20th December
Posted in General, Japan at 12:14 pm by Visez
Welcome to the first issue of the Japanese FAQ. Here I will attempt to answer the questions about Japan that people most frequently ask me. Which is exactly what a FAQ is. I’m sure you guessed that. But, come on, I need some kind of introductory text. Be nice.
In this first issue, I will talk about something that is kind of wrapped up in mystery. The Japanese fetish for used knickers. Is it true? Can you really get them from vending machines? Does everyone do it?
For the ones less familiar with the concept, if you are a manga reader, or an anime fan you might have been puzzled at the sight of some characters that seem to be obsessed with panties. Stuff like this:
‘Why do they do it’, you might ask yourself, ‘it’s not even funny!’. Well, in Japan, you have to understand that for lots of reasons that I’m not going to discuss now, the nerd population tends to have slightly peculiar sexual tastes. This is mirrored by the popularity of dating videogames and porn manga with the most absurd scenes, from tentacles to incest to rape to stuff I don’t even know the name of. Because of the so-called Lolicon, frequently the subjects tend to be very young girls, and a direct consequence is the obsession with schoolgirls and, obviously, their panties. I will try to discuss this phenomenon in another post.
So, together with my senpai we went looking for one. But before such a dangerous mission, I needed a suitable disguise:
Fantastic, nobody is going to recognise me now. I kind of like this Owen Wilson-ish look. Anyway, we were all set, and we started going. I’m not going to say exactly where it was, but we went to Shibuya. Shibuya is exactly how you imagine Tokyo: loud, dazzling and packed with people. And it’s nothing compared to Shinjuku.
There we are. If the indications are correct, it should be on the second floor of a building in a back alley. We start climbing the stairs, there’s a door slightly ajar in a very anonymous corridor. We open it.
Inside, a small neon-lit small room, cctv cameras everywhere, and a guy at the counter that without even looking at us keeps on reading his… erm… magazine. The walls and the aisles where crowded with uniforms, schoolgirls uniforms, all kind of stuff. The most expensive ones had pictures included of the girl that owned that uniform. In the second picture, you can see socks pinned to the wall and next to them, racks over racks of amateurial videotapes of girls all recorded in that very store. Crazy stuff. Expensive as well.
And then, there they were:
This image kindly provided by my senpai since my attempts were all blurred. This is exactly what you think it is. A huge stash of used panties and bras.
So, yes, these shops do exist. It would be untrue and unfair to say that EVERYONE here does it, but exactly like we have perversions and fetishes back in good ol’ Europe, here there are some weird things that really do the trick for some people….
Keep on emailing me your questions!
Update: These shops apparently are called Burusera shops (ブルセラ ショップ). Just click on the link for more information about it.
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4th December
Posted in General, Japan, Atsugi Guide at 8:32 am by Visez
Whew… Sorry to spoil the ongoing celebrations guys, but I haven’t kicked the bucket just yet. I wrote that post since on saturday night I went to eat fugu with a friend.
Fugu, the bloated looking chap in the picture -pescepalla per intenderci-, is a Japanese delicacy. As you probably know from personal experience already (sigh!), all good things in life either kill you or make you fat, and since fish is as fat-free as it gets, there is nothing left to do for our fishy friend apart from killing you. And in a particularly cruel way as well: blowfish contain a toxin that will slowly “disconnect” your muscles, leaving your lungs and heart for the gran finale.
Oh, I almost forgot the funny part: you are completely conscious throughout the whole process. Ever wondered what it feels like to drown? Eat fugu liver and you won’t be disappointed!
So as you can imagine fugu chefs are serious professionals that undergo years of training and anger management therapy (you really don’t want to piss them off, do you?). Despite their skills, sometimes they have a bad day and a handful of people dies every year in Japan for fugu poisoning. (It has to be said that most of the deaths are caused by people that REALLY REALLY want to die and eat the fugu without taking the toxic parts off, and apparently the liver is so tasty looking that is impossible to resist from having a bite… there are legends of rather unorthodox practices like eating as much as it gets you completely paralysed until the poison wears off but with your internal organs still working, but I guess trial and error is not a very good method for knowing your limit.)
Disclaimer:Kids, don’t do this at home! Ask your daddy to do it first for you…
Anyway, so we went to the restaurant, don’t really know the name, WAAAY too many kanjis written in the funny cursive stylish way but for the people in Hon-Atsugi, it’s on top of Mylord 1, near the station. Here’s a picture of the entrance, the ふぐ sign means (surprise surprise!) fugu.
We go there tempted by a special offer and we are welcomed by a chef that speaks with a voice that is a mixture between a Kabuki theatre actor and Vegeta from Dragonball Z. We get a table right next to the window, the view is breathtaking, more for the surprise of seeing something like this in a small city like Hon-Atsugi rather than for the quality of the view itself.
Dazzling, isn’t it? Yes, the photo is blurred, I’m crap at taking pictures, but it’s all very christmassy outside and the lights are far brighter than it appears in the picture. Quite annoying in fact when you have the power of a lighthouse concentrated in a beam that is perfectly centered on your right-eye pupil.
Ok, so we get the menu, and a brief chat with the waitress makes me realise that because of my poor Japanese what I thought a “special offer” was in fact completely the opposite: I thought that one dish was enough for two people, but what it actually said is that at least two of the same dish had to be ordered. So we thought we would have spent half, but we ended up paying double… ehm… sorry… at least it was just another person and not a party of ten people, otherwise I would have had quite a bunch of people pissed off…
Anyway… the meal was excellent and the service was very good: we got (each) a steamed eggy thing (kinda like tofu) with crab meat, a portion of eight pieces of sushi -really really good-, a soup with mussels and seaweed:
So it’s now time to get to the fish that has taken so many lives in exchange for brief carnal pleasure…
I bravely introduce the deadly morsel in my mouth and wait for the exquisite flavour to hit me. And I wait. And wait. And wait some more. I look at my friend: “Tastes like chicken” “Yeah, it does”.
Chunky, cold chicken, with a very vague sweetish aftertaste and lemony scent. You really have to use the sauce to feel anything. If you ask me, you should put it in a bed of soft white bread and cover it with a blanket of mayonnaise. Now that would be better 
. But it had to be done, another tick on my checklist.
Cool thing is, there is a tiny amount of poison left in every serving, so that at the end of the meal your lips will feel slightly numb or tingly. Slightly less cool was the price of the meal: ￥3500 (a mesu schina) each, which for Japanese -outside Tokyo- standards is on the expensive side, at least given the quantity. But if you think about it in pounds, it’s 17 quid which makes it pretty acceptable .
Ok, I’m off now, another episode of Full Metal Panic and I can go to sleep… nighty!
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30th November
Posted in General, Japan, Geeky stuff, Manga at 10:47 am by Visez
If you have never read a manga, maybe because you wouldn’t know where to start -from the back, I’d suggest- or because you just don’t want to pay stupidly high prices for an imported manga, you might want to try with Megatokyo.
Megatokyo is a free online dojinshi (independently produced manga) with high quality drawings, with about three new pages added every week. It’s a nice story (at least the first 500 or so pages - and there are about 800 online now-, afterwards it gets a little too slow and too much of a love-story IMO) about two american -or canadian?- geeks stuck in Tokyo in a series of adventures about all that is Japanese: idols, dating simulators, arcades, manga, giant robots and ninjas, of course. It’s a gentle introduction to manga and life in Japan.
Enjoy!
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28th November
Posted in General, Japan, Geeky stuff, Manga at 9:19 am by Visez
Hi!
Foreword： Chances are you found this post googling for some pictures of pretty Japanese girls in tight French maid outfits you can drool over. If this is the case, sorry mate, no pretty girls here, but I hope you’ll find the post interesting nonetheless.
Back to us… Last Sunday I went on a small trip to Tokyo, and I ended up in Harajuku. Rings a bell? It’s the part of the town where you want to be if you want to feel like the thousands of cool Tokyo teenagers that shop here: lots of small shops, less expensive than Shinjuku or Ginza, more rebel, more alternative, more hip. (Jesus, sometimes I sound like the Lonely Planet guide…) It also proudly hosts the Meiji temple (yes, the same Meiji Emperor guy of the Meiji Restoration), but more about that in another post.
The reason why you probably heard of Harajuku is because of this lovely natural blonde here:
(Or rather, her four Japanese freaky lifeless minions).
Those four girls you see are in fact Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls, so called because they represent the kind of crowd you can expect to meet here.
But in order to talk about that, I have to introduce the concept of Cos-Play (コスプレイ). Cosplay (Costume play) is the practice of dressing up either like anime/manga characters or just in a generally ridiculous (but fashionably so) way. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween or Mardi gras. So if when walking down the street you happen to notice just how short Sailor Moon’s skirt is or you find yourself wondering why you remembered maids as fat and German while here they are slim, young and probably, judging from what they are wearing, very cold, it means that you are witnessing people doing cosplay. You can mostly find them in big manga stores or during conventions, and of course here in Harajuku every weekend before dusk.
So, here’s a sample of what I saw on Sunday:
Now… cosplay is mainly for girls… guys will be there pretending to be rockers and playing the guitar. However, sometimes something goes terribly wrong and they end up like this:
The guy was quite immense, and after seeing him I really didn’t need him to speak to me with a really high-pitched voice (stile cugini di campagna) that scared the crap out of me and made me want to cry for mercy… Impossible not to think of the giant in little girl’s attire from the paedophile episode of BrassEye.
But in the pitiless world of fashion, not everyone can be cool:
You might be asking yourself, why do they do it? I’m not a social anthropologist, but maybe if you too lived in one of the many faceless buildings in some unnamed Tokyo suburb going to school from Monday til Sunday in this orderly, well-mannered, overformal Japan maybe you would feel as well an urgent need to break free before going slightly mad…
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26th November
Posted in Japan, Atsugi Guide at 9:47 am by Visez
One thing Japan is full of, no matter where you are, is places where to eat. Just Hon-Atsugi (the central part of Atsugi) is packed with cheap (compared to London) places where you can stuff your chubby face and be happy about it.
So I decided to try as many places as I possibly can, and since I have always dreamt about being a restaurant reviewer, I’ll write -briefly and without too much bullshit- my impressions about the place. I hope that other people that will visit Atsugi will find it of some help.
I know that out there there is one person in particular that a couple of weeks ago had a craving for eels… with that in mind, I found an eels restaurant and tried it out.
Location: Mylord 1 (exit of Hon-Atsugi station), top floor
Name: too many kanjis… ends in kawa (川)… I think someone told me it was kitagawa, but I could be horribly wrong. But you can’t go wrong, it’s the only restaurant on the top floor of Mylord that serves eels (うなぎ).
Description: Wooden interiors and yellow lights in a poor attempt to give a homely feel of coziness, but it was all too new, too clean… where is the love? I’m not feeling the love here!!! It was like someone trying to give his house a personal touch by buying a set bedroom from Ikea. Anyway, it wasn’t ugly and it was clean. Pass. Quite nice the tatami-floored private rooms with sliding doors…. but for some reason we didn’t get to sit in there, even though one room was (and stayed) completely free. The place was quite empty, but then again, it was quite early.
Here are some pictures of the place:
Gosh! I’m not selling it very well, am I? Well, to be honest, it was all very unremarkable until the food was brought by a very courteous waitress. The eels were E X Q U I S I T E, perfectly tender, warm, very juicy, and the eel-to-rice ratio was just right. Fantastic. And it filled me up as well, which is no easy feat. Seriously, the stuff was really good, and it’s something you should really try at least once. Oh, and they have point cards as well.
An eel tendon will set you off for ￥１５００ whereas an eel meal with a very good fishy soup (and the eel’s heart inside… fantastic), a slightly bigger portion than in the tendon’s, various pickled veg and a complimentary end-of-dinner tea is about ￥１８００. Going up with portion size and food served will increase the price up to 2500 yen, but I haven’t tried it, so I can’t really say. Definitely worth it, if you ask me.
Here`s a picture of the meal itself, the 1800￥ option:
Talking about eels, you should try listening to them… not the edible ones, but the American band, The Eels. They change genre quite a lot depending on their “phase” (read the lead singer’s biography to understand why), but beautiful lyrics are a constant. If you are into acoustic stuff, I’d suggest you to get the “Daisies of the Galaxy” album…
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24th November
Posted in General, Atsugi, Japan at 7:47 am by Visez
Welcome to my blog!
It’s a very lazy night here in Hon-Atsugi （本厚木）; outside is too cold even for the crickets that used to keep me company during too many lonely nights, their songs replaced by the hypnotic drone of my air-con.
Freezing point outside, thirty degrees inside and a vague scent of fried chicken with mayonnaise. I’ve already taken my 7 o’clock emergency power nap… feels like uni all over again. You know the feeling.
So, here I am, looking for something to do… there are only two options left that do not require my long depleted brainpower: laundry or blog. For those who know me, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I chose the latter. Laundry is my nemesis. It’s not the act itself that irritates me, which requires little effort, it’s the fact that it’s a task that you cannot complete in one step. Not only that, but you can’t even decide when to do the next step. I mean, I will put my stuff in the washing machine, press the button and go to sleep. Tomorrow morning I will HAVE to take it out and put it in the dryer. Tomorrow evening as soon as I get back from work I will HAVE to take it out of the dryer, iron the shirts, fold everything else, and put my clothes back in the wardrobe. Total time required: approximately nineteen hours. Such a trivial task shouldn’t take so long. It’s unfair. And what if I miss one step? My stuff will end up stinking of wet dog. And I will have to repeat the whole process again. Not to mention those bloody bastards that stay locked up in their stinky rooms playing with Bishojo games with rotten food, dirty pants and (urgh!) used tissues all over the place just to realise at 4 a.m. that it’s maybe time to wash up their only t-shirt after two weeks of continual use… operation which of course requires them to dump all my clean, pristine clothes on the floor or on the sink, where they will stay for the whole night. But they will pay. Wankers. Literally.
Enough of this, I think I already managed to scare half of you away and to bore half of you to death. So, here’s for the remaining half:
Why are you here? Most probably you know either me or someone that knows me. If so, make yourself at home and drop me a line. There should be some coke in the fridge.
If you found this website because you will move to Atsugi, I will try to post as much stuff as possible about life, the universe and everything here in Kanagawa. If you found me because of my everincreasing popularity, certainly due to the wittiness of this blog or to my sheer good looks, please note that I accept international checks, money transfers via paypal and pictures of yourself or of your pretty friends/sisters/single cousins.
If you are simply wondering how to live in Japan without throwing yourself in front of the Shinkansen taking as many japs down with you… I’m currently trying to figure it out as well.
Ok… that’s it from me… I do realise I managed to type nonsense for quite a while providing no useful information whatsoever… you’ll have to wait for the next post.
I do promise that I will try to update this thing on an almost-daily basis. Oh, by the way… there might be movie quotes and hidden messages in some of my posts… extra kudos if you find them… 
Disclaimer:
Throughout the entirety of this blog I will use the expression jap in a non-derogatory way. It’s just much much easier to write jap instead of “a japanese person”. Don’t worry, I’m sure you will immediately realise when I’m being my usual sexist, racist self.
Visez
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