something…Probably the best thing about them is that they feel a lot more natural (if panty shots can be described as natural) than Ikkitousen where sometimes the scene would start up a girl’s skirt then go on to the other less important stuff like the fighting and plot.
• Fighting girls
  
  Twindere doesn’t fight though (I’m starting to sound like I’m obsessed with Twindere…) The “Ikkitousen factor” of strong girls holding their own with the men is always a good turn on for fanservice fans. But don’t date Saeko unless you want to get squeezed drier than the beer taps on World Cup final night. I don’t have a pic of her fighting, so here’s one of her licking a goya.
• Guns
  
  Everyone knows that men love guns. No chainsaws as of yet though…Hirano’s nailgun reminded me of the heady old days of playing Quake over a 28k modem. Why the hell is there a sniper sight on that shotgun – could someone please enlighten me?
• Hirano
  
  Seriously – how awesome is Hirano? Except for his unhealthy crush on Twindere Meganekko which is ill fated to getting repeatedly smashed in the face in a fit of jealous rage (has he not watched what happens if the hero goes for the twintails girl?) His only fault was in episode 6 where in the face of a zombie apocalypse he didn’t immediately go for the shotgun..I reckon by the end his virginity is going to be stolen by the purple haired special ops MILF. I don’t want to sully this post so here’s a picture of Twindere looking sultry.
• Hot MILF Nurse / Gun MILF yuri
  Well – in my mind that is…
• Zombies
  
  Wait – this is about zombies? I thought their purpose was to act as stepping stones so we could see Rei’s pantsu.

One could make comparisons to other male oriented semi-ero stuff such as Tenjo Tenge but Highschool is just on another level – fanservice wise…With a heady mix of swinging tits, flashing panties, swishing weapons and smoking guns it’s almost like he’s trying to appeal to all male urges simultaneously…Still not enough yuri for my tastes though – despite the male:female ratio.

I’m rooting for Kendoapron/Twindere for the win…

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But anyway – This is my first full summer in Japan! They sure are hot aren’t they! Luckily the humidity has broken a little bit and it’s a lot drier now though most days the temperature is still up in the mid 30s…A far cry from the temperature back home in the UK! I had two goals for this summer – One was to climb a 3000m plus mountain while it wasn’t snowy and Two was to go to Fuji Rock!! (well, we did buy the tickets about 6 months ago)

For those of you that don’t know, Fuji Rock Festival takes place over the last weekend in July in Niigata prefecture about 200km north from Tokyo. It’s modelled on the UK Glastonbury festival in that it has an emphasis on a wide range of music on a variety of stages, environmental issues, organic farming, sustainability, Third world charity and so forth. We had a lot of fun at the Fuji Rock festival (despite the rain) and so I’ll probably be writing a full Fuji Rock guide to supplement the current one on the Fuji Rock blog which is lacking in some respects…

In K-ON!! #12 (the summer holiday episode), the girls go to “Natsu Rock” which is heavily modelled on the Fuji Rock festival. So I thought it would be fun to do a post where I Photoshopped the screenshots from the episodes with photos from the festival. See if you can guess which ones we are…

Everyone takes this photo. I swear that this is the only reason they have the sign up.

It’s a lie – the flat space on the Women’s only camping area never fills up.

Yeah, it’s not a picture of the same thing, but it looks the same alright!

The river at the place in the screenshot (Tokoro Tengoku) isn’t so wide and nice as here so I used this photo.

Everyone loves it when it rains at Fuji Rock…Not. 

The mountains are steamy.

They don’t actually run out until well gone evening. That would be a bad business plan.

Spot the British restaurant in the background. We patronised that place like crazy!

Crowds.

Yeah, and crap bands like MGMT.

They didn’t show that over half the Japanese people are sitting down. Lazy gits.

The Thunder stage (White stage) is on the wrong side of the Fire stage (Green Stage)

The top area is on a cable car and is called “Day dreaming” though you can’t read it in the official map…

Some inaccuracies:

Though lots of (urban) Japanese spray it on liberally there are no biting insects in Naeba… If you ask me how I know – they absolutely love to bite me and I didn’t get a single one.

Why isn’t anyone wearing wellies?

Some things that were tastefully or inexplicably omitted from the K-ON!! version:

• Mio being frightened of the spiders and the smell in the toilets
• Azusa missing her favourite band because of queueing for the loos.
• Mugi faints from sunstroke in the three hour queue for the hot spring (true)
• Mio trying to get between two stages on a tight schedule but getting caught in a crowd going the other way (happens a lot!) and missing their entire set.
• Festival officials inexplicably close off the only path between stages because of overcrowding, trapping the girls with some horror goth heavy metal thrash band from hell.
• Yui gets stoned out of her mind and is exactly the same.
• The girls see the crappest band in the world but Yui thinks they’re cool.
• Mugi gets to eat yakisoba because it DOESN’T RUN OUT.

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Yuri

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Anyway, here we go!!

Surely if she’s wearing panties underneath the shorts it’s exactly the same difficulty for moving around in. I think it’s just extra Kuroko protection…

I often feel like this in restaurants.

Oh Misaka, you should have known better than saying that when Kuroko is only wearing a towel…

If only this worked in real life…

:3

The trick is to always keep your eyes on the target while you’re squeeing to avoid embarrassing situations like this

…though she’ll die of blood loss if you suggest anything that she actually wants to do.

You might not know, but it’s common for hair to grow nerves and muscles, especially in the case of twintails or drills.

Kuroko really needs to fix that “I’ll have the same as you Onee-sama” tic.

The thing is I can’t stop thinking…Does she wear those ribbons every day?

Everyone knows that in the sake of wake up kisses you should get in fast and then never let go.

I’d ask why Kuroko was lecturing Kiyama on public indecency when I realised that Kuroko only strips for Mikoto in the safety of their dorm room.

Judgement desu no!

Kuroko’s panties are so tiny you couldn’t see them in this shot.

The sad thing is that you could never deliver a kick powerful enough to send someone through a window.

Get out!! Get out now!!! She’s really mad!!

She looks a bit too happy for a girl with several cracked ribs

If Uiharu used Level Upper she might be able to…erm…Stop Global Warming!!!!

I’m not convinced those bandages are in the place where she got kicked. I think they’re just so Uiharu doesn’t get a good look at something only Onee-sama needs to see when she’s changing her bandages.

Actually, they’re probably in the right place. They must be working if she can shake Uiharu like that…

Emergency teleport! This reminded me of a game that probably no-one remembers called “Pocky and Rocky” on the SNES…ahh, those were the days.

Uiharu is really useful! she could…Stop Global Warming!! Oh I’ve already made that gag.

And it’s moments like these that say that Mikoto doesn’t really mind getting molested by Kuroko every day after all.

Something more interesting next post I promise!

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In many ways, To aru kagaku no Railgun’s Shirai Kuroko isn’t a new type of character. To use my own character typing, she would be a “Vamp/aggressive” type with other yuri attributes. What makes her new is that she eschews the traditional yuri ojousama image of being reserved yet exceedingly gay (Hanazono Shizuma – Strawberry Panic) or unusually unreserved and exceedingly gay (Sei Satou - Marimite) for a rather non-typical rampaging yuri phenotype where various amusing situations crop up due to her obviously stalking Mikoto (teleport is rather useful in this situation I guess…) I say “rather”, as there is another girl with the same character type this season – Mikuru from BakaTest who I’m sure has the same amount of secret pictures of her oneesama as she has had hot dinners. Other examples of the type include Saku-chan (Candy Boy) and Remi from the rather less known ecchi manga Chocolate Melancholy (Only read the first volume).

The thing that puts Kuroko apart from the others in her field is that thanks to her status in Railgun as a main character (well, co-main), she gets a whole bag of character development which helps her evolve beyond the comedy sidekick status that rampaging yuri types usually get thrust into. She’s awesomely cool, for example – fights like a demon (in stark contrast to Mikoto who is pretty useless without her powers) and has an underwear collection rivalling, if not exceeding that of Mai HiME’s Kuga Natsuki (before it got exploded, anyway).

So here are a collection of Kuroko moments from the first 5 episodes. Her best techniques are trying to sound col and refined while secretly trying to peep at Mikoto and then getting owned by a piece of furniture. Perhaps the most puzzling thing is why Mikoto doesn’t just shun her for being such a pervert.  It’s interesting that in Index, there’s no doubt that there is chemistry between Mikoto and Touma, whereas in Railgun the feel is more towards rivals – I’m guessing that they’re taking it easy on the yuri-shippers.  In my yuri-centric imagination I think Mikoto’s feelings are something along the lines of: 1) Mikoto is not used to seeing men as anything but annoying, so Touma is an unusual middle ground – she can’t beat him and he doesn’t want to hit on her so she’s confused how to feel around him. 2) She sees Kuroko as a girl with a noble sense of duty and hard work…but extremely perverted towards her. But since it’s not in Mikoto’s nature to hate her for something like this they’re good friends.

Or something like that. I don’t think Mikoto has romantic feelings towards anyone at this point. Maybe if Kuroko tried less hard she might notice her…

…She knows kung-fu!

…and shower breast-fu

If I were her I’d have teleported very far away at this point.

And here…we see…the rare species…Shirai Kuroko…as after a long battle…she mounts her mate.

If this was a shoujo manga he’d have got all blushy and embarassed right here. Before he got kicked in the head.

The young female equivalent of Hugh Hefner

The world through Kuroko’s sepia tinted glasses.

…You’re a panther all the time Kuroko.

Panther makes Azumanga-face.

I really really doubt anyone can drown their sorrows in lukewarm red bean soup.

Damn you Japan and your reliance on courier delivery services! Damn you!!

…My attack had no effect?!

You really…really shouldn’t have said that Mikoto. Can’t you see the relationship flag?

…or was that a electro-fetish H-scene flag?

I am mystefied as to why Kuroko DOESN’T want to see Mikoto naked.

Interesting, yet obvious that Kuroko chose Mikoto’s panties to “pantsu to kao” with.

She could teleport out of this, but she’s actually getting off.

The fact that Kuroko can do more than one is awesome. Especially triceps push-ups.

Pillow munching.

Loli Kuroko knows kung-fu too!!

I tried thinking about what she would do here. Since she can’t teleport things greater than her body weight I guess she’d try and teleport his nose into his head? Or his cock up his ass?

Who knows.

Join us next time for more Kuroko awesomeness…or maybe some other awesomeness. I don’t know yet.

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A real cake

It’s just been White Day, for those of you that live here – the Japanese (actual) equivalent of Valentine’s day (i.e. the one where the guys have to make the effort and every restaurant/park/cinema/sex shop/love hotel is packed out all day).

So for a treat, the other half and I headed out to Shinjuku 3-chome to a cafe called “Sweets paradise” which is something Japanese people would call “suiitsu baikingu” or a dessert buffet. Basically, you pay 1470 yen per person and get infinite all you can eat cakes, ice cream, jelly and drinks for 70 minutes (and there’s some savoury stuff too). Needless to say after 70 minutes it was difficult to make it to the lift let alone out of the building… The effect of Sweets Paradise is like a children’s party in a leisure centre (a swimming party, ice skating party or something like that) – It’s all brightly coloured and there’s all the sweet things a kid could ever want. It was rather natsukashii.

It also got me thinking about Japanese sweets in general. The Japanese, like many other cultures, have realised that the times between meals in a day just don’t add up. breakfast to lunch is 5 hours, but lunch to dinner is usually 6-7 hours. So what do we need to put in between? Snacks of course! The British equivalent would be “Tea” had around 5pm with a little cake or scone to satisfy the food craving. The Japanese have oyatsu which is usually taken around 3pm and consists of green tea with some small sweet thing, usually made of rice and/or an paste (anmitsu is a high class example).

Fail cake

However, coming to Japan from the UK or US, you’ll never be satisfied with Japanese sweets. They look AMAZING, that’s for sure, so if you ate with your eyes you’d be made. However, the taste is always a little lacking – using more whipping cream than double cream, less butter and often sweeteners to replace sugar leaving a sickening aftertaste… When I introduced my labmates to the traditional British sponge cake recipe (equal quantities of flour, butter and sugar – usually 5 or 6 oz and 3 eggs), they recoiled in horror. “That much butter?!” is apparently the Japanese approach to cakes and unfortunately cake shops have to go with the country’s taste. Since old desserts have always been small, sugary and unfilling, there doesn’t seem to be a place for a moist, heavy rich cake such as the good old British battenburg or a piece of Jamaica Ginger cake…

Here’s a couple of recipes for comparison.

Japanese Chiffon Cake (the sponge used as the base to all cakes in Japan)

Makes a 16.5cm chiffon cake (note that chiffon cake rises about twice as high as traditional sponge)

• Egg yolks????
• Sugar???100g
• Vegetable oil???60ml
• Water???70cc
• Flour???100g
• Baking powder???2 teaspoons
• Egg white???4
• Salt??? little

And compare this to the traditional English sponge cake recipe (courtesy of Delia Smith)
(makes 2 x 20cm sponge cakes, half as high)

• Self raising flour – 175g
• Baking powder – 2 teaspoons
• Eggs – 3 (large)
• Butter – 175g
• Sugar – 175g
• Vanilla extract

The obvious difference is in the fat content – 175g of butter vs. 60ml vegetable oil + water is a hell of a lot of difference.  In Chiffon cake, the fluffy texture comes from the whisked egg whites causing the extra rise and the extra fluffy texture, whereas in British sponge there is a buttery richness partially imparted by the butter but also by the denser sponge resulting in a crumblier cake.

I wish we could bake cakes here…Darn lack of ovens!!

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Not so here. If you ever heard of Tokyo described as an urban neon jungle, it’s not far from the truth. Working hours here are quite literally silly. Most shops open till at least 10pm every day (sometimes including Sundays) and most shops open holidays too (except for New Years and Golden Week). Since the Japanese culture centres around eating, many restaurants will open till 1am or even later before disgorging their full and drunken punters into the brightly lit streets. Here’s a few more things you can do in the silly hours of the morning…

1. Hang around a convenience store and read manga.Convenience stores are a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year business. They’re probably the only thing open on New Year’s and stock a wide range of subtlely overpriced goodies and hot snacks. So common is the above pastime that most convenience stores have resorted to binding their manga weeklies in an effort to stop businessmen reading them who should be getting to work/meetings/pachinko/mistresses.
2. Get ramen. Or beef bowl.Ramen and beef bowl chains are often open 24 hours a day, meaning that you can come in on a 3am flight and still get something hot to eat at 4am in the morning. Which is nice. As opposed to the UK where you have to survive on whatever chocolate/crisps/cookies you can afford from the inevitable train station vending machines. Oh, MacDonalds is also open 24 hours too, if you find yourself with the early morning craving for a deep fried apple pie…
3. Go to the cinemaYeah, midnight showings are weird…But hey, they probably don’t need to have many staff on to do a single showing at midnight or 1am…
4. Have a bathStrange though it may seem, most onsen and many public baths are open 24 hours. Although if you think about it, since the water is running 24/7 it would be silly to waste it by not allowing people in to bathe in it. For example, Oedo Onsen Monogatari in Odaiba in Tokyo is open over New Year’s, so you can count down the seconds soaking in a milky sperm coloured salt bath. Ahh…bliss…apart from the hundreds of other tour groups who had the same idea…
5. Read manga or play video gamesThe Japanese phenomenon known as the “Internet and Manga Cafe” (Mangakissa) is available in all good towns around the country and offers both a comfy space with shelves full of manga and a dimly lit room of cubicles you can use for playing net games (or looking at porn, whatever your poison) Also, you get free refills of the soft drink of your choice so you can carry on enjoying your poison until the red rimmed dawn breaks outside.
6. Have freshly made sushiThe hand made sushi bar (i.e. not kaiten conveyor belt style) down the road from us is open till 3am, so if you ‘re peckish after that big night out but don’t fancy the usual MacDonalds, how about stopping by for something a bit more stylish to curb those early morning munchies? And infinitely more expensive, of course.
7. Meet a schoolgirl and have sex with herTechnically you can do this in any country if you’re awesome enough…

Things you can’t (surprisingly) do in the early morning

1. Play pachinkoThe great Japanese pastime of Pachinko (that is unintelligible to everyone else) for some reason stops relatively early (around 11pm) in all parlours. Presumably this is because they can kick all the businessmen out and they can then finally go back home to their wives/mistresses/find a whore/enjo kosai or whatever. You’d have expected gambling to be one thing that you could do into the wee hours though…
2. Have a cup of (good) coffeeSure you can have a crappy one from a machine at a Manga kissa or in a convenience store but no cafes or coffee shops are open and all the restaurant chains that serve coffee (Saizeriya and other family restaurants) close around 11 or 12pm meaning that the caffeine available to an all-nighter is noticably below par. Have recently discovered that certain chains of FamiRes such as Royal Host and Jonathan’s open 24 hours. So you can get a fairly decent cup of coffee…and a badly made pizza.
3. Catch a trainI would have thought that if there was one country that you could catch a train between 1am and 6am, it would be Japan, but they stop here the same time as in the UK. I mean, it’s not as if people stop wanting to go places suddenly between 1am and 6am…I bet train companies could make a packet running trains between these times, even just once and hour but I suppose it’s just another one of those things you can nail down to tradition…
4. Get money out without paying through the nose for itJapanese banks are hilariously ancient – most still use passbooks and take HOURS to serve you (probably stamping god knowns how many copies of the red tape that they have to do for each transaction that should be on computer by now.) One of the symptoms of this is that if you want to do anything at an ATM bar draw your own money out within banking hours, they charge you for it. So even if you manage to find an ATM that’s actually open at 3 in the morning, the chances are you’ll end up paying 250yen or so for the privilege.
5. Go to an arcadeSurprisingly these shut fairly early too…I suppose since their customers are generally teenagers, it wouldn’t do to encourage them to stay up that late playing games when they should be studying hard for exams. Instead, lets kick them out so they can find a nice love hotel or something to have fun in…

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General Comments

Animation quality: Very good (as expected of KyoAni, really). To be honest, the style was almost exactly the same as the TV, but in better resolution. There were the odd 3D sections that blended so seamlessly with the rest of the movie that it was almost as if they didn’t need them at all! Kyon actually looked cool in places, which is a surprise. Long hair Haruhi looked as if she’d been pulled straight out of Strawberry Panic and Yuki shone as usual. Overall, it pushed all the right buttons.

Story(without spoilers): Even with my limited understanding of spoken Japanese, the gist was easy to understand. Overall, the tone was a little sad but gripping, with tense moments, relief, cute moments and ridiculous ones in equal measure. Oh, and Kyon is a dick for the first 30 minutes. Ignore him. Oh, and you won’t understand a jot unless you’ve seen both series one and two since elements come from both that are integral to the story.

Voice acting: Chihara Minori is on TOP FORM as Yuki in this movie. I won’t spoil the story in this section, but moe factor is increased manyfold. Hirano Aya shouts her head off as usual and Goto Yuki is “kinda cute” as Mikuru, but Yuki really steals the show. Oh, and Tsuruya is teh AWESOME. You really can’t believe that she voiced Osaka in Azumanga Daioh…

SPOILERS AHEAD

Nice big gap for the people who haven’t read the book or plan to see the movie when it comes out on DVD/download it when it gets subbed. For good reason, since there is a twist that could get majorly spoiled if you read further…

I couldn’t obviously take pictures in the theatre, so if you want to read on, you’ll have to make do with my tasteless narration, I’m afraid…

Story

“The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” (in English) appears in what appears to be Times New Roman on the bottom of a blank screen. The camera’s eyes gradually open to the sound of Kyon’s alarm clock. It’s cold and Kyon’s sister takes great pride in removing his blankets and Shamisen. Take note of this scene, it gets repeated, Endless Eight style about 10 times during the three hour long movie.

The setting – it’s December after the Culture festival and Haruhi gathers all the brigade members in the club room to announce that there’s going to be a special Christmas party for the SOS Dan on Christmas Eve…and also that there is a special present for Mikuru in the form on a thoroughly chilly looking Santa girl outfit. The day unfolds and Kyon says hi to all the major characters including Tsuruya san (yay!). Taniguchi boasts during PE that he has a date on Christmas Eve and couldn’t make the Christmas party even if Kyon invited him and Itsuki’s classmate chats to him about club activities. After school, the brigade members decorate the room with the usual gaudy Christmas tack and discuss what they should eat at the party. Haruhi decides on nabe (Japanese stew cooked at the table) and tells Kyon to go home and pick up some more tinsel on the way.

Kyon wakes up the next morning in the same fashion and it’s not until Taniguchi tells him that he’s had a cold for the last few days and hasn’t got anything like a date for Christmas Eve that he begins to realise something’s wrong. The next 30 minutes are of Kyon running around like a madman being a total dick to everyone because the world’s changed. To summarise, Haruhi is no longer at North High, and in her place, Asakura Ryouko is back, he terrifies Mikuru who now doesn’t know him and Tsuruya (wai!) offers to beat him up. 1-9, Itsuki’s classroom no longer exists, presumably along with all of the students in it. Also, the tinsel has disappeared from his bag. After he’s finished being a dick, he ends up in the Literature clubroom, where a thoroughly different, bespectacled Yuki is sitting. She makes the mistake of saying she does know him and he then proceeds to be a dick to her too, pushing her up against a wall and demanding information she doesn’t have. In desperation,he turns on the ancient computer but there’s no trace of the SOS Dan at all. When he turns to leave, Yuki stops him and hands him a piece of paper. It’s a “Club application form” for the Literature clubroom. When he gets home, as if to cement his dick-ness, he decided to be a dick to his little sister and then try to talk to the cat.

The next day Kyon’s fed up of being a dick, so he goes back the the Literature clubroom and mooches around while Yuki reads. Suddenly, he has a revelation – He remembered that Yuki previously put a bookmark in the clubroom copy of Endymion (not the Keats book, the Dan Simmons book) telling him to meet her at the park and he almost demolishes the shelves looking for it. On it is written “Program run condition: Collect Keys. Deadline 2 days.” Kyon then spends the rest of the evening looking through the rest of the books on the shelves for the “key” but has no luck. When he decides that he should go home, Yuki gets up to go too and they end up walking home together. Inevitably, she invites him round to her apartment.

Yuki’s apartment is completely different – it even has a kotatsu. And…Asakura-san still lives downstairs – since she pops up with a steaming pot of nabe for them all to eat. Kyon gets up to be a dick and leave, but Yuki stops him in an extremely moe way and he ends up eating nabe anyway.

The next day, Kyon mooches around in school until Taniguchi let’s slip that he did still go to middle school with Haruhi, but she went to Koyouen, some high class ojousama academy across town instead of North High. This last part was said through clenched teeth with Kyon breathing down his neck, of course. Kyon then races out of school and runs all the way there only to find that he’s too early and they’re still in class. The inevitable gate-guard looks at him suspiciously.

As the students file out, Kyon stands like he’s waiting for a bus. He spots Itsuki’s classmate and wonders if the entire of 1-9 was transferred here instead. Then Haruhi emerges, walking next to Itsuki. She’s got long hair and looks infinitely ojou-sama-ish with her haughty frown and dark uniform. Kyon attempts his usual being a dick to try and get people to recognise him, but she kicks him in the calf and storms off. The gate guard meanwhile has prised himself from his gate guard box and come to apprehend the intruder. Just when it looks like Kyon’s about to get dragged off somewhere and get buttraped, he shouts that he’s the John Smith from Tanabata 3 years ago and Haruhi stops in her tracks.

Next we’re sipping coffee in Saizeriya (a Japanese Italian restaurant chain). Kyon’s explained everything and Haruhi believes him, although according to her on that Tanabata they met twice. It seems that although she isn’t God of the world anymore, she’s still a paranormal freak. She decides on her own that she wants to go to this clubroom and see these people so she rushes off in excitement without paying the bill. Itsuki lets slip that in this world, he’s interested in Haruhi but she’s only going round with him because he’s the transfer student.

When they get back to North High, Haruhi hatches a plan to get in wearing gym kit and pretending to be runners. First they go to the Calligraphy Clubroom and hijack Mikuru then burst into the Literature clubroom. Mikuru reacts in pretty much the same way as she did in the first series when Haruhi kidnaps her during break. Yuki’s a little scared and Haruhi is on top of the world. Suddenly, the computer blinks. It’s Yuki. Apparently gathering all the people together was the key. Now Kyon has to make a choice. Either run the program to get things back to the way they were (hit Enter) or any other key if he likes things the way they were. Everyone in the room is a bit mystefied as Kyon thinks for a moment then hits Enter.

The room spins.

Suddenly, it’s hot. Kyon rushes to take off his winter coat and runs out of the empty clubroom. He rushes into the Familymart to find that he’s been taken back to Tanabata 3 years ago. Again. He runs to the park just in time to catch himself waking up in the lap pillow of Asahina Mikuru (Jr.). As she’s walking away, he catches up to Asahina Mikuru (Sr.) and they have a chat. The gist of the talk is that someone messed around with the time planes and so she came back to fix them. And that someone wasn’t Haruhi.

Mikuru (Sr.) suggests that they should go and talk to this period’s Nagato so they trail up to her apartment, on the way shouting to Haruhi so that they’d meet twice and she’d probably end up going to North High.

Nagato lets them into her apartment. It’s exactly as they remember, only with their temporal time variants sleeping in the opposite room. She listens to their explanation impassively. She tries to confirm by accessing her temporal time variant 3 years from now, but finds that not only has it been blocked, but that the Integrated Data Overmind no longer exists. She expounds the exposition (taken from the novel as I didn’t understand a word.) – The culprit stole administrative powers for the world from Suzumiya Haruhi and used it to alter the world completely as well as the memories of everyone in it for the last 365 days. In order to restore the world to it’s previous state, someone needs to go back in time and inject the restoration program into the culprit’s body. Nagato takes off her glasses and they shimmer and transmute into a large syringe. Kyon protests and it gets turned into a slightly less scary needle gun instead.

Nagato tells them who the culprit is…but not the viewers.

After giving the coordinates to Asahina (Sr.) and injecting them with more nanomachines, they’re off to the future. It’s cold again and they forgot to get their shoes so Kyon lends his coat to Mikuru (Sr.). It’s December again, the day the world changed. They sneak to the school gates as the culprit approaches. She raises her hand and the world changes. She lowers it again.

It’s Nagato.

Kyon walks up to her and greets her. She doesn’t run away, but it’s clear that she’s not the Nagato from the past anymore. Cue montage of Kyon wrestling with himself about what to do. Should he shoot her and restore the time lines to the way they were, or keep things the way they are now – the way Nagato seemed to want it. Obviously he decides that things should go back to the way they were, so he raises the gun. Yuki gasps but doesn’t move. Then out of nowhere…the newly recreated Asakura stabs Kyon in the back with her army knife. She’s just about to deliver the final low when the knife gets caught in mid air by someone…and suddenly there’s two Mikurus crying over him and a voice telling him that “sorry we didn’t come to save you earlier, but we’ll take care of things from here”. Then darkness.

Kyon wakes up in a hospital bed. Beside the bed, Itsuki is peeling (far too many) apples. He explains that Kyon fell down the stairs and lost consciousness right after they’d decided on nabe for the party and that it had been three days since then. He tops the mountain of apples with a delicately half peeled slice and gestures beside the bed where Haruhi is sleeping, curled up in a sleeping bag. Kyon briefly considers drawing something on her face, but resists the urge and she wakes up and promptly falls over. As she’s ranting to Kyon, Mikuru comes in and starts crying and everyone’s back together again.

Afterwards, Kyon’s standing on the rooftop in his coat and hospital gown. He realises that Nagato, Mikuru and himself must have gone back to that day on December 18th to save him and that to do that he’d have to travel there from this time period. While he’s considering this, Yuki comes to greet him. She apologises for all that happened and puts it down to “internal errors”, denying that telling any of them that this was going to happen would have made any difference. She’s going to be judged by the Data Overmind for her actions. Kyon gets angry and tells her that if it does anything bad to her then he’ll rile up Haruhi and they’ll make a world where the Data Overmind doesn’t exist. Yuki seems happy. Snow falls, romantically.

And we’re back to life as usual at North High. Kyon walks towards the clubroom feeling introspective and wondering when he’ll have to go back to the past again. He shoos away two girls who are wondering who’s cooking in school on Christmas Eve. He puts his hand on the door handle and thinks – “The world can wait to be saved until after I’ve sampled Haruhi’s Christmas nabe”. Roll Credits.

After the credits have finished rolling, we’re at the city library. Yuki sits, reading. In the foreground, two children play with the library stamp set. Yuki looks up, as if noticing the camera and holds up her book to cover her face. Fade to Black.

END SYNOPSIS

Sorry, that was rather long.

Overall opinions on the movie then -

• Kyon was a complete dick for the first 30 minutes. It occurred to me that although he spent so much time getting annoyed at Haruhi, when she disappears he doesn’t once think that the world is a better place without her. Other than that, he almost ends up being quite cool…other than crumbling completely when he got stabbed. I mean, any other anime character would have grabbed for the gun and shot Yuki with their last dying breath to save the world
• Tsuruya san saying she would punch Kyon if he ever came near Mikuru again was SUPER COOL.
• Moe moe glasses-girl-Yuki really stole the whole movie. Haruhi barely featured in it at all, really – it might as well have been titled – “The Awesomeness of Yuki Nagato”. The voice actor really did well as did the animation in bringing across Yuki’s two different personalities. You feel sorry for her, being brought to a state where she feels it’s best to change the world to one where Haruhi isn’t God anymore. It feels like the culmination of little flickers of emotion that we see in season 1 and 2, especially in Endless Eight and the first Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody where you get the feeling that even Nagato’s endless patience is wearing thin. It’s really nice that her character got expanded upon like this
• The time paradoxes are pretty standard (think Red Dwarf season 7 Episode 1 for starters) but for some reason I’m a huge sucker for time travel plots so it really hit the spot for me!
• Adult Mikuru for the win! Why she wears a blouse that she seems like she’s always going to burst out of it is beyond me. Probably to seduce Kyon. As usual, she wasn’t much help when the knives started flying. She should’ve just shot Yuki and saved Kyon all that trouble.
• Long hair Haruhi with a ponytail! She definitely looks a lot more refined and they must’ve taken great pains to animate her hair because it’s awesome. Other than that she’s just the usual Haruhi and doesn’t really get to say much in the movie.
• Asakura stabbed Kyon. Woohoo. It shut up his inner monologue for at least 0.53 seconds.
• Itsuki and his apples….well….they were there.
• The last scene on the rooftop was very well done I thought. In contrary to the novel, there was a real sense that Kyon didn’t believe that what Yuki did was an error in her programming and that he really cared about what happened to her. When the snow starts to fall, Kyon says “Yuki” and Nagato half starts, perhaps thinking that he’s calling her by her first name. It’s these flickers of emotion that really brought this movie to life.
• The ending credits song sung by Yuki to no backing music: Haunting.
• The last scene: Undecipherable.

So there you have it – a full synopsis and opinions on the Haruhi movie. Thanks to anyone who’s bothered to read it this far, I really needed to get it off my chest! Makes me want to get back to reading the novels again! I’d buy them in Japanese, but Kyon’s introspectives use far too complex vocabulary for me…

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Shirai Kuroko (To Aru Kagaku no Railgun)

The yuri brigade has been led for some time by the ~desu no and twintails of Shirai Kuroko. I’m not sure what exactly it is about Shirai san that makes me laugh, but it’s probably becuase as the supporting character, her personality is very well developed and even though she has her one-dimensional obsession with raepling her onee-sama there are a lot of other sides to her as well that stop her becoming yuri trash. She’s very loyal to her beliefs, she’s awesome at fighting, deep down she’s a really caring person and of course – she says “desu no”. Actually, I was rather amused at how quickly I came to like her seiyuu, because even though she’s a “desu no” character I was not expecting 65 year old grandmother voice to be chosen over typical rich girl ojousama voice. It’s actually rather a refreshing change. You can see what she’s done to me by the number of Railgun doujins I’m translating for free at the moment…Damn you Kuroko

Shimizu Miharu (Baka to Test to Shokanju)
The typical one-dimensional yuri-tokentrash. This time with Twin duriru. She likes her oneesama. She comes after her with violent disposition. She then gets the smackdown or has yuriraeplings with oneesama. The end. To be honest, I rather like Minami, even though she’s just a typical tsundere type. Probably that big yellow ribbon. Anyway, having only seen up to episode 3, can’t wait for that terrible jaw-clenchingly bad Japo-german to come out. Oh, and who the hells idea was it to name 3 of the main girls starting with “Mi”? It’s damn confusing!

Seikon no Qwaser (I’ve stopped watching this)
Well, I’ve stopped watching this, but I gather that there’s cunnilingus now. And Milking machines. Seikon no Qwaser is the very definition of the show that you don’t want on TV when your parents come into the room. More so than Bible Black. At least with that you can say – “It’s porn! All healthy boys watch it!” But with Seikon no Qwaser it’s “not” so you’re stuck with the awkward…”So…you watch this stuff…and they don’t have sex? Is there something you want to talk to me about son?”

Shiraishi Haruka (Chu Bra!)
The Osakan of the trio. She’s shy and big bodied so she kinda feels like a mix between Sakaki-san and Osaka from Azumanga Daioh. She’s not constantly putting her hands down other girl’s bras and feeling their breasts, but she’s a much better candidate than Nayu who is to my ears and eyes portrayed as being 100% straight. Just in a squishy breasts kind of way. Her soft Osakan accent helps as well – I don’t think there’s been a non-harsh Osakan since Osaka herself…Kiyono could show her a thing or two if she asked I suspect…^^;;

Nori-chan (Hidamari Sketch Hoshimittsu)
Ah, Hidamari – The most recent season is drawn really nicely compared to the previous seasons and there’s less of what I like to call “SHAFTy stuff”, so that’s a plus too. Nori-chan is the more outgoing of the two new girls and the way she coddles Nazuna (the other new girl) could be considered yuri material by some. I don’t think so, but Since everyone else is paired up (Miya/Yuno, Sae/Hiro) if they don’t get together, they’re gonna be left out!

Murasame Sumika (Sasamekikoto)
Sasamekikoto was a little disappointing, but I expected it to be as such since I’ve read the manga and figured that the slowness of the plotline wasn’t going to do any favours for an anime adaptation. The fact that Kazuma STILL hasn’t noticed Sumika’s feelings in the manga (and we’re on volume 5 now?) shows how goddamn slow it’s progressing. If Kazuma could stop “Wai” ing at all the pretty/cute girls for a second, then she’d notice how morose Sumika has become over volumes 2-5 and then maybe something would happen. Seriously. You could skip from volume 2 to 5 in this series and not miss anything crucial…

Sumika herself is the stereotypical butch one in the relationship (though you don’t really get butch women in Japan), she’s also insecure about how she sees herself and has the typical “Sakaki-complex” of tall girls wanting to be cute. I personally think they’d make a great couple – probably the most realistic of all the couples in this list. The mangaka just needs (several) kicks up the ass.

Echidna (Queen’s Blade 2)
This is reaching back a bit, but she was the most predatory of all the gay girls in Queen’s Blade. Couples wise, obviously Shizuka/Tomoe was the best, but Tomoe’s ditzyness had me a little annoyed at the end. (If she wasn’t then Shizuka would still be around, but anyway) Echidna reminded me a little of Hanazona Shizuka from the (now ancient) anime Strawberry Panic. But with a lot more of the “Fuck ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude. But I guess you’d get that if you got to be as old as she is…

Akaba Chizuru (Seitokai no Ichizon)
Not strictly yuri, but her obsession with Aka-chan’s cuteness definitely has yuri elements. In al other respects she’s just your regular long black haired, ample-chested sadist character who gets off on getting Ken to lick her boots. My favourite character is Mafuyu, though she’s more into BL and has a crush on Sugisaki. Toweringman did a great yuri sketch of Mafuyu/Minatsu though…don’t click it unless you’re into incest lesbianism…or have seen the whole of Candy Boy.

I know Kampfer also probably had some rather dodgy scenes, but I didn’t watch it OK?

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This week I managed to get a hold of an electronic version of Kamiya’s Handbook of Japaese Adjectives and Adverbs so I began compiling a list of adverbs in Japanese. The Japanese seem to use adverbs a lot – especially in speech and they can be annoying to translate since a lot of them don’t have kanji and blend in with the rest of the sentence. There are a few main types of adverbs and they can be divided into various subgroups (e.g. describing time (e.g. immediately) describing fashion (e.g. quickly) etc. etc.) However, my favourite method of dividing them up is:

1. “ri” adverbs (i.e. adverbs ending in the syllable “ri” such as “yappari”, “sukkari”, “suppari”) which are informal, almost all used with positive verbs and most of which have a double consonant sound in the middle. Their use emphasises the qualifier more than using an equivalent adjective or adverb. For example, though “micchiri” and “tsuyoku” mean “hard/earnestly”, “micchiri benkyou shite yo” is informal and has a stronger nuance than “tsuyoku benkyou shite yo” though both mean “study hard, ok?”
2. Onomatopoeia adverbs (eg. “ira ira” (irritatedly) “nuru nuru” (wetly), “beto beto” (gooey)) which are almost all repeated syllable phrases and stem originally from imagined onomatopoeia of how the adjective/adverb sounds. “sorosoro” (slowly) for example is the sound of feet scraping along tatami (supposedly). They may sound informal, but a lot are used in polite level speech “dan dan” (slowly) for example, or “masu masu” (more and more). They are easily mixed up with each other and not all of them have meanings obvious from the sound. A lot of doujin authors seem to make up new ones of these that aren’t in any dictionary as well (maybe they’re in some weird hentai only onomatopoeia dictionary somewhere)
3. Everything else (Miscellaneous adverbs falling into neither above category – e.g. “aikawarazu” (as always) “sukunai” (few), “yagate” (at last)). These are spelled with both kanji and hiragana in some cases and some are only used with negative verbs (e.g. “zenzen” (not at all)). Some require extra particles to make adverbial phrases, e.g. “hitori de” (alone), “sara ni” (furthermore). These may be split further into groups regarding “time”, “action”, “place” etc.

So as you can see, adverbs can be used to add variety and visualisation to your Japanese – if you can remember what the hell they mean. They probably play a greater part in language than in English (though we do use adverbs very frequently in descriptive English). There are a lot of adverbs that convey decidedly Japanese ideas that don’t translate well to English as well – some of which I’ve listed below.

For those of you interested in the full list, I’ve posted it on my site here:

And as promised, here are a few of my favourite adverbs…

• “aikawarazu”, “sasuga” “yappari” – adverbs that indicate that the listener conforms to the speaker’s expectations. All three of these adverbs mean similar things – “as expected of X-san” – which I think indicates what kind of society there is in Japan – i.e. a society that expects a certain level of compliance/work/politeness out of each individual.
• “sekkaku” “yatto” – adverbs that indicate that great pains have been taken to achieve something. “sekkaku” is used when great pains have been taken but the result is worse than expected – e.g. “sekkaku puresento o kaimashita ga zenzen suki dewa nai mitai desu” (I went through great pains to buy that present, but you don’t look like you like it at all). “yatto” is the same but without the negative implication.
• “ichiou” – literally “one response” but means “glancingly” if there was such a word. Indicates that the speaker has done something in passing or not thoroughly. e.g.
  A: Sensei, kyonen no ronbun, mite imashita ka? (Sensei, how was that script I gave you last year?)
  B: Aa, ano rombun ne? Ichiou miteta yo. Nakanaka ii da to omottan desu ga sukkari wasurechatta. (Ah, that paper? I glanced at it, thought it was good then completely forgot all about it)
• “Tashika ni” – Perhaps, taking the current situation under consideration” – extremely useful phrase in conversation when you don’t have anything to say. Short for “Tashika ni sou da ne” or “tashika ni warukatte ne” or a whole host of useful responses. Almost as useful as “taihen sou da ne” (that sounds terrible).
• “betsu ni … nai” – “nothing in particular” – you’ve probably heard this one a lot. “betsu ni” is usually short for “betsu ni kangaete inai” or “betsu ni shite inai” (I’m not thinking/doing anything in particular) implying that there’s something to hide or that they’re just wasting time. Similar to English kids’ “Nuffin’” in response to the same question.
• “peko peko” (hungry) – because it’s supposed to be the onomatopoeia for the feeling you get in your stomach when you’re hungry. Funny, I always thought it was “GRUUUOOOOAHHHHH”
• “waku waku” (excited) – used in speech more than other adjectives meaning the same thing. Isn’t actually strictly onomatopoeia, since it comes from the verb “waku” (to boil/become excited). Also the sound of people moving their arms up and down like a chicken when they’re excited.
• “Tappuri” (full/bursting with) – Virtually every soft drink in Japan is “tappuri” with something – Vitamin C, Vitamin E, collagen, lemons, strawberries, partially rehydrogenated corn starch, you name it.
• “kekkyoku” (in the end) gets used a lot in anime – usually in the last scene where all the episode’s misunderstandings get resolved – conveniently within 20 minutes. I like it because the kanji mean literally “connecting institution”

and finally…

• “mamonaku” (in a short while) purely because every day at the station “mamonaku san-ban sen ni densha ga mairimasu”
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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/these-are-a-few-of-my-favourite-err-adverbs/feed/ 3 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-7-nice-places-in-japan-1/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-7-nice-places-in-japan-1/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:46:44 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=839 I got a call from the wife a while ago while she was at work saying that she had some “news” that she had to tell me at home. Turns out that she’s getting to fly out to Okinawa (for free) to do some bird catch and release for a week. You don’t have to guess how jealous I was ^^;;

The island she was going to was Ishigaki-jima, one of the further islands from Okinawa, accessible by plane or by ferry from the main island. When we got to go there a few years ago, we had some great memories of the place (more so, in fact, than Iriomote, which we “had” to go to because of Azumanga related obvious reasons). This has kind of inspired me to write about places in Japan which I think are the best places to go. As a British person, I despise tourist traps, concrete monstrosities, souvenir shops, hordes of day-trippers with SLRs and especially the Japanese habit of ranking holiday destinations in order of popularity(so you can go to the one where there are the most other people of course)… So you can kinda guess what kind of list this is going to be…Oh, and I decided not to pepper this post with my holiday snaps just so you won’t get bored…

Okinawa


This is actually Ishigaki-jima…it’s a wonder that Japanese people prefer to go to Hawaii on holiday with this gem still technically a domestic flight away

To be honest, this isn’t strictly Japan, but if you count Hawaii part of the US, then I guess it’s fair. Since Okinawa is flipping miles away from Japan (though Tokyo-to’s Ogasawara islands are further south), it’s rare to go there on a trip to Japan (Needless to say they’re not included on a JR pass). However, there are other offers you can take advantage of as a foreigner – Both ANA and JAL offer foreigner trip discounts which basically work out at two flights for the cost of one (about 25000 yen).

Okinawa Honto (the main island) is lovely, but you really have to head out of the main city Naha to find the nice spots. we ended up taking a random bus out to a beach and I got horribly sunburnt ^^. There’s also lots of grisly reminders of WWII if you’re into that sort of thing. Ishigaki-jima is such a great place I highly recommend you fly out/boat out there, but be careful not to get the schedules mixed up like we did and get stranded there! (I had to book an emergency flight to Okinawa Honto to catch our flight back!). The people are so laid back and the weather is so balmy that it makes for the perfect tropical paradise…Also, it has wonderful beaches. We cycled 10km across the island to the main beach and took our bikes on the last bus back. The driver stopped to pick up some pineapples from a roadside stand and then went round to the boot to get out an enormous machete…but luckily the only thing that ended up beheaded were the pineapples.

Iriomote is nice too, but is more of a day-trip place, since it’s difficult to stay there and the forest is protected so you can’t wander there by yourself without permission. Needless to say we got stranded there too and needed to hitch a lift back to the harbour to catch the last ferry back to Ishigaki O_o…The youth hostel is hilarious – you’ll get a picture of you looking stupid in the regional garb and drinking the local (head meltingly strong) brew – Awamori (a bit like shochu).

Yakushima


Green parts? In Japan? You’d have to go a long way for that! And indeed – you do.

Working our way north, Yakushima is a huge round island just south of Kagoshima, on the southern tip of Kyushu. It’s subtropical and bears the dubious crown of the rainiest area of Japan (a bit like the Lake District in the UK, but with more monsoons). It’s also the worst affected by typhoons. However, this pales in significance when you realise that most of the island is covered with lush cedar forest with enormous trees hundreds of years old groaning from mountain plateaus poking their heads through the steam. It’s really quite a magical place. The people are really friendly here too – we ended up asking at the tourist information centre and they took us to an old man’s house which he had recently converted into a wooden extension for accommodation – amazingly comfortable private room for 3500 yen a night I remember O_o… I think things get cheaper the further you get from Tokyo…

Anyway, we spent a day hiking around the mountain and looking at the cedars (the bus had to stop for a while because of monkeys on the road), but if I went back I’d really like to spend a couple of days in the forest hiking up to see the oldest tree – Jomon sugi which is right in the centre of the island on top of the mountain surrounded by two waterfalls…

Sakurajima


This is the onsen at Furosato onsen hotel – obviously I didn’t take this one since it would be foolish to take your camera into the bath and rude to take pictures of bathing people…

This one is a little out of character, as it’s quite well developed and concretey but it’s such an awesome place that it deserves a mention. Sakurajima is actually a volcano (and an island), sitting in an inlet near Kagoshima in Kyushu. It’s the most active volcano in Japan and one of the most active in the world. It used to be a complete island, but an enormous eruption in 1914 joined it to the mainland. The area around it is hilariously overpopulated, with Kagoshima (pop. 700000) only a few km away as well as several thousand people living around the volcano itself. The volcano erupts (minorly) about 200 times a year and ash spews from the tip pretty much constantly. However, this means that the soil is really fertile and they grow ridiculously huge radishes (sakurajima daikon) and ridiculously small mikan here.

Being an active volcano, there are tons of onsen here. The one we went to was our first onsen and is still my favourite. Furosato onsen is in a hotel but the onsen itself is a shrine to a local dragon god, so you have to wear white dressing gowns around the onsen itself. The bath is mixed (these are in decline in Japan nowadays, unfortunately) and overlooks the ocean. It was a really overcast day but the rain was holding itself back – watching the moody waves crash against the side of the onsen was a rather surreal experience…

The cheapest place to stay in Sakurajima is the stupidly huge youth hostel – an enormous concrete monstrosity with about 200 rooms just north of the docks. When we stayed there it was eerily quiet – I don’t suppose there were more than 5 guests in the whole place!

Nagasaki

I never thought I’d put a town in here, but if there’s one town that you should visit in Japan, Nagasaki is it. It’s not urbane and sprawling like the other large towns and cities – heavily influenced by the West, Nagasaki has ended up stretching thinly along the West coast of Kyushu (something that probably spared it from some of the destruction from the atomic bomb) and is host to lots of lovely tiny little back streets lining canals, Western and Japanese style gardens, random churches and parks. Obviously there’s also the obligatory atomic bomb museums and memorials, but if you really want to see these, you’re better off in Hiroshima where it’s the defining featuer of the city. Nagasaki also has a lovely little streetcar system which is fantastic for getting around (as it’s surprisingly far to a lot of the main attractions). The only one rivalling it in Japan is probably the one in Hakodate (Hokkaido)

Oh, and the youth hostel is small and really friendly as well.

TBC

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-7-nice-places-in-japan-1/feed/ 1 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/saki-only-doujinshi-event-review-kiyosumi-oasis-kawasaki-shi/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/saki-only-doujinshi-event-review-kiyosumi-oasis-kawasaki-shi/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:23:49 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=843

I was really looking forward to this weekend as I had picked up a flyer a while back that said there was going to be a Saki only doujinshi event in Kawasaki-shi (10 minutes south of Tokyo) which promised to be a lot smaller and less crowded than Comiket. The poster said that there were only 20 spaces for vendors and that there would be events and an “after event”…

So happily, we trotted down t Kawasaki-shi on a lovely sunny Sunday – found the venue without much problem (The Kawasaki-shi Centre for Industrial Promotion) and took the lift up to the 4th floor to be greeted with what seemed like a wall of people. The first difference to Comiket became evident in that you had to pay a 500yen entry fee per person for the courtesy of buying things from the event, though you did get a nice catalogue and presumably you could get entrance tickets for less before the event.

The event itself was a single room, and I found out later from reading the catalogue that at the last minute they’d increased the number of vendors from 20 to 50 on demand (that being why it was so crowded). By the time we’d fought our way through the crowds for the first time in a flurry of doujinshi and 1000yen notes we’d seen all the booths and it was barely 10:45 (It started at 10:00am). The only booth to sell out before we got there was Hakka-ya, though since their doujins always get scanned I wasn’t too bothered about that. Vista was also there and had a new copy-bon out (They work hard! They had a new doujin out for FuyuKomi). We also ended up buying a rather nice wallscroll of Nodoka who had (surprisingly) normal sized breasts – though I believe the artist is female, so that might be why…

And so now for the other highlights and lowlights of the convention.

1. The cosplayers – being mainly men in drag, served mainly to disturb rather than admire. Particularly the Touka/Hajime combo could run for ugliest cosplayers any day…There were two female cosplayers, a Yumi with her own hair dyed highlights of purple which was nice, though she didn’t look anything like Yumi; and a Kanbara with great hair…though the girl was short and would probably have been better off doing Hajime or Koromo…


I pressed reload table when there were still tiles on the table and it jammed…Lawl.

2. The Mahjong tournament! They had an automatic table! While I was in the UK, a friend and I constantly debated whether these existed (I thought they must do) and there was one in the flesh. Unfortunately, since the buttons weren’t labelled, I pushed a couple and secretly broke the machine. I didn’t find this out until they started playing the tourney and pressed the exchange buttons and the tiles jammed ^^;; Needless to say it was fixed and I was not in the least bit suspected…
3. Tacos! They had a taco vendor outside, but unfortunately I found out too late that you had to apply for tacos in the convention and get a taco ticket, which seemed to be so that all the people walking by wouldn’t buy up all the tacos. Just for the record, they weren’t real tacos, since they were made using soft tortillas which are WRAPS. Typical Japanese nomenclature mistake though…
4. Hand holding up queues! I still don’t understand these – According to the signs they were holding, they were queueing for the more busy booths, but at the same time they were queueing, I (and a lot of other people) were just pushing our way to the booths and buying the stuff – you know, au-naturelle. I really don’t understand what they were queueing for…a new item? Limited edition goods? Maybe someone can enlighten me on this…

Anyway, we escaped the mahjong tournament before someone realised that the gaijin had sabotaged the only automatic mahjong table to find that on the ground floor some Japanese schoolchildren were having a piano recital so we sat in and watched that for some free entertainment (very cute dresses). For our patience we were treated to a (slightly mangled) rendition of “Brave new World” from Disney’s Aladdin. I was sad to see that there was no Nobuo Uematsu on the schedule though…

So that was my first small convention – packed, small and like mini Comiket, though you pay to get in and the prices of the doujins themselves are generally cheaper. Oh and here’s my haul…


Left – Nodoppai wallscroll. Right, clockwise from top left: Kaju/Momo – Cute doujin where they’re sleeping on the roof and reminiscing about their dreams. Hisa/Mihoko – Cute but nothing much else type doujin. Kaju/Momo by Vista – Yumi and Momoko share a moment in the clubroom invloving Yumi’s oppai. Kaju/Momo light novel by Amaranth – yet to pluck up the courage to start translating. Kaju/Momo mini doujin mainly with cute art and mini strips. Hisa/Mihoko and Kaju/Momo doujin mainly centering on Hisa/Mihoko and what Hisa is doing after graduation – Significant “MIHOKO IS MAI WAIFU” ending.

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/saki-only-doujinshi-event-review-kiyosumi-oasis-kawasaki-shi/feed/ 1 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/nanoha-za-movii-faasto-opinions/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/nanoha-za-movii-faasto-opinions/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:39:14 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=841

You may or may not know this (depending on how many Nanoha news groups you read), but the 1st Nanoha movie has just come out in Japan (the premiere was last Saturday I think). So I was naturally very excited (being an enormous Nanoha fan) and even more excited that it was going to be based on the first season (which is naturally the best, with Nanoha/Fate goodness and no pointless added characters or Kansai-ben, tsundere pink haired knights or pseudo-German-named hammer-mauls). Here’s what I thought…

The movie is about 2 hours long (I lost track) and the Japanese is rather easy to follow (except when the TSAB shows up and starts spouting about rifts in the space-time continuum, of course…). It basically covers the storyline of the first season of Nanoha from episodes 1-13 with additional backstory of Precia and Fate outlining how Precia went mad and why she hates Fate so much…

The storyline is compressed but not losing the main points – Yuuno shows up, loses mightily to a crap levelled Jewel-seed fuelled beastie and gets discovered by Nanoha and friends. That night she’s already transformed into a magical girl (complete with reworked transformation sequence – thankfully without that rather fetching pink-hue that it previously had) and by the end of it she’s already using Divine Shooter and Yuuno’s eyes are already popping out of his head. The fast development of Nanoha’s fighting skills is explained in part by giving Raising Heart a bit more dialogue – supposedly training Nanoha a little in the magical arts while she’s having class and such. The very next battle, Fate shows up and the whole Jewel seeds storyline kicks off.

The storyline as a whole doesn’t change that much. The characters are the same, but somehow Fate seems more kind and a bit more wistful, there is a bit more electricity between Nanoha and Fate, especially in the closing scene and, most importantly, the entire battle sequences have been reworked. The final battle especially between Nanoha and Fate was almost completely unrecognisable – When Fate pummels Nanoha with Phalanx Shift she doesn’t even pause for the spell activation phrases and Nanoha looks a lot more the worse for wear afterwards. The Starlight Breaker magic is even explained (Fate exclaims that it’s “absorbtion magic” – i.e. that it absorbs used magic from the battlefield) and the animation sequence for it is amazingly well done.



The one qualm I have with it is that reading the comics (you can get them over at MangaUpdates), they pose a lot of unanswered issues. The first is why Nanoha is so lonely at home on her own and really wants a close friend that she finds in Fate. This is alluded to in the movie, but never addressed – we know that Nanoha’s family is a jetsetting team of crimefighters (see Triangle Heart), so she must get left on her own a lot, but she has friends (Arisa and Suzuka get precious little screentime in the movie, poor girls) so it’s hard to see why she would be so lonely. Maybe the following comics will explain… The second issue was that Precia in the comics was undoubtedly rather obsessed and mad as in the anime, but by a couple of chapters Linnith (the cat familiar she creates to take care of Fate) seems close to breaking through to her and Precia is showing at least a little trace of humanity. I was waiting for that trace to show in the movie, but it never did – which is a shame, because I think that it would have made Precia more than your traditional insane 2-dimentional villain…

In conclusion, the movie was a really good watch, if not for the lack of new material the fighting sequences and polished animation really shine and there is a good dose of Nanoha/Fate magic to be had for those looking out for it. It just remains for me to pose the question – why do animation sompanies bring out “remake” movies rather than movies that fill in gaps in the plot. I’m sure the storyline that is most yearned for amongst Nanoha fans is “what the hell happened between A’s and StrikerS” – namely Nanoha growing up, telling Arisa and Suzuka, her and Fate becoming an item, her accident and all the events surrounding it, why Fate ended up in the Special corps, so on and so forth. However, if this first movie is anything to go by, then “Nanoha ZA MOVII – SEKONDO-” will probably be a reworking of the A’s storyline! Is it just left up to the OVAs to fill in the gaps?!

Oh, there’s a Haruhi movie coming out soon too I hear – perhaps I can test this theory…is it just going to be a marathon of the first season in the right order, I wonder…

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/nanoha-za-movii-faasto-opinions/feed/ 5 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/winter-anime-review-i-dont-like-anything-this-season/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/winter-anime-review-i-dont-like-anything-this-season/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:45:45 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=834 I don’t think it’s happened to me for a good long time, but a combination of the winter season being slim pickings and some rather insufferable attempts at animation, I have to say there really is nothing to hook my fancy this season at all (T_T). Actually, that’s a lie. I do quite like Hidamari Sketsh~Hoshimittsu~.

Let’s go through all the offerings shall we?


Dance in the Vampire Bund

Despite the awesome name and (apparently) awesome source material, Dance in the Vampire Bund started off with a talkshow episode. Kurogane hated this interpretation, but we rather liked it, since we’re forced to watch Japanese talk shows whenever we turn on the TV and its ALL SO TRUE. And at the end, Mina kills a vampire using her MIND CRUSH. Which is fairly awesome. But then in episode 2, for some reason we get a boring school scene with a spine-tinglingly cheesy amnesia storyline where Mina stalks Akira in a scary way, then falls over and gets naked. Apparently her MIND CRUSH powers don’t work on attack helicopters. Or other vampires. Or maybe past episode 1. Evangeline A.K. MacDowell could so kick her ass.

Protagonist weakness factor: 3 – Akira is actually quite cool. If only he hadn’t got “amniesia”.


Ookamikakushi

(Really annoying) boy goes to a new area where everyone is (creepily) nice to him and he gets arm-raped by a tomboy with short hair. The only awesome part was when purple-haired girl got her scythe out. Seriously, can mangaka NOT do an awesome demon storyline without attaching a stupid school life seinen one to it as well?!

Protagonist weakness factor: 8 – No confidence, gets arm-raped and is probably the wettest protagonist this season.


Omamori Himari

(Annoyingly voiced) boy gets visited by a cat monster that turns into a (improbably busty) Japanese beauty who must now protect him at all times from demons (apparently including lolis in swimsuits). This ticks all the boxes for an acceptable harem anime – Flat-chested osananajimi, Big busty new girl moving in on her territory, swimsuits in the second episode, monsters that are actually cute girls or lolis and a maid that looks a lot like Asahina Mikuru. Now if only the protagonist wasn’t so annoyingly voiced, I could take his claims to chivalry more seriously. And there’s the “Kanokon syndrome” as I will now call it – a teenage boy getting hit on by an improbably beautiful woman and NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE?! Puh-leese.

Protagonist weakness factor – 6 – He’s not that bad, at least he’s not as wet as the guy in Ookamikushi. But come on, she seriously wants you, at least hit it once! Maybe he’s a secret lolicon.


Chu-Bra!

I was kinda waiting for this one, as I’ve been reading Comic High, but I was a little disappointed (though seinen type anime like this are often really slow). By episode 2 there isn’t much to recommend it by, and nothing’s really happened except that there have been a lot of (achingly slow to resolve) misunderstandings. Nayu is a rather improbable lingerie-fetishist trying to push her “interests” on her friends in school by making an underwear club. However, according to love, she hasn’t said anything incorrect yet, so boys can really learn about the ins and outs of women’s underwear by watching the show! benkyou ni nattayo ne!

Protagonist weakness factor – 3 – Nayu is one of those irresistably kind but dream headed girls who probably don’t exist in reality. Well, not if they’re also lingerie monsters as well…

Ladies Vs. Butlers

I’ve been forbidden to watch this, even though it has naked nipples. Mainly because love has hated butler animes since Hayate no Gotoku


Seikon no Qwaser

Oh how crap was this. I watched episode one because I was aware that there was some controversy surrounding the censorship of the nipple sucking, but no-one quite prepared me for the absolute crapness that ensued around it. First and foremost, White-haired-emo-scar-guy who could control iron. Could you be more of a jerk? He’s not even that good looking, so he could have easily been a girl and pulled off the tsundere angle, but no – they went for the cold bishie guy instead. Rubbish. Biri-biri could so kick your ferrous ass. And the “baddie”? Who in their right mind would pick Magnesium if they had the choice of all the elements. Even if I was limited to the low numbers I would definitely pick Carbon and throw buckyballs and carbon nanotubes at people. Is the premise that the more powerful someone is the higher atomic number element they can control? Are we going to see the uber-baddie control Lawrencium or Seaborgium or something?

Uarrgh! Bad science makes me twitch!

Protagonist weakness factor: 3 – Mafuyu is fine as a protagonist – protective older sister types are done and dusted though.


Hidamari Sketch ~Hoshimittsu~

Well, it’s more of the same as the previous 2 seasons, but with two new characters, the loner and future NEET Nazuna and the computer geek and not-quite-genki-as-Miyako Nori. If you liked Hidamari Sketch before, it’s more of the same. Watchable, ignorable, cute, SHAFTy.

Protagonist weakness factor: 4 – Yuno is rather amusing at times though. Otonappoi ni naritai ne.

Others

I’m not sure yet of whether I approve of the new arc in Railgun yet, as I was quite looking forward to Kuroko going goggle eyed at all the Mikoto-onee-samas. As long as it doesn’t go all head fuck I think anything will be fine if Mikoto gets to go uber-railgun and Kuroko gets to smother her with her love afterwards. Hanamaru Kindergarten looks kinda cute, in a Animal Yokocho kind of way, so if I get completely bored I might check it out. Quiz I am boycotting myself because it’s YET ANOTHER SCHOOL SEINEN. Sigh. Do something original people, please…

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/winter-anime-review-i-dont-like-anything-this-season/feed/ 9 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-6-a-collection-of-strange-and-wonderful-things/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-6-a-collection-of-strange-and-wonderful-things/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:30:15 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=831

For lack of better things to write about, I wanted to make a list of all the strangest things that I’ve seen in Japan so far this visit…Also included is “strange drinks you can find in vending machines!”

Around town

1. A mother breaking my cycling with stupid things record with three children (all about primary school age) on the same bike (two on the back, one on the front, all with helmets and strapped into chairs). Crazy.
2. A man whose job it is to straighten up all the bikes in the free public bike park by the station after all the commuters pile in and shove their bikes in any old how. I say hi every morning.
3. Being shown the room catalog for a fetish hotel by the grandmother-age lady proprietor. I could never get used to that…
4. Following a single, 20-ish year old woman alone down a dimly lit alleyway in Shinjuku for 400 yards and her not even turning round once to check who I was. Japanese people are far too trusting.
5. Being served sashimi from a fish, the rest of which was still moving on the plate. Apparently that’s a good sign it’s fresh.
6. Watching Cinderella and Pinocchio on tiny TV screens while eating Japanese curry in Tokyo tower.
7. Enormous (1-2 hour long) queues outside the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme. They’re doughnuts, people! NOt gourmet food!
8. The fact that you often see people buying things from vending machines, but very rarely see them actually drinking them. In fact, there seems to be an unspoken rule not to eat or drink openly on public transport (I guess that’s why most anime characters sit down to drink their vending machine coffees). Doesn’t stop me though…
9. Seeing a transsexual/transvestite couple on the train – you had to look closely and listen to them, but the “man” was a spotty boyish girl and the “girl” was a tall, effeminate boy in a skirt. Actually, the boy was particularly convincing. Also, saw a transvestite man in a skirt suit going to work on the morning commute. They’re not all that common in England, I have to say.
10. Really old tramps. Like, tramps who have been tramps all their life. Professional tramps if you will. They sleep around Shinjuku station and under the bridge near Seibu Shinjuku. All the tramps in the UK are quite young – made homeless through drugs or other unfortunate circumstances. They probably die quite young but here, they live on and on…
11. Hundreds of people doing a job that would be done by two people…in the same amount of time – for example, around 10 engineers fixing a (short) escalator. For hours. Or 5 people directing traffic where it’s obvious where cars should go. Or at Comiket tons of people acting as barriers holding sticks. Could you not afford Tensabarrier(TM)?
12. Housewives drawing enormous sums of money from cash machines to put into other cash machines to pay the monthly bills (thereby avoiding the nominal transfer charge for transferring money from bank to bank – about 200yen)
13. Cat cafes! – Cafes you can (pay to) go to to sit and drink a (normally priced) cup of coffee. Sort of like a host bar but for people who are more of an animal persuasion…
14. People in parks walking their animals – Not so strange, you might think, but we have seen at least two people walking cats (without leads) and one person in Yoyogi koen with three cute lop-eared bunnies. Seemed quite difficult to catch them though…

Drinks and Things

1. Soba tea. Ugh

2. Black bean tea. Uugh.

3. Corn soup in a can. (actually this is quite nice)

4. Bean soup in a can (Shiruko) – I don’t wanna know what this tastes like…

5. Tangerine jelly in a can. Yay! Jelly in a can!! Note the coffee jelly in a can to the left of it.

6. The tissue packets given out a Comiket – Just that little bit bigger than the usual size – Man-sized you might say, for activities that men do. At home. After Comiket.
7. Fried chicken cartilage flavoured crisps. These appeared in my research lab one day. They havent been eaten yet.
8. Turmeric flavoured tea (doesn’t taste of anything)
9. A whole pig intestine in a ball (available at all good supermarkets), looking rather like an alien brain of some kind.
10. Probiotic toothpaste – we got this for free at my research lab and it kinda tastes like what you don’t want your mouth to taste of in the mornings. Obviously. And then your teeth feel worse in the mornings. Someone obviously hasn’t done their homework…

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-6-a-collection-of-strange-and-wonderful-things/feed/ 8 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-report-status-of-your-porns/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-report-status-of-your-porns/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:49:25 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=828

So I thought that I would write a short post on how trends in the doujinshi world seem to be developing, according to my limited view of browsing Toranoana and Comiket 77…

Parodies

Touhou is especially going strong at the moment (though it’s been pretty constant for the last year or so). Shijima visited the Touhou section on C77 day 2 and said it was a warzone, though I avoided it like the plague (mainly because I don’t really recognise the characters…). In Toranoana Akiba there is an entire floor dedicated to Touhou doujinshi (and sections of the other floors as well.) I myself am not entirely sure what makes Touhou so drawable for doujinshi writers – it’s not like the mythology is as well detailed as a manga or visual novel… There are a wealth of characters (all female) I suppose, and every fetish under the sun is catered for – Mikos, witches, ghosts, lolis, huge breasts and such. I guess you’ll have to ask the team at Wings of Yuri what it is about the series that makes it worth translating!

K-ON! is still going strong too – it was the last big thing and with talk of a season 2 confirmed, I think the next Comiket will be another “everyone does another K-ON doujin year”. Not enough yuri though, despite the fact that there are no men in the entire series. I do get tired of random men raping Mio doujinshi…

Saki has a lot of doujinshi following, and unfortunately it seems that Kyoutaro as well as the usual faceless male cock frames are getting a lot of action… There’s a few futanari doujinshi but yuri doujinshi are few and far between. Hakka-ya released a few at C77 though and they’re already on line at Tokyo Toshokan. There is a Saki only event in Kawasaki-shi (aptly named) at the end of January which I’m planning to go to that looks like there should be a wealth of Saki yuri, but we’ll see…

Nanoha is the series of the moment though…The doujinshis never really stopped since the series ended, with big circles like STUDIO HUAN continuing to pump out the Nanoha material, the fanbase never really died. With the release of the movie this January (I’M SO EXCITED!!!) C77 had an entire section of the West wing devoted to Nanoha doujins (which all the otaku in the East wing failed to find, it seemed) More Nanoha/Fate yuri please! There’s also a Nanoha only event coming up, but I might give it a miss unless it looks awesome…

Of the other themes, Hatsune Miku of Vocaloid is still poking around, Bayonetta makes her first (inevitable) appearance, ahead of the Japanese game release, no less… Queen’s Blade is all the more popular after the second season of boob fighting and To aru Kagaku no Railgun is really popping up everywhere (though relatively little Kuroko/Mikoto)… Bakemonogatari seems to be mainly taken up by the bigger groups (T2 artworks, most notably) – maybe the characters fit less well with random rapings and deserve a bit of pampering?

The old favourites such as Dragon Quest (why?), One Piece and Evangelion are still supported as much as before, though Bleach and Haruhi support seems to have gone down (especially after that abysmal second season). There was also relatively little Full Metal Alchemist, even though Brotherhood is currently being shown…I guess the lack of good female bodies counts for something…They showed up a lot in the Yaoi section though, believe me. And also disappointingly for me – no Seitokai no Ichizon yet. sigh…

Fetishes

Rape lovers will be pleased to know that their favourite fetish will never die – there’ll always be sufficient fap material involving girls getting raped by nameless and faceless men (who generally get reduced to semi transparent cocks) and covered with copious quantities of sperm.

Yaoi – still going, please ask someone who actually paid attention on Day 1 and 2…or find a fujoshi.

Yuri – I think there is a slow but sure rise in the yuri genre, but nowhere near the level that the fujoshi set with their gay boys…The queue at Fujieda Miyabi’s stand was immense (he’s currently doing K-ON! mostly, I believe) and a lot of Nanoha material is of the yuri persuasion. There is a lot of yuri support for certain couples – Konata/Kagami in Lucky star is still being drawn for example. Kuroko/Mikoto of Railgun fame may not get many doujinshi, but there are at least 3 volumes of collections of yuri material on sale in Melon Books (of various quality…) Girl’s Love Festival is also coming up in March and I intend to go! If anyone wants anything there they’d better tell me!

Futanari – There’s definitely a penchance for mangaka to spoil a good yuri story with inserting some cock – especially when it’s not well drawn. However, the classic futanari mangaka are still going – Behind Moon put out a new Angel Beats book in C77, Rebis is (still) continuing his “Prina” series, but Arsenothelus (his circle) have taken a couple of new artists under their wing – namely Sengoku (who draws beautiful, yet improbably proportioned futanari women). Hinemosutari continue to improve with their original works and last but not least there’s no comment to describe the awesomeness of the new Askray (which is still not online, I don’t think…)

So here are a list of festivals I am going to in the next few months:

January 31st – Kiyosumi Oasis (Saki)
March 28th – Girl’s Love Festival 3
April 11th – Sunshine Creation 47
May 4th – Futaket 6

More for my own reference than anything else…-_-

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-report-status-of-your-porns/feed/ 7 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-3-real-shopping-begins/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-3-real-shopping-begins/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:06:56 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=825
Approximately 1/10 of the people waiting to get in at 7:30am

So perhaps a shorter post about Comiket day 3 – somehow I caught something between day 1 and day 2, so I didn’t sleep at all last night and felt pretty crappy when I got up at 6 am to start off to the Big Sight…

Completely different sight to arriving at 11am yesterday – by 7:30am when I arrived there were already hordes of people sitting in little squares in front of the Big sight and two enormous queues 12-15 people wide stretching 500 metres down the main walkway away from the Big Sight towards Aomi station. I asked a steward where the East Halls queue was and he replied that they weren’t letting anyone else in the East halls queue at the moment so we were shepherded around the corner to form yet another 500m long line where we stood waiting… Shijima from Wingsofyuri was probably somewhere in one of the squares sitting down somewhere.

So there I waited for 2 and a half hours. It wasn’t bad, sitting half on my bag, half on the floor with my Seitokai no Ichizon manga for company and my copy of Link’s Awakening (which I was stuck on and couldn’t get any further), listening to the few episodes of “I’m Sorry I haven’t a clue” that I had left on my MP3 player. They do their best to keep you interested – at 9:20 the line moved a little, then in little portions towards the main stairway where we stood, poised, until at last at 10am, someone started clapping and the line started moving.


The view from the top of the steps, Day 3

Even taking into account the tunnel of horrors, I was still in the East halls by 10:20am, so I don’t think it really matters a great deal if you’re not looking to get the limted edition gear…I headed to A-20 first for Askray, I was a bit scared since he was an outside booth, but the queue was only 2 people long in the end. Then I hit the interesting snag which makes Comiket like a mosh pit.

For some reason, the Comiket committee choose to put all the ero hon in the East halls, which is where 95% of the people in Comiket on day 3 want to go. The West halls, in contrast, are relatively empty, filled as they were with a few ero hon (Nanoha themed), Key and Leaf fanbooks and the leftover yaoi from day 1 and 2. Why they do not spread the material out is beyond me. Secondly, they chose this day to close at least 3 of the 6 doors in East halls, so that all the people coming in and out of the sides were shepherded through a narrow causeway between the end booths and the wall. Amusingly, the queue for Arsenothelus was the only queue I’ve had to fight to get in to…I’m going to guess that there weren’t enough stewards to guard the remaining doors (of course, you need at least 10 per door, to say “migi ni detekudasai” and “kochira ni hairanaidekudasai”)

So anyway, most people are pretty polite, but there are the odd few who push through crowds with their lists in a “MUST BUY ALL MY PORN” kind of way which pisses me off. It’s only porn, man!

So anyway, after hitting the (nearly empty) corporate booths I was knackered so I retired to the East halls balcony to check my wares and wait for Shijima. She found me there wearing my brown nekomimi today (the other half’s suggestion) and we went for coffee. End of Winter Comiket 2009!


Haul! – Top row – Mutsuya (For someone else)
Middle Row L to R – Isago Jou (copy bon, but cheap), Hinemosutari (I swear he keeps getting better with each one) Behind Moon (No oversize in this one, so a little plain) Kesson Shoujo Memories 3 (4 previous Kesson shoujo books in 1 – a good deal…)
Bottom row – Radiohead (no scat, always a bonus) Arsenothelus (Not Rebis! Actually half is done by Sengoku so art is rather good) Senya Sabou (Maybe I’d rather have got his recent Fate/Nanoha one, but there was a long queue and I was rushed) Askray! (Lots of Buchou, so awesome, if short. Pity he didn’t finish the next one before Winter Comi…)

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-3-real-shopping-begins/feed/ 3 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-2-report/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-2-report/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:19:07 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=819
A slightly scaled down queue to get in

So missing out the fact that I avoided day 1 and apparently missed all the Saki yuri doujinshi (shimatta!!), I decided to go on day 2 – not exactly to shop, but to scout the place out and also to walk along to Oedo Onsen Monogatari to see whether they are open tomorrow (we were planning to go along after I’m done with Comiket and have a nice relaxing bath – and hopefully not missing the last train on New Years Eve while we were at it…) They are incidentally, so we’re going. Then maybe going to Hanezono Jinja in Shinjuku for Hatsumode in the evening…

So I decided to go along to the site at 11am, since I heard that it only takes about an hour to get in at this time. However, as I arrived at the Rinkai line station (Kokusai Tenjijo), I was surprised that the queue had already progressed to halfway up the plaza and actually I ended up walking straight in…
I went to West halls first because there were supposedly a lot of yuri circles there, but by the time I got there, the circles were already out of their new material and there were relatively few people in the West halls…(by relatively, I mean “lots” of course.)


A slightly scaled down Corridor of Horrors

So due to my own mistake I had to navigate the “corridor of horror” joining the East and West halls (Tokyo Big Sight architects obviously didn’t foresee people actually needing to get from the West side to the East side in large numbers…Thankfully, it was winter and there weren’t that many people, so it was only a mildly unpleasant experience, but in total it did take about half an hour to get there…Note to self – use East halls entrance tomorrow.


Some miscellaneous yaoi

In the East halls, they had joined together all the halls on each side to form two long halls straddling the central gangway. The content was fairly disappointing – unless you like Touhou or yaoi of course… in total, probably about one hall of the two was dedicated to yaoi circles, half a hall to Touhou doujinshi and the other half to Doujin soft, Doujin music and a small amount of crafts and merch.


Comiket from the sky

I thought that my money was better spent on the non-Touhou stuff that will emerge tomorrow, so I exited and went over to Oedo Onsen instead, had lunch in Venus Fort (amongst pairs of girls and couples galore), got to the second stage in Time Crisis 4 for the first time with the money I saved from not riding the (stupidly expensive) Yurikamome monorail and then ambled back to meet Shijima, though we somehow missed each other completely, even though we were probably standing at the same station in exactly the same place… Oh well, better luck tomorrow!

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/comiket-day-2-report/feed/ 2 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-5-differences/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-5-differences/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:30:28 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=817 When I came to Japan for the first time, I thought that the lifestyle here was really different, but now on my fourth visit and having stayed here for nearly 3 months, I can see that it’s not really that different from the UK. There are certain things that are obviously different – that there are fairly few visible foreigners and the culture of course, but there are several ways in which Japanese people differ markedly…

So I decided to write a post about what Japanese people are particularly good or bad at compared to other countries…

Things Japanese people are good at

• Hawking their wares – It’s difficult to get to work without someone from some company in a brightly coloured raincoat shoving a packet of tissues into your arms or a flyer or discount ticket for a nearby restaurant…At night, the competition gets even more fierce as the izakaya and the restaurants compete to see who can hassle the most people into going into their eating hole (I mean, how else would a restaurant on the 11th floor get any business?). Hilariously I saw a pretty girl who was getting a lot of business, but when I listened to what she was actually saying she wasn’t actually promoting the company at all, she was just shouting “I’m giving away free tissues!”
• Police doing useless jobs – I think it’s pretty safe to say – the Japanese police are completely useless at everything except perhaps looking at maps and directing you to where you need to go (and even that takes a lot of effort). Recently, the killer of Lucie Blackman (she was killed and put in a bathtub of sand a few years ago) was caught, but only because he handed himself in. Instead, the police concentrate on seemingly important duties, such as standing outside their police boxes looking useful, walking round and saying hello to people, completely failing to understand tourists asking for directions and most importantly, directing traffic, even when there are traffic lights at the same junction.
• Worrying about things that are a lot worse in other countries – Apparently according to my lab mates, about 90% of Japan has had or has swine flu. The fact that it is never tested for and the symptoms are not as severe or even remotely like normal flu doesn’t seem to perturb them – a two day cold is NOT swine flu or any other kind of flu, by the way. Lots of train companies have also put “security services” on their trains to deal with the “terrorist threat”. This would probably have been more useful after the Sarin nerve gas attacks a while back, but no matter. The fact that I’ve never once seen any of these security personnel combined with the fact that Japan is probably the easiest country in the world to be targeted (each station has about 500 coin lockers for putting bombs in, not to mention litter bins all over the place) doesn’t seem to occur to them…
• Killing themselves by jumping onto train tracks – Almost every day there’s at least 2 in Tokyo alone. Can’t people do it in a way that doesn’t make other people late for work? Please?
• Imitating other countries’ cuisine – Sometimes, it works really really well – Their Chinese food is very good, and there’s not much to complain about with their Italian eather (though the portion sizes could be bigger and they could use less potato ^^)
• Driving extremely carefully – Because the cyclists are such assholes.
• Making sure that you can buy the essentials, even at 4 in the morning – these inculde food, meat buns, beef bowl, ramen, MacDonalds, stew, alcohol, cigarettes and most importantly, pornographic magazines (note that these are on the BOTTOM shelf rather than the top, since short Japanese people would have a hard time reaching them to stock up)

Things Japanese people are bad at:

• Cycling – I’ve been through this one, but it continues to infuriate me! Though I saw a hilarious pair of schoolgirls the other day cycling the wrong way down Otakibashi Dori – one of the biggest roads in Shinjuku – one with zettai ryouki and long socks, the other riding on the back of the bike with loose socks…
• Imitating other countries’ cuisine – No, that is not how you make an Indian curry. Not anywhere else in the world, not here.
• Speaking Engrish – Though it’s better than most English people’s Japanese…According to one of the top 4 English conversational school’s  advert “A little bird told me you are birthday is just around the corner”
• Making things foreigner friendly – For some hilarious reason, the Japanese language proficiency test webpage (if you want to take the test in Japan) is all in Japanese…Well done guys – I think someone hasn’t thought this one through…or IS THE WEBPAGE THE TEST!
• Makking pretty buildings – Well, cast undecorated concrete appears to be in at the moment…
• Preserving areas of beauty without putting tourist shops and cafes all over it – Yeah I know everywhere is just as guilty, but they covered a sacred mountain with o-miyage shops for Buddha’s sake. And no, I don’t want to buy a miniature model of Mount Fuji from your souvenir stand at the top of Mount Fuji. Thank you.

I might add to these…


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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-5-differences/feed/ 6 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-autumn/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-autumn/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:16:15 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-autumn/ Well, as I write this, the autumn here is quickly turning into winter, but since nothing particularly exciting happens in winter, let’s talk about autumn instead…

The Japanese have a particular way of celebrating times of year. In just the same way we in England complain at the bad things at different times of year – In the spring it’s too rainy to go out, in the summer it’s too hot and sticky on the tube, in the autumn its rainy and there’s wet leaves everywhere and in winter the ice make the trains run hours late; Japan likes to celebrate the good things about each season. It’s probably because they have better weather.

In spring – it’s the countdown till the cherry blossoms come out (and the other flowers as well, but the cherry trees have their own particular forecast), in summer it gets dark late, so they have summer festivals, fireworks and get drunk in yukatas, in winter there’s not a whole lot, but there’s New Year’s and visiting the family in the hometown and in autumn there’s watching the leaves.

Watching the leaves turn (kouyou – literally “crimson leaves”) is as much a national pastime as hanami (cherry blossom viewing). The trees (especially the Japanese maple) have leaf turnning forecasts and city-ites commute to the countrysinde in droves (or their nearest tree containing open space) in order to sit under trees, drink amazake and take photos of the same thing they take photos of every year. Oh, and get drunk in the middle of the day. This season is helped by the fact that the weather is seasonably milder in the autumn months than at other times of the year – not as hot as summer, past the August/September monsoon season and not as cold as winter…

The colours Japanese trees turn is also beautiful. The only trees that turn red are the Japanese maples, but the other trees turn different shades of yellow and brown (though much less brown than in England thankfully) and forests are punctuated with swathes of different colours that somehow seem more romantic than a similar view back home…

The foods also change according to the season. in autumn it’s time for the yakiimo (baked sweet potato) served steaming hot and ridiculously expensively from mobile vans in the street, but also taiyaki (fish shaped pancakes with bean jam), various types of kinoko (mushroom), kuri (small sweet chestnuts) and pumpkins (kabocha). Amazake is a sweet lumpy rice pudding made from the sweetened rice pulp that is left over when they make sake (and is non-alcoholic). Convenience stores dust off their oden warmers and soon the faintly sickly smell of various fish mince boiling slowly in broth is a staple of life. (Incidentally, the best thing in oden is the little sacks of tofu with mochi – pounded rice inside…and I still don’t know what the puffy things that look like marshmallows taste like.) Shabu-shabu (sort of like “cook your own stew”) restaurants start collecting more and more chilly customers…

Here are a few more things in the I Spy guide to Japanese autumn:

- Chilly primary schoolboys in their cute officer’s hats STILL wearing shorts in temperatures below 10 degrees.
- Bakeries trying their best to incorporate all the autumn flavours into bread – baked sweet potato shaped bread anyone?
- Christmas sales – the opposite of everywhere else in the world, Japan just sees the Christmas season as another excuse to have a money off sale.
- Shinjuku and all the big shopping districts lit up with surprisingly tasteful lights.
- Little boys and girls dressed up in kimonos carrying long bags of candy on Shichigosan
- Schoolgirls STILL showing off their knees…maybe they think it’s alluring?

Hmm, I might add more to this list later…

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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-autumn/feed/ 2 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-sexual-japan/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-sexual-japan/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:54:48 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/?p=812

I’ve struggled to come up with things to write about in my Living in Japan series – mainly because my opinions haven’t really changed and I’ve probably said it all before in some post way back when in the archives…But I thought that I should at least comment on a few of the things about sexual Japan that seem important while I’m here.

So I was on the train the other day and I was patting myself on the back for being able to read a poster advertising some issue of a current affairs magazine. What really drew me to the poster in the first place was the fact that it said “SEX” (in big capital English lettering) in no less than 3 places. THe whole sentence turned out to be – “SEX – why Japanese people are not having enough of it revealed” and below (well, to the right) “I’m too small! I’m too weak! Men’s reasons for their loss of self confidence.”

In truth, Japan is not a very sexual place. I guess its the long working hours, coupled with the fact that to find employment, many couples get split up – with one (usually the husband) working away while the wife stays at home, or has a job nearer the house. That sort of arrangement can’t be good for sexual relations (however limited they might be with a son or daughter in the house). Yet as I have said on this blog time and again, Japan does come up with the most depraved pornography (and volume of it) – per head probably the most in the world. And not only that, but there is evidence of it elsewhere – the frequent fan-made pornography shows, the enormous red light districts bulging with love hotels boasting cut price cosplay outfit rentals, being accosted in the streets of Ikebukuro by a nice-looking lady who wanted me to share her umbrella (I played the “no speekee Japaneese” card”). There’s no doubt about it – at least part of the Japanese populace likes their sex.

I’ve mentioned Enjo kosai (teenage prostitution) before and it’s obvious that it still goes on, with enormous 7-8 storey buildings boasting “Telephone Club” (Place where you can call girls who are up for Enjo) in 3 foot high neon lettering, not an uncommon sight in the Love hotel districts. I don’t have any evidence about Chikan koui (fingering girls in trains), presumably for the horny older men who can’t afford to Enjo kosai. I assume it still goes on, but I’d have to poll Japanese women to find out… So what does can we conclude from this? Obviously there are a lot of frustrated older men separated from their wives around and some younger high school girls who like Prada who seem willing to fill that gap (the other part is probably filled by good old Thai prostitutes).

And there is one more piece of evidence that needs to be put forward. This month, the wife and I decided to spend some of our hard earned yen on going to the Tokyo Fetish Ball (well, it was being held just down the road after all). And needless to say it was a great show, but the one thing that really surprised me was the menbership of the society that sets this ball up every year – half foreigners. I know they want to retain a “varied membership” but aren’t there enough Japanese people into S&M to go round? Or perhaps they’re too scared to come out and admit it? And what of all the foreigners that joined – since there aren’t that many foreigners in Tokyo, the obvious conclusion is that there are a disproportionate amount of foreigners that come to Japan that are into that sort of thing. In which case, either they chose Japan because of its reputation in that sector (more likely) or Japan turns people weird (possible).

I’d like to insert here the random fact that I have not been able to find striped panties anywhere in Tokyo. Well, I have a long time left to look ^^

Conclusions

I’d like to draw all the evidence together and make some sweeping generalisations (or conclusions as I like to call them). First of all, horny men are separated from their (presumably equally horny) wives for the sake of work. Those with money hire prostitutes or find a nice high school girl who will take care of things while they’re away from home and those that don’t get it for free on the crowded commuter trains in the mornings. Meanwhile, the frustrated teenage boys who can’t get any because the girls from their age group are off banging middle aged businessmen turn to pornography resulting in the production of said material rising to the equivalent of 15000 metric tonnes per year. The other less able teenagers find foreigners who have come over to Japan because they heard it was a haven for pornography and sex and hook up with them instead.

And the horny frustrated housewives buy all the striped panties so I can never find them. The End.


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]]> http://www.yuribou.net/blog/living-in-japan-4-sexual-japan/feed/ 3 http://www.yuribou.net/blog/life-in-japan-part-3-anime-and-manga-in-japan/ http://www.yuribou.net/blog/life-in-japan-part-3-anime-and-manga-in-japan/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:10:50 +0000 yuribou http://www.yuribou.net/blog/life-in-japan-part-3-anime-and-manga-in-japan/

So I was moving house the last few days, so apologies for not updating very much…on the Yuribou-scans side of things, I’m still doing commissions, but at the moment I’ve not had the spare time aside to do other projects too.

This time I wanted to write about the part anime and manga have to play in the daily life of the Japanese. The truth is – not very much. Although Japan’s tourist board likes to hail it as the capital of animated visual culture, there isn’t really very much to see on that front as you walk around the average town. Not even in Mitaka where I work (where Miyazaki lived apparently) is there much alluding to Japan’s secret world except for the garishly constructed Mitaka Ghibli museum, of course. And the Manga cafe on the 5F of the building by the station.

Anime shows, as I’ve generally complained of before are generally scheduled for the cheap TV slots (1-4am) or have been relegated to one of several anime cable channels. The only anime you’re likely to see everyday by turning on the TV is likely to be Pokemon, Beyblade and kidsy shows, which mainly congregate on the Saturday and Sunday morning slots (and have good marketing potential).

Manga is a little more widespread – you can buy the big weekly/monthly brands such as Shonen Jump in most bookstores and newsagents/station kiosks and every bookstore has a good stock of the old stuff – you’ll often see commuters reading manga volumes on the train on the way to work…

However, outside of this, anime characters are used widely to promote everything from pachinko parlours to webmail services, cafes and travel agencies. It’s as if Japan acknowledges its anime and manga visual culture on two levels – most people are aware of it, but the depth and extent of the whole culture is a mystery to most. Anime characters are seen as both Japanese and cute, so are good objects with which to promote products. Since the Japanese absolutely adore cute things (you’ve only got to look at the Suica penguin on your commuter’s card to realise this)

Of course, the centre of this all is Akihabara, the electronics district – only a kilometer or so east of the Imperial palace the otaku reigns supreme…or they used to, anyway. Not that Akiba is no longer the centre of Japan’s otaku culture…The towering twin buildings of Comic Toranoana’s flagship stores attest to this fact. However, increasing government unrest to clamp down further on the unsavoury side of otaku culture – namely doujinshi – and a seeming dislike of this section of society in general (breaking up impromptu street mobs around cosplaying idols and the such) shows that the future plans for Akihabara in general don’t seem to include the otaku in them. Increased commercialisation of the area, especially with the completion of the Yodobashi Camera Akiba store is slowly driving out the small market stores that made up the bulk of the electronics district.

It seems clear what the Japanese government wants people to see in Akihabara – a buzzing electronics town, with super high tech gadgetry and towering shiny buildings attesting to Japan’s superior technology. Just ignore all the maid and ninja clad girls frantically throwing out flyers for various overpriced cafes, the sex toy shops and the towering shops and basements chock full of hand drawn pornography. Because that kind of grassroots culture that has been prospering for decades is embarrassing to the nation.

Well, I guess it kinda is…

Walking through Akiba today is still a liberating experience as a foreigner. Nowhere else in my experience can you push through crowds of people flipping casually through shelves of explicit pornography or eyeing up scantily clad buxom 1/2 life sized plastic models and not feel (too) out of place. I don’t think the concept of shopping points cards for pornography exists in many places in the world either. Or cat eared maid cafes.

So come to Akiba and be proud that your knowledge of the secret world of anime is – even in it’s home country – perhaps even more of a secret.

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