Everyone thinks Japan is such a safe country. And for the most part it, it is. The closest you ever get to guns are the ones they sell in the model shop I pass every now and then. They’re pretty good replicas, but they’re not going to allow for any killing sprees. I have a feeling that accounts for quite a bit of the safety (while on the reverse side, not EVERYONE in America carries a gun, which is a sentiment a few people here carry.) What this does translate into, however, are knives. If you can’t be violent with a gun, people turn to knives. There have been a few notable cases, such as this guy who went nuts in Akihabara, the “nerd” district of Tokyo. Japan does have its share of crime.
Why do I bring this up? Last night, it was very loud outside my window. At first I thought it was kids goofing around, because that’s usually what happens. Well, when I opened my sliding rice paper screen, I was greeted by the flashing lights of a parked police car and an ambulance whirring by. Now, I see ambulances flying places all the time, but why were they so close. Turns out, my neighborhood made the morning news today. There is a 7-Eleven just down the street from my house and a large apartment complex behind my house. Apparently a woman picked some stuff up at the store, and managed to pick up a stalker on the way home as well. At the entrance to her apartment, the man pulled out a knife and demanded her purse before stabbing her and making off with it. He still hasn’t been caught, and I think the woman is doing ok. It felt like a TV drama when i went outside today and their were several plainclothes cops flashing their badges and asking questions like “Did you hear anything last night?”
What was interesting was the attitude towards it. My host mother was telling me it was so scary, and how these sorts of things have been increasing with the downturn of the economy. Another prevalent tactic is to swipe purses from walking pedestrians while on a bike. Apparently another effective tactic is the reverse - grabbing purses and bags from the baskets of bike as they go by. I’ve never had a problem (though I did see a pretty intense streetfight in Shibuya at 4am, but that is a different story…)
It just should be noted, that in the face of people always saying how safe Japan is, crime still happens.
To whoever searched Google for “how to make pokemon on grand auto theft three” and ended up here,
To the best of my knowledge it is impossible. I’m sorry, but you will never be able to use Squirtle to cruise for hos. I’m sorry if this breaks your heart, but in case your continued search brings you back here, I’d just like to have an answer ready for you.
I’m in the mood for a quick post before I go to bed. Another in the “Japanese Game Center” line of posts. Before I brought you the children’s oriented Pokemon Battorio, this time it’s a rhythm game by Jubeat. Jubeat has the lineage of a fine rhythm game. Before there were the likes of Guitar Hero, there were games like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks, and Beatmania. What do these games all have in common? They all share the same developer in Konami and all all pretty renowned for their adictiveness and tight gameplay. Maybe also a little bit for their insane difficulty levels. I’m sure many of you have seen ridiculous DDR (or am I the only one who looks this up in their free time?), but the other two are equally ridiculous. Guitar Freaks was around before Guitar Hero ever thought about stepping onto the scene. And Beatmania? If you want to see hand eye coordination, search YouTube for Beatmania.
These games are all still alive and kicking on the Japanese arcade scene. Most of which is probably due to the fact that the Japanese arcade scene (at least in Tokyo) is alive and kicking. Arcades don’t tend to exist much in the states, and when they do they tend to be very small. You have to be lucky and live somewhere with good ones, or if you’re from Minnesota, live near a Casino, or a specialized venue like GameWorks. Venture into downtown Tokyo and they’re fairly common. There’s one next to my station and I live in the ‘burbs. I was beginning to think DDR had seen the end of its popularity, but I finally stumbled onto a new machine last month, released in December, and recently aquired by an arcade close to school. (I’d like to write about that sometime.)
But let’s stay focused. Jubeat. It’s got the pedigree. Konami knows what they’re doing. But we’ve got dancing, guitars, and dj covered. Oh, yeah, they have a “Drum Freaks” game too, so I guess that means drums are covered too. Well, if anything, Jubeat follows in the footsteps of Beatmania in that in has the player pressing buttons. A lot. Repeatedly. The physical console itself is a bunch of stylized cubes. It’s all about squares. The game itself utilizes two screens; a top screen that displays all relevant player and song information, and one bottom “screen” which is actually sixteen separate buttons set up in a 4 x 4 grid. So I guess if you wanted to be technical, the game actually sports 17 screens!
Gameplay is faily simple. You insert your coin, and player card (if you have one). It then let’s you choose three play modes - you can play online, locally, or by yourself. Local works if you’re starting at the same time as someone. I’ve always seen Jubeat in clumps of 2-4 machines. In order for local mode to work you both have to chose the mode around the same time - that is to say, if someone is already playing you can’t just jump in and challenge them. Single player is just that - you play by yourself. Online functions the same way as single player, you go along picking your difficulty and song as you normally would, and then before starting the game goes into a search mode. Because all the machines on the continent are wired up to the same network, you usually connect to at least one player waiting to play the same song and difficulty. Some songs are also more popular than others, so there’s a better chance of playing against someone. Regardless of mode, the actual gameplay itself is always the same. Based on the rhythm of the song (as most games of this genre function) set patterns “light up” on the buttons. The buttons actually say “touch here” in Japanese and get kind of shiny. The more accurate your press, the more you score. Failed presses result in a red explosion. On easier levels it’s fairly noticable, but the game will keep you at single button presses and not too many, so hopefully too many micro-explosions aren’t a problem. As far as I know, the game features three difficulty levels (though I wouldn’t be suprised at all if there is a harder mode) along the lines of beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
I’ve been playing the game recently, and it doesn’t seem too difficult. I do have some background in the Rhythm game genre though. I’d definitely say it’s easier than Beatmania - something I never managed to get the hang of. I haven’t played it enough to gauge it against any other games, but you really can’t compare it. At higher levels the game has you hitting 8 buttons at a time and things can get really confusing. However, it includes a good selection of songs, and strangely enough a few English ones as well. (Scatman, YMCA, Kiss Kiss.) The Japanese ones are mostly popular songs as well as songs from the previously mentioned games.
In any case, I can’t remember enjoying a rhythm game this much since DDR. Konami games have some sort of special charm to them. I don’t think any stateside realease is planned, but keep your eyes pealed! Let me leave you with some gameplay footage here. This guy is good.
So I’ll admit to it. There’s a Pikachu in my closet. I keep it there all the time and it doens’t do much. My friend Lydia has Relax-bear stuffed away in hers somewhere. We’ve been looking for a chance to try out these costumes for some time now. Full length character outfits with hoods. They’re pretty sweet. Called “kigurumi”, something along the lines of a crossbreed between wear and (stuffed) animal.
It can be a pain to coordinate schedules sometime as we haven’t seemed to been able to find some time that works for all of us. So on Sunday, not willing to wait any longer, I donned Pikachu and jumped on the train. While Tokyo can be strange sometimes, I don’t think people were expecting this on a Sunday afternoon. There were people who I think were araid of me, people laughing AT me, people laughing WITH me, and people who really didn’t care. I finally reached my destination: Harajuku.
Harajuku is the hip part of Tokyo for teenage fashion. Most famous of which is probably its gothic-lolita style. In any case, if there is any part of Tokyo where you can very nearly not out of place in a Pikachu costume, Harajuku is that place. What exactly was I going to do? Had we all gone, I really had no idea. But since it was just me, it was my decision, and so I figured I’d join the troupe of “free huggers” that trek to Harajuku every Saturday and Sunday. There is a bridge near the station where you find a little of everything. When I went there were a few guys with guitars, a mime, your typical gothic high school students hanging out, a full grown man in a pink frilly dress, a gaijin dressed in a yukata, waiting patiently, hoping to meet Takeshi Kitano, and so many more. And of course there are the free hugs. They were here when I came two years ago and they’re still here now. In the past there were more crazy outfits on these people, but on Sunday I was the only one who looked strange.
It was a really exciting experience. Lots of peopl take pictures. Lots of people get hugs. Japanese people and foreigners alike. Did it accomplish anything? Depends on your sense of that word. I probably could have been more productive, but it made me happy to hug people, and I think other people were happy to get a hug too. The world needs a little more happiness every now and then, especially Tokyo.
On top of that, near the time when I wanted to go home, a group of three Japanese students approached me. ”Are you busy next Saturday? Would you like to be a model for us?” It turns out they’re students at one of Tokyo’s trendier fashion schools, Vantan Design Institute. So in addition to having a fun day, I’m supposed to head on over there next weekend and wear some of the outfits they’ve picked out for final projects. Should be fun!
It’s easier to keep things somewhat logical when you do different posts. Therefore I’m bringing you another picture. It doesn’t really do much, but I have it set as my desktop background currently and since it seems to serve that purpose well, I thought some of you might want to nab it as well!
Here’s some more eye candy. It’s easier then writing, and it’s pretty. I’m having some trouble with my Adobe’s RAW editor recently which is no fun, but that doesn’t affect stitching. I could spend more time and make this look better, but I think it’s not too bad already.
In Japan, there is a holiday called Golden Week. It is a series of holidays that last approximately a week. They don’t really seem to serve much of a purpose other than to get the entire country off of work and crowd every known popular spot in Japan. Which means it’s probably best not to take a vacation during this time because everyone else is. Or, if you’re my host family, you DO take that vacation, if only to keep up with the Tanakas.
I’m still a little bit disappointed in the logistics of the whole thing. Maybe that’s because I’m from a family that I would consider good at this sort of thing, or maybe my host family is not very good at this sort of thing. Instead of leaving on Friday night when everyone was free from commitment, we decided to leave on Saturday. Surely this should mean hitting the road at like 6 or 7 in the morning to maximize the day and minimize traffic. Apparently what leaving on Saturday meant was leaving at 3:30. And stopping in Nagoya at 8:30. For dinner with a family friend and then heading over to their house where I wasn’t sure if we were staying the night or just visiting. Turned out to be just visiting, as we got back on the road at midnight. Did I mention stopping at nearly every single rest station? Okay, that’s probably an exageration, but between a 5-year old and a 10-year old when one or the other didn’t have to use the restroom, someone was hungry, or cranky. We finally arrived on Sunday morning in Hiroshima Prefecture to visit the island of Miyajima (Okay, to be fair, the island is actually called Itsukushima, but it is commonly referred to as Miyajima. Also, another interesting thing to note here is shima/jima is the Japanese character for island, so sometimes it sounds silly to me to say Miyajima Island, or Miya Island Island.) This is essentially the route we took to get there.
Miyajima was pretty cool, if not completely overtaken by tourists. Here’s one of those obligatory tourist pictures. I’m sure you’ve seen this before. It is a world heritage site, after all.
And then there’s this photo that I took from inside the shrine. I like it much more.
After that we drove to my host-father’s parents’ house in Hiroshima Prefecture. A nice house on a small island, it seemed like it would have been a wonderful place to grow up. I really do love the sea. The next day we went to a festival. I’m not really sure what it was, but it was on the beach, so I didn’t complain. I had the opportunity to row a small boat that was used by Japanese pirates in the area. It was a 12 or so man rowboat with a drummer in the back to keep everyone in time. It was quite fun. Then we grabbed lunch before the host-kids were entered into the “Fish Catch n’ Take” For an entrance fee of 500 yen (~$5) middle schoolers and younger got the chance to get into a pool with gloves on and try and catch up to three fish that were just caught by the fishing boats offshore. It was an amusing sight. Both my host-brother and host-sister hit their limit of three fish (okay, so really, one was an octopus…) and at that we headed home. What did we have for dinner? Sashimi. (Raw fish.) I was actually a bit scared at first even though I’ve been eating raw fish since I got here. There was nothing to worry about as it was extremely delicious having been so fresh.
After some more lazing in Hiroshima, we packed up for another long drive back up to Osaka. We got in late on Tuesday and crashed in a hotel for the evening. In the morning we took a quick jaunt over to Osaka castle which was pretty interesting. I really like Japanese castles.
After that, we took the one hour drive to Kyoto and stopped by Kinkakuji, the golden pavilion. More pictures. It’s easy to describe things that way.
Then it was off for a long lunch which meant putting off more driving. Ugh. We finally left Kyoto around 5ish? Many stops later, including an hour long road-side hot bath trip (yeah, what?), and a bunch of Traffic, we got home around three in the morning. If was a fun trip, but needless to say, I did not go to my morning class the next day.
Tokyo is completely overwhelming at times, and on the flip side there are times when things just seem to fit. Today was one of those days. Nothing particularly special. Class in the morning. I ran into both of the people who I intended on seeing in the elevator out of the building. That was useful. Spent some time on the computer, ended up with free time and a bit of uncertainty. Ended up talking to my friend Rachel for the better chunk of two hours. Maybe it was just something I need. With everything in Tokyo being focused on the hustle and bustle - I could hardly breathe do to compression of my body on the train this morning - moments of both self-reflection and awareness of others’ feelings don’t come along all too often. It was just refreshing. On the train home, the girl sitting next to me was studying diligently until she fell asleep on my shoulder. I was riding for a while and it wasn’t a bother. I let the more girl get what was probably some much needed sleep. To top it all of, as I exited the station, a crowd of people, huddled under umbrellas to shield themselves from the relentless rain, stood with their cell phones pointed in one direction. Now what was this? Then sun had decided to peak out of the clouds and left a full rainbow across the sky. A good way to wrap up the day.
Here are some pictures I’ve been wanting to share. Some are ok, some aren’t great, but I like them, and have been persuaded that I don’t post enough pictures. So here, enjoy them! If you are interested, feel free to ask about them.
