Tokyo has a lot of “Maid Cafes”, especially around the Otaku district of Akihabara in the Akihabara Electric Town (Akihabara Denki Ga). These Maid Cafes usually have cute girls dressed in lolita-style maid outfits, and serve the customers with drinks and food. If you pay a little extra, they will even play games with you, such as Connect 4 or draughts etc. These cafes have been the province of young male otaku until now…

The Otome Road (Maiden Road) in Ikebukuro district is becoming the yaoi answer to Akihabara’s otaku centre. Yaoi is a genre of manga popular with girls that focuses on homosexual love between men and is often sexually explicit. Yaoi as a term more used in English speaking countries, as the term “BL” (or Boys Love) is used more in Japan. A restraurant has opened on Otome Road called Lily Rose, which is a BL restaurant. The restaurant’s waiters are all really attractive young men in the BL style. Well, they’re really young women, dressed as young BL guys, with male names like Kaisuke-kun (kun being a honorific like san, but reserved for younger males you’re very familiar with). Generally in BL stories, you have “seme” and “uke”. Just like in martial arts where seme “attacks” and uke “receives”. This term has been used in terms of sexual relationships for a long time, and is in no way pejorative. Seme is generally more a traditional “masculine” role, being restrained, strong and protective - whereas uke would be more andryogenous or girlish in looks and behaviour. The waiters are called “gyaru-son”, which is another great portmanteau-type Japanese joke. Gyaru means “gal” as in a trendy young Japanese girl, with the word “son”, making a play on “garcon” - French for boy.

You might think it’s a little strange for girls to come to a restaurant staffed by girls to see guys - but one patron likes it: “Because the staff are really women, I can eat without fear of a man trying to pick me up, allowing me to take in the beauty of the ‘men’ around me as I enjoy my food.”

It’s just another reason why Japan is the most fantastic country on earth (^ ^)

It’s Halloween time again, so time for lots of parties. This year I went to the big party in my local rock club in the style of one of my favorite bands. Unfortunately most thought I was there as an “emo”, but not to worry. Unfortunately visual kei hasn’t really crossed over to here yet. One girl totally recognised my outfit, and made a comment, so that totally made my night! \(^ ^)/. My outfit was a pair of big-soled shoes, skinny jeans, black fitted tshirt, cross pendant and chain, and a band-leader’s jacket, along with blue harajuku/manga/visual kei hair.  The look I was going for was アリス九號 (Alice Nine) who are a visual kei band formed by Shou (将), Hiroto (ヒロト), Tora (虎), Saga (沙我) in 2004, playing at the Ikebukuro Cyber. A while ago, I was in Marui in Shinjuku, and saw a video on one of the screens and ran to one of the girls working there and in bad Japanese, asked her who it was. I got her to write it down, so I rushed off to HMV in Shibuya (well, I was heading that way so went to that one) and picked up the CD.

My favorite of their songs is Yami ni Chiru Sakura (闇ニ散ル桜) which is actually quite an old song, from about 2005 IIRC. Obviously they’re all absolutely gorgeous guys, and look amazing - which I guess is kinda the point for visual kei (visual style, or literally “visual system, lineage, group“) bands. I’ve blogged about this before - probably far to many times really - and I love to go on and on about visual kei to anyone who’ll listen, but if you’re unfamiliar - visual kei bands are usually quite flamboyant Japanese bands, normally playing rock, metal or punk, but very often any type of music. It’s really important to have really good style, and most of the bands wear amazing clothes, and have androgynous looks with stunning makeup and hairstyles. Clearly I’m bound to like bands like this! (^_-)-*

One of my other favorite bands is Malice Mizer, with the amazing and enigmatic Mana, but they disbanded a while ago now. I loved their style during the Klaha era, which was gorgeous funeral gothic style - a style still popular in Mana’s Moi-Même-Moitié clothing label.

The good thing is that I get the chance to dress up again as I’m having a Halloween party on Wednesday too - oh, and I get to dress up every weekend anyway (^_-)-*

In one of my blogs about Japanese love hotels, I mentioned about chikan (痴漢, チカン or ちかん) or “train groping”. Japanese transit authorities have done a lot to prevent groping of women on packed trains, such as women-only carriages during peak hours, but unfortunately, it still exists. To combat the problem, Japanese games developer Takahashi created an ‘Anti-Groping’ appli for mobile phones. It was out in 2005, but has recently climbed to number 7 in mobile phone application popularity. The application displays messages on the phone’s screen in bold print to show to the offender; “Excuse me, did you just grope me?”, “Groping is a crime” and finally; “Shall we head to the police?”.

This application shows a lot about Japanese culture (aside from the fact that Japanese are using mobile applications a lot more). I guess in the west, if that happened, then we’d probably shout about it. In Japan, people tend to not want to make that much of a scene, and women are often too embarrassed to say anything out loud. This application allows someone to get the message across to a “train pervert” without having to cause any fuss. Tokyo transit authorities have arrested a large number of people, but it’s estimated that most women don’t report incidents.

I blogged a little while ago about how strange Japanese TV can be, and also mentioned a Naked Ski-slope prank. At the time I didn’t link it, but I think it’s worth linking now

This clip has the popular habit of a superimposed person laughing at the funny parts, which not only tells you when to laugh, but makes it feel like you’re watching the TV with someone else.

Enjoy…

Dakimakura (or 抱き枕) are large “hugging pillows” popular in Japan, and some say a new craze. They’ve been around since the late 90’s, but are gaining popularity as covers for the pillows have been given away in a few Japanese magazines, and in stock in a lot more “utaku” shops. Typically they are slightly-smaller-than-lifesize pillows designed to be hugged in bed, and often have screen-prints of popular anime or Bishōjo Game characters. Bishōjo games (or 美少女ゲーム, bishōjo gēmu - game of beautiful girls) are video games, where the player interacts with a cute, anime-type character. Gameplay is pretty much seducing the character, leading to pornographic scenes, but sometimes these games feature characters who will become your girlfriend, and you must then interact with them to keep them happy….or maybe put out (^_-)-* They usualy fall into three categories; dating sim, eroge (Japanisation of “erotic game”) and visual novel - depending on the content.

Although dakimakura are a good way for a keen otaku to get their favorite character into bed, some go that little bit further and opt for the inflatable version, complete with…erm…’openings’. I was in a shop in Aikihabara a while ago where they had a vast range of these versions, along with outfits you could buy for them. I guess the extention to this is the realistic “real dolls” available in Tokyo, and even available to rent!

Interestingly, the idea of sleeping with something like the dakimakura isn’t a new idea, as the chikufujin (竹夫人 - bamboo wife) has been around for a long time as a hollow bamboo roll - about the size of a human - that could be slept against to keep you cooler at night. The air would flow through the chikufujin as you slept against it. Although I’m fairly sure that the blow-up versions aren’t meant to keep you cool at night!

There are lots of dakimakura , available from Mandarake in Japan, and some on J-List too.

One of the major parts of the Japanese fashion scenes is customising clothes, making your own, or matching things together to make a look. CRAFT magazine has a feature on making your own Harajuku punk shirt.

Craftzine also have some designs for punk iron-on transfers you can print out onto transfer paper, but it’s always cool to combine these with acrylic painting etc.

Last week I was at the Lomo World Congress, on the crew. It was a crazy week, and I spent most of it running around London, helping with stuff and sorting things out. In Trafalgar Square, we had a huge LomoWall containing 100,000 images taken by Lomographers from all over the world. They’ve been collected and selected from submissions over the last year, and it’s amazing to see them all together. I spent some time putting up panels, and ended up putting up a couple of my own! It was pretty great seeing people looking at your photos and talking about them, and even better seeing them next to other Lomographers’!

In case you don’t know - Lomography is an artistic approach to snapshot photography which started with a little 35mm Russian camera called an LCA (Lomo Compact Automatic, or more correctly a Lomo Kompact Automat). There are now loads of Lomographers all over the world, creating images, and sharing them via their LomoHomes on the Lomography.com site.

We had a week of events, workshops, meals, receptions, talks and plenty of alcohol. I hardly got any sleep through the week, but met an amazing, creative, enthusiastic and fun bunch of people from every corner of the world, and I feel really lucky to have been a part of it.

According to Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History by Sarah Chaplin, 1% of the Japanese population check into a love hotel (ラブホテル rabu hoteru), and 50% of all Japanese sex occurs in them. There are over 30,000 Japanese love hotels which earn more than 4 trillion yen per year, which is twice the value of the Japanese anime market. Love hotels generally offer a room rate for a “rest” kyūkei (休憩) or an overnight stay, although a “rest” is the more popular option. Generally they’re used by young couples who live with their respective parents, although they’re also used for prostitution in some cases.

Originating from “tea rooms” (chaya 茶屋) used by prostitutes, they became known as “tsurekomi yado” (連れ込み宿) or “bring-along inns” during the second world war, generally run by home-owners with spare rooms. The term “love hotel” apparently comes from an Osaka motel called “Hotel Love” which had a rotating sign on the roof with “Hotel” on one side, and “Love” on the other. The mis-reading produced the term “love hotel”, and it stuck.

Photo from Misty Keasler Photography; Love Hotels: Japan

While originally Love Hotels were just a room with a bed, the more expensive places offer themed rooms to cater for most fantasies; medical examination rooms, fairgrounds, bondage dungeons, and even subway carriages for people to indulge in “chikan” (痴漢, チカン, or ちかん), or “train groping”.

I have a 5th Generation Video iPod, which goes everywhere with me. It’s the most useful electronic thing I own, and even plugs into hotel TV sets, so I can watch videos and listen to music through them when I’m away. It’s a 60Gb version, and now it’s running rather low on space. Apple have just released two different types of iPod though; the iPod Classic, available in 80Gb and 160Gb versions, and the iPod Touch, in 8Gb or 16Gb versions (on removable flash memory). Ideally I’d've liked the iPod Touch, but with a 160Gb hard disc in it… The Touch is really just an iPod nano. It does have the new iPhone interface, and looks very much like an iPhone too. It also has stuff like wifi, but no Bluetooth apparently. It’s really an iPhone without the phone bit. It’s a shame that you can’t get an iPod Touch with the hard drive too, but I guess they don’t want to kill the “traditional” iPod, which this would. I’ve ordered an iPod classic instead, which has the new UI including the cover flow interface like the Apple TV and iTunes has (as well as the iPod Touch and iPhone). I’m not too disappointed though as I’d like to get an iPhone when they come out here, and the iPod classic will be a good match with this. If I went for the iPod Touch, I’d end up with two devices - pretty much the same - but one doesn’t have phone functionality, so the Touch might not get used as much.

I’m really happy to update my iPod though, and it’s great to have all the space for vidoes etc - as I’d pretty much removed the videos on my older iPod to save space. I did leave The Mighty Boosh on there though as it’s my favorite comedy series, and I re-watch it a lot. Does anyone want to buy a good condition 5th gen video iPod? (^ ^)

Also, Apple has reduced the price of the iPhone to people’s annoyance. There is an open letter from Steve Jobs about it on the Apple site, offering a $100 credit note from the store. I guess you can’t get that annoyed when you’re an early adopter, as you do pay a premium to get things early.

Bento (in Japanese; 弁当 or べんとう) are small boxed lunches that are very popular in Japan. Traditionally they were rice, fish or meat and carried in a laquered wooden box. In the past, they were very popular with school children, but as the children from poorer families were given lower-quality food, and the children from richer familes were given much better food, it obviously displayed your family’s status, so they were phased out in schools. Recently, they’ve become much more popular, but the same situation applies really. It’s considered a very important skill for a housewife to be able to prepare a nutritious and visually appealing boxed lunch - although now they’re packaged in plastic bento boxes, often decorated with idols, manga characters or nice designs.

Photo from Janine’s Flickr Stream

Typically with Japanese cuisine, they are presented beautifully and often the food is prepared to look like other things, such as rice balls in the shape of a face, penguin-shaped cookies etc. There are a multitude of tools available to the bento maker to prepare these, including cutters, food seperators that look like grass and little bottles for soy sauce in the shape of fish etc.

Historically they originated in the 1200’s and were a “dried meal” called hoshi-ii (糒 or 干し飯 in Japanese), although later on they were presented in the wooden boxes you sometimes see at nice restaurants in Japan. Travellers would often carry a “waist bento” called a koshibentō (腰弁当) which consisted of onigiri (御握り or おにぎり) which are small rice balls shaped into a triangle. Modern bentos often have these too, with a face made of other ingredients to make it more pleasing. Apparently onigiri were used by samurai who stored rice balls in leaves when they were out doing their samurai thing.

There are many types of bento too; choka bento (中華弁当) which is Chinese food, Kamameshi bentō (釜飯弁当) sold at train stations, Sushizume (鮨詰め) “packed sushi”, Shidashi bentō (仕出し弁当) normally prepared by a restaurant and often eaten at parties (containing things like pickles with tempura or katsu curry or sometimes western food) - and also Hinomaru bento (日の丸弁当) - one of my favorites, containing plain rice with an umeboshi (梅干) in the center to look like the Japanese flag (Hinomaru). Umeboshi is a distinctly Japanese food - a kind of plum picked in vinegar. Vinegar in Japan is often different to what the westerner would expect as umeboshi is picked in a barrel with lots of salt - the resulting juice and salt is the vinegar. It can be a shock to those trying it for the first time. It has an extremely sour and salty taste, and is said to improve health, despite the high salt content. For example, if you had a cold, you’d have “okayu” or “Japanese congee”, a type of rice porridge. Sometimes it’s put into Japanese drinks such as shochu for decoration and flavour. I’d recommend adventurous types to look some out at your local asian food store and try them. It’s a real Japanese experience!