The Rojin (old folks) Home we stumbled across in Shizuoka was a happy accident, one of those random call-outs from the back seat of the car that normally go unheeded. We were searching for an abandoned hospital and having little luck- so the mere sight of anything remotely fenced-off fired up our blood and got us out there investigating.
Freya 13
Delathon Rent, a 28 year old technician on the Freya 13 space station, sits slumped in the Outer rim command pod with a gas hatch sealed behind him, video-phone in his lap, waiting for it to ring. He’s been waiting for about 10 minutes now, after intermittently placing calls himself to the Freya Commune for the last hour. He has an awkward itch in the corner of his right eye. He wants to scratch it with the machined tip of his blue biro, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid to even touch his eyes. Instead, he taps the pen against the … Read More
Sanyo and BE haikyos, the move
Tokyo Times went to the underground bunker in Yamanashi and managed to de-bunk some of the mystery surrounding it. He found a Sanyo magazine which featured a little icon of one of the odd logos from inside the bunker. It doesn’t explain everything, but it goes some distance to removing the thought it might have belonged to a cult. Mike and I went to the BE lab in Shizuoka- I was going to post my version tomorrow but may go with something else instead- give his a bit more time to breathe before I clog the airwaves with yet more … Read More
Shizuoka Shimbun Building, Shimbashi
The headquarters of the Shizuoka newspaper in Shimbashi, Tokyo, is another Kenzo Tange building- he of Fuji Terebi and the Tocho. It resembles nothing so much as a giant mutated baobab tree, vivid rust-colored and sprouting fat boughs that elide in stubby endings, on one side its groping knubs reaching out to latch onto the closest building.
Ueno’s Ojarus
Ojarus are a couple of tea-cosy aficionados gone mad- either that or they’ve got some outlandish head-shapes. I caught up with them in Ueno just as they were finishing their bit of Heaven Artistry, and so I really don’t know what they did for their act. Perhaps poked people in the eye with their long blue head-hats? Tuned into to long-wave AM radio and danced along to Thrash Elvis out of Missouri (the home of Thrash Elvis, or so I’m told)?
Touring bones in the Paris Catacombs
Underneath Paris lie hundreds of miles of catacombs, dug over hundreds of years as quarries, tunnels, sewers and interlinked basements. Now for the most part they lie fallow, though never completely blocked-off for fear of sealing some intrepid explorers inside. Huge expanses are merely featureless tunnels of little interest, though nestled within their labyrinthine undulations can be found some fascinating pockets: rooms filled with stunning guerrilla art, bunkers from the World Wars stashed with antique munitions, secret underground cinemas, and of course the Ossuaries.
Emhoola’s Gibbet
Emhoola peddled magic. He sold it by the cartload, and everywhere he went it was bought with self-deceiving gusto. He sold it in cheap brass compasses that no longer worked, in the shriveled corpses of pack donkeys whose heads lolled flea-bitten against the sales-rack strappings of his wagon, in straw dolls and dried frogs and mosquito paste and all variety of herbs and medicinal fungi. He was a collector of all things collectible, and he purveyed these wares with a rag and bone man’s pitch few could resist. ?Freedom,” he’d call out, as he strode the dusty main streets of … Read More
Posing with cosplayers in an abandoned factory
The Cosplay Factory Haikyo in Ibaraki is like a series of jewels bevelled so well within a crown of thorns that you wouldn’t even know they were there. Snuggled up inside a bamboo jungle and locked behind at least two sets of fences, it keeps its treasures safe- and what treasures: a NASA rocket ship boiler circa 1950, two enormous bread kilns not for baking bread, and a gaggle of Final Fantasy warriors posing for their daguerrotypes to be etched. Glorious.
Isidro’s Furnace
Isidro’s furnace demanded FBI agents, but he only fed it limestone and coke, sometimes Rice Crispies if it was good. In return, it fed his insanity. Neither got exactly what they wanted, but it was a happy enough arrangement for the both of them. “FBI agents!” it would roar down the phone at Isidro, who often held a towel to his other ear to keep the noise in. “Out there, in the lawn, take your blunderbuss to the cheeky lot of them!” Isidro would look out at the lawn, see only squirrels. “They look more like squirrels,” he would say, … Read More
Taro
Three images from the Taro mine.