Mini Kyary!

Cutest thing EVER. Also she sings this song the same way I do at karaoke – mumble the verse because I don't really know it, then shout the chorus enthusiastically. Her Japanese is better than mine though. And nobody has made me a Kyary outfit. Yet.

posted by Chloe (obviously)

Kanamara Matsuri – festivals, phalluses, and foreigners

This weekend we did what possibly every other foreigner in Tokyo did, and went to the Kanamara Matsuri. A matsuri is a Japanese festival and we have been to a lot of them – but never one quite like this.

We took a train out of the centre of Tokyo to Kawasaki, and then walked and walked and walked and walked until we found the Kanayama shrine in a nondescript residential area. We could tell we'd found the festival because all of a sudden the narrow road was jammed with tourists, locals, and... um... this guy:

What do you reckon this guy is dressed as? Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what it is. A giant penis. Kanamara Matsuri is also known as the Festival of the Steel Phallus, and every year several thousand people gather here to join in with the phallic festivities. 

Three giant phalluses are paraded through the streets to the shrine, where they are greeted by priests and taiko drummers. 

First comes the black steel one, standing proud is his very own mikoshi (a kind of portable shrine carried on people's shoulders):

Next comes a rather disturbingly pink one:

And then one made of, ahem, wood, and hiding bashfully inside its mikoshi:

At the shrine, the willies stand to attention while the priests give prayers and everyone claps:

Then it's off to buy some appropriately-shaped refreshments and souvenirs:

And have a bit of a sit down:

Although it's now a bit of a tourist-fest, the festival has an interesting history – the shrine used to be visited by prostitutes to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases, and other people went for blessings of fertility and marital harmony. There is also a local legend in which a woman's vagina was inhabited by a demon, who castrated her newlywed husband when they tried to have sex. The woman went to see a blacksmith who made her a steel phallus, which she used to break the demon's teeth. And I suppose they lived happily ever after. 

posted by Chloe 

きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅの新曲!

Kyary-chan has a new song! Hooray! And she's found a second head, dancing lions, eyelash boobs, and a very very big bow. The song seems to be almost entirely about false eyelashes (tsukematsuge).

posted by Chloe

Creepy Kewpie

Anyone who has been to Japan knows it has a multitude of weird toys. Anthropomorphic broad beans, Kapybara-san, that sinister-looking Russian one with the weird ears – you name it, Japan has probably plastered its kawaii face over stationery and moulded it into phone charms, keyrings, and bento boxes. But among the giant cast of cute characters, one's caught my eye. It's a small doll who likes to dress up in all sorts of costumes. Wherever you go, she's there, dressed up as something strange. Now, this is in a country where no toy is content without a range of strange outfits and almost all of them can be found wearing costumes, often of each other (in particular, the Monster Hunter characters and Hello Kitty share a skin-swapping penchant). But this little doll has assembled a particularly extensive wardrobe.

Among her thousands of costumes, she's dressed up as a plane...

... a bowl of ramen (I like the jaunty fishcake hat)...

...an effeminate-looking Mario...

...a member of the wartime Imperial Japanese Navy...

...and any kind of fruit you'd care to name.

I even found her dressed as the Miyajima shrine when I went to Miyajima...

It turns out she is a Kewpie doll. Kewpie dolls were first designed in the early 20th century and derived their name from Cupid, who I guess they kind of look like, albeit a fairly creepy version. The dolls found their way to Japan where they were adopted by a mayonnaise company, who still sell their mayonnaise with the doll on the front:

Which brings us to Kewpie's weirdest outfit of all:

 

What do you think she's dressed as this time? No, you're wrong. She's a codfish egg. Not content with flogging just mayonnaise, Kewpie is now the global brand ambassador for her company's tarako sauce. Tarako is cod roe, which over here you can get as a topping for just about anything. Even, um, pasta. In fact, Kewpie Co have brought out a whole delicious range of tarako pasta sauces. Here's a sample ad:

It seems to have been Kewpie Co's main marketing strategy over the past twenty or so years to make ads involving hundreds of identical tarako Kewpies advancing steadily towards terrified children. A quick  youtube search will bring up loads of videos like the one above. But it's not all tarako armies. Oh no, they've formed an orchestra as well...

And their song proved so catchy that the company hired a couple of girls to sing a human version while wearing tarako-shaped hats. (Warning: this song lasts longer than you can possibly imagine.)

Apparently this song was a hit and the Tarako Girls released an album and a special Christmas version of the song. (I won't test your sanity by embedding the video, but if the song hasn't driven you crazy yet you can watch the Christmas version here.)

Tarako Kewpie became a mega star. You can buy keychains, phone charms, and all manner of other plastic tat shaped just like her. Even MP3 players:

And if you're lucky, you might even bump into her on your way to buy some delicious cod-egg pasta sauce.

posted by Chloe

P.S. Kewpie Co's website is pretty amazing too: http://www.kewpie.co.jp/tarako/index.html

AKB48, the weirdest, biggest pop group (and ISP) around

Okay then: AKB48. Here we go.

Today, AKB48 announced that they are launching an internet service provider, which was a little surprising, given that they are a pop group. What was a little more surprising was the promotion they launched with the website.

Yeah: look again. What's she doing with that baby? It gets worse. What the white text is saying is 'watashi to akachan tsuranai? or 'Won't you make a baby with me?'

I'll explain later quite what is going on. First, let's talk about AKB48 themselves. The girl in the picture is Yuko Oshima, member of 'idol group' AKB48, holders of the Guinness World Record for largest pop group. How many members? No, it's not, it's 59 (at the moment at least).

AKB48 are split in to four teams, team A, team K, team B, and team, er, four. There are also trainees. AKB is a shortening of Akihabara, the Tokyo 'otaku' district known for tech stores where you can negotiate the price, lots of manga, and lots of teenagers. On the 8th floor of a peculiar shop called Don Quijote (known to locals as Donki, you can buy pretty much anything you can think of, 24 hours a day) sits the AKB theatre where members of the group perform every day. Tickets are handed out by lottery.

As if that's not enough, AKB have spawned three further groups – SKE48, SDN48, NMB48 – all based in different parts of Japan. In total there are 152 girls. Now, at least. Another two groups (one in Jakarta) have been announced. There may be more.

The music is standard high-pitched J-pop. Here's an example. What I particularly love about this is the 50s French black and white melancholy opening, followed by the jarring, sudden shift as the video cranks into sunny J-pop-land.

So far, so good. The details of the many side groups, collaborations and "derivation units" can be found on this overly descriptive wikipedia article.

To the elections. It stands to reason that you can't fit all the girls into one PV (promoted video, the commonly used term for a music video), so you've got to choose. The top 21 elected get to star in the video, and the numbers 1-12 do the singing. The next ten sing the B side. The rest – don't do anything.

Earlier this year, a new member appeared: Aimi Eguchi. Here she is:

Good looking? She's fake. Doesn't exist. Made up. Made up, in fact, of component parts from six other girls in the band, much to the shock of the otaku who had fallen in love with her. This goes some way towards explaining what happened.

Which brings us back to Yuko Oshima and her baby. It is, the ad is basically saying, your baby, if you sign up to the AKB ISP. You can make babies with Oshima-san. How? Well, remember that face-blending technology they clearly came up with to create Aimi Eguchi?

I think that's a real AKB48 fan; I think that's what they all look like. If you don't like Oshima-san, and many fans have very strong preferences indeed, worry not, you can blend your face with many of the members. Here's the site.

What next? Who the fuck knows. But they're expanding, that's for sure, so watch out.

by tom

PON PON PON

Kyari Pamyu Pamyu is my new fave pop star. This song has been eeeeeeverywhere in Tokyo over the summer but I am late to the party on the video. I have been thinking for a while about what kind of critique on the Harajuku aesthetic I could write to accompany this, but every time I start to write a sentence, all I can think of is RIBBONS BOWS PRETTY COLOURS OOH PRETTY PRETTY PON PON PON WEI WEI WEI.

For something a little more informative on Kyari, read this article and look at these pictures.

Sumida-gawa lantern festival

It's Obon: a time to remember the spirits of one's deceased ancestors. Obon manifests itself as festivals across the country, through summer, but here in Tokyo, the main one is the Asakusa Samba Matsuri, in which lanterns are floated down the river with messages inscribed upon them.

I wanted to share photos of this but it turns out that taking photos of small laterns lit by smaller candles from across a large river is pretty tricky. It's a good time for some night-time cityscape-type shots though.

The little orange lights in the river are the lanterns.

Now's the time to whip out the yukata, a light, summery kimono.

It's pretty hard to tell from this next picture but there's a huge queue of people with lanterns, which are let down a slide into the river and float out towards the sea. This is accompanied by chanting.

All this happens in front of this.

This is the Asahi complex - office on the left (it's supposed to look like a pint of beer with a foamy head) and "Super Dry Hall" on the right, with what has become known as the Golden Turd (kin no unko) perched on top. Believe it or not this is Philippe Starck's creation.

The Sky Tree, a new TV tower and the world's second tallest building, pokes out on the far left.

by tom