Taking Pictures in Shibuya

Awwww shiiiiit. look who's got a new toy.

Time to head to Shibuya to try it out.
Shibuya Crossing, now with more lights now that the energy saving measures have ended for the most part.

Shibuya's center street has been renamed Basketball Street (Basuketto Booru sutoriito in Katakana) by the marketing geniuses of the Basketball Japan League. Or as they prefer to be called the "BJ League"

Oy....

And here's the Shibuya Gas Panic. Gas Panic is a Tokyo institution, a chain of clubs who's primary selling point is the lack of a cover charge. Shockingly they have a bit of a shady reputation.

McDonalds and Mister Kebab!

Just a quiet tuesday night on Basketball Street.

Here's Coin Bar a well known cheap foreigner hang out, near the end of Basketball St. I was actually taken here on my birthday, on my first Friday night out in Tokyo.

Let's take a stroll up to Love Hotel Hill.

The hotels up here have a "short stay" option for only a few hours.

I think I'm gonna like my new toy.

After the Typhoon, A Block Party

I had my first inkling that something was up in my neighborhood about three weeks ago. These lanterns (above) just appeared one day outside of the station I use everyday on my way to work.

Around this time of year there are a bunch of fall festivals going on all over Tokyo. But then a couple weeks went by without anything happening. I started to think maybe they were just decorations for the season like Christmas lights or something. Last week we had bank holidays on both Monday and Friday, and a lot of the big festivals were the previous weekend. So when that passed I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen.

Last Wednesday a Typhoon came through Tokyo. It actually caused the trains to get shut down for a few hours leaving my stuck at work. The next day I was getting home from work around 9pm and I popped out of the station to find the streets filled with people. About half of the crowed seemed to be wearing all manor of colorful traditional Japanese dress.

Everyone just seemed to be hanging out taking pictures, eating, drinking and having a good time. Young, old, parents, kids everyone was out in the street. However, it seemed like I missed the main festivities. Bummer...

Fortunately that turned out only to be day 1...

The next day at around 5pm I started to hear a crowd outside the balcony of my apartment. Then at 6pm I started to hear drums and chanting a huge commotion. I went outside to see what was going on and there was this huge procession going down the street. People were dressed in all kinds of colors, some people were dancing, some were carrying giant poles with lanterns on them, still others were carrying all kinds of traditional instruments.

I love the part in this video where theres a place for everyone to just jump in and start dancing along with everyone. It was wild and awesome to see. This was literally happening outside my door.

All my neighbors were out with their families, the entire community seemed to be there. Everyone seemed to know someone in the procession. Parents would run out into the street to take pictures of their kids at they went by.

The entire procession only went down the main commercial part of the street, about a half mile in all (~1k for you metric system folks). Outside the stations by all the lanterns was where each group got started.
And after each group made it down the street they went back up and started again. This continued for 3 hours!

After the main processions stopped each of the groups in the procession found a piece of road and did individual performances. Some of the dances seemed to be telling some kind of story,

The enthusiasm of both the performers and the crowd was awesome. I love the part in this video where one of the lead girls runs over to different members of the group whispering and getting everyone to do a certain number. The kind of spontaneity of the moment, I find endearing.

Here's some kind of shrine and traditional drum.

All of the local restaurants and cafes set up little grills and stands to sell food in the street.
This guy is the chef at a favorite local spot of mine called Cozy Bistro. I go in there quite often, particularly in the days when I didn't have a refrigerator. Really nice guy, despite not being able to speak any english he would always come over and try and help me through the menu.
I'm a big fan of Cozy which as far as I can tell seems to be a kind of traditional Japanese western bistro fusion type of thing. It also helps that my room looks down onto it from behind. Cozy is an apt description of the interior space as well.

Tokyo is a massive city, but really at ground level it feels like a series of almost independent centers and urban villages. Usually these are centered around a train station. Hatsudai is the neighborhood I live in/station I live nearby. It's located about a 15min walk from Shinjuku one of the major hubs of Tokyo and the busiest station in the world. Hatsudai itself though is fairly residential, and this main street consists of small stores, cafes, restaurants that exist to serve the locals.

You won't find any of the restaurants in Hatsudai in any guidebooks about Tokyo. This isn't a touristy spot or one that even locals who don't live hear would come to. I searched all over the english language internet looking for information about a festival in Hatsudai and found nothing. The crowd at this festival was large, but by Tokyo standards was actually quite small. The whole event seemed to by produced by and for the people who live here.

Even in this massive metropolis you have these pockets of communities. You have days and opportunities for you to celebrate your unique slice of city, at a scale small enough for everyone to be an active participant and to contribute. It was quite moving to see.

Tokyo at Dawn

Looks pretty neat...

Pharrell Williams in Tokyo

I posted a link to this on Facebook about a week ago, but I wanted to re-post it here. Pharrell Williams heads to post-quake Tokyo to talk to people about their experience, and how they think Japan will change in response to the recent disasters. The whole documentary is broken up into five short segments.

Now, Pharrell Williams isn't one of my usual go to's for social commentary, and nothing he says is particularly profound, but I think it's to his credit he just lets the people he meets in Tokyo speak for themselves.

My favorite thing about this film is the visuals. Many are Tokyo cliches, stations filled with tons of people, the skyline lit up at night, but they're cliches in large part because they reflect some truth about how one experiences Tokyo.

The parts that ring most true to me are where Williams gets led through some urban maze to some tiny bar/gallery/shop.

Enjoy.

Could You Pass the Crab Brain Pasta? - Japanese dinner party

Here I am sandwiched between two Australian guys named Nick, the three of us the only non Japanese at a dinner party where we were outnumbered by children under the age of four.

It's a bit of a long story how I ended up there involving multiple Australians, a Japanese girl who lived in France, and the Tokyo home of a Japanese women, who wrote popular books introducing French cooking to Japan

like 30 years ago

But the two people I have to thank most are my friends Nick and Mika for inviting me and hosting.

Our chef (and actually as I understand it he is a professional chef) for the evening also lived in France and prepared us a Japanese/French feast, the main course being ziti with a crab brain sauce (kani-miso). It tasted a bit different but was actually quite tasty.

The pasta was only one of many courses

Here we have a kind of beef artichoke stew, a plate of chicken sausage type meat thingy, edamame, salad, and a bowl of dipping vegetables that I couldn't quite identify...

That covers about a third of the courses, which included desert! A delicious tart.

The food was all around fantastic and more then we could all eat.

As I mentioned before there was a whole crew of Japanese rugrats running around

Here for instance is evidence that the socialization of Japanese children towards taking lots of photos starts very young.

Interestingly the party space was in the upstairs of the house in two bedrooms with a removable wall. We sat on the floor of tatami mats around low tables.

I had a great time, it seems to me that getting a bunch of people in a room around food is a great communal event in every culture.

Thanks again Nick and Mika for having me over!

Monday Morning Football

Good news the sports bar by my office carried the Sunday night game, there was even a panel of Japanese commentators.

The bad news... the game was Cowboys - Jets, if ever there was a game to make you wish they could amend the rules so that both teams could loose...

I managed to catch the last 15min of the game at lunch around 12:15 here. Just in time to see Romo totally blow it with a goal line fumble and an interception to hand the game to the Jets. What a clown.

The Adventures Of Grandmaster Terry Under The Happy Sunshine With Lady Wear Mesh Bikini

Your guess is as good as mine...

Couple Random Things

On my way home from work yesterday I popped out of the nearest subway station and was surprised to find a truck selling Crepes outside.

Why yes I will have a suturoberii banana chocco crepe...
It was the most efficiently made crepe I've ever seen.

Also a bike for someone with a Napoleon complex.

Annnd I'm back!, Wedding, Brazil Day, and complaining about jet lag

I arrived back in Tokyo last Wednesday after an eventful trip back to Boston. It was great to see friends and family, made a bit more poignent by the knowledge that I won't get to see many of them for who knows how long. The reason for my trip home was to celebrate my beautiful sister's wedding and to officially welcome my new brother in law Odreck into the family.

Congrats!

Fortunately we had great weather for the beach wedding. We had a few more days of sun down the cape before the weather went downhill fast with the arrival of Hurricane Irene just in time to cancel my flight back to Tokyo.

Quick question, as I'm a bit of the novice when it comes to flying back and forth from one side of the world to the other, is it possible to break the thing in your body that regulates your sleep cycle? I feel like after going back and forth to Boston and throwing in a few late nights has just convinced that part of my brain to give up and stop trying. I haven't had a normal nights sleep in two and a half weeks!

Anyway, two weeks after welcoming a Brazilian guy into my family I found myself at the Brazilian festival in Yoyogi park. I was a bit surprised to learn about the long and complex relationship between Japan and Brazil. I mean have the stereotypes of two cultures ever been more different? It turns out there is a large Brazilian community in Japan, over 200 thousand Brazilians live here constituting 81% of all Latin American immigrants in Japan. Conversely the largest ethnically Japanese community outside of Japan is in Brazil, with over 1.5 million people of Japanese ancestry.

Back during the turn of the 20th century Japan was still emerging from feudalism - the meiji restoration happening only a few decades before. However, the relative lack of violent conflict and disease meant Japan was one of the most highly populated places in the world. Based on my limited understanding it seems the gap between the fall of the old feudal system and the time it took for industrialization to get in full swing was a time of very few economic opportunities for your average Japanese pesant. Immigration was an outlet for many Japanese from their poor economic prospects at home. Unfortunately at the time America had strict quotas restricting the amount of immigration from Asia, as did other Anglophone countries like Australia. Brazil, however, was facing a labor shortage, so many poor Japanese picked up everything and tried their luck in Burajiru.

A funny thing happened in the late 1960s and 1970s, Japan really took off becoming one the leading economic power houses of the world. Brazil, like many Latin American countries at the time was under the grips of a politically repressive dictatorship and stagnating economic growth. Japan's complex immigration laws give preference to those with Japanese ancestry (up to three generations removed) and their spouses. So in an interesting reversal of the turn of the century trend you had Brazilians emigrating to Japan to pursue economic opportunities.

So there you have it, 100 years of the gears of history turning, lives lived, dreams dashed and fulfilled, all leading inexorably to a really awesome party in Yoyogi Park. Which happens to be a 15min walk from my apt.

Here was the main stage where there was a beauty contest going on and really awesome live music.

Of course there is nothing more certain to be at a Brazilian festival than lots of meat.

Meet on a stick and Guarana, yummm.

I love the Japanese label ha! Caipirinhas were also plentiful.

I thought this was interesting

There was a whole station set up by Banco do Brasil to send remittances back to Brazil. Notice anything strange about the poster?

Look again.

Still nothing?

It's in English!

This whole station was vigorously promoted by women sporting Brazil themed kimonos.

Having been caught in a hurricane back in Boston I was a bit worried about the typhoon that was supposed to hit Tokyo on this Saturday. There was a high chance of rain that could have ruined the whole event. Fortunately we got lucky and only got a few very, very light showers.

However, the chance of security guards sporting totally bad ass haircuts 100%

Overall great day and it's good to be back in Tokyo. Of course I got back home around 6pm, promptly fell asleep and woke up at 12am...