hi raven and maoam

If you have a 3G phone (which you do), you can use that in Japan without buying a sim card.

My sister-in-law used her iPhone fine over here with her normal sim in November, and I did the same with my Nokia n97.

I can use my 3G phone but it'l cost me a fucken bucket, so I'd rather not. And the thing about an iPhone (or anything similar) is that it's constantly syncing things - pushing email, calendar, contacts, and doing other whatevernesses.
I may turn on data roaming now and then but I'm going to look for free/open wifi during the day instead. And we may return to our pad occasionally even.

It's ''warm'' enough that we're not taking our jackets today. 13 now, rising to 15.

Hello Kit!

you can turn off all that syncing and pushing!

Be careful using a 3G phone. Even before I had a touchscreen smartphone, I used the occasional Google Map and looked up accommodation/transport when I got stuck once or twice; the bill when I got home was over $300. Just go with wifi. You can survive without being online.

Today we went out in t-shirt and shirt, as it was going up to 15 degrees and was already nearly that warm. By the mid-afternoon we were getting rather cold though, at our second shrine - the incredible golden Kinkaku-ji temple with some rather impressive grounds.

Earlier, we went to Ginkaku-ji, which was meant to be silver (hence the names being so similar) but they, er, didn't get around it. Beautiful anyway.
We then walked down a little bit of the Philosopher's Way, but it wasn't that exciting and was rather touristy, and we'd heard about this amazing noodle place, so we decided to backtrack and go to Omen.

Omen is amazing - their signature dish is beautiful udon noodles served either hot or cold with a miso type soup, and a big bowl (big for what it is) of roasted sesame seeds, and a plate of assorted veges and pickles. You basically mix them together yourself however you like, incredible flavours combining in true Japanese fashion. I also had a little plate of tempura which was delicious as well.

Now it's late arvo and we're going to explore a few shops and find dinner. There's some nice record stores not far away...

funny how we sync our holidays r&m. (we in HK).

Kyoto - hit the fushimi inari shrine at dusk. mustmustmustdo. nothing else shriney compares. please.

Awesome anok, thanks! And yeah funny how we managed not to cross paths last time :)

Went to Art Rock No. 1, not far from our hotel (well, not that far), which was #1 on my list and did not disappoint. Split up into genres like folktronica, post-classical, postrock, various Japanese subgenres and various lovely Japanese labels, I had an enjoyable half-hour or so there and picked up a few great items, mostly Japanese releases, including a few el-cheapo second-hand Japanese editions. It's up there with the better Tokyo places, if not quite as comprehensive.

in Tokyo that synth shop on the 7th or 9th floor opposite tower records in shibuya is worth a look.

assume mandrake is already on your radar for comics, etc.

Hm I think I checked out Mandarake in Akihabara last time, but I don't really understand manga and I really won't understand it in Japanese :/ A lot of it is ultra-beautiful, but I'd rather have it in translation.
We are certainly going to the right area in Shibuya though, near Tokyu Hands, so I'll check it out.

The best record stores these days are in Shimokitazawa though, other than the big Disk Unions in Shinjuku and Shibuya. Ah Tokyo, can't wait.

This evening was all about t-shirts, candy and gyoza. For me, anyway.

T-shirts and hoodies from a place called graniph. It's like Threadless but better.... now that I've gone to their website I've realised that they have two stores in Sydney. There you go.

Then there was candy. The beautiful sugar coated variety over-wrapped in a way only the Japanese can do. The candy is surprisingly not that sweet, so give me sour gummy worms any day instead.

Oh, and a French patisserie followed. It looked beautiful - a tiny place down a narrow lane - but hidden within a standard looking baguette was a massive amount of pepper. A Japanese twist on an old favourite? I wonder what the croissant we bought for the morning will hold. I'm hoping it's not red bean paste.

And the gyoza.... it was awesome. Bought from a little bar-ish place in Gion called Senmonten. A guy at one end of the bar was assembling them while we sat at the other. A plate of 10 delicate gyoza, plus pickled cucumber and iced tea was less than ten bucks each.

Now to find a gourmet restaurant for dinner on the weekend.

gonna play pachinko?

Angela (er... Maoam) was looking at those two websites together, and said to me ''Ah, they deliver to Australia!'' to which I replied ''Er, wouldn't they be a bit cold when they arrive?''
For some reason I was convinced she was referring to the gyoza.

Here's a fascinating article on the crazy savoury pancakes we had on our first night.

Also, the pedestrian crossings all go ''pew, pew, pew'' when it's your turn to cross. For some reason Angela doesn't that it's a good idea to do laser gun impressions along with them.

of course you shouldn't do laser sounds.

a national psyche still haunted by memories of Godzillia and Ultraman.

Ah, pachinko! Nicholas Cage has explained it so well... not.

Anyone ever tried it?

Thank you tinyman. Hear that raven? No more laser sounds while crossing the road.

pew
pew pew

gonna play pachinko?

well?

No.

Sorry lickly Pachinko, but I don't like gambling-like games. Or really arcade games at all. I know it's a unique cultural experience and all.

THREE is such a great room. loved playing there.

Asakusa rules. Hanayashiki!

Best thing about Ghibli Museum is Catbus. Worst thing is that only kids can climb all over Catbus (｡-_-｡)

Oh yeah anok, you guys played there and the same band Soul Tune Factory supported didn't they? They were great!

We are going to try and get to Asakusa, maybe Saturday. My friend Richard aka Superlight told me about a gorgeous gallery there where he wants to do a collaborative gig...

Today I went to Tower Records in Shibuya, where I finally worked out the J-Pop thing - i.e. anything Japanese can go under ''J-Pop'', not just cheesy Japanese cutesy-pop.
Tower actually have J-Club and J-Indies too, so I painstakingly worked my way through the J-Club section (of course it's in Japanese alphabetical order, so even the ones with roman lettering titles appear in a funny order) and at last found the shit I was looking for by Himuro Yoshiteru, Joseph Nothing and in particular the Murder Channel label.
Banzai!

Ghibli Museum was ultra-cute but ultra-overrun with tiny children. Of course, it's built for tiny children, with a tiny spiral staircase in which I narrowly averted claustrophobia only because we managed to get straight up to the top...
Neither of us have seen a huge number of Miyazaki/Ghibli movies. I've seen enough, I think, to know what I was looking at. Extra bonus: there's a movie theatre there, and we got to see a kawaii short film about a little sentient egg who's enslaved by a wicked witch on a waterfall, but gets rescued by a sentient blob of dough. They run through fields of wheat into a little town where the wheat is processed and baked, and are chased by the witch, but it ends well (phew).

There's a photo of me next to the great big metal man on the roof, but Maoam has to upload it.

This morning before we left Shinjuku we went into Tokyū Hands, and got some little solar iPhone chargers. Just hang it off your bag or whatever, it charges itself from the sun (can also be charged off USB), and when your iPhone's running low, you can charge it back up from the device - it pops out a plug that fits the multi-thingy plug on the iPhone. Handy!

Tonight we had a pretty awesome izakaya in Shibuya, south of the station. We were looking for a place Lee Tran Lam mentioned but couldn't find it, so instead went to one which had what looked like crackly roast pork on a placard out the front.
Turned out it was (more) fried chicken, not pork, but delicious all the same. We had some pretty good edamame, a cold chicken salad with sesame dressing, and a delicious hot-pop with tofu in ''Chinese-style spicy sauce'', which was a variety of mapo tofu basically. Came with rice and a stunning spicy garlic sesame oil ooh yeah baby.

Shibuya is still insane. The sheer quantity of people on the street, particularly in the shopping area north of the station and at that famous crossing with enormous TV screens, is incomprehensible, and then you go into absolutely any building and they're packed with more people. There's so much to do, eat, buy, see - even though the best record stores have either moved to Shimokitazawa or have better branches elsewhere (with the possible exception of Tower Records - haven't been to the Shinjuku branch).

We're loving staying in Shinjuku, not least because of the incredible view from our corner room, but it isn't the most lively area on the south side of the station, and even the late-night shopping area isn't exactly Shibuya (or Shimo, in its own way). Still, I wouldn't trade this view for anything really!

redmenace, Catbus was awesome but yes, overrun with little kiddies.
Worst thing about Ghibli really was that it's built for tiny people. Because I am a large Westerner, I had to pretty much duck for even adult-sized doorways :/ A function of being in Japan full stop of course - Maoam found a motherload of awesome clothing at Zara and elsewhere today, but I might as well not even look because there's pretty much nothing in XL.
*whinge*

ok, ok, here's ya picture:

What am I talking about? I'm tiny! I should fit through even the most miniature doorways.

ahem what?

Laputa, Castle in the Sky is the studio's first movie. It's my favourite. Used to watch it over and over again. Sky pirates and kind, gentle, murderous giant robots. For anyone that dreamt of flying.

Hey friends! Can you get me a tacky $1 Japan keyring please?

I love Spirited Away (like everyone I guess) and Totoro, but I reckon my favourite is Tonari no Yamada Kun (My Neighbors, The Yamadas) - I dunno, despite it being about a semi-dysfunctional Japanese family, I can relate in a lot of ways. And I love the haiku.

Morning bump as I keep updating this thread at ultra-late-night Aussie times!

What's the ''ahem, what?'', tiny?

The large westerner issue continues in China too, raven. Anok doesn't fit in any of the beds we've slept in, including the 'king' size ones. And women continue to giggle and gape at his height.

Been to any of the cat mansions yet? There's a good one in ikebukuro called nekobukuro (!). If you're cat people that is...

Aw so cute! I wanted to go back to Ikebukuro this time round but don't think we'll make it.
We saw a cat brothel (so I call them) in Kyoto though, and hung around and stared into the windows from the outside for a bit.

So, last night's Spartak gig was equally awesome - brilliant playing from both, and some great Japanese supports, especially cuushe who opened the night (although her guitarist was tuned painfully sharp and failed to improve the situation during the set).
Unfortunately it was a tiny basement room, and the smoke situation was even worse that Wednesday - all of us Aussies had to surface for fresh air mid-gig, and came home eyes streaming and stinking to high heaven (although as far as ''high'' goes, only one source of smoke seemed to be a spliff).

The night (and the Spartak tour) was presented by flaü, the label run by Yasuhiko Fukuzono aka aus. It was awesome to meet Yasuhiko - when Shoeb introduced me on Wednesday night he said ''Peter... is that Peter Hollo?'' I was totally taken aback. Shoeb hadn't told me who he was, but then he was like ''We're friends on Facebook!'' - which we are, through John Part Timer, and in fact John's album on flaü features me on cello. Crazy. He gave me a pile of flaü releases which I'll be listening through in the next week or so along with waaaaaay too many CD purchases!

At the end of the night the girl Elly who was DJing played this awesome thing with crazy 5/4 piano thing that was like a cross between Sky and Tortoise (there's a ridiculous amount of crossover between prog and post-rock anyway, and the Japanese love both). I asked her what it was, but beyond the fact that it started with ''N'', I couldn't work it out.
Later at night I worked out who she was, found the wonderyou/nature bliss site, and thus discovered Networks. The YouTube clip there is a fragment of the song she was playing, and I picked up the album today in the ''J-Club'' section of Tower Records, Shinjuku. (So cute, Tower have not just J-Pop but J-Indies, J-Reggae, J-Hip-Hop, and J-Club, the latter of which covers everything from ambient glitch to techno...)

Also yesterday morning we also ventured off to the bookshop district in Jinbōchō, where we spent some time looking at gorgeous Ukiyo-e prints going back to the mid-19th century. That's where I finally got Ange's (er, Maoam's) 30th birthday present, a lovely small painting by Hiroshige II (amusing story in Wikipedia about how Hiroshige II was a pupil of the most famous Hiroshige, who married the master's daughter and adopted the name. They later divorced, however, and the daughter married another pupil who became Hiroshige III.)

Today we walked and walked. After getting the Networks CD at Tower, we headed over to Ginza, one of the big shopping districts near Tokyo itself. Interesting to discover a new area. Lunch was at a push-button-ordering place where I had some kind of soba noodles and pre-made tempura. But the bonus (other than the price) was the squeeze bottle of roasted sesame seeds OMG.
Also, Apple Store (Japanese keyboards are weird... but free WiFi is always nice), paper shop (Maoam has an awesome tube of awesome paper in suitcase now), one of many Rag Tag outlets (don't think anything was bought there, Shibuya on Thursday was the clothing spree, which Maoam can relate if she wishes), etc...

Then we hopped on the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro, which is pretty much diametrically opposite on the circle. I thought I'd check out the Disk Union and RECOfan there, and discovered there's also a Tower branch there - although it's pretty suburban it turns out. Disk Union had some nice finds though - a couple of mid-'90s Foetus albums and a Yoshihiro Hanno remix album from 2001 with a World's End Girlfriend remix I'd never heard about.

Next up, the compulsory walk down the hill from Harajuku Station, although it's not Sunday so no cosplay girls sorry. We have to leave by 1pm or so tomorrow from the hotel, so we'll just be catching the last few bits & pieces (like as many Muji ''Tangy BBQ CC's'' as can fill the suitcase).
That street is as ridiculous as always, full of schoolgirls looking a little shops of oddments and garments... At the bottom are increasingly more fashionable shops till you get to the bottom of Omotesandō. Down the bottom we went back to Spiral, which we'd visited last time after doing that walk in stifling summer heat. Much nicer on a balmy 9º evening after a beautiful sunny 11º day. Found some very pretty mugs and bowls there for people too.
Round the corner we found the A-Z Cafe, a co-produced project of Yoshitomo Nara with the Graf design team. I happened to be wearing my sad guitar kid Yoshitomo t-shirt, completely by accident, and they certainly through it was cute.

It turns out that by the time you're down there it's only another 10-15 minute walk to Shibuya, so we stayed on foot, and found our way round to the south side of the station to an izakaya called Teyandei (the Shibuya branch anyway - everything's a chain in Japan). Finally Maoam got to have agedashi tofu, and we had a delicious cabbage salad topped with tiny fried jako fish (which I could cope with until I'd been eating them for a while and the fishiness built up in my mouth), plus deep fried yam and an incredibly delicious pork steak with mushroom and onion.
For dessert we had to try the deep-friend ice-cream bread. Just as advertised - a baguette stuffed with vanilla ice-cream, and it appeared to have been soaked in maple syrup too. Insane(ly yummy).

And that's it. Back in our Shinjuku hotel room now, enjoying the view of mils and miles of buildings, the fabulous clock tower right in front of us, lights lights lights. And Network's epic math-prog. I haven't quite made it through listening and ripping half the music I've bought/been given, but I haven't done too badly. Utility Fog will be a Japan extravaganza for the next couple of weeks, and I'm pretty proud that along with many obscurities of minimal dub, idm, drum'n'bass, breakcore, dubstep, industrial, noise, postrock and glitch, there's a tonne of Japanese music in there.

Home!

Have you thought about what will happen to your CDs should something happen to you? You should write a will, with me in it.

There are strict instructions to melt down all my CDs when I die - in the same furnace in which I will be cremated. Also my hard drives.
Also you.

SNOW MONKEYS!

LOOKIT!