Category: Japan things!

These things are about Japan!

Anime USA 2015!

I managed to attend Anime USA for the first time in over 4 years, since they moved away from the Crystal City Hyatt to the Wardman Park Marriott in DC.

I didn’t get to see everything, but I did manage to get some photos, so enjoy!

Otakon 2015!

Otakon!
Otakon!
The next-to-last Otakon to be held at Baltimore Convention Center has begun! I decided to take a leaf from others and take some photos around the convention with one of my anime figures, “Danboard” from the manga “Yotsuba and!”. There are a lot of people in Japan and other places that are taking photos of Danboard in various famous sites, so I thought “why not do the same?” Here are a couple of pictures I’ve taken so far, with more (hopefully) to come!

Enjoy!

Danboard checks out the Otakon "ice cold waterworks" sign
Danboard checks out the Otakon “ice cold waterworks” sign
Danboard waits patiently outside the main entrance
Danboard waits patiently outside the main entrance
Danboard meets a cosplayer
Danboard meets a cosplayer

Katsucon 2015

Decided to put the gallery here instead of on a page, that most people wouldn’t see.

These are shots from Katsucon 2015, held February 13-15, at National Harbor outside of Washington DC.

Enjoy!

Kiyosumi Garden, Tokyo

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Almost exactly 2 years ago today, October 23 2012, I was on the first full day of my third trip to Japan, a month-long excursion I called “Nerdtour 2012” (I blogged it on this site).  One of the best places I went was this little slice of old Tokyo park design, called Kiyosumi Garden.  It was just about 1 or 1.25 miles up the road from the apartment I stayed at, and my buddy John had been there before, so on a somewhat rainy day we set off to see this.  It’s a nicely laid-out park, with a large pond or small lake in the middle, beautiful landscaping, and more turtles in one place than I had seen in a long time!  I took this picture of a couple having their picture taken, I don’t know if they were models, or of they were a genuine couple preparing to get married.  Either way, it was a stroke of luck getting this shot from across the lake, given it had been raining off and on with breaks in the clouds allowing the sun to shine.  I plan to go back sometime in the next year, if all goes well, if not, then the year after.  There is so much more of Japan to see!

BTW, I wrote a small photo book that you can buy on Blurb.com!

Flashback: “Noir”, an atmospheric anime

Screen Shot 2014-08-29 at 2.13.41 AMBack in the early 2000’s, I was just getting into anime watching heavily, and one of my favorite shows from that time was “Noir”, a mystery about two young women who work as assassins for hire. Their assignments mostly involved killing people who deserved to die, at least as determined by the ones hiring them, but there was also they recurring mystery of how they became killers, and what secrets of their relationship to each other and to their employers would be revealed. One of the girls was amnesiac, who woke up in a room in Japan with no memory, but with a school uniform and ID, and an innate knowledge of how to field-strip, clean and reassemble almost any gun. The other young woman initially worked alone using the code name “Noir”, but she encountered the other girl when both of them tried to kill the same set of gangsters. The younger girl ended up working with the older, and they ended up on various assignments throughout Europe and the Middle East, all the while learning more and more about who hired them and why, and what tied them together from many years earlier.

What most added to the show for me was the atmospheric music of Kajiura Yuki, who wrote music that spanned several genres, but mostly faux-Medieval European music, such as the song in this video clip, “Salva Nos”. Also, there was a recurring theme, where the amnesiac girl had a musical watch which played a theme song that the other girl remembered from childhood. Ms. Kajiura played many variations on that theme throughout the show’s episodes, and it added a haunting current to the scenes of both violence and stillness.

This was one of the first anime in the “girls with guns” genre, which led to two follow-on anime by the same production company, Bee Train, called “Madlax” and “El Cazador de la Bruja”, but with different characters and no relation plot-wise. Other anime in this genre include “Gunslinger Girls” and even parodies such as the currently running “Sabagebu”.

This video clip is a music video of “Salva Nos”, with many action scenes from various episodes of “Noir.” Enjoy!

“Gisoku no Moses”, a delightful anime short inspired by Gene Kelly

Screen Shot 2014-08-25 at 9.22.14 PMLeave it to Japan to combine a catchy Gene Kelly tap-dance number from “Singing in the Rain” with a cute anime ghost girl, to create one of the sweetest, cutest anime shorts I’ve seen to date. A lot of the world seems to agree, since the YouTube video is now over 300,000 views, and the comments section is filled with all kinds of languages from fans.

Screen Shot 2014-08-25 at 9.27.01 PMThe anime short starts off with a lonely, sad ghost girl, who happens to hear two haunted tap shoes singing and dancing to “Moses Supposes” from “Singing in the Rain.”

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She’s hesitant at first, but soon she starts trying to dance with them, and as the song goes on she breaks into a tap-dance routine just like Gene Kelly’s. It’s kind of bittersweet, as the shoes lose their movement, but in the closing we see a shopkeeper (Named Mose!) watching the ghost girl looking at a sign in his window for “Singing in the Rain”, and the last scene shows them in a theater where she’s enjoying “Singing in the Rain” with the shopkeeper!

“Miss Veedol”

Pangborn and Herndon, unsung heroes of aviation history, along with "Miss Veedol!" This monument is right at the entrance to the grounds of the Misawa Aeronautics and Science Museum, in Misawa, Japan.
Pangborn and Herndon, unsung heroes of aviation history, along with “Miss Veedol!” This monument is right at the entrance to the grounds of the Misawa Aeronautics and Science Museum, in Misawa, Japan.
Most people have heard of Charles Lindbergh and his historic non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in his “Spirit of St. Louis” airplane, but how many have heard of Clyde Pangorn and Hugh Herndon, much less their airplane, the “Miss Veedol?”


A plaque describing the flight of Pangborn and Herndon in the "Miss Veedol" in 1931.
A plaque describing the flight of Pangborn and Herndon in the “Miss Veedol” in 1931.
In 1927 Charles Lindbergh set out from New Jersey, in order to prove it was possible to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean, which hadn’t been done before. His success stirred the imagination of imitators around the world, and in 1931 two men decided to try to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean, a feat that would cover almost twice the distance and take 41 hours!


The full-sized (non-flying) replica of the "Miss Veedol" in the Misawa Aeronautics and Science Museum
The full-sized (non-flying) replica of the “Miss Veedol” in the Misawa Aeronautics and Science Museum
Originally intending to fly around the world for a world record, they had to abandon their attempt in Russia, near northern Japan. Instead, they decided to try to fly non-stop across the Pacific (the $25,000 prize the Asahi Shimbun newspaper offered for the feat wouldn’t have hurt!) Modifying their Bellanca J-300 airplane to hold almost twice the normal amount of fuel, they barely took off from Sabishiro Beach in Misawa, northern Japan, dropping their landing gear along the flight to save weight. Pangborn even left his boots in Japan, just to shave off a few pounds! The two men apparently didn’t get along on their flight, which is kind of understandable when you see how small the plane was, while holding two pilots alternating flying, sitting alongside fuel containers for nearly two days straight!


After many harrowing moments in the flight (at one point Pangborn had to climb out to manually detach a couple of supports from the landing gear they had dropped!) they finally arrived in the skies over Washington State. They thought about flying on to Boise Idaho to add more distance to their record, but weather prevented them, and they tried several other airports in Washington State with no success. Finally they had to land, and they picked a field in Wenatchee, Washington, where they made a belly-landing damaging the propeller. They succeeded, and both the towns of Misawa and Wenatchee honor their flight, Misawa with a giant Aeronautics and Science Museum (where I took the pictures here), and Wenatchee with a National Historical site, as well as a full-sized, flying re-creation of the original “Miss Veedol”. The two towns consider themselves “Sister Cities”, and the aviation club that built the new “Miss Veedol” actually flew it over in Japan, where it was on display in the museum in Misawa.

Nerdtour 2012 flashback: Brilliant fountains of Yoyogi Park

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In the middle of Yoyogi Park there’s a small lake with two fountains. During the day they alternate how high they shoot up, but at night they are both lit from below by constantly changing colored lights, which create fantastic displays of light and motion.