AltJapan

Get On Your Robot

Grendizer Go... in Austria, of all places, according to the description on flickr.

Compare and contrast to this one discovered in New Hampshire and this one found in Pittsuburgh. Also observe this and this Gundam ride and discuss "which would win in a fight." Pencils up, people.

Get Your Robot On

It's like Christmas in December over at CNNgo.com -- check out my guide to Tokyo's top vintage toy stores right here! Below, some unused behind-the-scenes shots of the insanity.

 

 

 

Japanimation --> Chinamation?

Yahoo Japan News "Chinese Animation" as Seen By the Japanese Anime Industry (Japanese language)

Kazuo Obara, CFO of anime firm Madhouse Studios' Peking office, spoke to Chinanet about the difficulties facing the his industry. "The Japanese anime industry is stagnating. It's facing a harsh reality. Television station revenues are falling, the number of shows airing and the amount of money available for production in serious decline. DVD sales are dropping precipitously, a lethal development for production companies, which depend on DVD sales for some 40% of their revenues. The time has come for the Japanese animation industry to revise its thinking and devise a better business model for a new age."

Obara continued that if properly trained, Chinese animators could well usher in a new era of animation history, but said hurdles remain -- the main one being that of time. "China doesn't have the luxury of taking as long of a time as Japan did to become good at animation. They need to push onto the world stage immediately."

Reactions from the always-reliably-reactive 2ch crowd varied. "The anime industry is already saturated, so it's going to be extremely difficult to break through no matter how much technology you have," remarked one poster. "Given the political stance there, can anyone really create something truly free-thinking or thematically complex?" commented another. Others took a less thoughtful approach: "So the Japanese anime industry is going to sell itself out to the Chinese." And: "This is like an article from a North Korean paper! What is it really saying? 'Japan is out of the game, and China's giving its best?'"

Game Centered

Much ink has been spilled over the decline of the Japanese video game arcade, a.k.a. "game center." So what are Japanese gamers playing when they go to the arcades? This 2ch post actually asks, and finds out:

-"Games that even beginners can easily start playing have really been on the decline recently."

-"Tetris or PuyoPuyo."

-"I was super into Time Crisis for a while."

-"UFO Catchers."

-"Music games."

-"Medal games."

-"QMA with a friend." (Quiz Magic Academy)

-"Damn you otakki bastards who play QMA alone while taking notes! It's a game for couples!"

-"Fighting games or QMA."

-"Ones where you kill zombies."

-"The Bonds of the Battlefield."

-(Absurdly detailed thesis about PuyoPuyo)

And for the win:

-"Whenever my friends and I go to the game center we basically stand around for a while and leave because there isn't anything a beginner can just start playing."

Mighty Battle Skin Panic (And Other 8-Bit Fantasies)

Figments from an era when videogames were nothing more than a mildly retarded upstart to that oh-so-established genre of entertainment known as "anime".... All from a long-dead gaming platform called the MSX.

Some company called "Gainax" made this super-realistic high school simulation that incorporates both submarine warfare and a case of the old "battle skin panic." Wonder what they're up to now. The bikini-clad schoolteachers, I mean.

"Starship Rendezvous" defies easy explanation -- Oh, who am I kidding. It's a proto-porno game featuring a weirdly vibrating digitized photo of a female. HOT!!! (...If throbbing pixels are your "thing.")

Most realistic Gundam simulator EVER. Remember that scene where Amuro had to dodge falling pot-roasts in the anime?

He's a bat, man! This super-deformed, explosion-prone portrayal of the caped crusader is the best thing since Christian Bale, or Adam West.

Forget the penchant for wine, women, and breaking and entering. What REALLY gets Lupin III going is bubblegum.

Cold Mac'in

 Bar sign in Akihabara. Best re-use of an old translucent G3 PowerMac tower ever?

The Whis

                            

If you've spent any time hanging out in the sleazy yakitori joints I do, you know all about Hoppy. It's an inexpensive, super low-alcohol carbonated beverage that is mixed with shochu to create a super-cheap beer substitute. Which sounds appalling, but is actually quite good, if you get the mixture right. ("Right" meaning "a frosty mug full of shochu with a little Hoppy on top.")

But did you know that there's another alcohol substitute making a comeback? Maboroshi no Sake Hoisu, or "Hoisu, the Phantom Liquor"! Scholars of Japanese will recognize the "Hoisu" as being the first three syllables of an archaic pronunciation of "whiskey" in katakana (ホイスキー), making the name something like "Whis." Hoppy is a beer substitute. Hoisu is a WHISKEY substitute. Or more to the point, a mizu-wari (whiskey-and-water) substitute.

So how's it taste? Read my piece on CNNgo to find out!

The Mysterious Case of the Spare Prick

A few weeks ago, I noticed an odd translation for the lock-equipped luggage racks aboard Japan Railway's new Narita Express trains: 

When the set combination is forgotten, it becomes a delivery of the spare prick in the train terminal station.

What the hell? The Japanese is straightforward enough:

指定された暗証番号をお忘れの場合は、列車終着駅でお荷物の引渡しとなります。

Which gives us, normally,

If you forget your combination, your luggage will be returned to you at the final stop.

So whither the "prick"?

After doing some poking around (huh, huh) online, I realized that the N'Ex is just one victim -- there seem to be other examples throughout Japan. And I think I've managed to discover the culprit. It appears to be none other than Excite Japan! Try giving the above sentences a whirl through Excite Japan's online translation service. Hell, just send お荷物 (luggage) through:

 

So there we have it. Intriguingly, Excite Japan's translation tool (huh, huh) is apparently powered by a company called BizLingo, sold by Accela Technology for the low, low monthly licensing fee of 119,000 yen per CPU (additional CPUs just 69,000 yen each, with a 250,000 yen setup fee.) Who knows what kind of deal they've cut with an online provider like Excite, but whatever the case, this particular system seems to be responsible for a rash of spare pricks across Japan.

But why "spare prick?" It is so far beyond the ken of the usual bad machine translation that its appearance has shocked even normally oblivious-to-Engrish native Japanese speakers. This blog theorizes that it may be an extrapolation from やっかい者, someone who is a "burden" to have around. やっかい者 also happens to be the translation of a British idiom I'd never heard before, "like a spare prick at a wedding," thus giving us a connection, however convoluted, to the spare pricks aboard the Narita Express.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle, when it comes to extra genitalia.

Rubber and Zinc

It's diecast kaiju Sunday, people.

 

 

 

           

The Painted Courtesan

Hiroko and I spotted this tiny swallowtail (actually a Red Ring Skirt butterfly, an Asian variant of the "Painted Courtesan" found in Europe) sheltering from the wind on a fence in Inokashira park. We had our first cold snap last week and were surprised to find this guy (?) out so late in the year, particularly in such "mint condition." Perhaps he hatched too late? Or early? 

Whatever the case, he seemed very cold and eager to hang out on our warm hands. We brought him home, fed him some sugar water (which he drank greedily, for a solid ten minutes, using his krazy straw-like tongue), and sent him back on his way.