Japan trip 8: Kinkasan
MON 19 — KINKASAN Last night I showed the hotel lady my credit card and she said ok, but today she says, no, it won’t do. Plus, Plus, the banks are closed because it is a holiday. With the small amount...
View ArticleHARAJUKU HALOWEEN PARADE
although it’s in tokyo’s ‘wacky fashion’ neighborhood, this parade is not, as you might expect, a bunch of cosplay kids or glam rock lolitas. it was a bunch of little kids with their parents. because...
View ArticleCHERRY BLOSSOM VIEWING IN THE GRAVEYARD!
YANAKA BOCHI, nishi-nippori (near ueno), April 2nd. Normally i don’t post touristy stuff or "culturally englightening" stuff but what the fuck it’s hanami! (the very traditional cherry-blossom –...
View Articlecrows and cherry blossoms!
Crows are a trip – they have this very elegant, all-black-shillouete appearance . . . very Chanel, very Audrey-Hepburn-in-a-little-black-dress. But their behavior is the opposite- they are crude, rude...
View ArticleINTERVIEW: HIROKO YODA and MATT ALT
Hiroko and Matt are professional translators who also publish their own books. They just released a rad tome called YOKAI ATTACK – the only book in English about Japanese folk monsters (all the other...
View ArticleHanami in the graveyard!!!
Everyone knows I’m crazy about Yanaka Cemetary. It’s got Shogun tombs, feral cats, spooky crows, AND a jungle gym! Plus this blank, ‘insert-name-here’ tombstone: Available on a first-come-first-served...
View Articlethe passive-aggressive zombies of suburbia
Tama Reien (多摩霊園）, a cemetery that makes Yoyogi Park look like a parking spot. Located in suburban Tokyo (Musashi Koganei is the nearest station). Famous for being the resting place of Yukio Mishima,...
View Articlejapan book review 7a: offensive shinto vocabulary corner
This is a companion to my review of Skya's book JAPAN'S HOLY WAR. Here I'm collecting all the most offensive Shinto propaganda phrases that he used. But I'm also adding the kanji for them! A lot of...
View Articlesmall shrines of sadness
When most people – foreigners OR Japanese - think of shrines, they think of Google Image Search images like this: or this. . . But in my neighborhood, shrines all look like this: and this . . .!...
View ArticleMOST DEPRESSING KOTOWAZA
While reading all those "explaining the dark side of Japan" books I posted about a while back, I noticed that most of the authors used really fucked-up, depressing kotowaza (old sayings) to show the...
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