Yoyogi Rockabillies

Mike Grist Japan, Manga / Anime / Cosplay 19 Comments

Sunglasses, pomade, gravity-defying quiffs, leather jackets, black gloves, check. 50’s music, party atmosphere, gyrating hips and waggling bent knees, chicks in preppy floral dresses, crowding camera-toting tourists- BAM!- welcome to the Tokyo Rockabilly club- Yoyogi chapter.

Showing his gang colors- black, leather.

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Kaze no To and Umi Hotaru, Tokyo Bay

Mike Grist Haikyo, Tokyo-to, Vaults 19 Comments

From the 25th floor lobby of the Dentsu HQ in Shiodome there’s an awesome view across Tokyo Bay, taking in Hamarikyu gardens, Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge, and in the distance, fogged by pollution and heat distortion- a weird-looking dome-shaped structure out in the middle of nowhere.

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Weird dome, at 200mm zoom from the edge of Odaiba.

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The People in the Walls

Mike Grist Stories, Surreal 4 Comments

The people in the walls are an infestation. They crowd around the living room in their inch-thin insulation space and watch me while I go about my life. Some of them have drilled peep-holes. I cover the holes with paintings I paint myself, and vases full of flowers which they sometimes steal and eat.

I paint paintings of the people in the walls. I suppose they look a little bit like aliens. They have big and flat grey heads an inch thick. They look a lot like stick men. They are normally smiling stick-thin smiles, which creeps me out.

I hang the paintings of the people in the walls over the holes in the walls the people hide behind. I suppose there’s something ironic about that, but I’ve always liked irony.

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(Image from here.)

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Barry Eisler (Author of John Rain)

Mike Grist Japan, People / Culture 3 Comments

Barry Eisler is the author of the world-wide bestselling John Rain hit-man series, now 6 books in total, translated into 20 languages, winner of multiple awards and plaudits. He was in town this past week for a sneak preview of the movie made from his first book- ‘Rain Fall’- to which he’d invited his Tokyo fans via his website. I found out about the preview the day before and just managed to snag a seat in the screening room, in the process briefly meeting the man himself:

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Me and Barry Eisler.

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The Life and Death of the Sofitel Hotel

Mike Grist Haikyo, Hotels / Resorts, Tokyo-to 17 Comments

The Sofitel Hotel once stood on the Ueno park skyline like a bizarrely massive chest of drawers, at once a paean to modern design aesthetics and traditional Shinto values. It was demolished in December 2006 after only 12 years of offering 83 4-star rooms in central Tokyo, leaving a weirdly-shaped gap on the city-scape viewed from Shinobazu pond. Like the cherry blossoms that frame so many shots of the Sofitel, it was only a temporary beauty, one that serves to remind us of the short time we`re here, and how any one of us can be called away at any moment.

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The Sofitel and Cherry Blossoms. Thanks to sevargmt for this image.

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Harajuku Cosplayers

Mike Grist Japan, Manga / Anime / Cosplay 29 Comments

At the meeting point of the painfully fashionable Omotesando street and the city-looping Yamanote train line, triangulated between Harajuku`s ultra-hip boutique fashion zone Takeshita street, the soaring lines of Kenzo Tange`s 1964 Olympic Gymnasium, and the giant red tori gate at the entrance to the 88 year old Meiji Jingu shrine, you`ll find the Harajuku cosplayers.

`Cosplay` is a Japanese popularization of a common concept: costume play. In other cultures such dressing-up has traditionally been reserved for Halloween parties, college toga parties, and masque balls. In Japan, cosplay is perennial- on the bridge outside Meiji Jingu they can be found ever Sunday come rain or shine.

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Ginza Walkers

Mike Grist Uncategorized 19 Comments

Goose Lady lives on the streets of Ginza and eats fried breadcrumbs dropped from the sweet-cream crepes of winter shoppers. At night she huddles up to the braziers outside Luis Vuitton and drinks cold mango lassi from the yaki-imo man. She sing songs beneath her breath of the days when the Emperor walked the streets as a God, with a red sun forever blazing over his head. Now she scurries and hides when the black vans roll round, beneath a park bench, in the guttering of a tall glass phone box, in the shadow of a koban.

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Goose lady watches skittishly from a street-corner.

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Ashiodozan 3. Factory and Train Station

Mike Grist Ghost Towns, Haikyo, Mines / Factories, Tochigi 19 Comments

Despite 400 years of powering Japanese industry, of mining, processing and shipping one of the most essential early industry elements in some of the hardest and most dangerous conditions around, Ashio is remembered far more for its flaws than for its accomplishments. Ask any Japanese about Ashio, and they’ll give you a response straight from their high school history textbooks: in Ashio Japan learned the true cost of industrialization, that of crippling environmental damage, as sulfuric acid from the factory’s numerous smelter chimneys coagulated in the atmosphere and fell as acid rain, poisoning the water table and blistering the mountains so all plant-life died.

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Red bones of the factory, what’s left after acid rain stripped away the skin.

Copper is extracted through a two stage process: first the copper minerals, with around 0.5 – 5% copper, are left to steep in a vat of acid called a heap or dump leach for a few days; and second, the remains are smelted to purity at a temperature of 1200 °C, unleashing huge amounts of sulfuric acid gas.

The sulfuric acid gases in the air were the problem- stripping both the nearby mountains:

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The factory and bald mountain, ravaged by decades of acid rain.

The factory was the last thing Su Young and I investigated, despite it being one of the first things we saw, looming up over the valley as we approached, squatting up against the bald mountains from across the river as we went by. The reason for that was how secure the facility was, how close to the main road it was, and how live it appeared.

Of course it had a fence, like the mine and the power hub did, but the fences on the factory were intact, tall, and pretty much unclimbable without risk of injury. There was a new road going down to the factory front, with a new security box and new car-crunching fence across it. In the factory forecourt were cars, and earth-moving equipment, and vending machines.

You can see from this photo how new the front buildings were:

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Almost the whole complex, with new buildings at the front.

So, we decided to bypass the well-guarded front. We went up the side-road that promised to loop behind the factory, and perhaps offer opportunities to get on the bluff above it and come down. Up that side road is where we found the power hub, then the mine, then shrine. At the top, the road gave off at a very live fence, with a security guy telling us to turn around. The road beyond that point hadn’t been built, or had been destroyed. I’ll guess this open space was where the more modern Ashio town had been. Gone now.

Going back down the road, it branched- one fork heading back the way we’d come, and the other shooting off and curling up the mountain. I assumed it must head to the back of the factory, but it was also well fenced, with a lot of signs, and was the same fence we’d heard a security guy earlier open and close while we were hiding in the mine complex.

We debated for a while, then just decided what the hell, we’d come this far, we had to at least try. So, I hoisted the bikes over the fence, and off we went.

The road snaked upwards with the mountain, soon affording us a view over what remained of Mato town, then plateau-ing out in a wide-open car-park type space, dotted with strange square holes in the tarmac. I’ll guess it was once a huge warehouse, but I’m not really basing that on anything. We raced to the far side, past a few empty security boxes, veering round the weird deep holes, and at the edge found ourselves looking down on the back of the factory. We savored the view for a moment, then laid down our bikes to deter detection, and, hearts racing at the thrill of it all, began our descent down the rickety metal staircase.

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Looking down at the factory from behind, well-screened from the road, alongside a big slurry-pipe.

Racing down the stairs, we emerged into ruin and melted behind cover. In the shadow it was bitterly cold, and we kept moving to ward off the frozen tingle in toes and fingers. Here were immense concrete pipes smashed through, looking into silos piled up with some ancient crusted chemical, there the great rusted side of the factory had been peeled back to reveal the russet pipes and frayed wires of its musculature and nerve system.

Together we darted from the cover of great iron casting buckets to the elevated rail station buried within the factory’s bowels, eyes constantly turning to the road without and all the buildings were we could see people moving within. Though the worst they would likely do is simply kick us out, when you’re in the thick of the explore, taking photos manically, thirsty to see everything, that threat looms huge. It’s the difference between success and failure.

So we continued sprinting around, over lifeless chemical puddled ground, in awe at the scale of the rotting hulk around us. At times it felt like standing in the corpse of some giant, long-dead beast.

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A huge concrete pipe lay waiting for us at the bottom. Actually I suspect this was a leaching pit filled with acid and copper slag- since inside there are various chambers, and it’s massive.

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Through the smashed-up vat.

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The vats from below.

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The one remaining smelter chimney.

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The red metal factory wall.

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My favorite shot of the whole endeavor- I assume part of the smelting process.

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Race you to the top.

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Two huge buckets, I assume for carrying molten copper to be cast.

After about 30 minutes of wandering the factory freely our confidence was up, and we figured it would be safe to venture out into the train station area, connected to the factory. This place was much more easily seen from the street- but to be honest there wasn’t really anyone on the street anyway, so I suppose it was quite secure.

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Looking over the terminus station of the old Ashio line.

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Rusted solid.

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Sulfuric acid vats.

And that’s pretty much it, really. We climbed back up the mountain-side, got back on our bikes, and headed off. At the fence we did bump into a security guy, but I just bulldozed us past him and over the fence before he could really register what was happening- he’d been re-locking the fence behind his car as we sped towards him, so hadn’t seen us approach. He was pretty taken aback when he did see us, and I managed to get my bike over the fence and was working on Su Young’s before he was able to blurt out- “you shouldn’t be in here!” I looked back as I lifted the second bike over and said “So desu ne, sumimasen” (Sorry, yes you’re right), then we were off.

We free-wheeled down the main road back to Mato train station, where we waited in the waiting room- of course just the two of us- for one hour, drinking hot cocoa and corn soup from a vending machine, waiting for the train to come take us home.

I made a video of the bits that I shot:

VIDEO



CONTENTS

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 1. History and Relics

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 2. Shrine and Apartments

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 3. Power Hub and Mine Complex

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 4. Train Station and Factory

You can see all MJG’s Ruins / Haikyo explorations here:

[album id=4 template=compact]

Ashiodozan 2. Mine and Power Plant

Mike Grist Ghost Towns, Haikyo, Mines / Factories, Tochigi 18 Comments

Mining for Copper began in Ashio over 400 years ago, on the chance discovery of a surface lode by 2 farmers tilling their rocky topsoil. Shafts were dug and miners sent in, the process was commandeered by the Shogunate of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and production went into overdrive. Soon the copper coming out of Ashio made up 40% of the nation`s supply, driving the engines of Japan`s industrialization, providing coinage, plumbing, roofing, wiring, and material for a wide range of household goods.

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The Mine Complex, wooden rails and roofs in broken cascades around it.

The Power Hub was the first building Su Young and I came across after shooting the factory from across the river and crossing the oldest bridge in Japan (made in Germany). From the exterior it looked bland, there were no extensive bundles of wires going into or out of it- at best we expected a warehouse with a few bits and pieces in it.

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The warehouse front looks pretty basic.

We got off our bikes, rounded the side-fence which hung out over a smaller rivulet (“Be careful!” I keep saying to SY, “Hug the tree!” She laughs at me…) and cruised round to the back entrance.

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I followed Su Young in and was instantly rewarded. In the center of the dusty space amidst shafts of light thrown through holes in the roof lay some hulks of huge rusted machinery.

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Something out of a steam-punk fantasy.

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Ceramic pylon heads look like deep-sea mines.

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Ingersoll-Rand manufacturer`s mark

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Fusebox.

After toying with levers and switches a little, we left. Feeling peckish we sat down in the middle of he road (SY`s idea, because it was in the sun) and ate trail mix. Neither of us had any real food.

Next came the first sign of a mine. It was a 3 or 4-building complex gathered round a mine-mouth, heavily fenced-off and across the river. I approached the fence and judged the best place to cross- the razor wire on top had been cut at one point at the edge, a little too close to the drop though for comfort. I wandered round to the side and through some reeds looking for a safer way- down to the river, across, then back up.

*Come on then!” called Su Young. I turned back to see her. Of course, she had already gone over.

I suppose I’m actually quite timid when it comes to these things. I like to know the lay of the land utterly before I make a move, to know for sure I’ve done everything I can to minimize any risk of being hurt or being caught. Su Young on the other hand just goes for it. I think that’s pretty awesome.

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Those long narrow windows make it look like a bird-blind.

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Me standing overlooking the wreckage, like a still shot from an apocalypse movie.

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Mine entrance and wrench. SY was ready to bolt, a security guy had just given the place a once over (us flattening ourselves against walls to remain hidden), so going even further in just didn’t register.

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Next, the final part, the Factory and Train Station.

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Sulphuric acid tanks on left, factory on right, one remaining smelter tower out of shot right.

CONTENTS

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 1. History and Relics

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 2. Shrine and Apartments

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 3. Power Hub and Mine Complex

Ashiodozan Mining Town- 4. Train Station and Factory

You can see all MJG’s Ruins / Haikyo explorations here:

[album id=4 template=compact]