emzee

I remember reading Idoru years ago, where one of the characters is a purely virtual pop idol, a software construct created to entertain the masses. You can imagine the advantages - no rehab, no paparazzi, no romances with sketchy guys.. though there’s always a risk of a software bug causing her to freeze up in mid-concert (please be patient while we reboot the performer..).

Frank Sinatra’s royalties are safe for now

A virtual pop star is a lot way off, but synthetic singing software already exists… enter whatever words and notes you want, and it sings them. They of course created a virtual idol (limitations be damned) called Miku Hatsune, whose songs are all over Japanese charts.. it’s all still pretty scripted, so we’ll have to deal with the Britneys and Winehouses for a few more years, but I’m looking forward to the day when tabloids are full of rumors that the latest virtual idol has caught a deadly computer virus (planted by a jealous rival, natch..).

Call me a late bloomer.. last night I felt every bit the virgin fan that I was at the Kaiju Big Battel at Webster Hall. I had read about it before, it sounded like a goofy godzilla-meets-wrestling pseudo-satire, where huge “monsters” battle it out in the ring. The series comes complete with backstories, rivalries, betrayals and intrigue.

Monster vs monster, duking it out

The event definitely blew me away… first of all it was sold out, over a thousand people. The MC kept the crowd worked up with melodramatic commentary that any WWF/WWE fan would recognize. People were really into it, some sporting t-shirts of their favorite monsters, and I even spotted one wearing the costume of a recently-deceased monster (Pablo Plantain RIP.. or not..).

Dr. Cube talkin’ smack in the ring

The other thing that amazed me was the action. I was expecting silly dweebs in the costumes hitting each other with foam appendages… these guys were doing all the crazy flying moves you’d see in a pro wrestling event. I mean, the “fighting” is fake, but when they’re doing flying backflips off the top rope and colliding in mid-air, it’s still impressive.

Finish off that slimy beast!

Definitely an event best viewed with a sense of humor (a drink or two doesn’t hurt).. highly recommended.

A good sushi dinner is one of those timeless pleasures.. or at least it feels timeless - according to the literature, raw-fish sushi’s a pretty recent invention. But no matter, maybe it took the Japanese a thousand years to get it right. I’m just glad I was born in the right century.

Worshipping at the altar

It’s a happy day when you finally find a good neighborhood sushi joint - the right combination of great fish, smooth service, unpretentious surroundings, and local crowd. No sushi snobs loudly debating the relative merits of Spanish vs Japanese mackerel, no tourists ordering salmon teriyaki.. just people eating raw fish and loving it.

Kanpai!

After a week in Tokyo, Manhattan feels like a small town. You can walk across the island in an hour. Whenever someone opens a new restaurant a dozen blogs and newsletters announce it. And even before the opening, several blogs will have already gossiped about arguments between the chef and the owner, or problems getting the liquor license from the community board. I even run into people I know in the street. That’s not supposed to happen in a big city, I should be walking anonymously through crowds full of strangers.

Feeling out of your skin?

So what does one do after coming home from a trip to Japan? Go out for sushi.

Last night I stayed in a high-end ryokan, the kind that serves a full kaiseki dinner in your room. This one was as extravagant as any, with a full 15 (yes, fifteen) courses that elegantly combined a variety of regional, in-season ingredients into a medley of artistically presented hot and cold dishes in a sequence that evoked the rhythms of nature, the rise and fall of empires and the progress of civilization since we emerged from the seas.

Whenever I encounter food-as-art I have a very mixed reaction. Not the usual developed-country guilt that we’re wallowing in luxury while people elsewhere are starving, it’s more a sense that maybe we’ve just lost the plot somewhere along the way. I certainly enjoyed the meal, each dish was indeed an edible sculpture and the overall experience was almost symphonic in scope. But the formality made it all feel a little distant. I missed the part where you take your first bite of a dish and go “mmmm!” out loud.

 Eenie meenie…

I wonder if people who live in Tokyo eventually stop being surprised by anything. Today I came across a noodle place that has its menu on a big back-lit sign outside, above what looks like those ticket machines in the train stations. Only in this case, instead of fare classes and destinations on all the buttons, each one corresponds to a menu item. You push a button (”Noodles with pork and soft-boiled egg, 980 yen”), feed in some money (1000-yen note), and the machine spits out a little ticket along with your change. Go inside, sit down at the counter, hand the guy your ticket, and he comes back 2 minutes later with your noodles. When you’re done, you just leave, no check, that’s it.. genius.

Spending a day shopping in Nakameguro and Daikanyama is enough to make you wonder whether Japan was once a French colony in some parallel universe. It’s not just Comme des Garçons, feels like half the stores have French names, or use faux French paraphernalia as props for exotic ambiance.

The food, too, was very Europhile. Tons of cafes full of hipsters sipping wine and eating panini. Soba for lunch is probably as pedestrian here as a hot dog or burger in the US. Is the grass always greener on the other side? I think the only country that considers its own food cool is Italy.

Forget Japan’s reputation for homogeneity, a quick stroll through the Akihabara district and I was pretty blown away by the sheer diversity (and occasional bizarreness) of electronic entertainment and gadgetry on offer. There’s the usual computers, cameras, etc.. but also entire stores specializing in LED lighting, or model figurines, or softcore anime DVDs with abnormally large-breasted cartoon schoolgirls on their covers. I can imagine there are people who would be into almost any kind of niche interest, but enough to support block after block of these stores? Scary.

Beef jerky?

A lot of the arcades and amusement halls have those machines where you put in a coin and then move this big claw around to try to pick up prizes, usually stuffed animals and such. I found one that gives you a chance to snag a box of smoked beef snacks. Maybe there’s a special thrill to scoring something for 100 yen that would ordinarily cost 500 or 600 at the local convenience store.

More passion!

Speaking of Lost In Translation… I walked by a huge billboard with Cameron Diaz in an ad for a local mobile phone operator. Wonder how much they paid her? Don’t think we’ll be seeing her doing Verizon ads back in the home country anytime soon..

After 2 days at the Tokyo Game Show, I’ve decided that I’m not 13 anymore, and there’s a limit to how long I can play/stare at video games before my brain begins to turn to jelly. Or maybe it did turn to jelly when I was 13 and I just didn’t notice.

Even the fighting games are cute

Spending this much time with Japanese video games also makes me wonder.. how much do the differences in Japanese and western games reflect underlying cultural differences? Western games are all about photorealism, and most involve competition and/or combat. Japanese games are cute, cartoony, fantasy worlds.. not necessarily innocent or child-like, they often have dark and even twisted themes, but they’re always taking you on a trip away from the real world rather than trying to make the game feel “realistic”. Video games are usually about fantasy and control, but why do Americans want to pretend they’re soldiers or athletes, while Japanese gamers want to leave this world entirely and hang out in trippy technicolor dreamlands? Do they have more imagination than Americans, or are they just more bored and need stronger stimuli?

Mousepad with a comfy wrist rest