So you ve come up with a camera, named it Kiss for reasons best known to yourself and/or your marketing department, and you need a cool commercial to show the world how rocking it is.
The logical step would be to get four kids to get made up just like Kiss, have them sing a song to the tune of I Was Made For Loving You while touring stereotypical and invented Japanese scenes. And you have to conclude with the kids learning to breathe atomic death rays like Godzilla.
Wow.
Yay!
The new Miss Universe Japan hails from round these parts (Shizuoka), although I m not exactly sure where, thus hobbling my plans to stalk interview her - even doesn t surrender such vital information, although she could really do with installing some kind of spam filter. Check out this screen cap of her trackbacks: Riyo Mori is a ballet dancer, and, while she may be exceptionally beautiful, I m not sure she s as hot as Kurara Chibana, last year s Miss Universe Japan. (I actually thought Chibana had won the Miss Universe title until I stopped by her .
You got to love that media saturation in Japan - best form of brainwashing known to man. I ll be eating natto with a mmmmm, yum expression on my face next.)
Still, buying one of these super budget tickets is a cheap way to get around Japan, and if you think trains are the bomb, then you won t mind so much - especially seeing as the tickets allow unlimited travel for a 24 hour period (on only local JR trains, natch) for the bargain price of 11,500 yen.
w00t.
A lot of people have heard of Yellow Magic Orchestra, a lot of people haven t. Me, I heard about them for the first time when in a secondhand book and CD shop, I came across Junior Vasquez s Junior s Magic Orchestra for 200 yen. Had no idea what the hell this might be - some weird concept album?
Turned out to be his remixes of 6 Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks, pretty tasty stuff.
Yellow Magic Orchestra are kind of like the Japanese Kraftwerk, in that they made music with electronics and made it popular. They re different from Kraftwerk in my mind because they have more of a sense of fun.
They formed in 1978 , hung around until 1983, and haven t really done much together since.
There is, however, a whole heap of videos at YouTube. Here s my favourite, Cosmic Surfin :
That s my favourite track, but the best video award goes to Computer Game -
There re also videos of , and probably heaps more I never came across.
Oh, and if you re interested, I found a copy of that Junior Vasquez CD. At about 15 times the price I paid. Oh, tis a sick sad world
Anyone who s known me for a while will probably know about my rather peculiar fascination with derelict buildings.
They might be disturbed to know that I recently found out about a whole island that s been left to rot since 1974. Especially if I add in the grisly details of feeling my pulse quicken when I saw images like this from Saiga Yuji-
- and if I m being totally honest, I found this totally breathtaking. More so than if Koda Kumi had come in to my apartment naked.
Look closely at the picture, take in the number of empty rooms there. Rooms where things once took place, where people watched television, got drunk, read books, ate dinner, made love, conceived children, died, got sick, woke up, got dressed. All the things you or I do everyday, things that leave faint echos in the lifeless buildings around us.
The tale of Gunkanjima is not as apocalyptic as you might assume given its stricken wasteland appearance.
The actual name of the island is Hashima - gunkan is Japanese for battleship and is a moniker given the island by locals inspired by the way the island looks from a distance. Hashima is about 15 kilometres west of Nagasaki, in the south-west of Japan, and once upon a time it was a bustling mining town, tapping the coal resources under the seabed.
In 1959, its population density was 835 people per hectare for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare for the residential district, supposedly the highest population density ever recorded worldwide.
All these people lived, grew up, worked and died on the island, and they lacked few facilities - you can see this just by looking at makingplaces.com, which lists the various buildings that could be found on Hashima in its heyday.
There are schools, a police station, a hospital and even a cinema.
And now? It s probably a safe bet that all those things are still there, as evidenced by Saiga Yuji s beautiful photography; still there, but in decline.
Something worth seeing - the decaying evidence of lives lived, crumbling in to dust.
I so want to go to Gunkanjima. Sadly, entry to the island is currently prohibited.
Anyone able to pull any strings for me?
I have to confess, I ve never read a zoological blog before. Don t let the threat of big words put you off though; on the science of the various strains of godzilla is filled with gems and laughs aplenty.
You might also learn something, like why godzilla doesn t eat -
Apparently its stomach has mutated into a new organ: the plasma gland. Radioactive particles rise from here to be expelled via the mouth during combat, and excess radioactivity is also passed into the dorsal scutes at the same time not unlike the overflow guard in your ordinary bathtub
So cool.
And yeah, I know , but I d finished my article before I came across their one, so sorry if this is nothing new!
Found this great little site last night and thought I d share. My main reason for including it was the comic section with its motley crew of characters who are funny for all the right reasons.
I think I d have to rate Skeleman as my own personal favourite.
I mean, with details like this, you can t not like him:
Absolute genius.
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