AltJapan

The Clone Whores

When I purchased this set of vintage Japanese karuta at Tokyo's SuperFest convention this Sunday, I heard the voices of millions of copyright attorneys crying out in terror... then suddenly silenced. These trading cards appear to be based on some Seventies science-fiction film that I can't quite place. Let's take a closer look.

Seals and Snake Women

Remember our tale of sunbathing with a colony of harbor seals off the coast of Vancouver island? (The tiny, uninhabited speck of grass and rock where they live is called Snake Woman Island by the locals - there's an interesting story there for another time.) I just updated the post with some additional photos. Now you can see the whole of the seal colony as glimpsed during our initial approach by boat, and some shots of the seafloor.

A couple of people have asked how we managed to get as close as we did. It wasn't easy. The first rule was following the advice of the divemaster. He told us to avoid making a direct approach and to never, ever stand up in the shallows (the sudden appearance of a towering human silhouette is reminiscent of an orca, for whom harbor seals are a favorite snack.) We took our time and avoided making unnecessary noise, whenever possible allowing the waves rather than fin-kicks to take us closer to the "beach" (I use quotes because it was a sandbar --- more like a pebble-bar -- about two feet across.) Much of the time was spent motionless or close to it, with little more than eyes and snorkel above the waves. Patience pays off.... read all about it in the original post.

The Day After

The inevitable fallout from a day spent writing about videogames instead of studying on Nov. 2, 1980...?

Nov. 2, 1980

Important document found in a musty stack of papers at my grandparents' house earlier this year:

If this hadn't resurfaced, humanity might never know what happened on that fateful day. That I could use a semicolon properly at age 7 yet fail to correctly parse the number "500,000" prophecies a decade of futile attempts to raise my math grades.

Formosa Heat

"Taipei. Why'd it have to be Taipei?"

 

Takara MicroChange Browning Gun Robo purchased in a "Taxi Driver" esque hotel transaction in Taiwan last year. Yes: I now own what essentially amounts to Megatron's illegitimate stepson. For better or worse they just don't make transforming gun robot toys like this anymore. Ah, who'm I kidding? It's definitely for the worse. Because what budding young suburban thug -- I mean, nerd -- doesn't need a chromed, transforming .380 to shove down their waistband?

How to be a S.E.A.L.

"Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn..." Hiroko and I have been in Vancouver for the last two weeks, overseeing the dialog recording sessions for a "TV game" starring characters from one of those "Japanimation" cartoons. More on that when we can tell you without having to kill you first. But producing recording sessions is a 9-5 job on the weekdays. On the weekends, we got out of town. Really far out of town: to Nanaimo, a good two hours away from the city by ferry. And that's where we underwent serious SEAL training.

Working Character World Cup!

When Japan's TV Champion show organizes a mini-olympics of Japanese mascot characters, insanity ensues. Known as "yuru-kyara" ("weak characters") in their home country, we dubbed them "working characters" in our book Hello Please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters From Japan. If anything highlights the sheer pervasiveness of cute characters in Japan, it's an event like this.

Here, our fuzzy heroes take time off from their jobs promoting various national and regional tourist attractions to participate in a super kawaii soccer match, a game of tag, a 50 meter "endurance race," and even a little sumo wrestling. Score one for the team, Hikonyan! (And watch quick: chances are those clips won't be available for long.)

They Live

"Perfect gifts for foreigners!" proclaims this sign at a Narita Airport gift shop. I couldn't agree more. Who needs the Chrysanthemum and the Sword when you've got Yokai Attack and the infamous Tabloid Tokyo series?

But forget all that: I've got news. Big news. YokaiAttack.com is live! Designed by Andrew Lee, who also laid out the book, it probably the only website with quotes from Steve "30 Days of Night" Niles, Don "Phantasm"  Coscarelli, and Albert "that whole theory of relativity thing" Einstein. So it isn't only the official website for Yokai Attack. It's also fun for the whole damned family. Check it out when you get a chance.

Nagai Yokai

Thanks to "Nekrodave" for digging up this early-Seventies pic of a very young Go Nagai holding up a super-limited-edition Mazinger Z prize statue (believed to be a one of the prototypes for the very first Jumbo Machinder toy.) Note the glowering Tengu mask on the wall above his head. Tengu are among the oldest of Japanese yokai, and masks of them are still common sights throughout Japan today.

There are two main "species" of Tengu: Karasu (raven) Tengu, and Hanadaka (longnose) Tengu. Raven are subservient to longnose in the Tengu hierarchy; they're like the enforcers, whereas the longnose are more like dons. Here's the longnose Tengu as seen in our new book, Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide:

All Your Flies Are Belong to Us

Spotted by me and shot by Hiroko in a really toadperfect little waterin' hole in Okayama prefecture. It's a nihon-hikigaeru, or (drum roll, please) "Japanese toad."