New shit on Tokyo Damage Report! I’ll let Steven explain:
“Just for grins, I’ve translated Shinya Kusaka’s URA HELLO WORK. [...]
HELLO WORK is what Japanese call their unemployment office, where people go to find job listings. URA means ‘the dark side of.’ URA HELLO WORK basically means ‘grey-market’ jobs – things that are not entirely illegal, but everything is paid in cash, under the table.
Anyway, Shinya Kusaka interviewed twenty different people, each of which has a shady job! The 20 different jobs are arranged from least illegal to most illegal.
Anyway, this translation will be a regular feature on Tokyo Damage Report – every Monday, I’ll start off the work-week with a new chapter, and a new job for you guys to get!”
Here are the links to the individual chapters:
- Interview 1: Tuna fishing
- Interview 2: Human Lab Rat
- Interview 3: Publishing Broker
- Interview 4: Nuclear waste cleaner
- Interview 5: Locksmith
- Interview 6: Door-to-Door newspaper sales
- Interview 7: Cult member
- Interview 8: Out-of-court settlement negotiator
- Interview 9: Toxic waste disposer
- Interview 10: Korobiya – Drug Courier
- Interview 11: Sokaiya
- Interview 12: New Hida’s prostitute
- Interview 13: [Missing?]
- Interview 14: Uncensored porno shop owner
- Interview 15: Con man
- Interview 16: Night escaper
- Interview 17: Marijuana cultivator
- Interview 18: Forgery creator
- Interview 19: Loan Shark (Yamikin)
- Interview 20: Internal organ broker
Dual Maps is a mashup combining Google Street View and Live Maps Bird’s eye view.
Go ahead, try in fullscreen mode, you know you want to.
“Otaku Power – Trivia, Desire, and Transformation” is the title of a lecture given by Patrick Macias at Temple University Japan Campus (in Tokyo).
- Download (via blogs.com)
It covers 50 years of otaku history in 40 minutes. From the original 60’s science fiction/space battle otaku to the 00’s maid café/Moe otaku.
What ? It is 2007 and not everything in the world comes in the form of an RSS feed?
Yes, even in this day and age some sites don’t have RSS feeds – it’s probably because unlike 90% of the internets they aren’t some crappy blog, but sites with actual content.
I used feed43.com to create a custom feeds for Midnight Eye: “The latest and best in Japanese cinema – interviews, features, film reviews, book reviews, calendar of events and DVD releases”, the site about Japanese cinema that *does* live up to its tagline.
Midnight Eye RSS
The end of an era for Akihabara ? That’s what Patrick Macias is writing about this month in the Japan Times online.
Akihabara has apparently become too famous for it’s own sake : it is now alienating the very otaku that made it what it is. The big money is here : corporations are reshaping the neighborhood, massive uniformisation is underway and akiba is progressively loosing what made it unique. Otaku never intended to be part of the mainstream, they just wanted a place of their own, and if Macias is right on this, it won’t be long before they have to look elsewhere for it.
David Marx, who’s been prolifically blogging since 2004 about all the dysfunctional things we love (or love to hate) about Japan, has started a new collective site called néojaponisme (note the accent aigu on néo – how very Japanese to use French as name decoration).
There isn’t anything in term of content on the new site yet (apart from the manifesto), but it already has a gold mine : the Neomarxisme Archive. It is a page featuring the best articles and essays from David Marx’s old blog neomarxism, arranged by subject matter. There are some good reads in there about everything Japanese, such as:
- Japanese culture aka “Gross National Cool” taking over the world (or failling to do so ?)
- Why everyone really hates the ganguro
- Saaya Irie and the underage “idol” obsession
- The underbelly of Japanese politics : Uyoku the “black trucks” yakuza-based right wing groups or Shinzo Abe and his Class A war criminal grandfather Kishi Nobusuke
- Why it’s “cute” for gaijin tarento (in this case Leah Dizon) to speak adorably broken Japanese
- The otaku boom
- The gaijin complex : all foreigners with interest in Japan hate all the other foreigners with interest in Japan
- Japanese universities : “fun time” before a life of dull employment ?
And of course David Marx’s personal obsession: CanCam, the number one fashion magazine in Japan.
Sometimes the articles are just a starting point and the most interesting part is the discussion that follows.
I know that “writing” about food by just putting up pictures of what you’ve eaten is pretty lame, but I love to do it and I’m weak so… On to the culinary highlights (junk food really, what else?) of my recent Tokyo trip:
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