There’s a musical group in Japan called “World Order“, started by a former kick-boxer and now choreographer and composer (why have just one career?) named Genki Sudou. The group has made several music videos, and their signature style is to dress in expensive business suits and march in robotic unison through crowded streets in Tokyo, followed by pop and lock dancing to music composed by Sudou. They’ve been featured in ads for some companies in Japan, as well as performing in different placesaround the world.
Since Tokyo won the rights to the 2020 Summer Olympics, “World Order” made a “Welcome to Tokyo” video, where they perform their song and dance in various famous (and not so famous) places in Tokyo, such as Akihabara, Asakusa, Ginza, Roppongi, and Tokyo Tower. It was neat seeing this, because I’ve been to most of the places they perform in this video, which makes me wish I had been there when they were recording this! Seeing familiar places also makes me want to go back again, although with my current employment situation that’s not going to be possible for a few more years.
At any rate, here is “World Order” performing their song “World Order” in Tokyo.
So, I thought I’d try to be a little artistic with another one of my photos from Japan. I see all kinds of “art” photos where the photographer uses grainy black and white, so I thought I’d do the same with one of my more-or-less “artistic” photos, converting the nice clean crisp color photo to this B&W thing. This is a shot of one of the platforms at Tokyo Station. I was headed to Yokohama for the day, and it was well past rush hour so there was hardly a person there. “Crowded Tokyo” is very selective in its appearance.
I don’t know if this works as “art” or not, since I’m not an artist, but here it is anyway! I guess it kind of looks like an old photo, or something…
So, what do you do when you have to park a lot of cars, but land is very expensive and hard to come by? If you live in Japan, there’s only one way to go: grab a bit of space and double up!
Here are two examples of how people in Tokyo deal with parking, one a parking garage in an apartment building, the other a space for a fleet of company cars. If you don’t have the space to put up a dedicated parking garage, if you have room in your space for two cars, all you have to do is get one of these things, hook up your electricity, and boom, now you’ve got room for four! A little corner that would hold 4 cars in a US neighborhood can now hold all 8 company cars just as easily. I’ve heard there are some clever ways of using space in New York City and probably in other cramped US cities, plus there’d be no need of them in the rest of the US, but it seems like these things were everywhere in Japan. Like a lot of Japan, it’s simple, efficient and convenient!
I’m a big fan of Japanese Enka music, which is an original Japanese style of music often called “Japanese blues”, because it was influenced by American blues, and because it’s usually about the same types of subjects that blues covers: Lost loves, old friends long gone, “the good old days”, drinking. Older enka songs tended to be accompanied by a few instruments, including traditional things like shamisen and flutes, but after the 70’s they became more “Las Vegas”-like. In some ways some of the songs remind me of country songs, at least for the songs of “lost love and drinking”!
“Rhythm”, the enka store, in 2007
On my first trip to Japan in 2007, I learned about an enka store in the Ameyoko shopping district of Ueno, near Tokyo, called “Rhythm” （リズム）. At the time I was pretty deficient in Japanese and only knew of one enka singer by name, but the shopkeeper was very helpful in finding a couple of CDs of the singer. I thanked them as best I could, and promised myself I’d come back. I didn’t get a chance to in 2010, but in 2012 I went back with my friend John, also an enka fan. This time I could communicate much better, and talked to both the owner, Kazuhiko Kobayashi and his wife, and was able to tell them things like where I was from, how much I liked certain singers, and to tell them in more detail what kind of enka I was interested in. They were very surprised to know that there were Americans who had even heard of enka, much less being fans of the music, and they happily let me and John get pictures made with them. Even better, they took pictures of John and me and posted them on their wall of photos.
The reason I know this, there is a cable channel called NHKWorld, which is an English-language re-broadcast of select NHK programs from Japan, and one episode of “Tokyo Eye” covered enka. The TV crew went to Rhythm and interviewed Kobayashi-san, who told them of how surprised he was that foreigners would come to his store. The cameraman happened to pan down the wall of photos, and I saw part of the photo of me and John. Needless to say, it was quite a feeling to see a picture of oneself, in a tiny store in Japan, broadcast literally all over the world.
At any rate, this is Kobayashi-san and his wife, with some ugly foreigner! My next trip, I will go back to visit them again!
After many years of dithering and dawdling and otherwise procrastinating, I finally have a new book out! Hopefully the first of many, its photos cover one morning and early afternoon at the Kiyosumi Garden in Tokyo, Japan, on my first full day there.
In case you’re interested, I have both print and ebook versions available, although not through the Apple iBookstore. I’m using the software and website of Blurb.com, which is a print-on-demand service that provides book composition tools, as well as a marketplace and promotion utilities (such as the preview below) to help people create and sell books. Their model is quite reasonable, they establish a base price for paper quality, number of pages, and size of book, and the creator (me!) adds a small amount of markup, to keep once the book sells (hopefully!). I want to take more of the photos that I took on my Nerdtour 2012 trip and make books from them, because I saw and photographed some interesting sights and activities in the Tokyo area, as well as in the Touhoku region of Japan.
I named this book “Kiyosumi Garden Tour” and it’s basically a walk-around through the park, in pictures, with some occasional explanatory commentary in captions. The ebook version can be previewed and ordered here, while the print version (much more expensive, but batteries not required!) is available here.
If you want you can preview a few pages in this viewer (click on the “view fullscreen” icon to see a larger version:
Here’s a photo from the “star” of my upcoming book, Kiyosumi Garden! I went there on my first full day in Japan in 2012, and even though it was a mixture of sun and rain during the hours I was there, it still managed to be very beautiful, quiet and serene, even in the heart of Metropolitan Tokyo.
So, I finally have a few tools to help me with the workflow, the process of making a photo book. I decided to work on a few books from my Nerdtour 2012 excursion, one each on a different place, topic, or a single day. I took so many photos that it was hard to work on them individually, selecting each one, adjusting lighting, selecting which to use and not use. Fortunately technology has kept advancing and getting more affordable, so now with Adobe Lightroom and Blurb BookSmart I think I can start creating the books I want to write! Of course, the hard part will now be writing up stuff in the books, the photo part was easy! By the way, the first book will be about the Kiyosumi Garden in Koto Ward, Tokyo, which just happened to be a couple of miles from my apartment, and one brief subway stop away!
Here’s a couple of screenshots of the “work” in progress:
Okay, even though I’m no longer over there, I still have a lot of things that I did in Japan that I haven’t posted about, so once more into the breech! Continue reading “Nerdtour 2012: It’s the future!”
