Yoyogi Rockabillies – Excellent music video showing the Yoyogi Rockers teasing their hair, getting set, revving motorbikes, and of course- dancing. Tokyo Green Island– Tokyo Photo-shopped to be paved with grass. Nice- I saw these first at the National Art Museum’s ‘Media Arts Festival’ near Roppongi. Ugly Tokyo – Billy West takes shots of ugly city wires and bad city-planning. That’s it for this week.
Nichitsu 3. A fire truck in the ghost town
Nichitsu Ghost Town stretches for around a kilometer, from the semi-functioning mine shacks at the mouth of the last tunnel, up past the Junior High School, the heavily dilapidated wooden apartments, and buildings stacked off the steep hillside on concrete supports, round a hill of white lime-chips, past the Doctor`s office hidden somewhere in the thicket of buildings, up to the Lower School, dorm, and warren of walkways. Dis-sheveled buildings.
Universal Time
I’m working the deep 7 run again. Last time I was out here, must’ve been pre-schism. Before the split, and opinion divided the universe. -Blah blah. That’s what my mistress says, when I try to discuss politics. -All I can hear is blah blah. I suppose she reckons I don’t know more than anybody else, but maybe that’s not true anymore. I move in high places now. I deal with leaders of worlds. I see their colonies, their technologies, their lives, as part of the whole. I can still see the Empire, in the echoes, while all they see is … Read More
Ryogoku Sumo
Sumo is the traditional Japanese sport, beloved of retirees and tourists alike. On any tournament day at the Kokugikan in Ryogoku you can see them lining up for tickets at the single ticket box; the old folks nose-deep in their rikishi listings, the tourists in their guidebooks, coming up for air every now and then wide-eyed with anticipation, wondering if something awesome is happening around them, secretly hoping to see something as cool as Edmond Honda’s hundred-hand slap or torpedo head-butt. Well, I can dis-abuse them of that hope. To the sumo novitiate without 15 days to kill watching hundreds … Read More
Kiwi Pocky
Pocky have been coming in a wild and weird range of souped-up flavors for decades- I myself have witnessed creme brulee, deep-sea tuna, cauliflower-mango, and flugelberry (oddly enough- a flavor pioneered by the Beatles!). But this new flavor- kiwi, that just takes the cake. Even better- this is tsubu tsubu kiwi- which translates roughly to- kiwi pocky like your mother made it. Wow, those crazy Wonka-ites, what will they think of next? Tugging on our heart strings for that old-style religion, while simultaneously playing our tongue string like a hillbilly banjo. Kiwi Pocky posing on my balcony, despite high wind.
Edo-Tokyo Museum, Ryogoku
The Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku is one of the ugliest and most pointless buildings I’ve yet seen in Tokyo. A giant clunky trapezoid on 4 legs in grey concrete, fissured with juts and wedges and all manner of go-faster stripes, layered with a shrine-like blocky hat, faced with a child-like mosaic paddling pool, dashed round with white umbrella-like gazebos, it adds up to precisely nothing. It’s just ugly, and pointless- in no way calling back the Edo period, or for that matter the Jomon period, or the Meiji period, or any period from any history in the world. It’s just … Read More
Weekly Links
Every Saturday I’ll be posting a list of links I’ve enjoyed in the previous week (if I’ve found any, if I can be bothered): Something Wicked Zine – Buy a copy now! Colbert Report – Enjoy the satiric news comedy of Stephen Colbert via streaming. TOHO Cinemas Roppongi – Great resource for finding out movie times and booking tickets. Andrew Jones Art – Amazing artist- go look. Thing Asian Press – Travel guide book publisher who will be putting out a guide to Japan called- ‘To Japan with Love’ featuring a haikyo article and a cycling article from yours truly, … Read More
Nichitsu 2. Elementary school in a Ghost Town
At the dead-end of a blast-hewn road snaking up through the mountains north of Tokyo, imprisoned by sheer moss-rocked walls looming overhead like rotting Gothic colonnades, the Nichitsu mine ghost town lies in wait, wreathed in a low mist and perennially dusk-lit by the overhanging crags. It hums with a crippling weight of nostalgia, of enfolded memories playing out again and again in its boarded up buildings, of invisible ghosts standing guard at the mine entrance, looking out of cracked windows, walking their habitual paths to and from and back again.
Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile @ Something Wicked
Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile is my first story ever to find publication in a print medium, and I couldn’t have asked for a better debut. The cover-art on the right is a specially commissioned artist’s impression of a scene from the story: the Grammaton looming up from a city in flames. I had no idea Freemantle was going to take the cover like this- so when I saw it I was effusive in my thanks to both editor (Joe Vaz) and artist (Hendricke Gericke). What an honor- thanks again. You can go buy a copy of this magazine, or … Read More
Beer Drops
As we all know- sometimes liquid beer just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes you have a thirst so deep and true that only a solid will really cut to the chase, really drop the A-bomb, really nuclearize that aching need inside. Up until now, the best solid beer we had was jelly beer, beer-tots, and beer-steak. Ha. Now- the real thing; pellet-sized beer-crystal rocks of deep beery satisfaction, ready for you whenever you think you’re ready for them.