Murakami Takashi

Best known in America for doing the cover art for Kanye's Graduation and his Louis Vuitton installation, Murakami has an extensive body of art and is the pioneer of the supposed "Superflat"

Milk

he "Superflat" concept is an attempt to form marketable characters and cute figures that could potentially appear as cell phone charms, toys, figurines, and comics a la Andy Warhol or another of those pop artists selling low culture as high art. In Murakami's case, this attempt is wholly unsuccessful. The otaku culture, though widespread, is still something despicable to the art set, since anime and manga, though it requires drawing skill, is highly stylized, and not viewed as art. 

A woman transforms into a jet

On the same token, otaku don't view Murakami's art as something they can relate to either. It lacks the moe that inspires such strong desire and adoration. Murakami's art isn't a negative criticism of the otaku culture; I actually find it to be one that embraces it and wants to raise it to lofty new heights, but because he seeks to take it somewhere else, he can't be a part of it. His figurines are original, but they are too mannequin-esque. They don't have the flaws that creates the endearing sensation that is "moe". They borrow heavily from anime and manga without giving anything back.

My Lonesome Cowboy

I personally like Murakami's figurine/statue series. I am not as interested in the paintings, which are for the most part bland and uninteresting. However, even the figurines don't stimulate the imagination to fill in the back story for them. And that is the problem. I like the commentary on the overly sexual nature of otaku culture, somewhere between ecchi and hentai, at the border of art.

Murakami would be much more sale-able if he just embraced the moe database and worked harder on creating characters that inspired some interest instead of something slightly shocking but overall forgettable.

Gallery Showing Design Festa, Harajuku

My work.

Other work in the same room.

More work included in the show. Mapping all of the districts of Tokyo.

The bartender taking a break.

Show Poster.

Tokyo Tower

Though featured in a variety of romantic dramas and animes, the Tokyo Tower is actually full of tourists and schoolgirls. The foot of the tower, known as Foot City, is full of expensive exhibits, such as one on Michael Jackson, and an aquarium, etc. 

This is a picture I took from the window. It was a cloudy day, so Fuji wasn't actually visible. In my 4 weeks in Tokyo, I still haven't glimpsed Fuji D:

The Tower isn't as fun when you go there alone :(

Seeing all the Japanese old women pose for photos together, the sailor suit girls holding hands and asking their male classmates shyly to take their picture.

It's taller than the Eiffel Tower, but it's not quite as romantic.

I don't know, maybe that's a personal problem.

The viewing window.

There's a beautiful rose garden nearby where you can see the tower clearly. I still remember the smell of the blossoms that I stole. I left them in my room until they rotted. When a flower smells so strong and sweet, it doesn't wilt cleanly, but it rots with a stench.

The Tokyo Tower:

Go there with your lover.

Gazing out at the city alone makes you feel like nothing.

Square Enix Store: Hatsudai, Tokyo, Japan

I came here with the notion that this was a Square Enix Museum because that's what I heard from a YouTube video, but it's really just a store. Another misconception is that this store is really difficult to find. Once you get off at the station, you just exit past the statue of the huge metal man with a moving jaw:

And then take a left. It's about 3 blocks away from the station. The only reason that people think the store is hard to find, I think, is the cryptic way that Japanese people give directions and draw maps, as well as the fact that none of the locals have heard of it.

Anyway, onto the huge Sephiroth in the floor:

This is pretty much the centerpiece of the store. The only other really amazing display they have is Vincent's outfit:

A lot of items they were selling were just really hilarious. For example:

Cloud Cologne!

Other than this, they sold a lot of jewelry featured in various Square Enix games. The focus tended to be FFXIII and Dragon Quest for the most part.

There's really not much that you can get at the store that you can't find in Akihabara. All of the figurines, plushes, and phone charms can found in a lot of stores in Akiba for lower prices, so save your money. The reason that I would go to the store is just to see the life size Sephiroth and maybe hug a few giant King Slimes.

They have all the Square Enix game soundtracks, but they were very expensive. Some can be over $100. So if you're into that kind of thing, the SqEnix store is the place to go. Otherwise, don't go out of your way.

Shimokitazawa Record Stores

Warsawa

Warsawa is a tiny record store with some rare titles. The prices are a lot more reasonable than even US prices despite the fact that half of them are imports.

I picked this up based on the recommendation from http://rdfrnds.blogspot.com/

They play one of the new release albums in the store and display it so that you know what you're listening to.

JetNet

JetNet is right next to Warsawa and has a slightly larger selection with much higher prices.

They have a lot of well-known indie titles, but they also have some rare stuff.

Unlike Warsawa, JetNet has various genres. I don't think I would come back to this store because it was really overpriced.

Found this Cold Cave album with 18 tracks that I'd never heard of it. I didn't get the name of the album in the picture, sorry.

Indies

This store doesn't really have too much indie music, but has a huge selection of 90's music. This store is also overpriced and has a lot of crappy albums, but they do have some good stuff.

A wall of EPs.

Cool album with fan remixes.

Unknown Record Store

This was a boutique style used record store. They didn't have a lot of great titles, but if you search through enough, you can find some great stuff.

Big selection of Brian Eno up on the wall.

Some cool books and stuff they had in the corner including a kid's book about Robert Moog.

Flash Ranch

This record store has a really huge selection of used vinyl ranging from the 1930's to the late 80's. All used vinyl is 800 yen ($8), but if you buy more than one, you get a huge discount. You can also haggle down the prices (if you can't speak Japanese) by writing down the price you want on a piece of paper. They have a pretty good selection of music books as well.

I picked these albums up for about $20 in total.

Shimokitazawa is the vinyl destination of Tokyo. Don't be fooled by big names by Tower Records which have poor selections and high prices. I would give Warsawa the highest rating of all the stores for its selection, prices, and atmosphere.

Wagashi

Wagashi is the Japanese style of cake making. The outside is made of sweet rice gluten and flour and the filling is either red bean or a paste made of pickled cherry blossom. There are a lot of different techniques that can be used to decorate the cakes. Strainers, scissors, saran wrap, and a comb can be used to manipulate the malleable gluten and create a lot of new shapes.

The texture of the cakes is smooth and a little grainy. The taste isn't very sweet, but it's a nice snack with macha, powdered green tea.

I made these! The brown one is shaped like a potato!

Experimental Filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa

Three Frames Create a Triangle when played at 24 FPS

Constant sideways, diagonal, and upside down images of buildings and windows simulate the feeling of falling. A flash of grass means you've hit the ground. The images of a city flash at you quickly in Apollo, like the confused depictions of life and surroundings before a suicide. It also simulates the hyper speed of driving down a highway and viewing the country side through a rear view mirror.

In Market Street, images of consumption overwhelm the senses, numbing and deranging them. Neon signs during the day time, in black and white, lose their ability to stun, when repeated over and over. Grates and images of textured sidewalks pass by as if you're actually walking along them. A montage of squares and then of circles. How long is Market Street? It feels neverending. A last shot slowly pans across a street and stops, giving us a brief glimpse into the lives of the walkers, then back to the grind of skyscrapers and decorative trees until we descend into black, into night.

Sketch Films (#1,2,3)

An arbitrary headline is given at the beginning of each film (each day). A repetion of just drain covers and man holes could potentially go on for minutes, each different from the last. A documentation of various public works and city structures. The curved necks of streetlights are compared to bent tree branches one frame to the next. A barrage of numbers on the next day. Signs and lines alternate. Pausing at any moment reveals a hidden world that could have been missed in the flurry of images. It reminds one of the sci-fi learning process: a barrage of seemingly meaningless images cut up and juxtaposed and flashed before the eyes as rapidly as possible. Sketch 3 reveals a sideways city of bricks and art deco. Buildings spin as they change positions each frame. All filmed on either 8 or 16 mm in black and white.
Nishikawa is a strong believer in the analog method of cutting and splicing, though he doesn't often edit anything he does. "I will be dead before film is dead".

Protip: try to sync these up to music, they're all silent.
View Market Street through this website:
http://www.tomonarinishikawa.com/film.htm#MS

Fake Food

It costs more than real food

The district of Kappabashi, near Asakusa station, is dedicated to restaurant supplies, specifically fake food. It's very difficult to find a restaurant in the area that sells actual food.

Ghibli Museum

The Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, isn't just a rehashing of classic Miyazaki films. It offers so much more in terms of never before seen in America shorts. There are flip books of all the shorts, and a movie theatre where I saw the sequel to My Neighbor Totoro called Mei and the Kittenbus. The museum is laid out like a house with rooms that are decorated as if illustrators were only recently occupying them. There are original watercolors and preliminary sketches from all of the movies decorating the walls.

Unfortunately, there is no photography allowed inside. It's understandable, but the museum is so popular that it's hard to get in. Instead of getting just a ticket, I had a reservation to go to the museum at a certain time. There are a lot of great exhibits, original watercolors, and stills from the movies. Your ticket can be exchanged for 3 original frames from one of the Ghibli movies. There was a heavy focus on My Neighbor Totoro, more than any of the other movies. I got two movie posters for future Ghibli movies: one is based on the story of Princess Kaguya, and the other is an adaptation of the children's book Anne of Green Gables. Neither are Miyazaki, but instead are being directed by Takahata, who I recently found out was the producer of Little Nemo in Slumberland.