From the Essential Skills Department. . .

Via Ramen Students

The following is a look at a mostly foreign rock band, the Sushi Cabaret Club, based in Nagoya, Japan.

The members hail from Scotland, England, Australia, and Japan. They talk about their music, what brought them to Japan, what it’s like for bands in Japan, and what it’s like playing for Japanese audiences. They dispel a few myths like how easy it is for Western musicians to make it big in Japan as well. Also, few of their fans talk about their interest in the band’s music.

The Sushi Cabaret Club site

Here are two videos the band made themselves while they still had their first drummer:

This little piggy rolls out your toilet paper!
Although odd for your bathroom, I think the craftsmanship on the pig is beautiful. Does anyone know what the 931 on his shirt is for?

Spice up your bathroom with a piggy workout via Product Page

Japan’s oldest “modern” robot — the 10-foot, 6-inch GakuTenSoku — has been awakened in Japan. Gone are the inflatable rubber tubes of the original 1928 android build by biologist Makoto Nishimura. The bot now tilts its head, moves his eyes, smiles, and puffs out his cheeks thanks to a $200,000, computer-controlled, pneumatic-servo makeover. While nothing compared to his modern offspring, GakuTenSoku still manages to creep us the hell out. On display at the renovated Osaka Science Museum starting July 18th.

japanese robot nostalgia from engadget.

interesting series of photos on this website

One of the things I love about our house is the living room shoji, but as you may already know, this particular decor is incompatible with children or (other) animals.

I gather from ‘a close and reliable source’ that Japanese children are unable to resist the lure of poking fingers, pencils, basically anything through the delicate paper screens. Cats, it seems, are quite partial to shredding them too.

Parents and pet-owners will generally endure occasional ‘mishaps’…

…until it reaches a point when your screen doors no longer actually screen you from anything and something has to be done.

And so begins the whole process of re-papering your shoji. So first you must dampen all the glued seams. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys stripping wallpaper (and there are plenty of words for people like you) then this is for you.

There’s no avoiding it, this is messy. Now is the time to work out which day is paper recycling day.

But after no more than a few hours back-breaking and fingernail-stripping toil, your shoji frames (we had 4 doors and 4 windows) will be picked clean and ready for their refurb.

If you haven’t already destroyed your carpet, now’s your last chance. Grab the glue and spray it liberally around the room, aiming roughly for the frame as and when the fancy takes you.

‘Simply’ lay the paper over the top, and trim and tidy the edges. It’s best you let a loved one brandish the blade while you sit and take pictures.

Now spray the finished papered frames with water (yes, really - to allow the paper to shrink taut), and when it’s all dried, if all has gone according to plan, and my simple instructions, while you yourself will be bent and broken, your screens will have returned to their original splendour.

 

You should now repair to your fridge, which of course you had the foresight to fill with imported beer. You did, didn’t you?

« Collapse story

Not to be confused with the summer lantern festival, the Toro Roman (灯籠浪漫) festival is a welcome burst of colour and winter warmth in the old town of Yamaga, Kumamoto prefecture.

You can read an excellent write-up of both summer and winter festivals here (and the same page in Japanese here). I’m just here to show you pretty pictures!

More of the same after the jump!

While strolling through Utsunomiya Station with the charming and delightful Mrs. JP today, we spotted a pair of real live kigurumin (girls who wear a type of pajama-suit that resembles an animal and sometimes cartoon characters) strolling along off in the distance.

Much to the dismay of Mrs. JP, I was off in a flash, digging my trusty EXILIM digital camera out of my pocket as I trotted through the station. I introduced myself to the girls and they kindly agreed to pose especially for you, dear JAPUNDIT readers.

Every year, the city of Nagasaki celebrates the Chinese New Year with a spectacular array of bright and colourful lanterns. The Lantern Festival began this year on February 7 and continues until the 21st.

Nagasaki, which for a couple of hundred years of the Tokugawa shogunate was one of the few entry points for trade in Japan (under the sakoku laws), shows its foreign influences all over, no more so than in its sizeable Chinatown, and the crowds throng around here, Chuo-Koen and Minato-Koen, where the main displays are.

And when I say crowds, I mean it. To get anywhere and see anything, you have to throw yourself right in there - Ganbaro!

whilst surfing the interwebs, i came across this website

pimped out japanese 18 wheelers, oh yeah!

enjoy

If you’re looking for something a little different from a night out drinking, the Mainichi has an interesting story about “ika tokkuri” - sake cups made from dried squid.

The skins of cuttlefish caught off the Sanriku Coast are formed by hand in the shape of tokkuri (sake bottles) and then repeatedly dried in the sun. When you pour warm sake into an Ika Tokkuri, the taste of squid melts into the sake, giving it a mild taste.

A mild taste of squid, I presume that means. Not really my cup of tea, but if squid is to your taste, you can go the whole hog and eat your cup afterwards. Available only from the Kimura Shoten shop in Yamada, Iwate prefecture, ¥1,000 each.

Image: Mainichi Newspapers

While looking for a place to buy a New Year’s shimekazari (wreath), I came across this lovely short video on how to make a shimenawa, the rope which you see hanging over Shinto shrines and which is used to designate sacred spaces. I enjoyed the tremendous care used to construct it, and everyone’s collective surprise at how it was done.

I’m assuming that the videographer is somewhere fairly traditional; these all look like the they were taken in an agricultural town, not unlike the one where my mother grew up. At 2:17-2:19 you see a shimenawa along an irrigation ditch–I’m guessing it’s the northeast corner where in my mother’s town some people still have permanent shrines to ward off the bad “drainage demon.”