Hello again, rain. I like you in Los Angeles, but here you’re just a jerk.
Day 4: Sunday, March 3
Trip 4 was a direct result of trip 3. At Yamato Party we’d gotten to see the first preview of Yamato Resurrection, and I knew instantly that I had to come back to see it in a theater in December, 2009. It might have been the only time in my life I’d get to see Yamato on a big screen. Imagine that! Read the travelogue here.
All manner of monster masks on sale in Harajuku.
For some reason, it just occurred to me how arbitrary the timing of these trips has been over the years. We go at specific times for specific purposes, but the initial decision-making comes from people we’ll never meet and who have no knowledge of us. Specifically, the Yamato Production Committee. It is they who construct a schedule, combine it with theater data, and determine exactly when a movie will come out. When that information is released to the public (often on a flyer or in an ad), the target date is set and trip planning begins. The exact experiences we will have on that trip have been arbitrarily decided for us based on that date. If they’d picked a different date, we’d have different experiences. That’s my argument for today for the randomness of fate.
This cold and rainy day was sort of an experiment in randomness. It began with a delightful breakfast at Magia di farina, a pancake restaurant in Harajuku discovered by Dan on Trip Advisor. He’d already been there once and wanted to go again. As a pancake aficionado myself, I couldn’t say no.
These were pancakes unlike any other. I can only describe them as fluffy clouds of butter, batter and sugar that you want to fall into and eat your way out of. I believe it’s called “souffle” in your Earth language. Even before we finished, I knew for a fact that I’d be back. Another gem in the crown of Japanese cuisine.
Sweeping through the Shinjuku Piccadilly on the way to our next meeting point, Dan and I checked on the Chapter 7 merch level. Surprisingly, not very much was sold out. This had been a consistent problem with previous chapters and someone finally solved it. That’s the way of things when we make TV cartoons, too. Everyone gets really good at it right at the end of a season.
Most 2202 merch was still holding strong at the Piccadilly gift shop. No noticeable drop in slippers or tote bags, though.
Our major destination for today was the island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay, filled with shopping malls and event spaces. The event that drew us there was Borderless, a festival of light and color at the Mori Art Museum. It had been recommended by Anime News Network’s Justin Sevakis, who said it was one of the most amazing things he’d ever seen. Justin is one of the most cynical people I know, so that endorsement carried some weight.
It would turn out that he was right, but getting to Odaiba that day threatened to overshadow things. Continuing rain made it depressingly cold. I’d bought a hoodie that morning in Harajuku, but didn’t have a chance to put it on before departure. It would have helped immensely as Dan and I stood, damp and shivering, waiting for Anton Brandt to join us. We kept in touch with Walter (at his Odaiba hotel) as we crept toward that side of the city hoping for a boat ride to get us into his neighborhood.
I get deleriously happy when my favorite anime characters pop up to greet me in unexpected places.
Arale (from Dr. Slump) is now the mascot for Suica (swipe cards) and the new JR Yamanote “green line.”
You don’t actually need a boat for that. A train line called the Yurikamome does the job just fine and with good speed. But I’m not talking about any old boat, I’m talking about the Hotaluna, designed by Leiji Matsumoto. Years earlier, I’d had the fortune to take this same ride on his first ship, the Himiko. (See the photos here.) Since then the Hotaluna and a third vessel called Queen Emeraldas have been added to the Tokyo Bay cruise circuit.
Keeeeeeeen!
But they’re notoriously hard to ride, at least for me. So many times, I’ve checked the listings or gone to Hinode Pier only to find service suspended. Maybe their hyper-futuristic design creates more maintenance demands, I don’t know. But we checked the schedule over breakfast and Hotaluna was DEFINITELY running today, despite the rain. DEFINITELY.
So we fought our way through three different train lines to Hinode Pier. Keen on taking the ride with us, Walter trained his way off Odaiba so he could boat back to it. It took a little longer for us to all find each other, but we did. Tickets were less than five bucks. We had to wait another half-hour for Hotaluna to arrive, but it was GOING TO HAPPEN.
You already know how this turned out, don’t you?
The time came and the attendant called out “Departing for Odaiba” and we walked toward the dock. There was a boat, but it sure wasn’t Hotaluna. When I asked about it, he pointed to a sign we saw only now for the first time: Hotaluna suspended. I asked if Emeraldas might come next, but it turned out she doesn’t even stop at Hinode.
THIS IS THE BEST BOAT! QUIET, YOU!
So after going out of our way for an exceedingly rare and cool experience, we boarded a shabby tub called Jubilee and rode it for ten minutes to Odaiba Seaside Port. Oh, did I say shabby tub? I meant to say it was the greatest goddamn boat on Earth and it did exactly what we needed it to, and it was a once in a lifetime experience. We will probably never board it again. I mean it, this was the BEST BOAT. EVER. PERIOD.
After that we got right on the same train line we’d diverted from and took it to the Mori Art Museum. If we’d just stayed on that train, we’d have gotten there an hour earlier. Instead, we took the BEST BOAT. PERIOD.
Borderless was quite simply a wonderland. A huge museum space had been split up into several rooms, some with flowing surfaces to walk on, and strategically filled with mirrors, curtains, props, and sub-rooms that offered a seemingly infinite array of magic. Lights, colors, and shapes flowed endlessly in elaborate patterns. The name Borderless was chosen by the art collective that created the exhibit to emphasize the interactivity of nature, expressed through light, which flows through us all without limits.
At one point I watched a flock of birds, streamers of color flowing behind then, flit across two walls and down a corridor – out of which marched glowing samurai. One room was so convincingly filled with mirrors and projections that it seemed infinite. Another was strung with chains of LEDs that made you question whether or not you were standing on the ground. Yet another had beams of light that climbed the walls and wove into spirals. And this was only about half of it.
My favorite part ended up being a tea room where you chose a blend of tea and it was brewed for you in a cup. You sat down at a table where flowers of light were projected into the cup. They bloomed in your tea and expanded outward into a cloud of petals after you took a sip, perfectly matching the bloom of flavor in your mouth. Absolute genius. I have no idea if this exhibit can travel outside Japan, but don’t hesitate for one minute if you get a chance to see it.
After a couple hours in dreamland, we were smacked in the face by real life when we had to rescue our stuff from storage lockers and trudge back out into a cold, wet night. We reboarded the local train and shot over to Decks Mall to wander up and down First Street in Daiba Town, a kitschy Showa-themed shopping zone (as seen in previous Yamatours). Or at least, that’s how it started out. Many of the 60s and 70s displays have given way to more retail space, and what’s left is harder to focus on with the encroachment of modern merchandise. It was supposed to be a time capsule, but now it’s turning into nothing special.
The others had to split for dinner at a restaurant called Iserlohn Fortress, decked out in decor from the Legend of Galactic Heroes anime. I’m not yet into LoGH (though everyone agrees that I should be) so I chose instead to go see the 1/1 Unicorn Gundam for the first time. I got to it just in time for a cool and colorful lightshow.
I’d heard that Gundam Front (inside Diver City Mall) had been hollowed out and renamed Gundam Base, and this was indeed true. Just like Daiba Town, what used to be exhibit space was now repurposed for commerce. Gundam Base is a giant Gundam store full of nothing but Gundam merch. Maybe 80% models and 20% other. The only remaining displays are custom-built Gunpla and some anime history to keep you occupied in the checkout lane.
Off to one side is Strict G, an apparel and accessories store. I would have loved to find some simple Zeta or Double Zeta swag. A T-shirt would have been perfectly fine. But nobody thinks that simply any more. The content and iconography now run so deep that only the hardest of the hardcore can make sense of it.
Example: hats and shirts with the words “New Yark City” on them. What’s the explanation for this? Back in the first Gundam series, creator Yoshiyuki Tomino insisted “New Yark” was the correct spelling, maybe based on hearing a native say “New Yawk” and interpreting it phonetically. That’s the story that reached my ears, anyway. And now “New Yark” is something you can wear on your body and explain to others.
I appreciate the gag, but my dedication doesn’t go that deep. So long for another year, Odaiba. Hope there’s enough of you left to recognize next time.
Totoro, meet Beatrix. You’ll get along nicely. (Storefront in Jimbocho).
Day 5: Monday, March 4
After crossing a line in trip 4 – flying a third of the way around the world to see a movie – I had no hesitation to do it again for trip 5: the premiere of the live-action Yamato film in December of 2010. And I wasn’t one bit disappointed. For one thing, my pals and I got all the way inside Leiji Matsumoto’s house. See that travelogue here.
Cold and rainy again. But my spirits were up after a glorious full night of sleep. With the weekend behind me, all the group activities I’d arranged were over and I could walk a solo path again. Today it took me to the book district of Jimbocho, always a place of peacefulness and civility.
The human mind, paper form.
The rain made it a little dodgier in terms of maneuvering. Rain and books are natural enemies, so every tiny little shop has battened itself down one way or another. Everyone’s carrying umbrellas that have to be stowed so as not to brush against the stock and ruin its resale value (never mind that some of it hasn’t moved in decades). So they’ve all set up plastic-wrap dispensers; you pull a long condom off a roll and insert your umbrella into it to contain the moisture. These things are everywhere in the rainy season, not just in Jimbocho. As a result, empty umbrella condoms find their way into the street, looking embarrassingly like the real thing. As if a herd of rutting horses had stampeded through town just before you got there.
An hour into this, I was getting soaked and hungry so I split to join Anton Kholodov back in Shinjuku for lunch at the City Hunter café. This was one of those tie-in collaborations like the handful that have come and gone for Yamato 2202 over the last couple years. It was set up in a theme restaurant called inSPYre, named for its secret-agent-hideout motif. You can hang out with your otaku friends here and partake in some group activities, one of which is an escape room.
The City Hunter part consisted of a tie-in menu (Kaori’s 100-ton hammers in sausage form and Umibozu-style pancakes from the Cat’s Eye cafe) and a photo op with prop guns. It was quick and dirty fun and it got us fed for a few hours.
From there we pushed through the rain like a couple of Clydesdales, clothes-shopping with the kids in Harajuku, digging through art supplies in a Sekaido store, and perusing the shelves at the city’s largest Book Off in Ikebukuro. Then, off to a dinner I’d been looking forward to since Daniel George mentioned it a week earlier.
In the American pizza wars, I come down firmly on the side of Chicago-style deep dish. (I did come from the Midwest, after all.) And believe it or not, there is a 100% authentic deep dish pizza restaurant in Tokyo called Devil Craft. Founded by an American expat from Chicago, it first set up in Kanda and did well enough to open a second branch in Hamamatsu. Both are about ten minutes apart by train. We know this because we went to the Kanda branch to find out it was booked solid, and they sent us to the other one where we got seated right away.
I ordered the delicious “Abe Froman.” Ten points to Gryffindor if you get that reference.
Day 6: Tuesday, March 5
Mandarake is EVERYWHERE.
Trip 6 started on a lark; I’d already paid for a European trip that went bust, and since I couldn’t get a refund I turned that into a Tokyo trip. It got me there in January 2012 to see the Resurrection Director’s Cut, and something very unexpected happened: I also got a private viewing of the workprint for Yamato 2199 Episode 1. How did that come to pass? Read about it here.
Today I bundled out of Tokyo with Walter Amos to see the previously-unvisited city of Nagoya. (This was originally Dan’s idea, but he withdrew to placate an encroaching head cold.) It’s about a 2-hour ride by Shinkansen in a westerly direction. Commuter traffic was heavy in the morning rush hour, but we made it just in time and launched as planned.
Weather was kind, warm and sunny enough to sling jackets over shoulders for the first time since we’d flown in. With a little pre-planning, Nagoya turned out to be very easy to navigate with a simple subway system. The only challenge was getting out of the enormous Nagoya station and finding the subway system to begin with. After that, easy peasy. (My anxiety level always climbs when challenges like this arise, since mistakes can be expensive when navigating a foreign city on limited time.)
There were three stops that day: a Mandarake store, a science museum, and Nagoya castle. Two of those stops went according to plan.
All these cels live at my house now.
For anyone still on the learning curve, Mandarake (pronounced Mahn-dah-rah-kei, not Man-drake) is THE chain of stores for all your otaku needs. There are others, but nobody beats Mandarake. Primarily a used-goods-turnover center, it’s like the real-world version of the Amazon Marketplace. Just about everything you’ve ever heard of in Japanese entertainment culture (and a lot of things you haven’t) flow through their shelves.
These LP records, too! I didn’t know any of them even existed.
You didn’t know there was a Vifam Digital Trip, Tim? Well here, have TWO!
Tokyo is the epicenter for Mandarake. Nakano Broadway mall is the headquarters with about a dozen different branches all specializing in one thing or another (books, toys, figures, games, music, etc.). Other stores are all-in-one. The Nagoya store is like that, and after one visit I can say it’s one of the best.
More Mandarake goodness.
Walter and I quickly found its anime cel stock and rifled through it like raccoons. I didn’t know I wanted a Hikaru Ichijo cel (from Macross) before I held one in my hand, but that’s all it took. A few feet away was an anime soundtrack LP collection with titles I’d never heard of. A huge book wall was behind that and the upper floor went to town on everything else.
Walter won the toss by finding a nice little trio of autographed Yamato 2199 autograph boards.
The Nagoya Science Museum was a few minutes’ walk from the store. One exhibit there was a shining example of how physics and math can defy the need for translation. There was a terrific section in which hands-on objects demonstrated one concept after another with simple elegance.
Dinosaurs and space exhibits are always a magnet for me, and of course they had both. The dinos were well and good (though they paled next to LA’s Natural History Museum), but the space section was sublime. The photos don’t do it justice. It even gave me a perfect idea for something in my SF webcomic Pitsberg. Ten points to Hufflepuff if you spot it somewhere down the road.
The giant sphere in the museum structure contains the space exhibit and what is purported to be Japan’s largest planetarium. Unfortunately, we couldn’t confirm this for ourselves since it was sold out for the day. (Lots of schoolkids trooped in as we arrived.)
Last stop here was – natch – the gift shop, where I was happy to find a JAXA cap that perfectly coordinated with my NASA jacket. Hats off, Nagoya!
By the time we made it to Nagoya castle (just ten minutes or so on the subway) it was 4pm and we were disappointed to learn that (1) all the buildings were closed and (2) the grounds would be locked up at 5pm. One hour earlier would have made all the difference here. But the grounds were lovely, the castle was just as pretty as we could have asked, and now we have a reason to go back.
A few times over the course of the day, we noticed how quiet and peaceful Nagoya was compared to Tokyo; no crowds anywhere and far less advertising. Tokyo is pretty much a riot of ads wherever you go. Nagoya still looks like a city that serves people rather than markets to them.
To wit, it was nice to get away from all the Captain Marvel advertising in Tokyo, which was inescapable. Don’t get me wrong, I was counting down the minutes to seeing the movie. The thing is, I work for Marvel (making TV cartoons) and have always been invited to early screenings. When I got the invitation to see Captain Marvel on March 5, my heart sank. It would turn out to be the first one I missed since Avengers in 2012.
I was able to forget this all day long until we got back to Tokyo and there she was again, looming over everything. Reality was back.