The Japan Foundation Toronto Library is Digital

Huge news for Torontonians looking to stay connected to Japan!

Kobo and Libby
working in harmony to help me devour books

The Japan Foundation, Toronto launched a brand-new digital library last month via Overdrive, the popular library-lending app.

Since the pandemic has closed their physical JFT location, this is huge news for library lovers. It goes without saying that without regular borrowers, the library could find itself in a serious dilemma, and pivoting to a digital platform in the meantime is a great move. (Unfortunately for me as an author, Edokko is a Kindle exclusive, so you won't find it in the JFT catalogue - but maybe they'll pick up Meet You By Hachiko at some point, who knows!?)

Considering that they started from zero, I'm impressed at the collection that's been put together so far - as of this writing, just shy of 500 books, with a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, manga, and Japanese-language materials. Kudos to the library staff for their hard work, here!

JFT library card holders can borrow instantly by visiting JFT OverDrive and logging in with their library card number and PIN (last four-digits of phone number). If you're new to the Japan Foundation Toronto or haven't been in in a while, the staff will need to help you renew your card first, but it's easy and quick, and so worth it.

For me, the timing of the Overdrive launch couldn't be better, as we've almost fully packed up for a move, and all my books are currently in boxes. My Kobo Libre has been saving me with access to tons of ebooks via the Toronto Public Library, and the minute I saw the JFT had gone live with theirs, I immediately headed over on the Android app Libby to get hooked up and browse the selection. My only regret is that I can only borrow five books at a time, and I'm continually running up against that 5-book limit and having to return things I didn't actually get to read yet in favour of the holds I wanted more. 😂 What to read next!?⁠

⁠I still prefer the real-paper feel, but pandemic + moving has finally gotten me aboard the ebook train. How many of you read ebooks as well as physical...?⁠

VHS Tape Bonanza

A box of tapes on their way out of the library

The Japan Foundation Toronto is moving, and though that means a lot of changes and adjustments for those of us who found Bloor and Avenue pretty convenient, the upside is that the library is overhauling, which means clearing out old items, which means VHS TAPE GIVEAWAYS.

You might have guessed from my persistent interest in all things retro, that I have just a teensy bit of nostalgia for decades past, with the 80s/90s (my formative years) entrenched firmly at the top. That means I don't just treasure the memories of taping my favourite shows on the family VCR - I still own the family VCR. I actually received a VCR-DVD combo unit for Christmas of 2013! However, 99% of my tape collection is at my parents' house, so I left it there to begin the long project of dubbing dozens of old favourites onto DVD whenever I visit them for the holidays.

So, when the Japan Foundation Toronto decided to get rid of most of its videotape collection to save space...well, needless to say, the airport x-ray techs probably got a kick out of my suitcase as it went through the scanner on my most recent trip back home. It was so hard to resist! I found some fabulous Tokyo-in-the-late-80s-early-90s snapshots with videos like Neighborhood Tokyo, Tokyo Date, NHK The News 1985 and Norimono Ippai. Lots of glamour shots of the Yurikamome Line, pre-extension, in that last one. I also scored the Ichikawa classic Tokyo Olympiad, and four out of a set of Japanese recent-history programs covering events like the Hanshin earthquake, the marriage of the crown Prince (now Emperor), and the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which was actually just in the newspaper here, as the 30th anniversary was yesterday.

All in all, a pretty impressive bounty of pre-millennial pop culture. I'm sad that these tapes can't be borrowed from the JFT library anymore, but on the other hand, it was good timing for me, because I was able to take the time to watch and enjoy them all, and they won't end up in a landfill, either. I was happy to see how quickly the rest of the tapes (there were at least 500 given away over two days) were picked up by other patrons to take home.

Looks like at least a few others out there still have VCRs!

Japanese Music in Concert

For a music fan, I'm not willing to expend a lot of energy or cash to go and see a band - in fact, I'm lucky to go to a concert every 3 years at the most, and usually only shell out for nosebleed seats. However, I've actually seen a few really good Japanese bands while living here in North America. I've seen bands that would be playing sold-out shows in Tokyo, and paid next to nothing for them.

The secret is...anime conventions.

Almost all of the big conventions feature a musical act. Here in Toronto, I hit up Anime North every couple of years when they have a particularly interesting guest. I'm also in Baltimore almost every summer, and been able to see some fantastic acts at Otakon. T.M. Revolution, L'Arc~en~Ciel, JAM Project (including Okui Masami and Kageyama Hironobu, for you anisong fans out there!), Home Made Kazoku...all free with the price of admission to the convention. How good is that? When friends in Japan heard that I'd seen L'Arc, live, they were completely bowled over. 

In Osaka and Tokyo, I saw ZARD and AiM and Wada Kouji - now, those last two are definitely a story for another day - but going to a see a big-name show was pretty unlikely. I just don't have that kind of interest in any one band - plus I've been lucky enough to see T.M.R. in the U.S. not once but twice, and (long after this post was originally written) even ran into him on a flight between Japan and Canada!

Quite a lot of Japanese artists have come to Toronto to perform as well - Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was here a couple of weeks ago, and though someone offered to sell me their tickets at the last minute for cheap, it wasn't enough notice to actually go. Too bad! I also missed out on B'z the year before last, which was really unfortunate. These are fairly big-name artists, though, that it'd be tough to get good tickets for in Tokyo, and here they are performing at the Sound Academy in T.O.!

New York, L.A. and other bigger North American cities also have plenty of Japanese performers who slip under the radar, both at local venues and at cons. The next time you're looking to find some new J-artists, why not check out a convention? You might be surprised at who you can get to see, practically for free!

Hobonichi Techo Life

In 2008 while living in Japan, I was finally able to play MOTHER 3, a recent (at the time) sequel to a cult hit video game that I loved as a teenager. My brothers and I owned a Super Nintendo and a copy of EarthBound, by far the house's "preferred game." Released in 1994, it was a role-playing game set in rural America, starring four "normal" kids (or as normal as spunky psychics, princes and genius teenagers can get, anyway). Years later, the sequel MOTHER 3 got a Japan-only release.

For me, it was perfect timing. Uncertain how to make Japanese-speaking friends, I had been hanging out mostly with fellow JETs and exchange students from the nearby university. I spent a lot of time in my apartment chatting online with people back home and listening to Internet radio. And as it happened, that was where I had the good fortune to meet my first real Japanese friends - not in Japan, but on the Internet.

This could turn into a much longer story (and my social life isn't actually what the post is about!) so to keep it short, I'll just say that I got involved with a certain well-known EarthBound community and encountered a Japanese fan of the game within it, Mana. She was about my age and lived in Gunma-ken, a prefecture north of Tokyo. The two of us arranged a meeting during one of my visits to Tokyo and hit it off, and from then on, whenever I was in the area, I made an effort to see her and her friends that I had gotten to know. All were fans of the MOTHER series, so I went from a fairly small amount of fandom involvement to quite a lot, very quickly. 

Japan was a good place to be at the time for fans of this 20-year-old series - aside from MOTHER 3's relatively recent release, there had actually been brand-new merchandise released in arcades (Game Centers), The King of Games was selling official t-shirts out of a shop in Kyoto's Teramachi, thirty minutes from my apartment, and you could still buy the special MOTHER 3 Game Boy Micro in stores - I still regret not owning one of these! I struggled through reading the blog of MOTHER creator and copywriter Itoi Shigesato, and I went to LOFT on not one but two separate Januarys to buy his well-known Hobonichi Techo, a day planner with customizable covers and thoughtful quotes. I did not make the purchase on either occasion - after all, every year CLAIR sent us a compact, designed-for-JETs planner in the mail that I was quite fond of, and I also received a small calendar book from my school. While I wanted a techo because of the Itoi connection, I couldn't validate the expense when CLAIR's version was smaller, printed in English, and had subway maps and unit conversions on the back pages. None of the covers interested me enough to drop ¥3,500 on one, so I settled for simply looking them over whenever I visited Kyoto. There were other ways to show my MOTHER love, like this fancy colour-changing Ultimate Chimera shirt that cost an absolutely astronomical amount of money at the time.

At one point Mana-chan and friends, myself included, attended a MOTHER event in Tokyo where I even ran into into two other English-speaking members of that community, one of whom was an expat JET like me - though a CIR, not an ALT - from a few prefectures away. We hadn't really known each other at the time, certainly not enough for me to recognize them offhand, but I was completely gobsmacked to spot someone in the subway station wearing a Ness t-shirt, and rushed up to them immediately to say hello.

It's been some years since that event, and though MOTHER influences my life to this day, my active involvement has waned pretty considerably since leaving Japan. Not so of the JET I met at the event in Tokyo, Lindsay - she now translates and localizes for the company belonging to the creator of the MOTHER series, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun!

I can't tell you how awesome it is to see a fan succeed not only at entering the industry professionally, but to have the incredible good fortune (not to mention the moxie to go after it in the first place!) to work with Itoi himself. So when word got out that Hobonichi was releasing an English version of the techo, translated and localized by Lindsay, I decided it was finally my year, despite having converted over pretty thoroughly to Android's convenient Google Calendar access.

Typically, I have never been great with keeping up planners. Not since high school have I used an agenda on a regular basis. But my techo's design and ease of use (can't bring my phone into company meetings!) and stylishness and POCKETS has driven it home.

(No, I don't always save my TTC transfers!)

I use it for writing fiction ideas, dates and times and details for stories, copying the office calendar down so I can see it at home, collecting movie and concert ticket stubs, noting what foods I liked at restaurants and how much I spent, and more recently tracking Bitcoin gains and losses. I also get to use stickers I brought home from Japan and my immense Muji pen collection, and imagine my surprise when I discovered that two of the other staff in my office also have Hobonichi techos!

It's been a bit tough carrying around a book all the time when I cart around plenty of heavy things in my purse, not to mention switching from digital back to analogue again, but I'm already dreaming about putting my techo on the shelf at the end of the year and having this record of 2014 to flip through again someday...it's much more personal than reading back through Twitter logs!

I guess I can't possibly be shocked that MOTHER continues to exert that subtle influence over my days. I might even have to pull out the big guns and use some of my carefully hoarded Mr. Saturn stickers.

What are you waiting for!? Start your techo life!

Photo of the Day - Final Fantasy VI

Halloween is just past, so why not a costuming photo!?
These Final Fantasy VI cosplayers at Tokyo Game Show 2007 were so adorable!

Photo of the Day - Dosei-san

This oversized dosei-san character from the video game series MOTHER (known in North America as EarthBound) came
to visit arcades around Japan in 2010. He was partially animatronic and had a person inside, operating him!

Kotatsu

I have been waiting to make this post.

I am an enormous fan of the Japanese furnishing known as a kotatsu. I own two - one big, one small; one is sort of formal and classy-looking for guests, and the other is pink-topped with a big fluffy polka-dot blanket, just the way I like 'em!

There is no possibility that I overdid it on the pink. None.

My fascination for kotatsu started well before I actually arrived in Japan, though I can't quite remember where from. (Possibly Ouran?) I have poor circulation, so I'm literally cold All. The. Time. I fell in love with the idea of kotatsu long before I had ever laid eyes on a real one - and no surprise, when I finally had one of my own, I was hooked. 

So just what is a kotatsu? 

The underside of a kotatsu

A kotatsu is a table that has a small electric heater built into the underside, and a removable tabletop. Cheaper kotatsu are often made of plastic and are light and easy to store, but classic wooden ones are still very popular. A square blanket - often two of them - is placed between the frame and the tabletop. A person then sits on the floor or on a cushion with their legs under the table. Originally, the intent was that the heat would enter through the bottom of traditional Japanese robes and exit at the neck to effectively heat the entire body - since Japanese houses depend largely on space heating and most are not insulated effectively (if at all!), a kotatsu is a cheaper way to stay warm in an inadequately-heated room. It has come to be symbolic of family life and domesticity, as families still gather around the kotatsu on winter evenings, and is a comfortable spot to read, eat, or nap on a cold day. In the summer, the blanket and electrical cords are removed, and the kotatsu becomes a normal coffee table. 

Kotatsu have their origins in the Motomachi period, the 14th century. The cooking hearth, irori, was used for heating as well as cooking and fuelled by charcoal. Over time, the irori was adapted to have a seating platform, and eventually, a quilt, which trapped the heat coming from the burner. This was called a hori-gotatsu. In the Edo period, the concept was adapted into a square shape with the wooden platform encircling it. 

The easiest way to sit at a kotatsu is with
a zaisu; a legless chair. Cushions also work!

The visual style of the kotatsu we know now came about with the use of tatami mats in homes. The charcoals were kept in a earthen pot on top of the tatami - this style is known as the oki-gotatsu. Electricity eventually replaced charcoal as the primary heating source, and the electric heaters came to be attached to the underside of the table. This is the type of kotatsu used in modern Japan today, and I doubt I would be exaggerating much to say that just about every household has at least one - in fact, we even had one at my school, in the resting room, and on the cold winter days when the students were off for New Year's break, I sometimes chose to spend the day there rather than at my desk by the (open!) window.

My apartment also came with a kotatsu, courtesy of my predecessor - it was actually I really nice one; solid wood and in fantastic shape. Unfortunately, it was a bit too tall to be comfortable for me to sit at, so I put it into storage and later gave it to a friend, who shipped it back to the U.S. (That was exciting - if you've ever pondered the logistics of packing up a twenty-pound solid wood table, well, it's something we expats need to think of at times!) I bought a brand-new one and spared no expense at this very exciting purchase - I must have checked out every major department store from September on, waiting to find my "perfect" one. Finally, I saw it at last, at LOFT in Shinsaibashi, decked out for Halloween:

This display caused me to throw excessive amounts of money at the Shinsaibashi LOFT

That was my kotatsu, I decided. I bought the one on the left, choosing a pink lacquer tabletop. The glass top was so inviting, but I knew I would be shipping the table home at the end of my contract in Japan, so I decided not to take chances. (Good thing - my table actually suffered shipping damage obvious enough that a glass top never would have survived!) I had a fleece blanket like the ones above, but later got a more traditional square one with a removable, washable cover, with the intent being that someday when I furnished a living room that wasn't entirely pink, I could sew a new cover for the blanket and make a new table-cover in a more vanilla sort of colour. As it turned out, upon arriving back in Toronto, I was lucky enough to be able to buy a bigger (double the above size), chestnut-coloured wooden kotatsu from a family selling theirs on Kijiji. It's the perfect size for guests, and I improvised with a twin-sized kakebuton for the blanket. I've watched Kijiji since, with an alert on the word kotatsu, but I've only seen two pop up in the year since I've been in Toronto.

That does mean that having your own kotatsu isn't necessarily going to be easy - the cost of importing even a cheap one is rather steep. I've seen guides to building your own online, which may be a good bet if you have the woodworking skills and the confidence to work with the heating element. (The heating elements themselves can be bought online as well!) A word of caution, though: I asked at the electronics shops in DenDen Town what needed to be done to take my kotatsu home to Canada with me, and he recommended a step-down transformer (it weighs at least 10 lbs!) for safety and to prolong my kotatsu's life, since using any appliance on the wrong voltage will wear it out faster. It was actually pretty tough to find the correct adapter, even in DenDen Town, because most Japanese appliances will work in Canada/the U.S. just fine. In the case of a heater, though, you want to be safe rather than sorry! I've seen these transformers for sale at Mits here in Toronto, or you could probably pick one up online.

Image via Wikimedia Commons
In case you were wondering what
a non-pink kotatsu looked like!

You can also buy yourself a kotatsu and the accessories online, of course. J-Life is based in the U.S. and they sell elegant, classic tables. Rakuten, on the other hand, is a little harder to purchase from (watch out for that shipping!) but they have colourful, modern kotatsu and kotatsu-gake. Personally, I like all types - the classic wooden style, the colourful tabletops and blankets with a ton of "pop," and even the lightweight retro plastic ones like the table we had at school. It was very 80s, like the rest of the room, and that was one of the things I loved about it.

So, are you ready to settle down for a cold winter under the kotatsu? I've found my perfect method: a puzzle mat (for comfy sitting and laying down) with a nice fuzzy rug laid over it. 100x100cm table with adjustable height extenders. Downy, fluffy kotatsu-gake blanket with a washable futon cover so I can change out the patterns and colours as I want them. Heat turned on a nice medium-low, and a small zaisu legless chair with padding on the back. A cup of tea. Earl grey - hot. Maybe a nice pot of sukiyaki, too!

I hate winter, but my kotatsu makes it bearable. ♥

Labels

Japan's most famous anime mascot, Astro Boy

The word "Japanophile" really bothers me. So does otaku. There's really no easy word to describe a passion for Japanese culture that some people won't see as negative, and that's a shame. Do Anglophiles (admirers of English culture) feel like this sometimes?

Looking down on others makes people feel better about themselves, and among foreign residents in Japan, many are quite derisive about those who come to the country because they enjoy popular culture. The perception comes partially as a result of otaku culture in the West, which is usually associated with social awkwardness or out-and-out lunacy, depending on which aspect you happened to walk in on.

Of course, there are some deeply problematic people, and some of them are certainly enthusiastic about Japan as a hobby, or are unwavering apologists. I do think it's unfortunate, though, that people can't just enjoy things.  

I travelled on a GO Transit bus during Anime North weekend this year, whereupon turning down the airport-hotel stretch of Dixon Road, we drove into a sea of con-goers dressed up in everything from cardboard boxes to bikinis. I'm used to this stuff - the other passengers weren't. As we waited at the lights, the crosswalk looking more like Shibuya than little old Mississauga, they peered out the windows and started talking among themselves, wondering what kind of strange carnival was being held out there.

Anime fandom goes hand in hand with an appreciation for Japan, and while some otaku go the opposite way and care little about anything but the media aspect of it, many others are crazy about Japan simply for being The Place Where Anime Comes From, and have little concept of how Japanese society actually functions. 

Fortunately, still more are well-rounded and interested in other aspects of Japan, but the unfortunate trend tends to be that if you started learning Japanese because you happen to enjoy anime or manga, and that path eventually takes you to Japan, you become a target for all the foreigners who moved there because it was a great chance to supplement their party lifestyle and now hate living abroad but can't or won't go home. Then there are the holier-than-thou types who, because they appreciate the higher forms of culture (and don't get me wrong, I practised ikebana myself, and the Japanese arts are beautiful) despise pop culture on principle. 

This is a terrible way to live - I don't see the point in mocking other peoples' hobbies. The unfortunate reality, though, is that after seeing the way otaku, Japan apologists and Japanophiles are openly derided in certain JET communities, I found myself hesitant to socialize with people who seemed to be in Japan for a lark, in case they turned out to be one of these types. I probably missed out on a few opportunities to meet good people, but at the time I didn't feel up to fighting the good fight to defend why I wanted a tatami room and to send nengajo and to cook Japanese instead of Western dishes.

The word otaku doesn't have quite as much negative connotation in Japan as it did twenty years ago, luckily, but Japanese fans are even more secretive about their hobbies. When you cosplay at an event in Japan, you aren't permitted to come in costume from your hotel - you have to register and use the cosplay dressing room to change when you arrive. I suppose this, too, originates from fans not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves. But something I really liked about Japan is that it's OK to be into anime, or manga, or trains, or bentou art, or British television, or anything at all really - it's just not acceptable to be over-the-top about it. No matter what country you're in, the label's not particularly good.

These days, anyway, they're saying that 'the geeks shall inherit the earth,' and I hope that does good things for the perception of fans going forward, especially with the anime boom here in North America dropping off pretty sharply in recent years, Still, someday, I'd like to feel that my interests and hobbies aren't 'strange' to anyone at all.

My Love Affair With Uniqlo

The first time I walked into a Uniqlo store, I knew it was over.

I've never been a brand shopper - in fact, my clothing shopping mantra has usually been "get in, get out, I don't have to try it on do I!?" And the cheaper the better. Up until the point where I stepped into Yodobashi Camera's 7th floor Uniqlo store, I didn't care about my clothes or where I bought them. Now, I'm stockpiling money to finance a shopping trip to New York City, specifically so that I can go to Uniqlo.

My students teased me about this sometimes - hard to say whether that was because Uniqlo clothes are inexpensive, or simply because I bought 90% of my summer wardrobe there. (Hey, I didn't really need a summer wardrobe on the East Coast, so why bother spending money for clothes you'll get three weeks' wear out of?) I didn't mind, because I was so thrilled to have found the awesome place that is Uniqlo. Short for "Unique Clothes," this store delivers everything in bright colours at great prices, with an amazing turnover rate for fashions. If I found something I liked but was a bit expensive, I could usually go back six weeks later and get it for 50% off. Their colour range is so dynamic and it was easy to find 'basic' items, which is great when you like layering. The tank tops and legging offerings were fantastically diverse. And the one-piece dresses!

They've been expanding rapidly, so if you're lucky enough to live in any other country but Canada, please get yourself to this store. And take me with you!

Conan Town

Not close.

One of my greatest adventures in Japan was visiting Conan Town in 2009. I had never gone so far afield for a day trip before, and I had never taken a daytime highway bus anywhere, either. Nor had I ever come quite so close yet to getting stranded in the middle of nowhere in Japan!

My friend Ami was visiting me from Canada, and she had short list of things she wanted to do in Japan. She asked about Conan Town, also known as Hokuei-cho, a place that I'd been resolving to visit over and over but had never gotten to it due to time and cost. Just to give you an idea of how much time and cost I'm talking:

Hokuei was created from the 2005 merger
of the towns of Hōjō and Daiei Towns

Route1
Take time: 260 Minutes Transfer: 3 Times Distance: 282.5 km
Total:¥ 8,070 (Fare:¥ 5,150 Seat Fee:¥ 2,920) 

Thanks, Hyperdia.

Oh yes, that's one way. Looking at over eight hours combined travel and about $160 in cost (the exchange rate was comparable at the time) if I wanted to slog all the way out to Tottori-ken and see this place. It wasn't something I was willing to undertake alone, and none of the friends who'd been to visit me were up for this expensive and monumental task. I can't blame them - we had some pretty big adventures as it was. Ami, though, is a fan of the manga Detective Conan, and the lure of Hokuei-cho is that it is the birthplace of Aoyama Gosho, the artist of this series. 

When the idea of taking a day trip to Tottori came up with her, she immediately agreed.

If you were spending 11 hours
in train/bus seats in a day,
you'd want to relax a little, too!

I had to find a way to bring down the cost and the travel time. Luckily, my Google skills and my Japanese were just good enough to get us set up on a Nihon Kotsu bus for a very reasonable ¥3,600. I think we left at either 8 or 9 AM, and the bus was just over 3 hours from Hankyu Umeda to Tottori City (which, I should point out, is nowhere near Hokuei-cho).

Our next trick was getting from city to town, which is further into the boondocks of Japan than I had ever been. We got lunch but missed the San-in Line train, which meant buying reserved seats on the charmingly-named Super Hakuto limited express.

About two hours and one long wait for a train change later, we finally disembarked, tired and excited, at Yura Station!

Detective Conan statues were all over town

It had taken us almost seven hours to get this far. This probably should have been indicative of how the rest of the day was about to go. Still, we were happy to be there at last! It had been dreadfully difficult to find information in English on the town in our pre-Google-Translate world - I probably spent 30 minutes just digging out the name of the train station - so we didn't have much idea of what to expect. 

These tablets marked the path from the
train station to the Manga Museum

For those who got this far in the post without any idea what I am talking about when I say Conan, well, Detective Conan is a famous comic series that is among the longest-running in Japan right now. The first volume came out in 1994. The manga has been released in English under the name Case Closed.

The basic premise of the story is that a high school-age genius detective, Kudo Shinichi, witnesses a shady exchange between members of an organized crime syndicate, the Black Organization. He is caught and fed poison, but instead of killing him, the poison shrinks him into a grade-schooler. In order to protect his family and friends, he takes on the name Edogawa Conan and goes undercover, living with his maybe-girlfriend and her PI father while he tries to take down the Black Organization. I hoped to see the conclusion of the series while I was in Japan, but no such luck - it's about to hit the 20-year mark.

The original moulds used for the
statues around town 

Back in Conan Town, being the birthplace of Aoyama Gosho is obviously a huge claim to fame for this little village, though many of the elements of Hokuei-cho were a bit dated - the statues and other permanent landmarks were based on Aoyama's earliest drawing styles; mid-1990s. I had the locations, though, of seven Detective Conan statues in the town, and a list of other spots of interest. 

Walking along the road toward the Manga Museum, the main attraction of the town, tablets lined the pathway, each one showing the cover design of one of the manga volumes. The area's other claim to fame is watermelons, so watermelon motifs were quite popular. (We ended up coming home with Tottori pears, but no watermelons.)

Where the magic happens!

Where the statues were dated, the Museum was very modern. We passed a closed souvenir store that had seemingly moved into the Museum, so it had obviously seen a lot of effort put into it to lure the big fans. There were appearances here and there by Yaiba, the lead character of Aoyama's pre-Conan manga of the same name, and plenty by Kaitou Kid, star of Magic Kaitou and a very familiar crossover character. My favourite feature was the replica of Aoyama Gosho's workdesk. 

Shinichi statue at the library

There was an interactive skateboard game, a voice-changing bow tie, a showcase of Detective Conan in various languages, a selection of famous mystery novels by authors Aoyama enjoys, sculptures, toys, original pages of Aoyama's works, giant cardboard characters...this place was as thorough as any big museum in Tokyo! We spent so long going through the museum and the gift shop that we left ourselves very little time to go see the remaining statues.

Professor Agasa's car

After we finished at the museum and made a quick stop at the bookstore, we were about to head back to the station. Unfortunately, we still hadn't seen that last statue! Glancing at the map and the clock - 5:30 - I had to admit that there wasn't really enough time to go up there and see it, and still make it back for the 5:56 train. It was a Sunday, so there was only one train per hour, and this train was the last one that would get us back to Tottori in time for the bus home. If we missed the bus, I had no Plan B. Stranded six hours from home on a school night? No thanks.

Still....I really wanted to see it. There was only one statue of Ran in the whole town at the time (though now there are two!), and on the map, she did look close by. Daiei Elementary School was behind the train station, so we would be on the wrong side of the tracks, but on our not-to-scale map I thought perhaps it couldn't be more than five minutes from Yura. I asked Ami if she was up to the challenge - from the library to the elementary school and then back to the station, in 25 minutes. Could we do it?

She's asthmatic, so I'm not sure why she agreed to this, but the game was afoot. Away we went!

Don't do this.

Needless to say, when we arrived at the school at 5:42, we were more than a little worried about being stranded in Conan Town overnight. Had it been a Saturday, sure, Conan Town forever! But the best we could do was snap a couple of photos of the statue and then run back to the station before we heard the train warning bells. As it was, we had just enough time to quickly buy tickets ("How much should I put in?" "It doesn't matter! Just get any ticket and we'll fix it later!") before the train arrived and it whisked....er, trundled....us back to Tottori City and the Nihon Kotsu bus.

Mirai e no Ayumi
The statue that almost cost us dearly

From there, it was a long journey back to Osaka - when we were dropped off at the OCAT building at last, we were tired and pretty cranky, and Ami left her bag of Magic Kaitou books in the overhead compartment of the bus. By the time we realized it, we were so exhausted we didn't have the energy to go and file a claim. We arrived back at my place well after midnight, having clocked a full 14 hours in transit. That's quite a feat for a day trip!

Still, it's not a stretch at all for me to say the museum alone made our ridiculous journey worth it, and we had ourselves quite an adventure. I would have done it again in a heartbeat - but I would have given us two days!

Urusei Yatsura

The book, which I haven't seen in years,
goes for $60+ on Amazon nowadays.
Oh.

About ten years ago I picked up a manga called Lum: Urusei Yatsura as reading material in a comic shop while on a trip to Halifax. It was literally the best deal on the shelf (back in the day when Japanese comics were not even 1/10th as mainstream as they are now!); 400 pages for $15 dollars. We were in for a long ride back to St. John's, so it was perfect.

I remember not being sold on Lum at the time. It was a little too wacky for me, and the "collection" nature of the book made it hard to follow at times. Still, as I was going through my photos from orientation to post on Tadaimatte, I remembered something that made me smile: on my first day in Osaka, while staying at the Dotonbori Hotel, the only thing on television that night was Urusei Yatsura. I walked in halfway through, so I didn't really get what was going on, but it was a relief to me to find something familiar to watch once it became too late to go outside in the unfamiliar city. The movie was Only You - you can check out the trailer below.

While I was thinking back to that, I decided to give Urusei Yatsura another try by watching the films, and over the past week or two have been doing that and finding that I'm enjoying the series considerably more. I'd developed a distinct taste for Takahashi Rumiko's vintage collections  long ago (Maison Ikkoku is my favourite manga) and while Urusei Yatsura is not her best work, it is still funny and lighthearted. It does contain many of the elements that I love about Ikkoku, a series that came a short while later, and clearly after learning a few lessons about the direction she wanted to take her work.

I know many people enjoyed the more well-known Inuyasha, but in my opinion, 'slice of life' stories are what Takahashi Rumiko does best. I'd definitely like to see her return to this sort of project someday.

Only You

Photo of the Day - Nishinomiya

My friend Marisa and I are both fans of the Takarazuka Revue, and on our way to a show in Takarazuka City one day, we passed through Nishinomiya Station.

This town is the setting of the light novels/anime The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, so we took a few photos.  The courtyard of the station is probably a familiar sight for fans!

Anime and Manga

Don't really have many photos of anime-ish stuff in Japan, but here's an amazing birthday
cake with a Dragon Ball character on it that Emily got me for my birthday in 2009. Fantastic.

When I first started taking Japanese classes, I'll admit that it was interest in anime that got me there, and not the other way around. From junior high school on, I was a devout fan of the Japanese animated shows that were on television here in Canada, starting with Astro Boy and progressing to Sailor Moon, Samurai Pizza Cats, The Wizard of Oz, Dragon Ball and others. It was after I started going to the local anime society in 10th grade that I got really interested in watching shows in their native Japanese, with English subtitles.

I did a fair amount of growing up between then and when I left for Japan; I had begun to move on to other things by the time I graduated, as I had so many hobbies that I rarely had time watch anime. (I still read manga, when I can afford it.) Fans, I'm sure, would probably consider it an incredible waste that I went to Japan after this had happened!

I clearly remember a conversation I had with my vice-principal and my go-between in the car as we left Osaka Orientation, and they asked if I liked manga. This was the first time I had met either of them and I wanted to make a good impression; didn't want to look like what some JETs referred to as an "akiba-boy/akiba-girl," someone who only came to Japan for the chance to go to Akihabara and buy toys. At the same time, I couldn't exactly lie, so I replied "sometimes," and they asked what series I liked.

Scrambling for one that wasn't too associated with 12-year-olds, I replied that I liked Hikaru no Go (a series I hadn't read in many years), and then had to field questions for the next five minutes on the plot of Hikaru no Go and whether I could play Go and so on. Oops.

Mittsume ga Tooru figure.
Tezuka Osamu, creator of this series as well as classics
like Astro Boy, is said to be "the father of manga."

Still, when I was there, the mere exposure to so much animated goodness had me back into it on a smaller scale. This is mostly thanks to the SkyPerfect satellite service - on my first month in Osaka, all the JETs did a weekend of seminars at a local language institute to help speed us along on our journey to Daily Life In Japan. We had a fair amount of down-time and I hadn't made any close friends yet, so I spent a lot of it in my room watching TV. There were two channels that showed a ton of nostalgic shows that I hadn't seen in years - Pocket Monsters (the original version of Pokemon), Ranma 1/2, Dragon Ball Z and the like. The channels were Animax and Kids' Station, and they showed anime both new and old, 24/7. I decided then and there that I was buying a satellite dish. Soon, SkyPerfect TV was streaming gems to me like Maison Ikkoku, Cat's Eye, Minky Momo, KochiKame, Touch, Nodame Cantobile, Sailor Moon, Kaiketsu Zorori, Dokonjō Gaeru, Detective Conan and Lupin III.

For a long time, I was so relieved to hear "easy" Japanese that I understood, I left the television on 24/7, hoping it would sink into me by osmosis.

This phase passed, and soon I was probably paying way more for my satellite service than was worth it for the amount of TV watching I was doing. The honeymoon phase of struggling through manga in Japanese was also over, but it was nice having the option. On a lazy rainy day, it was good to just be able to turn on the television and know that there was probably something on worth watching - even if that something was marketed at 12-year-olds.