The little joys of living in Japan
It’s fun to live in Japan. You get to enjoy many good things, like the warm feeling of hot canned coffee on a cold train platform, or the thrill of finding a girl’s phone number scrawled on the back of a chopstick wrapper after a night at an izakaya bar.
Just as a Hemmingway aficionado might get a thrill out of retracing the road from Paris to Pamplona, it can be fun for those gaijin of the otaku persuasion to visit some of the locations in their favorite anime series. Tokyo’s a good place for this, since the images of the city are well-represented in anime and manga, from Tokyo Tower (a regular fixation of the CLAMP artists) to the famous “Scramble Intersection” to iconic buildings like Shibuya 109 or the inverted pyramid at Tokyo Big Sight.
I remember my first trip to Tokyo back in 1991, when I stood before the famous Studio Alta giant TV (giant for 1991, anyway), realizing I had finally arrived in Japan for real.
The other day, weekend I went with a friend up to Karuizawa, a nice mountain town that happens to be the setting for the outstanding series “Please, Twins!” It was a lot of fun, roaming around the town and seeing what places from the anime series we happened to come across.
for me it is riding around the lake behind my wife’s house on my bicycle.
By myself.
This so duplicate’s my childhood that I have wondered at times if….(i could go on and on).
I travelled half way around the world to be exactly what I always wanted to be.
A ten year old child.
November 18th, 2006 at 2:54 pm“riding around the lake behind my wife’s house”
Well… That’s all fine and good for you, rem. . . Being able to breathe under water and all of that. . . But what about the rest of us??
November 18th, 2006 at 4:01 pm(JP)- taturanuma - (with swans)- is a magic place to be - I don’t have to worry about all those complicating issues like - language.
or maybe i’m just regressing - (as is so obvious)…:neutral:
i just like riding my chari - ok.
November 19th, 2006 at 2:30 pmI had my first “Whoa. I’m totally in Japan.” moment in izakaya/ restaurant. I was happy drunk and had been eating everything good in Japanese food, while laughing and chatting with a bunch of my friends’ friends.
Went to the bathroom and began to relieve myself. Looked over my shoulder and saw myself in the mirror and just started laughing at how much fun I was having.
My second moment was on the train by myself. It was just a normal train ride. Then Sakamoto Ryuichi’s “Forbidden Colours” began playing on my iPod and it suddenly became the train ride of my life in Japan.
The blue canvas bum villages in Ueno also take me there. Gotta love those guys.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:48 pm