The Road Most Taken

Today was a little less hectic than yesterday. Though we'd intended to see the big parade, we didn't make it. Sucker started at 9 and was long. Though we've been getting up early, today we took it more on vacation time. I think we both needed it.

We finally did some touristy thing as we took the day and visited temples and historical sites. Our guide book said we'd be able to do all these things in a matter of three hours or so. It tooks us about four hours to do just two and we had to rush through the third as it was closing. Bummer.

I won't bore you with all the details. Sooner or later I'll buy a Flickr account so you can see the million or so snaps I took today. However, I'll give you a taste of what I did on this day of my summer vacation.


That's the Golden Pavilion. Bet you'd never have guessed. This is part of the Rokuon-Ji Temple. There was a lot of pretty greenery to see and a nice little shrine area where Kristen and I lit candles.
Hers is "alleviate stress." Mine is "be very fine."

Kristen rocks the bells at the temple like her name was LL Cool J.

From there we went to the Ryoanji Temple, famous for steakburgers it's rock garden




where I had this moment of zen:

Then we hit the Old Imperial Palace Ninna-Ji which since it was the largest place, we got there twenty minutes to closing.



We both fell in love with this orange pagoda, though I haven't the foggiest what it is.



Then there was this thing. It was pretty.

I'm very sorry I can't tell you more about the palace. It was absolutely awesome, but we were literally sprinting through the place, taking pictures like mad as we went.

Speaking of pictures, Japan has got to be a photographer's best friend. You can point your camera anywhere, at anything and come up with an interesting image. Old or new stuff. Trees, people, vending machines. This is maybe the most visually interesting country I've been in.

Now, let's get down to the important stuff. What did I have for dinner? Well, I broke my streak of not eating at McDonald's by eating at McDonald's tonight. But it was good! I was shocked. Plus the workers all wear old school McDonald's uniforms, so they get points for that.

There's the menu in English. It's smaller than what they have in the US, but it gets the job done. I made it a point to order the weirdest thing on the menu, so I had the EBI Filet-O. Essentially it's a Filet 'O Shrimp. It was delicious.

We also had these Mango Pies.
Unlike the US pies which you could cut diamonds with, these were light and flaky and yummy.

I think we're getting ready to go back out (it's only 6:17 PM here) so I'm going to wrap this up. I forgot to take the critters along, so here's a gratuitous shot of Jet Jaguar conquering the room decorations:

PS: since we've been here, we've missed both a typhoon and an earthquake. w00t!

Thank you for Smorking

Smorking OK after a long day like we had. Lots of traveling, more rain, less English.


To continue my last post, here's the bullet train. Ours was on the right. This thing really moves, and it's smooth as you can imagine. It didn't feel like the trip took any time at all, when in fact it took nearly three hours.


As you can see, Godzilla and Gamera are busy checking out the scenery. When we weren't in a tunnel, there was some nice country side to look at. Most of it was going by too fast to get any worthwhile pictures of, but that didn't stop me from trying. In fact, I did catch this interesting shot.


Seems someone forgot to climb in the luggage and had to make it to Kyoto on his own.

So, here we are in Kyoto. It's a lot less English friendly than Tokyo, but we're still getting around ok. Tokyo is super modern, but Kyoto is a bit more on the old side. It looks more like the stereotypical Asian city you think of with wooden buildings, narrow streets and electricity wires running everywhere.



The hotel also has the most complicated toilet I've ever seen.



The bottom thing flips down to reveal about half a dozen buttons that do things I just don't understand. All I want to do is just do my business and leave, but apparently the Japanese have elivated that to an art.

Anyway, we walked around a bit. A long bit, as it was. Ate lunch at a Korean place where there were no English menus and I haven't the foggiest idea what either of us ate (she had a soup of some kind, I had fried rice something. Both were very good, actually.)

After lunch, we walked around some more. Then the streets started filling. I think I mentioned this festival going on? Well, the people were coming in droves and pretty soon, it was like a wall of people moving through. Kristen tired earlier than I did, which is a strange thing as it's usually the other way around.

Took a subway, took a cab, got back, ate dinner and here we are. I got more to tell, we went to a Namco Wonderland arcade, ifor instance, but it's going to have to wait. I'm about falling asleep as I type this, so until next time...

Bullet Train Blog

Right now I'm stilling on the bullet train without internet. I'll have some photos to go with this, but I just wanted to jot down a few things while I had some time.

Man, this is a fast critter but you really don't feel it until you pass another train or enter a tunnel. There's something to that one piece rail system, I guess. It's also, like nearly everything else here in Japan, a model of effency. When they tell you your train is leaving at 10:33, it's leaving at 10:33, come hell or high water.

If you've seen the movie Bullet Train, with Sonny Chiba in a minor role, it's nothing like that though. If you haven't, that's the movie Hollywood ripped off for Speed. No bombs on the train, thank goodness.

We're on the way to Kyoto. We don't have too much of an agenda, like how most of this trip is running. That's just how Kristen and I roll. There's a lantern festival we're going to try to check out, but that's about it. Wednesday we'll be back at the Conrad in Tokyo and all that.

I think my time is running short, but I wanted to do a few quick reviews. It's been ages since I've done anything and I have some time, so here goes.

First up, Lode Runner DS. Basically, if you played any previous version of Lode Runner, you know what you're in for. There's nothing new, it's just Lode Runner and the Champion edition. There's really not even anything special for the DS, which is a good thing. You see the full map on the top screen (which I end up watching most of the time) and a closer view on the bottom. There's a level editor and that's it for frills.

Even though this was one of those Apple ][ games I played the snot out of, it's still fun and still kinda hard. Probably not coming to America and maybe not worth the import price (I really don't know what Play-Asia would charge for this. I think it cost 3800 yen.) Still, if you're interested, there's not a lot of Japanese in it, so it's an easy pick up.

(And this is one of the things I love about Kristen. While I'm looking at console games, she picks this up and walks over and is like "this looks like something you would like." Excellent score babe. Right on the money.)

Another Kristen find was Eddie Costa's "Guys and Dolls Like Vibes." I was in the vibes section of the CD store (Japanese jazz stores arrange according to instrument, FYI) and she pulled this one out, attracted by the "jazz versions of showtunes" aspect. I was a little hesitant, it was showtunes and on Coral, not a jazz label by any yardstick. But she flipped it over and said "look! Bill Evans!" and I was sold. (I'm getting her trained well.) Plus it was a nifty mini-LP sleeve, and I'm a sucker for those.

Anyway, it's really good. I forgot I had some Eddie Costa on my iPod already and I love vibe players, so why not? Yes, it's a little on the light side, but Costa and Evans have some nice chemistry. It's also interesting to hear Bill Evans in this time period (1958) where he was playing with Miles and still finding the style that would make him THE Bill Evans.

Then there's this Les De Merle CD "Spectrum." OK, it's dated (they do "Aquarius" from Hair) but it's enjoyable in it's own way. Kind of reminds me of Buddy Rich Big Band records from the same time period. And there's no denying dude has some serious drum chops, like the afforementioned Mr. Rich.

(At this point, we were pulling into station.)

Gonna make you Pocari Sweat 'till You Bleed

Mmmmm...sweaty. I'm somewhat relieved to report the famous Pocari Sweat does not taste like squeezed Asian man, but tastes kind of like lemon lime Gatorade.

Today was fairly low key. We'd planned on hunkering down for the typhoon, but it missed us. Regardless, we didn't do a lot today. A trip to the hotel spa was the big event. However, tomorrow we are going on to Kyoto for a few days, so we had to buy train tickets today. Looking forward to traveling on the bullet train.

Here's a couple of snaps from the train station near the Conrad:





CHOO-CHOO!!!! Here comes the train!!!



Saw this weird little bag in the train station. The family was coming back from Tokyo Disneyland. Seriously.



Here's another quirky piece of Engrish from the convenience store where we bought the beverages I showed you earlier. Note: this store was playing Guru when we were in there last, so I'll forgive them their weird slogans.



As we're walking back from our little venture, I noticed a rack of DVDs in front of a newsstand. A closer inspection revealed I'd stumbled onto the Japanese equivalent of the dollar store DVDs I'd been so enamored with a while ago. But, rather than a bunch of obscure Japanese movies I'd never heard of (which I really would have preferred), I found the selection to be rather familiar.



The top row there is all the classic Charlie Chaplin films. The second, every Disney feature up to Dumbo.



The racks were filled with pretty much every important US film up to about 1950. The only omission I found was Wizard of Oz, but you name it, you could find nearly anything else. (Note 500 yen is a little more than $4 US.)

Another little book store, another rack of DVDs. This one had a little more color anyway.



Who the heck is Mike Mizno? And what's he got to do with pirated DVDs of US films?



Really? I know nothing about Japanese copyright, but wow.



Is this revenge for all the pirated US Gamera and Street Fighter discs? Totally weird and maybe I'll bite the bullet on a disc or two just to see what the deal is.

Speaking of Gamera, ho-boy, I shouldn't have left him and Godzilla alone in the room because this is what I walked in on:



Hey you guys. What are you up to?



GODZILLA! You put that little tree thing down, right this instance!



*sigh* That wasn't what I meant.

Jet Jaguar was busy running up a bill with the adult pay per view, but I won't bore you with pictures of that. (Really ugly, trust me.)

Well, that's all I got for today. Bed is calling so according to the pink duck thing, this blog is officially closed for the night.

Behind the Brown Door

Konichiwa! There's some of that fine Mary Tyler Moore font I promised you. Yeah, that's our door. We didn't see much of the room today as we spent most of the day getting rained on in Akihabara. Thanks weather. Anyway, two geeks in the electric capitol of the world were probably need more than a little rain to slow us down.

There's Kristen just after we got of the train. You can start to see a little of the insanity in the back ground. The only way I can describe it is if you've seen Blade Runner, it's pretty much like that, without the artificial animal shops.

That was just a random street corner. Nothing really special, but just a typical image from the street. We hit it at about 10:30 and didn't leave until 6. Stores were packed solid with people and electronics. Of course, everywhere I went, I was wishing I'd paid a little more attention in those ten hours of Japanese I took at IUPUI as it is a little tough to look for the stuff I was really after (such as videogames.)

Konchiwa Sanders-san! Am I the only one who thinks some Japanese men start looking like Colonel Sanders as they age? Kind of like US guys looking like Kenny Rogers. Hmm...they both had chicken restaurants. Coincidence?

So most of the stores don't allow photographs, ironically enough. I had to sneak a few, like here, look who is thinking differently:

Sadly he wasn't for sale. (Gamera is humping an old iMac, in case you couldn't tell.)

One of the fun things I dig even at home are capsule machines. In Japan, they really know how to do them right.


Kristen is getting ready to drop some yen in the wall of machines we found in one store.


This Namco machine was my favorite. We tried in vain to collect 'em all. Collect what? you ask:

Alright, you can't really tell from the picture, but they're keychain fobs that make noise when you press the button. So the Pac-Man one does the wacka-wacka thing, Dig Dug makes the pumping sound, etc. I still need a Xevious...grrr.

That same store had tons of toys and I picked up a few:

Look! It's Gamera, Jet Jaguar and Godzilla in his '68 comeback flavor! w00t! I was wishing I was more into Ultraman, because this store had so much Ultraman crap, I just wanted to start buying stuff even though I had know idea what it was.

I won't bore you with everything we bought, but here's a highlight:

This is the Space Invaders Anniversary set for PS2. I'd seen this before, but become it came out so long ago, it was off my radar. You get a PS2 game with all the Space Invaders games and this cool little controller thing:


You stick a dual shock in there and play it like an old Space Invaders cabinet. Totally silly, but I had to have it and got it cheap used (750 yen!)

As you can see, I'm putting it to use immediately to broker a peace accord between Gamera and Godzilla. Rather than trashing Tokyo, they're settling their differences over a game of Space Invaders. Jet Jaguar has a quarter up, though no one really takes him seriously.

Speaking of Gamera...should I feel shame for dropping some serious coin on the first four Gamera movies? Why do I love them so? Why are the crummy pan & scan "public domain" versions we have at home not good enough? Further more, why am I now determined to track down the remaining three discs I need to finish this set. *sigh*



Here's my CD haul for today. I love Japanese reissues, as they tend to do them right. The mini-LP covers are the bomb and I'm noticing what started out as just a jazz thing is moving to all kinds of music as well. However, it's just the jazz I'm after. Highlights of this include Dave Pike and Les De Merle discs I've never seen and, though it pains me to rebuy anything, I finally have another copy of 1969Miles, which is my favorite Miles CD ever. I'm not letting this one out of my sight, as my first copy walked. Kristen bought some good CDs too but I'm sure she'll talk about that over on her blog.

Rob G. out. I got a monster game night to referee.

Be Fresh!

OK, we're here. It's about 9:28 PM here and about 8:28 AM yesterday in Indy. Blogger thinks I'm Japanese now and I can't figure out how to change it, but I know what I'm doing so here we are.

I'm pretty zonked, so this is going to be quick. I just wanted to check in.

Tokyo is a pretty amazing city. I've seen several large cities, but this is just something else. I can't wait to actually get out and explore...assuming we don't get rained out by the typhoon. :(

Speaking of typhoon...




yes, we have the fancy Japanese toilet with the butt washer and heated seat. Oooh aaaah! The Tokyo Conrad is pretty nice. Excellent use of the Mary Tyler Moore font all over the place, which I'm always in favor of.

Anyway, I'm going to crash out. Later.

Airplane Blogging

So here I am, airplane blogging. Obviously, I won't be able to post for a while. It's 5:22 PM Indianapolis time and I haven't a clue where we are currently, but we're going to be airborne for about ten more hours. Joy.

Air Canada first class is pretty sweet. You have these nifty pod deelies, it's pretty standard for big planes, but still impressive. Everyone up here ends up with their own bed in essence as the seats go flat. Did this on our European trip three years ago, though we got bumped up only on the way there. Kristen should have a picture of these things.

Anyway, we went from Indy to Toronto and now are en-route from Toronto to Tokyo. For my in flight entertainment, I watched the entire first season of This American Life. Yeah, I had a vested interest (whoo hoo, I heard my drums for about five seconds just before the credits in episode three) but they really did an awesome job translating an iconic radio show to TV. In short, if you like the radio show, you'll like the TV show. If not, I don't know what to tell you.

I'm a little disappointed that the TVs here in the plane don't have the map channel. Yeah, I know a majority of the time you're looking at nothing more than an outline of a plane over blue (or at least you are on the flights I've had it on) but it's still kind of fun once you get close to your destination.

What else? Well, I didn't really say much about the wedding. It was pretty much amazing. Kristen is an awesome planner and all the people who put things together did such an awesome job. In spite of constantly threatening to run away to Vegas, I think it was all pretty much worth the hassle.

I'm pretty excited to go on this trip, but I think I'm also excited to get life back in order. We've got a huge mess at home and I guess I'm kind of anxious to get things in order. Plus, I have a man-lair to set up. I've been over a month without a turntable and it's bumming me out big time.

Other than that...not much I guess. I'm 32, I'm married and I'm probably over an ocean somewhere, basking in the glow of my MacBook, typing this. Sleep would be good, but I don't know if I'm ready yet.

Toronto

Well, my first attempt with mobile blogging was a bust, but I found a hot spot and here I am in the Toronto airport waiting for our flight to Tokyo. I'd advise you to jump over to Kristen's blog to check out some hot wedding photos.

Oh crap...we're boarding. Later.

T Minus Two Days...

and counting.

Really, I don't know if it just hasn't hit me yet or what, but I'm not really nervous or worried about getting married. I'm just ready to get this show on the road. There's been tons of planning and anticipation and it's to the point where everything is moving at light speed now (a setting I don't function well at) and I think it's starting to make us both slightly crazy.

Not that I was anticipating cold feet or anything like that. It is odd, I had never planned on getting married (as my dad likes to remind me every chance he gets.) That, of course, was before I met Kristen. I know it sounds cliche, but you really do know when the right one comes along. In fact, I never really proposed, it just seemed like marriage was the right thing to do.

So it's all pretty cool. If anything, I'm excited about spending the rest of my life with my best friend. We have so much fun together and I think we compliment each other nicely.

I'd also like to add we got interviewed by Channel 13 a few days ago about having a 7/7/07 wedding. I have no idea how that is going to come out, but I think it's going to air tomorrow at 6.

I also thought I'd share some music I put together as background for the cocktail hour and such. It's some of my favorite jazz slow jams, hopefully, you'll dig them too.
Disc 1
Disc 2

A lot of words about a handfull of DVDs.

I've been up to my eyeballs in wedding and moving lately, but I have managed to sneak a few movies in during the downtime. I managed to pick up a bunch of stuff on Something Weird's summer sale which came out to $8 post paid a DVD-R. For those of you who only know the SWV catalog from their special editions, they have a ton of stuff in their on-line catalog that will probably never see an Image disc. In many cases, the stuff is a little more "adult" than what a mainstream company would be comfortable carrying. There's also some of it with a much more limited appeal than what they have been releasing. And some of these prints are flawed in a way that only more dedicated fans will probably put up with them.

So, my order had a little of all three of these elements. Of course, it will probably be just my luck that Image will take the plunge on a few of these, but I kinda doubt it.

The first movie I got into probably hits all three criteria. It's Miss Nymphet's Zap-In, a Herschell Gordon Lewis film lost until a few years ago. HGL cut this one to double feature with Gore Gore Girls, though it's pretty far away in theme from that odyssey of gore.

Zap-In is kind of an "adult" take off on Laugh-In, consisting of lots of rapid fire vaudeville sketches, dirty jokes and plenty of boobies. Every now and then, the action stops and the entire cast yells "ZAP" and attempts to hold a freeze frame. Honestly, these were some of the more humorous moments in the film.

I'd like to say something good about Zap-In, but I really can't. Could HGL do comedy? Yes, at least when we're talking black comedy. That vein runs deep in most of his films. But this one just comes off corny and while it's interesting for a HGL completest, there isn't much to recommend it above and beyond that.

SWV's DVD-R looked alright to me, all things considered. This film had a really low print run and until recently, this was the only copy known to exist. (An incomplete print turned up on eBay about a year ago, but I don't know if anyone has seen it.) This print is pretty battered, with emulsion lines running through out and some rough spots at the reel changes. Still, I've seen a lot worse, and I don't think the public is going to demand this one get the Criterion treatment any time soon.

I filled a couple more holes in my HGL collection with The Magic Land of Mother Goose and Jimmy the Boy Wonder, two kiddie features Herschell shot as a hired gun. Now this is a warped double feature. Mother Goose is basically a stage play with Herschell doing little more than setting up a camera at the back of a high school auditorium. Basically, this was a vehicle for some magician and it features practically no production value at all. It does have a Raggedy Ann costume that is pure nightmare fuel and a pretty twisted which burning trick. I found this one worthwhile, but I also love K. Gordon Murray kid flicks.

(Speaking of K. Gordon Murray, one of his Santaland shorts appears as an uncredited extra on one of these discs. Both discs have a bunch of Storybook Classics trailers as filler. Pretty cool stuff there.)

Jimmy is an attempt at a real film. The premise being, this kid wished time stopped and then has to start it up again. Along the way there's terrible singing, a villain that could be Faud Ramsey's cousin and a poorly dubbed cartoon stuck in the middle as padding. (Check out Hersh's terrible Sylverter the Cat impression. Mel Blanc, he ain't!) Though there were many snooze inducing parts, again, I found it worth checking out, if you are into the warped kid flicks as I am.

Then we had an infamous one from the dynamic duo of Lee Frost and Bob Creese, Love Camp 7. I remember reading about this one in Incredibly Strange Films and knew I'd have to see it someday. This one may have been the first Nazisplotation film, a dubious honor, I'm sure. You know it was created just on the cusp of hardcore porn as you never see any of the guys take their pants off, and you see a whole bunch of torture and whatnot in lieu of sex.

The best part of the film, hands down, is Creese, in the role he was born to play, as the camp commandant. Bob doesn't just chew the scenery, he Hoovers up large pieces of it like a black hole let loose on the Hogan's Heroes set (which, according to legend, was where this was filmed.) Other than that, the movie is kind of dull. At least there's ample 60s cuties to gawk at, though the sex scenes made me reach for the fast forward button.

Other than that, I've had some time to view a few discs I got on the last Deep Discount sale. I was anxiously awaiting the new Godzilla discs from Classic Media and again, they impress with their releases. Ghidora the Three Headed Monster makes it's US DVD debut and Invasion of the Astro-Monster (aka Monster Zero) returns after being out of print for ages. Like the other releases, you get the US and Japanese cuts, commentary tracks and documentary features on one or another aspect of the Godzilla series.

Both of these movies are great, in my opinion, and Classic's discs serve them well. Quality is again top notch, though I found it a little curious that they reedited the Japanese prints to match the US dub tracks rather than using a proper US print this time around. I'm guessing it was to curb criticism like they had from their US print of Godzilla vs. Mothra that was the incorrect aspect ratio. Still, I can't recommend these discs highly enough and I only wish Classic had the rights to all the Godzilla films in the US as they appear to be the only company to truly do them right. (And the discs are cheap!)

Finally, I watched Sin City and I know at this point I must be the last person on the planet to see it. I only own it for the PSP as my friend I bought my PS from threw it in. Since I found these spiffy speakers at Target for cheap, I figured I'd kill an afternoon with it.

About the movie, my only real complaint is it could have used some tightening up. Ironic to say this, considering there's an even longer director's cut, but I just felt it could have been a little shorter and not any less of a movie for it. However, I loved the story, thought the look was great and I especially liked Mickey Rourk. Really fun stuff.

Watching a movie on a PSP is like staring at a dollar bill for two hours. It's easy to see why the UMD bombed as a movie format bombed, aside from the fact that people aren't too keep on paying twice as much for a lower quality disc they can only watch on the PSP. The screen on the PSP is great and with this Psyclone speaker set up ($25, Target clearance rack) you end up with a miniature home theater, but that's just the problem. It's too small to get really engrossed in like I like to with a movie. Even my Phillips portable with a 10" screen is a more enjoyable experience.

So, there's the latest in my movie watching diary. Also, Planet Earth on Blu-Ray is mind blowing. There's the PS3's killer app. After seeing that, it's really hard to go back to standard definition anything. Such pretty colors...