Andy in Tokyo

Akebono’s Gleeful Journey

Akebono has had many fine achievements during his forty years on earth: becoming the first foreign sumo wrestler to achieve the rank of yokozuna, winning eleven top division titles, and, err… managing to win one fight out of twelve in his career as a K-1 fighter.

Okay, so things may have gone a bit downhill after sumo, but when you’ve reached the highest echelons of one of the most famous sports in the world it’s always going to be hard to go one better. But recently the big man has roared back into the limelight thanks to a series of adverts for Fox’s latest smash hit comedy/drama thingy, Glee.

Words can’t really do the adverts justice. All you need to know is that they involve a lot of Akebono singing and dancing. The song? ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey – nothing could be more appropriate.

Check it out for yourself:

You can catch the rest of Akebono’s adverts on YouTube or one of the many Fox-related channels on Japan’s satellite TV network, Sky PerfecTV.

Live webcams around Tokyo

Want to see what’s going on in Tokyo right this very minute? Here’s a selection of some of the best live webcams. All of the cameras are running in real time (none of that “updates every ten seconds” nonsense), and you can control them yourself. Just click on the images below and away you go.

Shibuya (Hachiko):

Shibuya (outside Tower Records):

Shibuya (Parco):

Shinjuku Station:

Roppongi Hills & Tokyo Tower:

Ueno:

Cool Japan

Imagine if the BBC created a programme called ‘Cool Britain’, in which a group of foreigners discussed the most mundane aspects of British culture, such as rambling, Sunday Lunch, making a ‘proper’ cup of tea and Shrove Tuesday. The discussion would be occasionally interrupted by snippets of one of the foreigners ‘experiencing’ that week’s cultural item: plodding through the Yorkshire Dales in drizzle wearing an impossibly-coloured Berghaus anorak and occasionally screaming ‘Oooh, isn’t this lovely!’, for example. Presenter Richard Hammond would then throw out thought-provoking questions to the multicultural horde, questions like: “So, Ordinance Survey maps, a classic British navigation tool. Are they cool?”.

At the end of the show, and after much smug, self-congratulatory back-slapping by ‘Hammy’, June Sarpong and a random cultural ‘expert’, the day’s topic would be either voted cool, or not, and… well, that’s it.

Oh, and all the foreigners speak French.

Dying to see such inventive programming? I bet you are, and luckily for you a Japanese version, ingeniously titled ‘Cool Japan’, is aired on NHK’s BShi channel every Tuesday from 10pm. Here’s a clip:

Now, what really makes Japan cool? Kurara Chibana:

Daitokai: Japan’s coolest TV show

Daitokai (大都会 – or ‘Big City’ in English) has to be the best cops-and-robbers programme, ever.

Starsky and Hutch may have had its fair share of action, but the producers of Daitokai went absolutely, stark-raving bonkers with cheesy – but awesome – shoot-outs, car chases and explosions. And let’s not forget the ultra-cool cast, which included Tetsuya Watari (centre) and Japan’s very own Steve McQueen, Yusaku Matsuda (bottom left), at the height of his powers. Matsuda would go on to star alongside Michael Douglas in 1989’s ‘Black Rain’, shortly before dying of cancer.

For those of you in Japan with access to Nitereplus (日テレプラス. Channel CS300 on SkyPerfecTV) you can catch the third series of Daitokai every Friday night from 9pm. As for the rest of you, well, you’ll have to make do with the following snippets:

Back in Action!

Three months is a long time between posts, especially when you’ve got no excuse for not writing anything. So, as I still don’t have much to write about at the moment, please direct your moist little eyeballs in the direction of the following video:

1940s Japan

When it comes to promoting racist, narrow-minded views nothing beats wartime propaganda. The following film, titled Our Enemy: The Japanese, was produced in 1943 by the US Office of War Information. If you can ignore the horrendous voice-over – or just turn the sound off – there are some fascinating glimpses of 1940s Tokyo. Mitsukoshi in Ginza looks pretty much the same now as it did then:

Footage courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Steve McQueen vs. Lewis Hamilton

Resurrecting long-dead film stars for TV adverts is a far from new idea, and being a bit of McQueen fan I couldn’t help but notice this recent TAG Heuer campaign featuring the man himself and Lewis Hamilton. It’s certainly eye-catching, but for all the wrong reasons:

What on earth were they thinking? I’ve seen dead tortoises with better acting skills than Lewis Hamilton; Steve McQueen’s voice is utterly, utterly wrong; the lip-synching is dreadful; and the whole Lewis-McQueen dialogue scene has a distinctly  2D cardboardy quality about it.

Golden rules: stay away from dialogue, keep the CGI simple and have a Lalo Schiffrin theme-tune up your sleeve:

Feel the Music: Daito Manabe

Daito Manabe knows what the people want: facial electrocution set to music!

The end of humanity

You have to be as calm as a Hindu cow to survive some train journeys in Tokyo. Do you think you could put up with this kind of treatment on a daily basis without going mental?

Kimoi!

Japanese stand-up show Enta no Kamisama has produced its fair share of superstar comedians. One of the most popular at present is Kameko Nobuo, who bounces around stage in a ridiculously tight spandex shirt waving gold pom-poms in the air before telling the audience some decidedly kimoi (disgusting or gross) things.

I haven’t been able to add Japanese subtitles to any of Kameko’s YouTube videos (anyone know if it’s possible?), but even if you don’t know what he’s saying I think the general kimoiness of his character shines through in this clip:

Who is John Francis?

Chances are you’ve never heard of him, in fact from the age of 27 nobody heard anything from John Francis for the next 17 years. A remarkable man with a truly remarkable story: