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imomusWherein I shall readily observe that:
1. Coming to Japan just for a holiday is not really a sustainable lifestyle, no matter how much electricity it generates in your soul.
2. Mr Terunobu "tea in the trees" Fujimori currently has his entire Venice Architecture Biennale show playing at Tokyo Opera City. Lots of 1:1 scale sustainable wattle huts that you can pop in and out of. Excitement!
3. Nadiff (the Harajuku one will move soon to a new, undisclosed, location) has gone all New Age, with a tent in which you listen to quad sound surrounded by crystals and twigs. Much better is a book of angular ice cream-coloured paintings (from publishers Bluemark) by conceptual manga man Yokoyama Yuichi.
4. The new ArtIt is acrackle with excitement about the Asian artists in the Venice Biennale, as I am myself. But it's not very sustainable, all this biennale-hopping (especially wearing those heavy bunny ears)!
5. There's also a big feature on hamster girl Sako Kojima in the magazine, which one reads at Cafe FOB, positioned to watch girls entering La Foret.
6. Marquee magazine has a great big family tree of everything leading up to and following Shibuya-kei, with a twiddly, fiddly diagram by editor MMMatsumoto. That's me in the corner!
7. The other Matsumoto, the comedian from Downtown -- perhaps Japan's most familiar television face, he's singlehandedly made shaved heads and too-long suit sleeves cool -- has directed a film which is getting very good reviews. It's called Dai Nippon Jin and you can watch a trailer here (second button from the left). It's about big-body Japanese people who shoot up to Godzilla size and fight with monsters. Music is by Towa Tei, and UA is in it.
8. Bright Life Mascot Cleaning's Kuri-Chan says: "I am your dry cleaning mascot!"
9. One dines in Naka-Meguro with one's ex, Shizu, and husband David, both in fine fettle, which rhymes with kettle.
10. One buys a vibro-massager in the shape of a Mutant Ninja Turtle's back at Donki at, like, one in the morning. The store also sells cushions in the shape of human breasts. Perhaps sustainable?
11. One watches a one-hour documentary about hosts in Osaka on Google video. These spiky-heads are surrounded by girls who pay them enormous sums to flatter and fuck them. And it's a sad nightmare.
12. One will spend the next two days visiting Florian Perret in sleepy pacific Kamakura, Slow Life on Sea. Sustainable!
1. Coming to Japan just for a holiday is not really a sustainable lifestyle, no matter how much electricity it generates in your soul.
2. Mr Terunobu "tea in the trees" Fujimori currently has his entire Venice Architecture Biennale show playing at Tokyo Opera City. Lots of 1:1 scale sustainable wattle huts that you can pop in and out of. Excitement!
3. Nadiff (the Harajuku one will move soon to a new, undisclosed, location) has gone all New Age, with a tent in which you listen to quad sound surrounded by crystals and twigs. Much better is a book of angular ice cream-coloured paintings (from publishers Bluemark) by conceptual manga man Yokoyama Yuichi.
4. The new ArtIt is acrackle with excitement about the Asian artists in the Venice Biennale, as I am myself. But it's not very sustainable, all this biennale-hopping (especially wearing those heavy bunny ears)! 5. There's also a big feature on hamster girl Sako Kojima in the magazine, which one reads at Cafe FOB, positioned to watch girls entering La Foret.
6. Marquee magazine has a great big family tree of everything leading up to and following Shibuya-kei, with a twiddly, fiddly diagram by editor MMMatsumoto. That's me in the corner!
7. The other Matsumoto, the comedian from Downtown -- perhaps Japan's most familiar television face, he's singlehandedly made shaved heads and too-long suit sleeves cool -- has directed a film which is getting very good reviews. It's called Dai Nippon Jin and you can watch a trailer here (second button from the left). It's about big-body Japanese people who shoot up to Godzilla size and fight with monsters. Music is by Towa Tei, and UA is in it.8. Bright Life Mascot Cleaning's Kuri-Chan says: "I am your dry cleaning mascot!"
9. One dines in Naka-Meguro with one's ex, Shizu, and husband David, both in fine fettle, which rhymes with kettle.
10. One buys a vibro-massager in the shape of a Mutant Ninja Turtle's back at Donki at, like, one in the morning. The store also sells cushions in the shape of human breasts. Perhaps sustainable?
11. One watches a one-hour documentary about hosts in Osaka on Google video. These spiky-heads are surrounded by girls who pay them enormous sums to flatter and fuck them. And it's a sad nightmare.
12. One will spend the next two days visiting Florian Perret in sleepy pacific Kamakura, Slow Life on Sea. Sustainable!
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-21 11:25 pm (UTC)Enjoy Kamakura and maybe have a dance to brazilian beats on the beach.
or is it too early ?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-22 07:05 am (UTC)I haven't had a chance to watch the whole documentary on Osaka host clubs, but its pretty tragic. When people let consumerism invade so deeply into their souls that they come to treat other people as products (its really not so uncommon ie women as armcandy) then they are lost in a superficial gloss of advertising and pretense. I get the feeling that this happens often in Japan, especially in the cities, where wearing a mask and projecting an identity is common. Watching the film I wondered what these people do after they reach 25 (christmas cake time) .. the better looking hosts have the opportunity to go into TV perhaps, and the girls become housewives, I suppose. I know there is a long tradition of this type of entertainment (geisha) in pubs, but it looks so devalued to me. The hosts trolling for girls on the street was nutty, such open gigolo action in the west is only found in dirty train stations where muscle boys are pimped to homos looking to buy rough trade
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-22 10:13 am (UTC)there is a whole movement of manga that doesn't, even superficially, look like any other manga. it differs from each other too much, and it's been going too long, to be called a 'movement'. it's always published and distributed through mainstream sources, and can often find its way and sit comfortably in very 'conservative' compilations, covers of best-selling books etc so you couldn't really call it fringe... another good case to the point that mainstream and alternative have little/different meaning in japan
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-22 12:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-22 03:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-22 09:31 am (UTC)I also watched the documentary and was captivated by those poor people. The film continued to add depth to the people as it went along, making me feel bad for everyone involved but especially the women. I've seen some dudes that look like hosts traveling in packs around Tokyo, Sendai, and Chiba...now I wonder if they were actually hosts.
Thanks for your entertaining posts and links!
Nice quote
Date: 2008-05-07 12:12 pm (UTC)The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for
experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute
for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson
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