More Cute Things in Osaka

Aaaaand some more cute stuff. I’ll be honest, it’s mostly penguins…

splut splut

We are friends :)

I love penguins

Penguin argument

Penguins in formation

Penguins are so weird!!

Ethereal seal

Goofy porpoise

CUTE

Grumpy fish

Round seal

OK, this isn’t cute, I am scared of this turtle

Osaka Kitty

I don’t know what to say today so…here are some photos from the Sanrio shop in Osaka :)

Kitty frog

Hello

I can’t eat these, they’re too cute.

Sakura Lolita

Yeah, so, I thought I should dress up to match the cherry blossoms ’cause I’m a massive, attention-seeking idiot like that ;P Got the dress/cardigan from Bodyline, shock horror! Some Lolita purists don’t like that shop buuut, their clothes are pretty so, um, whatever? I’m not usually much of a pink person really, the cherry blossoms must have influenced me. It was a gorgeous day, perfect weather, perfect sky.

Failing to visit the Ghibli Museum

OK, I still haven’t been. It’s not because I don’t know how to buy tickets! I have the instructions written in my notebook and everything, I just keep forgetting to book them. You see you can’t just show up and buy them, you have to buy them in advance from Lawson (a convenience store) and you have to buy them for a specific time of day, The time/day can’t be changed and as you can buy tickets up to three months in advance you really have to plan ahead. So anyway, we were in Inokashira park and suddenly realised that hey, we’re next to the Ghibli Museum. We were just standing outside looking in when I remembered that the Laputa robot statue is on the roof! I got very excited and walked quickly (wasn’t excited enough to like, run) round the building and sure enough, you can see it from outside! Yes! There were a few museum staff around but other people were taking photos so I went ahead. Then one of the guys at the gate came up to us and I thought “Laaame” but he wasn’t coming to tell us to stop, no no! He said we should go over to the entrance where we could take photos of the giant Tototo at the ticket gate! Thank you lovely Ghibli Museum man! So we did and now I am more determined than ever to book tickets and actually GO.

It’s in the trees!

Ah! Look!

Look how big it is!

One please

Here is some money

I heart Totoro :)

Sakura Sakura

Some cherry blossom photos from Inokashira park. It was a bit of a dull day but I really loved the area. Went to a lovely vegetarian cafe called Deva Deva and then walked around the park a bit until we got to the Ghibli Museum (Next post! Don’t get excited! No, really!) I think I’d like to live in this area…*sigh*

Pink and pink and pink

Little flowers

Cherry blossom makes me sleepy

Oh, watch me ignore the cherry blossoms!

Hiroshima

We went to Hiroshima last weekend and I just thought I’d post some photos and write down some thoughts. I’ll split the trip into two posts, one about the Peace Memorial and one about Miyajima.

So, the Peace Memorial Park. Here are some pictures:

Atomic Bomb Dome

The Dome

The hypocentre

Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students

Children’s Peace Monument

Peace picture

Paper cranes from around the world

The Peace Flame

The Memorial Cenotaph

Paper cranes at the old Hiroshima Bank

Paper crane pictures

Peace dove

Of course you know you’re probably going to feel sad when you go there. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. I’ve been to a lot of war museums and sites of battles and things and I think in the West it’s the war cemeteries that always seem to upset me the most. You know, all those lines of identical pale grey concrete stones. All those ages, so many eighteen year olds and nineteen year olds.

Anyway, when you get off the streetcar at the A-bomb Dome stop you turn around and the dome is right there next to the road. Just right there in your face. It is eerie. Lots of people around taking photos. I really felt it would be weird to do the whole posing and doing peace signs thing (although lots of people were…odd, right?) so I just took lots of pictures of the building.

We walked over to the hypocentre, directly beneath where the bomb actually went off. It’s just this tiny plaque on the side of the road surrounded by garages. Very weird. Looked up, saw an apartment block, streetlights and wires. Impossible to imagine an explosion in this sky.

The layout of the park is beautiful. As you stand between the cenotaph and the museum and look through the arch you see the flame and the dome, all perfectly aligned. The museum itself is very calm and sort of unsensational. There are graphic images but  not many, it really doesn’t need to show much in order to shock. The model of Hiroshima before and after pretty much speaks for itself:  Model one shows a busy town full of buildings , model two: a wasteland with a few scattered concrete shells.

It’s upstairs that it gets very upsetting. This is where they exhibit objects damaged by the bomb. There are girders and wall sections and so on and then there are items of clothing and lunchboxes and rucksacks and hats. Most of the items belonged to children who were out working, demolishing buildings for firelanes. There were no air raid warnings that morning so  there were far more children outside than there would normally have been. The repetitiveness of the stories was just so sad. Despite horrific burns, so many of them somehow made it home after the blast only to die hours or days afterwards. So many parents rushed to the site hoping to find their children but instead finding their children’s bodies, or bits of clothing or nothing at all. The museum doesn’t hold back from explaining the gruesome physical symptoms people suffered from and there are graphic pictures of burns and very detailed descriptions of what the explosion did to people’s bodies at the moment of the blast and in the aftermath.

For some reason though, the story that really got me was of a woman whose husband was killed in the blast. She rushed to his office and found nothing but collapsed filing cabinets and some bones, next to his lunchbox and pipe.

After the museum we went to the National Peace Memorial Hall and sat down there for a while. There was no one else around and it was very peaceful. Outside there was a slideshow of victims faces and a scrolling list of their names. One girl, wearing a junior high school uniform, grabbed my attention. She looked so cool, she looked like she should be a singer in a sixties girl band, not dead in an atomic bomb explosion.

There are lots of resources at the memorial hall, a library, databases where you can access information about victims and their lives and about what happened that day. There’s such a big focus, not only on nuclear disarmament but also on eliminating war. I know it may seem futile but there is still something in that quiet persistence, in the idea that if we just keep calmly repeating how tragic this was and how tragic all war is then maybe someday, somehow peace will be a reality.

Again, I Go to a Games Event Despite Not Being Very Knowledgeable About Games

In this case,  the Nintendo 3DS preview event at Makuhari Messe last month. Yes, I know I’m late and that no one cares what someone who knows nothing about consoles thinks about the 3DS but…I was there! I took pictures! I’m going to write about it anyway!

When we showed up I basically thought it would be like TGS (noisy, colourful, a bit mad) but it wasn’t like TGS at all! Apart from the queues. It was all very white and grey and corporate looking, a bit like being inside a giant Apple store or something. Queues were very long and unlike TGS there wasn’t much going on to distract people. Oh hang on, I meant to say we were lucky enough to be entertained by Arashi’s advert for the 3DS played on a loop, forever and ever and ever!! I saw it so many times it got addictive. It turned into some kind of crazy mantra, I couldn’t stop watching it! Help me! Next thing I know I’ll start listening to Arashi’s music!! No actually, that’s never going to happen. Wow, this recollection is pretty intense!

Some pictures:

Entrance

Floating 3DS

Terrifying facial expression!

Worst paparazzi photo EVER

Cool dresses

3DS is SO MUCH FUN!!!

OK, the 3DS itself. Bear in mind that I don’t know what I’m talking about and I suck at most games.

It’s pretty. I like the Aqua Blue version best.

Games I Played:

Zelda: Looked nice but I struggled to play it so…it was alright I guess.

Dead or Alive: Looked average, not especially impressive BUT I won all 12 fights so it was great. Or I am great. Or both.

Kid Icarus: DIFFICULT. Pretty though.

Super Street Fighter IV 3D: Awesome. It looked poppy and jazzy and luminous, 3D was very effective and I can play it, hooray!

Nintendogs and Cats: Sucked. But I really don’t like Ninetendogs. They’re not cute.

3D camera: Pretty fun. Made me oddly sad to see people getting the attendants to take their photos because they were by themselves.

AR Games: Cool, but I can’t imagine it would hold my attention for very long. The feature where you can play around with your Mii and take photos with it and stuff looked quite fun but there were no opportunities to make your own Mii. Unless you happened to be one of the comedians on stage. I tried not to watch them but as I said, there were few distractions…

I should have brought some queue entertainment. A nice book or something. About 99.9% of all the children there had a DS. I suppose there would have been a lot more tantrums if they hadn’t.

The stands weren’t really giving away any merchandise, except the Capcom people who were giving out holographic postcards. So they win. Best game (Street Fighter) and a free postcard.

The second day was similar except for two special things!

One: I watched the Puzzle Bobble trailer demo thing about five or six times because I didn’t care about any of the others and because it was just so cute…I want Puzzle Bobble things.

Two: I made like a paparazzi and spotted Toshihiro Nagoshi. I mean, he isn’t exactly hard to spot but I was rather pleased with myself. Except I didn’t know what to do with this information. I informed Danny that I’d seen him and then I put my serious journalist hat on aaaaaand…….stood about five metres away from him trying to pretend that I wasn’t looking. Paparazzi skills. My camera, lovely though it is, doesn’t have an amazing zoom lens, so I took lots of photos of the back of his head, from a distance.Occasionally the people who were talking to him looked at me. Terribly exciting I know.

Stayed almost all day both days and left, as we entered, through a pair of walls plastered with giant posters of Arashi. Now every time I think of the 3DS I will also think of Kazunari Ninomiya, Sho Sakurai, Jun Matsumoto, Satoshi Ono and Masaki Aiba. Way to go advertising.

Maybe when I get to play around with a 3DS for real, I will post a picture of the amazing Mii I am going to make. Exciting times!

Me and a bird

An attack bird! Aaaahhh! This was at Jump Festa in Makuhari Messe.

Wobbling…

Aaaah!

Autumn leaves are falling

So like I said, I was on a leaf viewing mission. Autumn leaves, like cherry blossom, are a big deal here in Japan. And the constant leaf updates stress me out! I just wanted to see some…and not obsess over exactly where the best ones would be and exactly when they would change colour. As it happened we saw lots. I guess Tofukuji had the most colourful but everywhere we went was beautiful. I think I’d like to live in Kyoto. I’m always thinking I’d like to live places though. I wish for once I could live somewhere that I really really wanted to live and that I could wake up each day happy that I lived there. Oh dear, this is meant to be a happy leaf post. Ignore me! Look! Colours! The reds, the greens, the yellows!

Crinkly branches

Little crimson

Fluttery leaves

Hello leaves

Hello sky

Oh, too bright

Leaves fall down

Branches

View from the bridge

Fluffy tufts

Red burst

Pretty branches

Reds and greens

Red leaf fountain

Autumnal

Colour on colour

I wore this coat for you, leaves

Leafsplosion

 

Oh Maiko

Went to Kyoto last weekend on an Autumn leaf hunting MISSION. There are photos of leaves, of course, but there are also pictures of me dressed up as a maiko. It was a fun thing to do. I really love getting my make up done. It’s not like getting a haircut, you can just lie back and look forward to whatever the make up artist is doing and if it’s all that bad you can just wash your face. Of course I wasn’t unhappy with the results! Especially the lips. Goodness me they were amazing, I wish I could apply lipstick like that… *sigh*

I love the eye make up too

Sad Maiko face

Thoughtful Maiko face

Icy light

I removed everything except the eye make up afterwards, managed to keep that on all day :)

We went to Shiki Sakuraten and they were very nice so you should go there if you fancy dressing up as a maiko, geiko or samurai!