"The Dark Side is strong in me...for I am Sith...."

It's noon on October 31st, and I notice a young Chinese man standing near my seat on the bus.  Jeans, running shoes, black jacket, a baseball cap without any kind of insignia or logo, umbrella in his right hand, and a Darth Vader model lightsaber* hanging on his left hip.  Given his complete lack of other costume elements, I find myself wondering if he carries it all the time.

- Sid

* It has the distinctive black beveled emitter shroud that characterizes Anakin Skywalker's third lightsaber. The red power crystal is also a dead giveaway.

Japan 10: Home

In a world of technologically driven exponential change, the Japanese have an acquired edge: They know how to live with it. Nobody legislates that kind of change into being, it just comes, and keeps coming, and the Japanese have been experiencing it for more than a hundred years.

William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor

Overall, I had an incredible time in Japan.  As I've said before, I travel because it gives me a sense of adventure, and Japan gave me that in full measure.

If you're even slightly a geek, and a lot of your immediate associations for Japan come from video games, manga, anime or science fiction novels, it's a fascinating experience to visit the country in person. There were times in Tokyo when I felt like I was visiting the backlot of some kind of cyberpunk video game – I kept expecting a first person shooter HUD to appear as we dodged through Tokyo Station in search of the Kyoto shinkansen platform.*

In my case, William Gibson** is probably the biggest reason for that view of Japan.  Books like Neuromancer and Idoru had created a sort of mythical Japan in my mind, an exotic neon-lit setting for all sorts of futuristic high-tech mayhem.

Of course, really, it's not like that. Except that it was, a little bit, with things like Fuji TV's rectilinear head office and its globular centrepiece, or the Minority Report-style interactive maps on the observation deck at Sky Tree, Tokyo's soaring 634 meter broadcasting and observation tower.  In everything from toilet seats to bullet trains, Japan seems to be just ahead of the power curve in terms of technology - just a little bit into the future.

It was also wonderful to share this adventure with my lovely lady Karli. Japan was our first extended trip together, and after ten days of being almost literally joined at the hip*** I was sorry that I had to go back to work and not be with her.

Not only was she was the perfect sightseeing companion, but it turns out that we have strongly complementary skills in terms of locating hotels and train platforms. Thank you so much for making the Japanese trip a perfect one, my love.

Last, but not least, I would like to express our extreme gratitude to the Bertram family.  Terry and Misaki were our hosts for several days out of our ten day adventure. They helped us plan our schedule, made reservations on our behalf, acted as guides and translators, opened their home and even gave up their bed for us.  Thanks again to both of you for contributing so much to our vacation - it would not have been the same trip without your help and hospitality.  有り難うございます。

- Sid

* Karli, I hope this explains why I kept crouching behind pillars and muttering about save points while we were trying to catch a train.

** To get Gibson's full take on Japanese culture and his love for it, I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Distrust That Particular Flavor and read the essays on Japan.

*** The seats were a little close together.

Japan 9: Otaku

"Masahiko is seventeen," Mitsuko said. "He is a 'pathological-techno-fetishist with-social-deficit,'" this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth running it through her Sandbenders, whose translation functions updated automatically whenever she ported.

"A what?"

"Otaku," Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese. The translation burped its clumsy word string again.

"Oh," Chia said, "we have those, We even use the same word."

"I think that in America they are not the same," Mitsuko said.

William Gibson, Idoru

Today we visited Akihabara district in Tokyo - Otaku City, as it were. Otaku is often used by English speakers as a synonym for "nerd" or "geek", with a specific slant toward fans of anime or manga, but in Japanese, it's not entirely the same thing.

The word "otaku" literally means "your home" - loosely translated, an otaku is someone who never leaves the house. The term came into common usage in Japan during the 80s, and refers to a Japanese subculture predominantly made up of young males who have turned inward, away from the pressures to conform and succeed that dominate the Japanese educational system, and ultimately, Japanese society. In place of scholastic success and social interaction, otaku choose to obsessively focus on a particular area of esoteric knowledge.

Although many otaku do concentrate on aspects of pop culture like manga, or the Mobile Suit Gundam series or other anime, an otaku could just as easily choose to become an expert in variant types of World War II Sherman tanks - it is the obsessive nature of their interest, and the not entirely healthy manner in which it replaces everyday life, that characterizes an otaku.

Akihabara reflects all of these aspects of being an otaku, but showcases the subculture in a way which would probably not be acceptable in the Western world.  The ubiquitous advertising, and the action figures, videos and games that it promotes, are all intensely sexualized in an exaggerated and somewhat fetishistic manner.

If you turn off the main thoroughfares, the other side of Akihabara becomes visible.  Narrow corridors are lined with diminutive shops specializing in whatever items might catch the eye of a passing otaku. These miniature storefronts are not much larger than an office desk, with an opening just large enough for the proprietor to keep watch over his stock, such as hundreds of kinds of LEDs, or electrical connectors of every shape and size.

Akihabara also originated the maid cafe, another Japanese institution which might not translate well to the Western world.  In a maid cafe, patrons are served by young women dressed in exaggerated French maid costumes - with the accent on the phrase "served".  The maids treat their customers as the masters of their household rather than as paying customers, with services such as spoon feeding or kneeling by the table to stir cream or sugar into coffee.

It may be significant that Akihabara Station was the only place in Tokyo with bilingual Japanese - English warnings on the escalators to beware of upskirt photographs.  This would seem to be an unfortunate indicator that some otaku have chosen to focus (so to speak) on something other than electronics or giants robots.

- Sid

Japan 08: Head Office.

After I commented on the possibility of an Umbrella Corporation branch office in Yokohama, I remembered that according to the movies, they actually do have a main office in Tokyo.

Based on the footage at the beginning of the fourth Resident Evil installment, it's located at - or more accurately beneath - Shibuya Crossing, one of Tokyo's landmark intersections, which we visited today.

In real life, it's the home of the world's busiest Starbucks™ - you know, that other ubiquitous sinister global company.

- Sid

Japan 07: Gundam Front

The most fascinating thing about the Gundam Front Experience located on the sixth floor of the Diver City Plaza at Odaiba in Tokyo is not the innovative Dome-G animated movie presentation; it's not the life-sized Strike Freedom Gundam torso or the battle-scarred Core Fighter GFT, and it's not the Character Photo spots that allow you to be photographed with characters from any of the Gundam series.

No, it's none of those things.  The most fascinating thing about the Gundam Front Experience is the exhibition that showcases the unbelievable amount of Gundam-related merchandise that has been produced over the last 36 years.

Photo by Karli

The display is located just outside of the paid area of the exhibition, and features the literally thousands of models and toys inspired by the various Gundam movies and television shows.

The range of items is staggering - it's easy to imagine a dedicated collector standing in this room for hours, alternately salivating and brooding as they examine the glass-fronted cases showing model after model after model.

However, to be fair, the paid area offers some unique experiences as well.  The Dome-G video presentation gives the audience an impressive 360-degree ants-eye view of life-sized battlesuit combat on a 16 meter wide hemispherical screen.  The illusion is epic in scale, dizzying and fast-paced, with two short videos in steady rotation.

Leaving the dome, guests enter the Experience Field, which features a life-sized torso of a ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam, a full-sized recreation of a battered Core Fighter, and a scale model of the A Baoa Qu space fortress from the final episode of the original series.  Given that the original fortress is 13.5 kilometers tall, I think that the decision to go with a scale version was a prudent one.  There's also a pair of character photo-ops where you can be photographed with a character chosen from a full range of the Gundam programs.

The Experience also includes an area which explains the process by which the models are manufactured, and offers workshops in model building.  And, of course, if you're going to show people all those models, how they're made, and how to put them together, it seems only reasonable to offer the opportunity to buy some of them...

Merchandising aside, I enjoyed the Gundam Front Experience, although I admit to finding it a bit limited in terms of its scale - which is an odd thing to say about an exhibition dedicated to giant battlesuits.  However, I realize that it's intended for a more earnest fan of the series and its models than myself, and I can appreciate that for someone who was a serious follower, the Gundam Front Experience would be more than worth the price of admission.

And, for myself, I can now add "battlesuit pilot" to my list of geek achievements.

- Sid

Japan 06: Mobile Suit Gundam.

Japan is a country of contrasts between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern. On Tuesday, my friend Terry takes Karli and I to Haruna Jinja, an isolated Shinto shrine which was founded in 586 AD. Our visit is quiet and contemplative - it is impossible to ignore the spiritual feeling of the temple and its mountain location.

Wednesday finds us in Tokyo's ultra-modern Odaiba district, the artificial island home of the imposing 18 metre statue of Mobile Suit Gundam, taken from the 1979 animated series of the same name.  The statue stands guard over the Diver City Plaza, which houses the Gundam Front multimedia experience and exhibition.

Mobile Suit Gundam is a bit like Japan's Star Trek. The original groundbreaking series actually didn't do well in terms of ratings, and only 43 episodes were produced.  However, as with Star Trek, the program developed a large underground following, and over time that cult popularity led to new TV shows, movies, video games, novels, comics books and model kits.

This culminated in the construction of a life-sized reproduction of boy-pilot Amuro Ray's original powered battlesuit in 2009, in order to commemorate the show's 30th anniversary.  Originally located in Shizuoka Prefecture, it was relocated to Odaiba in 2011*.

The statue has been on the global bucket list for geeks since it was built, and Karli astutely asks, "This is why we came to Japan, isn't it?"  Not entirely, but I freely admit that it was certainly the first thing I thought of when I started planning a Japanese adventure.

The crowd surrounding the statue indicates that I'm not the only person who felt obliged to visit this towering entry from the Geek Seven Wonders of the World.**  It's impressively detailed, with all the little access panels and stencilled warnings that you would expect on a 60 foot military warbot, and it's obviously kept clean and in good repair.  It's actually a bit sad to think that there are more legitimate monuments that receive much less attention.

In saying that, I do the original Gundam series a bit of an injustice. Series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino wanted to illustrate the grim reality of war - the first episode prominently features the deaths of innocent civilians, and the pilots of the opposing mobile suits are never shown as faceless drones, but as soldiers who feel pain and fear as they die.

Once we finish admiring - and photographing - the statue, we head inside for a visit to the Gundam Front exhibition for part two of the mobile suit experience - posting to follow!

- Sid

* Sadly, I gather that they took it apart and moved it rather than having it walk or fly to its new home.

**  Other entries would be the original San Diego Comic-Con, the Doctor Who Experience, Kennedy Space Centre and the Lord of the Rings sets for Hobbiton.  I welcome suggestions for two more geek must-sees.

Japan 05: Idoru.

Her black hair, rough-cut and shining, brushed pale bare shoulders as she turned her head. She had no eyebrows, and both her lids and lashes seemed to have been dusted with something white, leaving her dark pupils in stark contrast.

And now her eyes met his.

He seemed to cross a line. In the very structure of her face, in geometries of underlying bone, lay coded histories of dynastic flight, privation, terrible migrations. He saw stone tombs in steep alpine meadows, their lintels traced with snow. A line of shaggy pack ponies, their breath white with cold, followed a trail above a canyon.

The curves of the river below were strokes of distant silver. Iron harness bells clanked in the blue dusk.

Laney shivered. In his mouth a taste of rotten metal.

The eyes of the idoru, envoy of some imaginary country, met his. 

William Gibson, Idoru

The manner in which life imitates art, or more specifically science fiction, never ceases to amaze me.  In William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru, a musician decides to marry a digital Japanese pop star, or "idoru", who makes her public appearances as a hologram.

Welcome to the future - literally.  Hatsune Miku, whose name is Japanese for "the first sound from the future" is a vocaloid, the public face of a singing synthesizer application.  Miku started her virtual career in 2007, and has been doing live holographic appearances since 2009, including a performance as an opening act for Lady Gaga's ArtRave tour and a guest spot on David Letterman.

It's easy to see something like this as the future of pop music - a library of customizable digital performers who can be programmed with the musical style of your choice, and modified to match any audience demographic as desired. Come to think of it, have you ever noticed that when Taylor Swift* is performing live, sometimes you can almost see through her to the drummer...?

- Sid

* Dear Ms. Swift:  I tossed a coin and it came up heads, so I went with your name rather than Katy Perry's.  Please don't write a song about me. 

Japan 04: Gnomic Statement XIII.

If the Umbrella Corporation has a branch office in Yokohama, I'm thinking it must be here.

- Sid

P.S. Seriously though, could the architect have possibly designed a less friendly looking building?

Japan 03: Big in Japan.

The crowded open-air market on Nakamise-dōri near the Buddhist temple at Sensō-ji is a Tokyo landmark.  Over 80 small shops sell a staggering selection of items in a location which has been active since the 16th century.  Karli and I are touring the market with my friend and ex-coworker Terry and his wife Misaki, who are acting as hosts and guides for the middle part of our trip.

I'm not a huge shopper when it comes to travel souvenirs - generally I like to pick up a mug if I can find something suitable, if it survives the trip home a mug is a practical item that will last for years if you're careful doing the dishes, but most of the merchandise at the I ♥ SOMEPLACE level leaves me cold. However, as we make our way through the masses of people, a t-shirt hanging at one of the shops catches my roving eye.

For me, the recognition of Astro Boy (Mighty Atom in the original long-running  - and incredibly popular - Osamu Tezuka manga*) is immediate.  In its animated version, Astro Boy defined the look of anime* at its beginnings, and was one of the first Japanese animation exports to reach North American audiences, making its NBC debut in 1963, long before Sailor Moon or the Transformers.  It doesn't hurt that the shirt says SCIENCE FICTION in large lettering, either.

Rather than attempt to turn against the tide in order to take a closer look, we make our way to the end of the market and return via a side route with much less traffic.

Once back at the store, I take a second look and discover that the image is actually a lenticular add-on that shows Astro Boy's internal structure and outer shell, depending on the angle of view. It's maybe a bit pricey at ¥3,900, but it's enough of a unique item that I'm willing to make the investment - provided that the woman running the store can find something in my size. I wait patiently while three women hold t-shirts to my back, examine my shoulders and debate sizing in English and Japanese.

As it turns out when we get to our hotel and I have a chance to try the shirt on, I'm comfortably snug in a Japanese XL, which in North America would probably hang a bit loosely on me.  I might have even been able to wear an XXL in the unlikely event that they'd had one - even finding the XL involved a bit of digging around.

Sadly, this trend continues through the trip. Sorry, Colin - I know that you'd placed a request for a t-shirt or two, but Japanese sizes don't translate well (so to speak) to the larger North American physique.

- Sid

* Every now and then I need to remind myself that not everyone who reads these postings will be conversant with the specialized vocabulary of my interests - in other words, you may not speak Geek. Manga are Japanese comics, which are commonly published in more of a softcover format rather than the North American comic book layout. Anime refers to Japanese animation, which has always had a unique style and feel compared to Western animation. In terms of quality, anime compares to the Flintstones in the same fashion that the Mona Lisa relates to wallpaper.

Japan 02: And now, the latest in an unplanned series of Imperial Stormtrooper jokes.

Move along, move along...

- Sid