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

Japan 01: But how would I explain the hair loss?

In Japan with a NASA hat and a Canadian lapel pin – fighting a terrible urge to shave off my beard, keep the mustache, and tell people I’m Chris Hadfield.

- Sid

Better late than never.

- Sid

P.S. The instructions on the card said to pick it up and wave it around, which produced additional cool lightsaber noises, but the camera I was using for the video artifacted the motion like you would not believe.

Project Apollo.

Thank you for your interest and for helping to keep alive the spirit of space exploration and its history.

Kipp Teague
October, 2015

I don't normally just post links to online content, but I've made an exception in this case because it's such an astonishing resource.  Kipp Teague, who is an IT Director in Virginia, has had a long association with NASA and the presentation of visual records of space flight.  His most recent project is the creation of a Flickr archive containing over 11,000 (yes, ELEVEN THOUSAND) unprocessed images from the Apollo missions.  The archive is unedited - there are blurry images and shots of random pieces of hardware mixed in with the more impressive photos, but personally I think that adds to the value of the collection, it's like getting a real time view of the events being recorded.

The archive can be found at:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/ - if you have any interest in the history of space exploration, I strongly recommend browsing through the gallery.  And, if you happen to be part of the lunatic fringe that thinks the whole thing was a hoax, I welcome your comments on how poorly the images have been faked - I enjoy a good laugh.

- Sid

Counting down.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown,engines on
David Bowie, Space Oddity

It's 8:30 on Sunday morning as I start to type this - we leave for Japan at 4:20 PM on Tuesday.

When I originally posted my travel plans at the start of this year, I had every expectation of making the trip to Japan on my own. The biggest (and best) change since then has been the addition of the gorgeous, smart and funny Karli to my life.

Initially Karli was reluctant to join me on the trip - I couldn't quite afford to pay full fare for two people on my own, and she wasn't sure about spending the money.  However, I had the good fortune to find a great deal on flights from All Nippon Airways, and that was enough to tip the balance. (To my intense satisfaction and happiness.) 

The framework of the trip hasn't changed very much - we'll start by visiting Kyoto, then spend time in Tokyo and Yokohama before making our way to Takasaki to stay with my friend Terry and his family for a few days.  A pilgrimage to the geek Mecca of the Mobile Suit Gundam statue and exhibition is still very much on the list, but now I don't have to take my own picture there, there will be someone with me to take care of that.

Thank you for agreeing to come along on my adventure, Karli!  It's going to be infinitely better with you there to hold my hand and enjoy it with me, my love.

- Sid