Adventures in Japan

Tokyoversary

Thanks for the calls and emails and actual mail mails wishing us a happy anniversary.

We did have a happy anniversary. The first anniversary, as everyone knows, is the paper anniversary. What better way to celebrate the paper anniversary than by going to a comic book convention? That's a trick question, there is no better way. It's science.

Comiket (short for Comic Market) is a comic book convention that occurs twice a year in Tokyo. It attracts about a million people.

We woke up around five in the morning on Saturday and boarded the bullet train to Tokyo. We made it to the convention centre about half an hour before the show was to open. There were a lot of people waiting around us. It looked kinda like this.



Except with more people.



And some kind of weird machine that made noises and transported something to somewhere.


Luckily, the day was overcast and not all that hot. The day before had been exceptionally hot, over forty degrees.

After waiting in line for nearly an hour we finally got to go in.

I've never actually been to a comic book convention before, but I'm pretty sure Comiket is fairly unique. It's mainly independent and self published stuff, but almost all of these indie comics are based on actual comics or movies or television shows. And on Saturday almost all the comics seemed to be about male romance. Several football fields worth of comics books and fan-zines about dudes falling in love with other dudes. It was a little surreal. And yes, most of the purchasers of these all male romantic fantasies were female.


The other big thing to do at Comiket other than buy books about the romantic adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner is to dress up like comic book characters or take pictures of people dressed up like comic book characters. That was also surreal. Cuz it wasn't just nerds with cameras taking pictures of scantily clad girls, it was also scantily clad girls taking pictures of scantily clad girls.


Our friend Paul was also at Comiket. As was Paul's friend Eric. Eric is visiting from Canada. Eric is a comic book artist. What has he done? Just a little something called Degrassi: The Next Generation. We met up with Paul and Eric and Fin(n?) (an Aussie from Brizzy) after the con and compared notes and pictures and went for a bite to eat.

There are a lot of people in Tokyo. Just a little FYI.



We finally settled on a place that had a giant sandal above the entrance, said entrance being a very small door. You had to crouch way down to get through the door, then descend some stairs past private booths, past a delicious smelling grill, finally ending up in a large room full of tables and people.


The food was good, the drink was good, the company was great. A fine time was had by all. After that we played some arcade drumming games (funny story about that: my wedding band broke) and then we (Carla and I) went off to find lodging for the evening.


Now a note on Love Hotels: in Japan there are regular hotels and love hotels. At regular hotels, you spend the night or nights. At love hotels, you can stay for one night or for a couple of hours. At a hotel, you get a small bed in a small room with a small bathroom. In the love hotel we stayed at, we got a huge bed in a big room with a big TV, a Wii, a DVD player and a Karaoke machine. Plus two jet spa bathtubs: one inside (that one also had a steam sauna) and one outside. Both bathtubs had TVs to go with them. It was awesome.

Summer Sonic

I was going to try and be cute and work the word suck into the title, like Summer Suck-ick or Summer Suck it. But those seem a little lewd and Summer Sonic didn't really suck. At least not the day I went to.

But it weren't a patch on the one from two years ago. For starters, I missed about half of the show due to work. Thems the breaks.

Also, I didn't really take a lot of pictures. And none of those that I did take were any good, so you won't be seeing any pictures of bands. You will be seeing pictures like this.



Those are people passed out at Summer Sonic. That was a fairly common sight.

The first band I saw was Bloc Party. I saw them at the last Summer Sonic, but only for one song. I saw their whole set this time. They were pretty good, but you could tell the hot Osaka sun was really hitting them hard. And the polite Japanese audience was freaking them out. Before the last song the lead singer addressed the audience with words to this effect, "This is our last song, this is your last chance to go crazy!" and the audience responded by clapping politely. Oh Japan!

After that we wandered over to see some Motorhead. That Lemmy sure is ugly.

After that we grabbed some food from the Oasis area. Also in the Oasis area: scads of bikini clad girls.

After that we took in some Cindy Lauper. That lady can sing! We got there as she was singing "Time After Time". Then she sang some song none of us knew and then Finished with "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". The place went nuts. And the place was packed. Who knew she was so popular over here? Ben was pretty upset when he heard that she had sang the Goonies theme song and he missed it.

We stayed put and saw The Cornelius Group. They had a whole audio-visual experience thing going on. It was very cool, but also very chill. My mind was engaged yet drowsy. It only perked up when I recognized a couple of the songs. Also, there were a couple of theremin solos.


After that we saw one song by The Pillows and then finished off the evening with a set from DJ Shadow and the Cut Chemist. I know that DJs aren't the most visually engaging of musical performers, but these guys knew it too. They did everything they could to liven up the experience. Before they took the stage a little instructional video aired, explaining what kind of records and equipment they used and why. It was both informative and amusing. Next, they were rolled on stage. Two guys at a long table with eight turntables. There were tons of cameras on the table as well, showing close-ups of what they were doing.

Plus videos played on the screen behind them. Their set was pretty low key to start out with, they mixed with a 45s from the 50's and 60's. But once the grooves entered the 70's, the vibe really started to pick up.

At one point they taped of a set mix on their records and then sat down and had a bite to eat. That was cute.

Their mixes were all over the place, you'd hear snippets of Queen, Elvis, Foo Fighters. Actually, that was one of my favourite parts of the set, when they let most of "Everlong" play while they messed around with the music underneath and around it.

They finished off by strapping turntables onto their chests and scratching along to "One" by Mettalica. That was a great note to end on.

I didn't get to see The Fratellis or Arctic Monkeys or the Offspring or Suicidal Tendencies but I had a pretty good time all told.

Last Weekend

This weekend is Summer Sonic. Next week is my week off. Next weekend is some kind of anniversary or another, and we are also going to Comic Ket in Tokyo. This past weekend was the Yodogawa fireworks. So that is were we went.

We grabbed the train to a station somewhere near the fireworks site. This is what greeted us there.



That's a whole lot of people waiting to leave the station. We waited with those people and then walked with those people towards the river. Gawa means river. Yodogawa. That's your Japanese lesson for the week. There were a lot of people all along the river. A lot. I've heard that around a million people usually make it out to this thing.

Here is a picture of just a small fraction of those people.



Just imagine that going on for a few kilometers on each side of the river. It was nuts. Here's another picture.



That's it for the pictures. Pictures of fireworks never turn out all that great anyways. Here is a video instead.



Sorry about the quality of the video, it was taken with my digital camera that is a few years old. But you get the idea. That went on for an hour or so, pausing only long enough to let the smoke blow away. And everywhere was people and food. Nuts.

After that, we went into Namba and saw Transformers. An evening of sound and fury.

After that we went to a small rock club. It was very loud.