AltJapan

Castaway No. 28

An unlikely survivor of the North Pacific Gyre, spotted among junk washed up on Midway Island: an old plastic Tetsujin 28 toy. The BBC reporter describes it as "a futuristic space warrior" that "must have spent months at sea, surviving storms and maybe even being swallowed by an albatross and fed to a chick that then died." See? SEE? Its yet more evidence of the spread of Japanese anime culture around the globe. Someone write a book or somethin'!

On a serious note, it's one of many pieces of discarded plastic caught in a massive cycle of ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean. You can read the (really quite depressing) article about the plastic junk that survives for years adrift oceanic currents here and here on the BBC's website. I encountered a similar phenomenon on Sado Island, just off the coast of Japan, the westward shores of which are covered in discarded plastic bottles, crates, nets, and other garbage from the Asian mainland.

Never Mind the Bollocks...

Two great flavors that go great together, spotted side by side in the song catalog at the local "karaoke box."

Where Diecast Robots Come From

What I learned at Tamashii Nation 2008: In the world of humans, when a daddy loves a mommy very much, he gives her a special gift, and nine months later she gives him a baby in return. Meanwhile, in Japan, when a licensor loves a licensee very much, they exchange contracts and blueprints and nine months later robots roll out of the factory. Like this.

Chogokin (diecast) robots start life as ingots of metal that are cast in molds. Here's some freshly cast parts.

Next, special dies are used to cast parts with fine detail out of PVC vinyl or styrene plastic, like heads.

The molded diecast parts are cleaned and polished.

Larger plastic accessories are created by injection molding. (These particular parts are for the upcoming God Marz toy.) Then, everything is assembled...

Ready for world domination! Or they will be, once they're painted.

If you dug this, you might dig learning about where Gundam robots come from.

Liftoff

Radena similis, often spotted in the Okinawa islands, photographed by Hiroko in the Tokyo Tama Zoo's "Insectarium."

Tamashii Nation 2008

Tamashii Nation 2008 kicked off last night at Akiba Square UDX with a gala reception for media and Bandai employees. It's open to the public through Sunday, but I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview. (Alas, I missed Go Nagai's opening remarks by minutes.)

Photos abound on the web (robot toy maniacs should try here, here, and here for starters), but the really fascinating thing about the show wasn't the announcement of new releases but rather Bandai's attempt to position their Saint Seiya, S.I.C., and Chogokin collector lines as "lifestyle goods" rather than toys. In addition to three showrooms housing new products, the main floor featured a series of faux rooms designed to show toy-freaks how they can best display their treasures.

Meet your new overlords: the mascot characters of the newly-founded Bandai Collectors Division.

The Gundam-equipped office. Note the wine rack.

An Evangelion-festooned study room. Is that a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" on the desk...?

Bandai executives explained that this diorama portrays the moment Patrick Macias was born.

Even Jasper Morrison agrees: there isn't a living room that doesn't benefit from a $1000, two-foot high illuminated statue of a Kamen Rider.

If your child's room doesn't look like this, you have failed as a parent.

I couldn't agree more.

Getting "Dusted"

"I'm not garbage!" A happy little dust mote pleads his case in this ad from Duskin. It goes on to explain how dust from cleaning equipment is recycled into concrete-making material. Just goes to show you: even chunks of grime can be super kawaii characters!

BAKUC of the Soul

Who needs Ultramen and kaiju when you can have your very own soft vinyl figure of the legendary, mysterious spokesman for all things Gun-Pla: BAKUC! You may remember his stoic yet alluring presence from that time Patrick and I invaded Bandai HQ to build the world's largest Gundam model together for Otaku USA magazine. Details are scarce at the moment but reliable sources tell us "the crotch is being adjusted as we speak." Right. Anyway, that's a clay prototype pictured above. The figure is due out later this year with a special surfboard accessory, and you're gonna buy one.

For those not fortunate enough to know BAKUC personally, he's the official referee for Gundam kit-building competitions across Asia. Feel free to tune in to his crazed body- and model-building blog. MUSCLE IS FOR MAKING MODEL KITS!

The UnKawaii

Here's what the kids are saying:

"It isn't cute at all."
"It feels totally out of place."
"You always were conservative, Nara. Way to go."
"The more you look at it, the easier it gets to stomach."
"As a resident of Nara, I'm embarrassed."

Here's what the Japanese press is saying:

"It's got a ferocious amount of impact."

And here's what the mayor of Nara is saying:

"We're just glad for the publicity. Whatever form it takes."

They're talking about the as-yet-unnamed mascot designed to celebrate the 2010 event planned to mark the 1,300th anniversary of Nara's establishment as Japan's former capital. A caricature of the Great Buddha at Todaiji festooned with antlers resembling those of the deer that roam the grounds of the famed historical site, it's the latest in what some Japanese news sources are now calling the "go-tochi kyara boom" ("the local mascot boom") of ultra-localized PR characters. (Perhaps the most famous being Hikone Castle's Hikonyan.) But Nara's creation deserves recognition as the first mascot to ignite a firestorm (well, sort of) over its decided un-cuteness.

Is this a sign of growing sophistication among Japanese consumers, who demand super-cuteness in their mascots? Or was it a deliberate attempt to stoke the flames of controversy? Japanese website J-Cast asked the Nara event committee themselves. They were told simply:

"This design was picked because of its outstanding impact and instant association with Nara. Also, as an incarnation of the energy of the Nara region, it will allow us to create further storytelling opportunities in the future."

In Japan, it seems, mascots don't ALWAYS have to be super kawaii.

New Nintendo Game System!

Move over, Wii and DS. Nintendo's just released a new game system, and on paper, it looks great. In fact... it IS paper.

Hiroko and I spotted this newly-released set of reproduction karuta cards at a tiny bookstore incogruously tucked between fish stalls in Tokyo's Tsukiji Market. They're called Osakana Karuta ("Fish Cards"), and they were co-produced by the Okuno Karuta Company in concert with Nintendo. Karuta have been around in Japan for centuries, but it turns out the history of this particular set is as fascinating as the artwork is charming.

Originally created in 1937 by a Tsukiji Central Fish Market PR man named Hideo Hasegawa as part of a campaign to promote fish sales, the cards feature light-hearted puns based on the names and appearances of various edible sea-life. Above, a hungry anglerfish stuffs his huge mouth, yari-ika ("spear squid") and a cuttlefish are compared to their namesakes, and a procession of hotaru-ika ("firefly squid") light up the night. This being the 1930s, several cards featured military themes, while another portrayed a whale being harpooned at sea.

In spite of his obvious sense of humor and the vigor with which he approached his work, increasingly stringent government regulations and the strain of the wartime economy combined to dash Hasegawa's ambitions. In frustration, he resigned from his job as section chief of the company that administrated the Tsukiji market, only to find himself drafted by the military. He died on the battlefield in New Guinea at the age of thirty-five.

Being made of flimsy cardboard, few of the Osakana Karuta survived the childhoods of the kids to whom they were given as toys. Today, only one complete set of the roughly five thousand originally produced is known to exist. While it might sound strange that the same company known for unleashing the Wii and DS is interested in reproducing a seventy year old set of paper cards, Nintendo has actually been around for a lot longer than you might realize: they were originally founded in 1889 as a purveyor of hanafuda, a card-game relative of the karuta. After all: cards are a form of "game system" too!

Otaku Origami

Stardate: February, 1980. While American fans were dashing off angry missives to the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization newsletter about the lack of "Japanimation" on local TV stations, over in Japan proto-otaku were applying the ancient art of paper-folding to American sci-fi standards. Like the Battlestar Galactica, above. I discovered these images in a moldering, twenty eight year old issue of the Japanese edition of "Starlog" magazine found in a dark corner of an obscure Nishi-Ogikubo used book shop. The author-folder, mysteriously described only with the initials "SSK," goes to great pains to explain that no scissors or glue were used in their construction.