Adventures in Japan

Happy Halloween and Other Bits of Old

Catch up time

There was once an anime called Gatchaman. In English speaking countries it was known as either G Force or Battle of the Planets. Ben was a big fan of that show. Ben is, by trade, a costume maker so he whipped us up some costumes for Halloween. But we didn't dress up as the heroes from Gatchaman, no we dressed up as the evil forces of Spectra.

Nobody else knew who we were either.

But we all had scads of fun.

Here is some photographic evidence.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a single good picture of the group of us all dressed up.


Here is a picture of a faux pope summoning some kind of spooky orange power to repel fat cross dressers away from him and attract cute girls in masks.

Not everyone gets all dressed up to the nines. Some people, like these girls here, just throw wings or horns or ears on their heads and call it a day. Or a night. Or an eve. Bonus points to the girl in the middle for dressing up as a girl with stupid stuff on her head who also likes to suck on phones. Way to go the extra mile! Back when I was working door to door in Australia, "extra miling it" meant to continue going door to door after you were legally supposed to stop (8 at night, maybe).

Two girls, a Guy, a Beer and a Gun. In the second season, we got rid of the gun. The ratings never recovered.

That was our Saturday night. Not all of our Saturday night, but about all of it that I can remember. We did it all again the next night. By we, I mean me and Ben. And the lovely and talented Jacqueline Howlett. And her lovely and talented friends. We all went to some club to celebrate Halloween with people from some other club. Japan is weird like that.

Ben and I were the only two white dudes there. It was a fun time.

More Pictures!!!

I know this required, like, no effort, but damned if I don't dig Beer Prime.

It would seem Japan never got that memo on blackface. Is Ted Danson Japanese?

All the pretty ducks all lined up in a row. And some dude dressed up as an angel in white pants.

These freaky horse heads really freaked me out, man.

These... pink... maid(?) girls were not nearly as freaky. They liked to dance with each other.

These girls are all dressed up as Gatchapin (not to be confused with the aforementioned Gatchaman). Ben loves Gatchapin. Ben was quite taken with these girls.

As members of Spectra, we are eternally opposed to Gatchaman in particular but heroes in general. Ben failed to kill these two. He fails to kill a lot of people.

That was out Halloween. For more pictures, go to Paul's Flickr page.

A week or two later Ben, Paul and I went to a day long gig. Two rock clubs celebrated their 20 year anniversaries. So they celebrated together at a third, bigger, club. Japan is odd like that. Aka Inu was to play, as was Shonen Knife, as were many other bands.

Oh right! That was also the weekend of the Osaka Games Festa. I've gone every year I've been here and I wasn't about to miss this year. But this is the year I forgot to charge my camera. This is also the year they shipped in tonnes of gorgeously cute girls and dressed them in things that made you stare at them in an effort to make you want to buy an XBox 360. I really want to buy an XBox 360.

Oh right! That was also the weekend of Paul's birthday! After the Games Festa on Saturday we went bowling, then we went drinking, then we went clubbing. Rock clubbing. At Rock Rock. Best time we've had at Rock Rock in a long time.

After two hours of sleep, I got up and went back to the Festa. Then we went to the Anniversary gig. We had already missed Aka Inu by the time we got there. That kinda sucked. My camera was still out of juice. That also sucked. Most of the bands weren't very good. But they were interesting as all get out. They broke my sleep deprived brain.

Most of the bands weren't really even bands at all. They were 'collectives' of people who like to make noise. Oshiri Pen Pen is a great example. Their name means patting bottoms. Their lead singer was covered in scars that looked to be self inflicted. Fans of this band showed their fandom by yelling insults at the members all during their set. At one point the lead singer leaped of the stage and wandered through the crowd, hitting himself in the head with the microphone.

He saw me, got down on his knee and began to serenade me. I was way too out of it to understand what he was singing, but I'm pretty sure he was insulting me. Then he stood up and grabbed a beer out of some girl's hands and chugged it. He choked and spit it out all over me and the girl. Then he poured the rest over his head and shook his soaked and matted hair at us. Then he stalked off. Then some fan called him an 'Aho' which translates to something very similar sounding in English. Then they fought. A lot of the acts were like that.

One band, Para, played one song for 20 minutes. All bands were allowed only 20 minutes for their sets.

Shonen Knife was awesome. I love that little drummer. She never has a mic, but she sings along to every song. When there are no words she sings along to her own drumming. We were close enough to see her going "Bam! Bam! Boom Boom Bam!"

So Cute!

The last band took forever to set up. Luckily we had made some new friends over the course of the day and chatted the time away. The last band played for just over one minute. It was one of the loudest minutes I've ever experienced. It was just one guy on stage screaming and jumping around. The stage was covered in reverb thingees and feedback thingees and it was just a wall of squealing and squelching.

Fun times.

Thanks for reading all that.

We really do need to do this more often.