An Animated Trip to Tokyo

by Geoff Cowie

The plan was hatched last year - a 2 week trip to Japan in which to buy anime, see a few tourist attractions and attend the 6th DAICON science fiction convention.

By July 1993 a flurry of action took place, and the four participants had paid for their tickets, ordered their currency and were ready to go. David and Denzil were the principal trip organizers. A week before the flight we were expecting the tickets. Two days before the flight we were still expecting the tickets... This is one drawback of flying with an airline that is not a member of the major ticket distributing group. The sole advantage of flying AEROFLOT (which, by the way is changing its name to RAI) is that the tickets cost just over half the BA fare.

On the flight Denzil discovered that Aeroflot mustard is VERY hot. On the final hour of the flight over Japan we had glimpses of very rugged mountains, some with snow, and a brief sight of Tokyo and a distant volcanic cone.

At Narita airport we were met by Denzil's Japanese friend Minoe-san. This seemed to be a surprise to Denzil too, but a very pleasant one, as Minoe-san drove us to our connecting railway station in Tokyo. Minoe-san also treated us to coffee and cakes, after we declined a lunch that would have cost our host about £50 a head.

We had arranged to use an apartment in the suburbs of Tokyo for two weeks. There was the slight problem of the missing map: to find an address in Tokyo without directions is almost impossible. Fortunately Denzil had memorised most of the directions before he lost the map.

While we were trying to locate the apartment key, Darren fainted, proving that wearing a shirt and heavy leather jacket and hat in tropical heat is Not A Good Idea. Next day, Denzil lost the key to the apartment. This occasioned a visit to Peter Evans, (for it was he, the Anime UK correspondent, who had allowed us to use the apartment he had just vacated while moving to a rented house). In fact we made several evening visits to Peter's house, meeting also his Japanese companion, and he proved a most genial and entertaining host. Peter played for us some anime CD music, and some anime, including WEATHERING CONTINENT, and David's DRAGON HALF, an OVA comedy series which can only be described as severely deformed!

During several days in Tokyo we made forays to the shops, visiting shops specialising in manga or anime, or models. We bought several thousand pounds worth of laserdiscs, that's enough laserdiscs to increase the number of anime LDs in the UK by several percentage points! We also bought some equally expensive tapes, and a selection of manga not readily available from the UK.

Our visit coincided with a Japanese holiday period, when many Japanese take a few days leave to extend national holidays into a whole week off work.

On the first Sunday and Monday of our visit we (except Darren) attended COMIKE (Comic Market), which was held in an exhibition area of six or so large halls in the Tokyo dock area. COMIKE is devoted to dojinshi, fan manga produced, mainly, by Japanese senior high school students.

The first day was shojo (girls) day, when all the vendors and attendees, apart from a proportion of boyfriends and brothers, were girls. On the second, shonen day the vendors and attendees were mixed, about 50% boys and 50% girls.

We three were almost the only gaijin to attend; the remainder being Americans from, I think, ANIMATE magazine who had a table in the computer hall on Boys' Day.

Getting in was arranged with typical Japanese efficiency (?) We had to tramp about a mile around the perimeter to reach a car park where we waited an hour and a half, marshalled into neat lines four abreast, for our turn to march in as a thousand-strong crocodile. The scale of this event was quite astonishing; there were 4500 tables, each with 2 dealers per table, four or more different manga titles per table. Some of the manga had full colour artwork covers and art that was, at any rate, as good as that in the throwaway weeklies. We were told that attendance for the two days was 250,000. So if we claim to have been surrounded by 100,000 cute Japanese girls, we are NOT exaggerating!! There was a fleet of lorries waiting to box up and ship home the piles of manga that fans had bought. We kid you not.

Most of our purchases were made on the second day, as the shojo manga mostly had excessively pretty boys on the covers, frequently in pairs! There was a costume photocall event, with a small hall devoted to changing rooms. So we were able to take some photos of girls posing in costume in a big hall or on the roadway outside.

The manga on sale paid homage to a number of more or less well known manga series, and computer games, e.g. RECORD OF LODOSS WAR and FINAL FANTASY IV, but SAILOR MOON was by far the most popular, with half a hall devoted to that alone. There was also a section devoted to PC game software and image software, all incompatible, alas, with UK PCs. Geoff even managed to acquire two tapes of unique fan anime. Sorry if this upsets anyone, but there was almost no sign of any interest in mecha or giant robots.

Dave coined a word for dealing with this sort of event: "Gibber".

In travelling around Tokyo we were struck by the sheer size of the place, and its disorganised appearance, with old shacks nestling around smart new medium rise buildings with no sign of planning. Many of the streets are disfigured by a tangle of overhead power cables, some of them drooping low enough over footbridges to be touched.

The trains are crowded, though one is usually able to get on without being crushed, and new lines are under construction. It does look in many ways like an anime backdrop, with house designs, shopping streets, office blocks, house sized outdoor TV screens etc looking familiar. We even saw the My City store (CITY HUNTER), and three giant spherical gasholders in the middle of a suburb (FIRETRIPPER). Gibber.

Don't bother with the Tokyo Tower unless somebody else is paying. There are equally tall skyscrapers (45 floors) in Shinjuku with observation decks which are free. You won't see Mount Fuji though, as the air is usually too hazy.

The district around Shinjuku station includes a warren of small streets including some of the best camera shops. Akhiabara has the electronics shops, a whole district of them. Most of the shops are on several floors, or there are shops with entrances several floors up. Altogether it makes Tottenham Court Road look like a market stall. The major stations are huge, with dozens of tracks on different levels and a warren of passages extending under the surrounding streets. Fortunately they are signed in English.

Culture: we didn't waste much time on that tourist stuff. Actually we did spend a morning looking round and photographing the NIHON MINKA-EN which was fortuitously within walking distance of our apartment. This is a permanent museum of old wooden farmhouses brought from all over Japan, and is highly recommended. For the steam buffs, there's a big steam loco standing on a bit of rail in the park nearby.

Among the conventional displays in the Minka-En's exhibition rooms we found an animated 3-D hologram of life in a period farmhouse.

The parks in cental Tokyo are very pleasant, and getting lost in one is almost like being in the country. At Ueno Park there are several museums including the TOKYO NATIONAL MUSEUM which is said to be the one most worth visiting. Ueno Park seems to be where homeless un-persons live rough and also hosts a flea market where young gaijin sell knickknacks to tourists. During our stay the park was raided by police looking for foreigners whose visas were not in order.

In Osaka we visited Osaka Castle, which retains the 17th century moats and defences, and the adjoining museum. The castle looks impressive but is partly a 1930's reconstruction in concrete.

Shops were fun to explore; in Ginza there's a doll shop where you can spend up to 1,200,000 yen on a lovely traditional Japanese doll. Department stores have everything, and there's usually a mouthwatering food department in the basement. Some stores even have their own railway in the basement - actually they are, like 'our' Odakyu, built over a private railway terminus. The store also owns the feeder bus lines at the suburban stations.

Japanese food can be quite inexpensive, and it's possible to eat out for ¥500 or so or get a takeaway from a supermarket.

For the second weekend we made a trip to Osaka, for the DAICON Japanese SF convention. Anyone contemplating a similar journey in Japan should acquaint themselves with travel options and event timings before leaving the UK, as our trip was an object lesson in how NOT to do it. We belatedly realised that the trains and buses would be busy, found we had missed the chance of any discounts, were dismayed at the cost of the Shinkashen fare, and eventually went out by overnight bus, arriving a full day early for the Con, and returned by Shinkashen at a total cost of £125 a head for a round trip of about 800km (500 miles).

The DAICON was rather different from a British SF con. There was no programming for the Friday night, and fans arrived on the Saturday and went home on Sunday afternoon. There was no evening programme on Saturday night after 7pm; instead there were all-night parties and discos, notably the so-called 'boat cruise' which many fans went to in lieu of hotel accommodation. There was no bar at the convention hotel. Gibber.

The proceedings were of course all conducted in Japanese, but an English language programme summary sheet was provided for gaijin guests. On the whole the programme items were quite like those at a British EasterCon, with media items well represented. Some anime (of course) was shown, as was some interesting live action and puppet animation material by fans. There was a fan room, which sold mainly manga, reminiscent of COMIKE.

As regards the hotel and the con fees, it gradually dawned on us that we were being treated as guests of the convention, which was jolly hospitable of them, and we're very grateful. We didn't even have to DO anything. For non-Japanese speakers, the most rewarding things were the opportunity to exchange addresses with Japanese fans or other gaijin, and to watch the video parts of the programme. The closing ceremony, with up to thirty people on stage in costume, was quite spectacular, and was videoed by Denzil and Darren.

Other gaijin at DAICON included visiting Australians, AnimEigo boss Robert Woodhead, and a couple of residents, one of whom like Woodhead had a Japanese wife. Some of us went out to dinner with Keith Johansson and later visited his apartment, which like many Japanese apartments was about the size of a British bedroom.

The Osaka International Hotel offered us our only glimpse of Japanese TV. There was some anime, a lot of game shows (awful), sport, documentaries, channels with English or selectable Eng/Jap soundtracks, and some samurai adventures, the latter being the most watchable.

As a finale to our visit, Denzil revealed that he had accepted on our behalf an invitation from Minoe-san to visit his house in Mito city, have a bath and dinner, and be given a lift to Narita airport in the morning. So we went to Mito on the Shinkashen. There was a delay because Denzil left his rucksack with his passport and Minoe-san's address in it on the Yamanote circle line train. The rucksack returned with the train an hour later; would this have happened in London?

We arrived at Minoe-san's house armed, Japanese-fashion, with suitable presents; later the family gave us some charming presents.

Modern Japanese bathrooms look familiar except for a drain in the floor; the bather is expected to wash or shower before getting in the bath. And there is a roll-up cover to keep the water warm between bathers.

Emiko-san's meal was excellent; there was a wide selection of dishes with fish, salad or meat, accompanied by beer and tea. Darren was thrashed by the children at computer games, and later we watched a Japanese live action SF movie (Jupiter Project).

When it rains, it pours buckets, just like in the anime. Our return flight was delayed by a typhoon which dumped nearly a foot of rain in 24 hours. It turned a small river fringed by golf courses into a half mile wide expanse of brown waves.

On the return flight we had a great view of Siberian geography for several hours - a bit like Mars + water and pine trees. A complete contrast with teeming Tokyo.

Denzil, lucky fellow, was to stay in Japan for a further two weeks.

Would we go again? Yes!