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superchicalonelyviking · 7 years ago

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Four

Hello everyone from Fuji Q theme park next to (you guessed it) Mount Fuji!

We've been in Japan 10 days now and what a fantastic country! We are totally impressed by how clean, beautiful and cheerful everything is here!

We arrived in Sakaiminato, a small port town in the South of Japan, getting off the boat you straight away see Japanese style houses, Japanese style seagulls (huge brown feathery type things!) and of course lots of vending machines! Sakaiminato is a nice seasidey town with lots of sculptures of characters from an anime cartoon series by the artist Shigeru Mizuki, lining the streets. You can go round and get rubber stamps of all the characters! Walking around town there are red lanterns hanging everywhere, lots of really sweet music playing and people greeting you from the shops as you pass. A kindergarten crocodile passed us, all wearing yellow hats and with colourful water bottles strapped over them and every one of them said 'koniciwa' to us, it was extremely cute! We had read that a Japanese way to show respect to people is to bow / nod your head, and everywhere you go people do this in greeting to one another. Everybody is so polite here as maintaining social order is important in Japan, apparently foreigners tend to break the rules (many of them unimaginable) all the time and have no idea, meaning we are a constant source of embarrassment and annoyance. Well I hope it's not quite that bad but we've been trying to fit in as much as possible!

From Sakaiminato we got a train up to Hiroshima, passing lush mountainous scenery on the way. Even the train was very nice and clean and had cute pictures of cartoon characters everywhere ! We got a Shinkansen for some of the way, which is name for the Japanese high speed / bullet trains- it feels like you're on an aeroplane rather than a train, actually looks a bit like an aeroplane too and it's fantastic how quickly you can move between places. The train attendants, on reaching the door at the end of the carriage, turn round and bow before leaving!

Hiroshima is a very nice, progressive and apparently international city (we thought it would be a lot more multicultural here, even in Tokyo it's unusual to see people who are clearly foreign, and apparently 95% of people who live in Japan are Japanese or Korean due to strict immigration laws), Hiroshima is most famous for being where the atomic bomb was dropped in WW2 and hence most people come to visit the peace park, museum and monuments which serve as a memorial and a message that it should never happen again. The place is very emotive but feels very optimistic too, it is very much about peace rather than divisions. There is a large flame in a shrine which will burn until we reach global nuclear disarmament, a bell which you can strike to send a message of peace, and a children's monument, inspired by a girl who developed leukaemia age 11 and attempted to fold 2000 origami birds before she died but unfortunately didn't succeed, so thousands of school children across Japan send birds they have folded in her memory. There was a busker in the park playing violin really beautifully, after a couple of hours we were so sad that we had to go for Okonomiyaki to cheer up! This is the local dish of Hiroshima and is this fantastic pile of pancake, cabbage, pork, noodles and an amazing sauce, all cooked in front of you! Afterwards we went and balked at how expensive the fruit and veg is here (in the supermarket, about £1 per apple!) apparently due to laws which protect Japanese farmers and govern imports, decided to attempt to cook some of our own meals to save money but subsequently decided this was a terrible idea, we are rubbish at cooking Japanese food and you may as well just pay someone who knows what they're doing! (It's hardly even any dearer) - oh apart from breakfast, we've been having scrambled tofu everyday, you can get a huge block of tofu for around 25p which is about 90% cheaper than in the UK! Also Mat is super happy because the loaves of bread here are sold with the crusts neatly sliced off, initially a disappointment for him, until he discovered that for less than half the price you can buy a bag containing all the discarded crusts!!! Anyhow this probably isn't very interesting so back to Hiroshima...

There is also a beautiful castle, rebuilt in 1958 in a lovely park with the huge temple of the carp god outside, all surrounded by a moat . At the temple you have to wash your hands and mouth with water outside before going to pray in front - to do this you have to summon the gods by ringing a bell, and afterwards clap and bow to signify you have finished. The main religions in Japan are Shinto and Buddhism. I don't know a huge amount about Shinto but I do know there are many gods, and a belief that when people die their spirit goes back into nature, and natural things such as rivers, trees, mountains and rocks are often worshipped or seen as sacred. There are small temples scattered around most places and most will be dedicated to a particular God. We visited some more in Tokyo, where we went next !

Tokyo in comparison with Hiroshima is a huge sprawling city (or amalgamation of lots of towns into a huge metropolis) it is very busy but yet feels strangely calm, I guess due to the attitude there of politeness and consideration not to bother others. Everyone is so well dressed, for example you see lots of people in smart suits and very white starched shirts, children in pristine sailor suit style school uniforms, in fact all the uniforms are very stylish and look brand new, we feel pretty scruffy in comparison! The place we stayed was tatami style with tatami mat flooring, futon mattresses and traditional wall decoration, and you're provided with slippers to use whilst inside the house (although not on the mats, and there's a separate pair for the toilet, it's quite complicated!). We had a few days exploring Tokyo, went to some beautiful temples (visited the temple of the God of Strong Legs, so now our legs are in fine shape) and explored some of the older parts of town, and after we'd finished with the cultural bits went to Joy-polis which is a bit like a cinema complex if instead of a cinema it had loads of indoor rides, and felt more like a giant disco! There is even a rollercoaster themed around sonic the hedgehog where you have to play a guitar hero style drumming game on the way up, and a ride where you're strapped into a skateboard with a big lever attached and it simulates going up and down a half pipe! What really makes the place though is the brilliantly enthusiastic Japanese ride attendants who clap and cheer when the ride begins and when the place closed were all grinning and waving from the exits! We also spent a couple of days at Disneyland and Disney Sea - I was majorly skeptical about this plan but actually it was fantastic, the attention to detail is really incredible, the place doesn't really feel like you're in a theme park so much as a giant pop up book, it's really fun just to explore and go on the kids' rides with all the freaky animatronic characters, some of the sets are actually really impressive! The parades are fun too and there are really good dance shows and a huge firework and light show projected onto the castle at the end of the day. Disney Sea was especially amazing, it is centred round a huge lake with a massive man-made smouldering volcano behind with a rollercoaster coming out of the top. Mat should probably tell you more this as he is the biggest fan but I also loved it!

We also visited Akihabara, Tokyo's 'geek' district, with massive gaming arcades and retro video game shops. Mat played Tetris at an arcade, and was thrilled to get the highest score of the day, before realising his was actually the only score of the day. On the whole Akihabara feels like the big, slightly weird Tokyo that we sometimes hear stories about. It's a cool place!

Near our place was a sushi conveyor belt restaurant where most plates were just 100 yen, approx 70p! So we were loving having amazing cheap sushi. Everything is ordered from a touch screen, but then is delivered via conveyor belt, with a musical jingle playing just as the plate reaches your table so you know to take it!

On our last day in Tokyo we discovered there are several so called 'Penguin Cafes' in the city, so we're really excited as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra was one of the reasons we were keen to come to Japan- the founder Simon Jeffes visited it (via the trans Siberian!) and wrote a lot of music here in the 70's, and the Penguin Cafe have toured Japan and have a following there. The famous song Music for a Found Harmonium was played on a harmonium found in Japan! So it turns out that some of the Penguin Cafes actually have real life penguins that live there (along with Tokyo's owl, cat, bunny etc. Cafes!), and you can watch them over a cup of tea! We decided against that but instead turned up to a place in Asagaya and on arrival realised it wasn't just any old Penguin themed cafe, it was totally inspired by the music, which was playing inside, with their records on the walls, and we spoke to the owner who also loved the music!

Afterwards we went to a nearby Yakitori place he recommended, very small places where you can buy beer and sake(rice wine) and Yakitori which are small skewers with meat and vegetables, cooked in the window, all the food is prepared behind the counter. It was a bit difficult to order as the people there didn't speak much English and our Japanese is awful but we ended up with lots of beer and skewers and afterwards the chef brought us a platter of leftover Fruit and salad then served us three different types of sake, each with a different flavour, which were all really good. Later we ordered more sake and were totally alarmed when the waiter didn't stop pouring after filling our glasses, meaning it splashed over the sides and filled up a small saucer underneath but on googling this found out it is a way sake can be served and is a happy bonus as you get a bit more than the glassful! Our original plan had been to go on a Tokyo big night out (by our standards at least) but we loved this place so much that we stayed all night, they also gave us free ice cream too! It is called Kawana. Highly recommended!

Since leaving Tokyo we have been in Fujiyoshida which is a city at the foot of Mt Fuji, and it has been brilliant! I had a giant picture of the Great Wave of Kanagawa by Hokusai on my wall since the beginning of university (for no good reason other than my room needed posters, I saw it at the Keele fresher's fair and liked it), the painting has a picture of Mt Fuji in the background (it's actually one of a whole series of woodblock paintings of Mount Fuji by Hokusai), the picture is still up in our lounge today and I never thought I would actually see the mountain, or that it would be as spectacular in real life!

The first night we stayed in a place we found on air bnb, we were the host Kazu's first guests so we're guinea pigs for his 'authentic Japanese experience', which turned out to be awesome!

On arrival we were given some lovely Japanese clothes to wear and then we had coffee, green tea flavour kitkats and then Kazu got out what looked like a kind of industrial workbench clamp and with it made us some Kakigori, a type of crushed ice dessert! Then we were taken to a study room and he taught us some Japanese calligraphy, using ink and a special brush, including how to write our names- they are written using an alphabet where all the characters represent a phonic, so for example the 'th' of Elizabeth is the same character as the 'th' of Matthew. There are two other alphabets used in Japan, with more than 2000 characters! Often the characters represent whole words rather than just a sound.

After calligraphy Kazu made us some Takoyaki which are these delicious octopus dumplings! And he drove us to a local restaurant for Ramen, and advised us on what to order. As if we thought it couldn't be any better, when we got back Kazu had run us a hot bath with Japanese bath salts so we had a mini onsen experience too!

In the morning Kazu cooked about 5 different dishes including tofu miso soup, cooked fresh salmon, rice, a really nice salad and tofu in a dressing, and afterwards showed us how to perform a tea ceremony and we had delicious green tea, with very tasty mochi which are a Japanese sweet made by pounding rice into a pulp. He also showed us a Japanese musical instrument called a Shamisen, played for us and let us try it. He even had a replica samurai sword! It was all so totally Japanese!

In conclusion it was great and if you're going to the Fuji area look up Kazu's place! Also, we really need to up our game with our air bnb! It's a bit more difficult to think what we would do for an authentic British experience, but any suggestions are welcome!

Whilst in Fujiyoshida we also went to Fuji Q, a theme park Mat has dreamed of going to for ages. The best rollercoaster was a '4D' rollercoaster called 'Eejenanka', where the seats rotate on their own axis, meaning you go over drops face first, upside down, forwards, backwards... it's really hard to keep track of what's happening and it feels nothing like any other rollercoaster I've ever been on! Our on-ride photo was so beautiful we had to buy it.

There was also the 'Super Scary Labyrinth of Fear', a walk-through haunted house (well actually a zombie hospital) with a reputation of being amongst the scariest in the world. It's really long, it took us about 20 minutes to get through, and you go through just the two of you, feeling alone, rather than with a big group. It was genuinely very scary, my heart was pounding the whole way through, and we were almost tempted to quit at one of the emergency exits part way through!

One afternoon at Fuji Q thousands of fans wearing matching coats turned up and gathered around a big model Sea plane- it turned out they were at a festival for an online Japanese video game - then a girl band came onto a little stage and everyone did a coordinated dance to the theme song. Totally bewildering!

On the last evening in Fujiyoshida we cycled up to a mountain opposite Fuji called Shimoyama, here you hike up through the trees to find the Niikurafujisengen shrine (dedicated to one of Japan's princesses) and a beautiful Chureito pagoda representing citizens of Fujisan, all with an absolutely stunning view of Mount Fuji towering over the town. At sunset it was particularly peaceful and calm. We met several elderly men jogging up and down it as we were nearly collapsed by the side of the path! On the way back down we went to the temple and were surprised by how noisy it was there as they are normally VERY quiet -it sounded like someone was doing some really enthusiastic evening gardening behind it- and then we realised the temple was covered in monkeys! They were leaping around all over the roof and through the trees behind, one of them had a baby on its back, they were super cute!

We went for really good sushi for dinner both nights in Fujiyoshida, it was a small traditional sushi place - somewhere Mat has wanted to go since working at Yo! Sushi (a bit of a different type of sushi experience!) - and the chef was so friendly and told us what all the different bits of sashimi were and how to eat it all! We got to meet his family, wrote in the restaurant guestbook and when we left he gave us a calendar with his name on it and on the second night he gave us a pen! Another recommendation for Fujiyoshida - it is called Musashino.

Next we are going up into the alps to a more rural part of Japan, so we're looking forward to that! Will blog again soon ! Miss you all!

Libby and Mat

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racheldoinstuff · 8 years ago

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What a visit to Sakaiminato, the birthplace of “Gegege no Kitaro” creator Shigeru Mizuki!

We took a train decorated with Nezumi Otoko there and returned by Medama Oyaji. The town was totally dedicated to Kitaro. We really enjoyed wandering around, checking out the many statues of demons and ghouls and buying a few character goods, including bread!

#Japan #Tottori #gegege no kitaro #Mizuki Shigeru #ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 #境港

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originaldetectivesheep · 8 years ago

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Sakura Quest - keeping at T1

If you want to add a caveat to this unconditional rec of what's probably going to be one of, if not the single, best of the things running this season, it should be mentioned going in that the writer rewatches Shirobako almost like a particularly unremunerative but personally rewarding late-night job, and from the studio to the subjects to some of the literal writing and cut setups, you are not going to see a better comparable.

this doesn't hurt either, but it's probably not what it looks like, and even if it is it's definitely the norwegian one instead

This is not P.A. Works at their most artistically lush, and there is a lot of moe going on here for those worn out on such. But the writing slams and pops, and the depictions of rural Japan, especially up north, while silly, are at least grounded; the people are real, the decay is real, the public transit schedules or lack thereof are brutally real -- even if very few rural night buses actually come with bards on them. The isolation and the sense of disconnection from Japan's Tokyo-centric national life is pretty real, too, and at least from what's been in so far, it looks like we're going to be seeing this from both sides, and from the insides all the way around.

rural japan switch, pounded on; the backgrounds are a little budgety, but that sign style is just unfair, man

As I have blarged about in the past, I've got a much stronger connection to the most rural and most outer parts of Japan than I do to its more accessible cities: catching grasshoppers on the hillside over a garage facing a potato farm in an amalgamated city on the Setonakai, stumbling down Mizuki Road in Sakaiminato on the north coast with a pack full of Siberian dust, soaked and freezing in high summer at the very outer edge of Shiretoko; Japan comes with one-lane mountain roads, wet rocks, the stink of open gutters and a high empty sky of screaming kites for me, not so much cattle-car subways and canyons of skyscrapers. This is a view I'm familiar with, and that I seek out -- but such Ontario towns are to be found everywhere, and there's few people who haven't grappled at least a little with this tension, the mental weight of place and the value of nature against the burdens of isolation and the continually increasing costs that an increasingly global and urban society places on those outside its periphery. People should watch this show, because reasons, and as long as it stays this good, they will have a good time doing so.

next time, maybe try the 'strange woman lying in pond' distro protocol

This is a long way of saying that this fundamentally silly and AutoCAD-backgrounded story about an unemployed juco grad who gets roped into being the Queen of Chupakabra via a case of mistaken identity and the personal force of a bizarrely chuunibyou grandpa is going to be kept at T1, almost certain to continue to the end of the season. A lot of things could go wrong and dumb -- a lot of things could have gone wrong and dumb already, but that they've all, without exception, have been good and smart and hilarious is an excellent argument that they're going to keep being smart and good down the line as well.

#anime #sakura quest #not shining #probably not the norwegian shining either #gratuitous woods of ypres reference

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notinthenews · 6 years ago

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Yokai of Mizuki Shigeru Road in Sakaiminato, Japan

Japanese manga artist Mizuki Shigeru’s popular ghost series “GeGeGe no Kitaro” brought many of the “yokai” of Japanese folklore—monsters and spirits of the supernatural world—to life as beloved, cutesified characters. Today, the artist’s hometown of Sakaiminato in Tottori Prefecture has embraced his work by creating a local yokai treasure hunt.

This sleepy little town’s main street, Mizuki…

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blue-swag · 2 years ago

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WE HAVE OUR CONTESTANTS!

LETS GET THIS PARTY STARTED!

bracket pending but our contestants are!:

Leonardo (rottmnt)

Leonardo (2003)

Leonardo (2012)

Sonic the hedgehog (sonic the hedgehog)

Hatsune Miku (vocaloid)

Rainbow dash (mlpfim)

Yugo(wakfu)

Gegege No Kitaro (Sakaiminato Town mascot(?))

Bloo (foster's home for imaginary friends)

Miyamoto Usagi (Usagi Yojimbo)

Yuichi Usagi (Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles)

Breakdown (Transformers Prime

Arcee (Transformers Prime)

Blue (Blue's Clues)

Bluey (Bluey)

Jack Frost (rise of the guardians)

Megamind (Megamind)

The Flavor Blue Raspberry (Real Life

Naoto Shirogane (Persona 4)

Lance Mcclain (Voltron Legendary Defender)

Electric Blue Raspberry (CPU Kerfuffle)

P-03 (Inscryption)

Cure Princess (Pretty Cure)

Percival King (Epithet Erased)

Jay Walker (Ninjago)

R2-D2 (Star Wars)

Goo (Inanimate Insanity : object show)

The Woozy (Oz)

Ojo the (Unlucky (Oz)

Atul (Spiritfarer)

Mew Mint (tokyo mew mew)

Lapiz lazuli (steven universe)

#blue swag poll

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animeindoblog-blog · 6 years ago

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GeGeGe no Kitarō ‒ Episode 18

New Post has been published on https://animeindo.org/blog/2018/07/30/gegege-no-kitaro-%e2%80%92-episode-18/

GeGeGe no Kitarō ‒ Episode 18

It’s kind of a scary thought that there are people who have never seen a watermelon growing. You can see it hit Cat Girl this week when Mana comments that she didn’t realize that watermelons don’t grow on trees or how big they are, because her family has only ever bought cut melons in bite-size pieces. This is more than a regional issue, like when I had never seen a pomegranate with a stem or the friend who had a pomegranate tree had never realized how low to the ground blueberry bushes are: the underlying theme this week is that migration to cities and the processing of food have led to a generation of people who have no idea how fruits and vegetables are actually grown. (Or where meat comes from, but we’ll leave that issue for Silver Spoon.)

In typical GeGeGe no Kitarō fashion, this is handled with a good use of subtlety. Apart from the aforementioned scene with Mana and the watermelon, most of the episode is understated – we see the decline of the mountain village where Mana’s family has a summer home in the little things. Cat Girl is helping an old man with his farm while he’s injured, and he comments that the fields across the way didn’t have someone to care for them when the farmer was unable to; subsequent pans of the area reveal that the old man’s fields are pretty much the only working farmland left, with everything else gone to seed. When Mana initially sees Cat Girl working the fields, she’s aghast, because how could Cat Girl possibly still be cool and stylish when she’s in old work clothes grubbing in the dirt? Even the fact that Mana’s family has a seasonal home in the village points to the decline of working rural life – it’s a common story where I’m from: homes are bought up by “rusticators” and farming/fishing families move away or become caretakers for summer homes, changing the nature of the town.

Then of course there’s the yokai angle. This week’s is kawauso, which simply means “river otter” but sounds like it has the word for “lie” in it. Stories of the kawauso tend to mirror those of tanuki and kitsune in that they’re tricksters, but this episode takes advantage of the homophone in the name to make him a liar as well. He’s currently basically harmless, inventing stories of dead or deadbeat parents and starving siblings to get free food, and in the past, when there were more people around, we can see that he was more a “boy who cried wolf” figure. Mostly what he is now is lonely – with the exodus to the city, he’s got fewer people to play with. And he does seem to think of it as playing; Kawauso enjoys interacting with people. He’s not meanspirited in any way – in a flashback we see him helping a scared little girl, and this week in one of the show’s trademark misdirections he’s taken in an old woman who fell from a cliff, not to eat (as is initially implied), but to nurse her back to health.

There’s a definite parallel with the Shiro episode here, since once again the yokai in question ends up going to the GeGeGe Forest with Kitaro and his friends. In fact, Cat Girl swiftly interrupts the old woman’s offer to stay with her in her house to say that Kawauso can come to the forest with her, because even if he moves in with the old couple, they’re, well, old, and in a few years Kawauso will be right back where he started. Humans and yokai can certainly interact and be friends, as we saw in the Sakaiminato episodes, but they have very different lifespans. Cat Girl doesn’t want to see Kawauso be hurt in the way Shiro was, forced to say goodbye to the humans he comes to care for. Perhaps more importantly for the overall theme of the episode, Kawauso and Shiro are both yokai living in rural towns that are in decline. Where they once lived in happy proximity with humans, rural yokai are finding that that is no longer possible. Thus the movement away from nature is also one away from yokai, and like watermelon vines, they’re becoming something that people simply don’t realize exist.

I’m sure there’s a folk song about that somewhere. But maybe anime is the better medium to convey the message today.

Rating: B+

GeGeGe no Kitarō is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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