An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

Boy's Love Cafe: B:Lily-rose

Ikebukuro back street. Somewhere near the entrance to the Sunshine City shopping complex, formerly the site of fearsome Sugamo prison. There’s a ramen shop, another ramen shop, a yakitori stand, and then a storefront window framed by black lace curtains and violet drapes.

The sign outside reads B:Lily-rose. A tall and elegant young man in a pin stripe suit welcomes us and takes our coats. It takes a second to settle in: Dude, that dude isn’t a dude, dude. Neither is anyone else working inside.

B:Lily-rose is a cafe staffed by women who cross dress as men. Not just as any old Tom, Dick, or Harry, but beautiful men who represent the very ideal of Boy’s Love, or Yaoi, manga and anime. It is the female version of the maid cafes that cater to male tastes, mostly centered in the nerdy Akihabara district.

There’s also a Butler Cafe named Swallowtail, which was our first choice for late afternoon refreshment, but business there is so popping that they required a reservation in advance. Still, B:Lily-rose, which opened scant three months ago, doesn’t disappoint.

It’s a small concrete bunker, made cozy by fake flowers and careful attention to details. It is full of female otaku customers, fresh from shopping sprees at the nearby “Otome Road” Tokyo’s designated Boy’s Love district, a line of shops selling amateur press dojinshi – thin pamphlets with an illustrated story inside depicting relationships of various levels of intimacy (from mild to wild) between male characters from mainstream anime and manga franchises. Billboards outside depict the wares in the shops: two blond and blue-eyed boys about to kiss, their lips almost touching, but not quite…

Our “Garcon” gives us a choice between a stainless steel table, lined with over-stylized black and red chairs smuggled in from the Mad Hatter’s tea party, perhaps. The other option is a gleaming white counter facing the wall, but a seat there costs an extra 500 yen (US$4.50), which entitles you to the “Conversation System,” an up-close and personal chat with the bartender (in picture perfect vest and bowtie) working the shift.

I count five “hosts” in all running the floor. Everyone is tall, thin, and impeccably dressed. Black trench coats, tailored jackets. Hair is dyed either reddish brown or dirty blond, styled with wax like the latest pop idols. Colored contact lens take us one step further away from reality and closer to some kind of ideal past male or female. Our waiter is wearing a sharp black pinstripe suit. She leans in to ask what we’d like to drink. The voice is velvet androgyny.

A menu lists off alcoholic and soft cocktails with names like Baby Kiss, Cutie Boy, and Sweet Love. I’m American, I’m a man, and I’m way out of my element here. I order a Coke. A tiny bottle is produced, along with a glass. Someone is standing in back of me. A thin hand crosses into my field of vision. The Coke is poured with careful ritual finesse. For the drinks with the girly names, a silver shaker comes out for a scene straight out of Cocktail.

Time to scan the customers. Its mostly young women in their twenties dressed a little punk, a little goth, but nothing too crazy or elaborate. Plaid skirts and designer black T-shirts with skulls on them, probably bought of the rack at Marui Young. Hair is black, straight. A lot of people wearing glasses. All of them, just a little dumpy (which is OK with me, I am too). The girl sitting next to me is drawing something in a sketchbook. Beautiful pencil illustrations of characters from the anime and manga Bleach…who also bare a striking similarity to the staff of B:Lily-rose.

Maybe it’s paranoia, but I imagine the cold eyes of death on me. “What the fuck is this gaijin…this…this…MAN doing in here?” Hard to get too comfortable. I have to keep one eye on the clock. As the menu points out helpfully, “No men allowed after 4pm.”

I’ve got scant minuets to figure it all out before I’m thrown out into the street. Coming here was Makiko Yanagi’s idea. She’s a journalist who has been following the burgeoning female otaku scene in Ikebukuro. What is the appeal of a place like this, I ask her?

“It’s peaceful, elegant, and clean. There’s nothing dirty about this place at all.”

Tom Cruise triumphant: a widescreen television on the wall plays Interview With the Vampire, the scene where a naked woman is sacrificed on stage to a shocked audience. But one in the cafe even blinks an eye at the graphic depiction of sex and violence.

Sands in the hourglass. I’m about to turn into a pumpkin. Better make a run for the door. Our host gathers up our coats and bags. “It’s cold outside,” she (he?) purrs to us. “Please don’t catch a cold. Please come again.” Did she say it to me, or to my female companions?

Then Tokyo reassembles itself and Ikebukuro becomes just another line of ramen stand, ramen stand, yakitori stand...

B:Lily-rose homepage (with address, hours, and dreamy pictures of Garcon)

Podcast: Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Nine

THE GIRL THAT WILL DESTROY YOUR HOMEWORLD!
ENGLISH DUBBED JAPANESE GIRLS TELL YOU ALL!!

HOT TEARS OF SHAME EPISODE NINE
GOTHIC LOLITA THEATA
(Special Guests - The Hot Tears of Shame All-Star Players: Daryl Surat, Kojiro Abe, and Pedro Edogawa)

Click here to listen
(Running time - 8:46)

Opening crawl read by Clarissa Graffeo

The battle of the Mysterian dome. It begins with a magnificent
unfurling of arc lights beams, then long and slow sonic booms that
echo throughout the Overtones like great pebbles skipping on the river
of time-space. The air on this plain of war is wet and weighed down,
black with burnt soy sauce, and packs of Parliaments lit by massive
gamma ray bursts that causing Ionospheric absorption down to, and then
straight past, the ultra low frequencies range...

Relevant links:
Pepsi NEX
Giant Robots in Kabukicho

Specter Ladies

One day in the life of three Japanese girls. Actual interviews conducted by Makiko "Hammerlock" Yanagi for her "Teens Quest" series, originally published by our heroes at Million Shuppan.

1. Gal

4:00pm
Wake up in love hotel with ugly middle aged man. Collect 30000 yen (US$255) for services rendered.

6:30pm
Para Para dance event in Shibuya.

8:00pm
Picked up (nampa) by two cute guys from Center Street. Invited to their apartment. Sex with both of them.

10:00pm
Go to host club. Spend massive amount of money on favorite guy.

12:00am
Administers a blowjob to stranger for taxi fare home. Collect 10000 yen (US$85).

2. Yanki

1:00pm
Picked up in car by the local neighborhood hoodlums, i.e. best friends.

2:00pm
Lunch at family restaurant. Make a mess at table. Squat around and smoke in the parking lot after. (Optional: Leave the resturant one by one without paying.)

6:00pm
Squat and smoke with friends at the convenience store. A cool guy she has a crush on passes by.

8:00pm
Annonymous sex at video arcade (can’t afford love hotel).

9:00pm
Mug a young girl for her money with a baseball bat.

3. Female Otaku

3:00pm
Go to K-Books in Ikebukuro (AKA Otome Road) to shop for Boy’s Love dojinshi. Meet with otaku friend in cafe after to talk about Boy’s Love dojunshi.

4:00pm
Screams “kawaii!” at two young school boys passing by. (New buzzword: “Shotakon,” female version of Lolicon).

5:00pm
Harassed by horrible, ugly male otaku at Akihabara cosplay shop.

9:00pm
Furiously masturbates to Boy’s Love dojinshi.

11:00pm
Overdramatic and unsuccessful suicide attempt while chatting on 2.channel.

Yokohama Night Special Attack Corps

Expect lots of good stuff on female bikers in the Japanese School Girl Inferno book. Tragically, there's already lots of nuggets that may not make the final cut: like behind the scenes tales from Ryo Tochinai, a journalist for legendary biker bible Teen’s Road.

-

Tochinai was once slashed in the leg with a razor while interviewing a female biker in Shinjuku. Previously, a member of a similar gang told him about giving birth to a lifeless lump of green meat brought on from spikes of speed and liberal helpings of paint thinner.

Back in the ‘80s, tensions were at an all time high. Teen’s Road was covering a feud between two rival factions and was accused of favoring one side over the other. Keep in mind that this was a mag that meant so much to the target demographic that copies of Teen’s Road were routinely left at gravesites and tossed into the coffins of readers who met untimely ends on the “Crazy Thunder Road.” And if the staff wasn’t careful, they too might wind up in the bone yard. While on assignment at a local high school, some bad boys held up a sword was held up to Tochinai’s throat while another began digging an improv burial plot nearby.

Teen’s Road ceased publication in the early ‘90s. The decline of the biker movement was certainly a factor, but it was mostly because the staff was tired of getting their asses kicked on a regular basis. Most moved over to a new magazine Outlaw Densetsu, which covered crime and yakuza stories.

Once in Hiroshima, Tochinai visited the offices of a little known, but much feared Gurentai (low ranked yakuza) organization. The building was also overflowing with gifts and love offerings from the larger syndicates, which seemed strange as it should have been the other way around. Turns out, the Hiroshima faction were the guys who did the dirty work for gangs involved in legimate business who didn’t want to get their hands dirty. The Gurentai were sitting on a cache of military weaponry, including bazookas, smuggled in from the Philippine army.

“I couldn’t believe it was real, “ Tochinai said. “It was like a manga. A whole gang made up of Golgo 13s.”

Okashi

Recently declassified photo of "aspiring journalist" Pedro Edogawa (R) grilling Gal Revolution leader Shiho Fujita (L) and her Revolutionary Accountant Hi-chan (M) about the meaning and location of Mystery Frequency 109.

Wes Black

Another reason to go on living! April 14th will see the release of a new record featuring old members of '80s era acts Rats & Star and Gospellers, who have teamed up to create the ultimate Japanese all-blackface supergroup.

(Pic of impressively massive billboard taken near Roppongi Hills in the year 2006. Make of that what you will).

Killer Rempo

Wed/22
Arrive at Narita. Anally raped by G.O.D. and immigration. Watch white people and baseball players get a free ride while me and the Asians are left to rot. Shinjuku hotel blackout, well earned.

Thurs/23
Change rooms. Suitcase back to Draft One. Lunch with Matt Alt near Inokashira. We blow off the Tokyo Anime Fair. War plans instead. Little girl gets bit by a dachshund in doggy sweater. Her friends lean in to look at the damage. All three conk their heads together. Hugs and kisses for Honda-san back at D-1. Dance around the room with Bu-Chan. Back to Shinjuku. An old man crashes his bike into a five year old on the Japanese equivalent of a Huffy. Dinner with Kazumi, AKA Batty Cheese, who will be illustrating the Japanese School Girl Inferno. Beer and the jet lag combo makes me feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a bat.

Fri/24
Lunch. Someone recognizes me. I don’t remember who they are or what to say. Shibuya. We invade a dance event hosted by the Shibuya Para Para Kingdom. Everyone is nice to me, despite being a big nosed foreigner who should be dead by Logan’s Run standards. Takadanobaba. Dinner with Slasher and Betty. A big bag of Yebisu tall boys and Marlboro Reds on the conbini counter bodes ill for…

Sat/25
A greasy hangover. Someone recognizes me. I don’t remember who they are or what to say. Lightbulb. She’s a bartender in Golden Gai. I’ve never seen her in broad daylight before. Gal Hunting in Harajuku and Shibuya. Episode eight of Hot Tears of Shame, basically.

Sun/26
More Gal Hunting in the same ding-dong places as before. Battling waves of cameramen and TV crews. Shibuya. Textbook raw funky gal on Center Street. We get in close to ask for a pic. It’s actually a dude in the rude. Following stinky O-gal in dirty bathroom slippers and stained yellow sweater. The guy she’s with buys her a crepe. Gal Swell dance event. Crazed black faced Mamba and host boyfriends. We get in, but aren’t allowed to take pics. Coke and ginger ale at the bar.

Monday/27
Shibuya. Offices of Egg magazine. Phone call from Shiho, leader of Gal Kakumei movement. Agree to a meeting on Wednesday. Sighs of relief. Nakano. Dinner with people on the Pop Travel Japan tour. Rich from Philly, Alex from somewhere complicated, and a family of three from Canada, all of them mad for anime, manga, etc. Shinjuku. Drinks with Slasher at the Living Bar. Alex from the tour calls up and comes on down. He tells us about cheese steaks, jolems, and frat life. We take him to Kabuki-cho. Admire Evangelion pachinko. Playing the Cobra game. Night cap in Golden Gai. A table full of salarymen pass around a hookah.

Tues/28
Greasy hangover. Back to Draft One to get a change of clothes. Meeting with Kateigaho staff in Shinjuku. They are the coolest. Jimbocho and offices of Million Shuppan. Meet with staff of ura shakai magazine to talk Yanki and Sukeban. Taxi to Golden Gai. Dinner on the second floor: former black market fuckpad. Interview with former member of all-girl gang Akujo. Date Rape comes on down. Her phone is possessed by some kind of darkness. I can’t feel parts of my feet and I don’t have dreams anymore.

Outrageous Cherry Blossom Clinique

Inokashira Park circa yesterday on the way back to Draft One. That's some mad psychedelic Dr. Seuss shit right there.

Podcast: Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Eight

THE MYSTERY FREQUENCY THAT WAS FOUND!
THE NEW BOOK IS ANNOUNCED BY CHERRY BLOSSOMS!!

HOT TEARS OF SHAME EPISODE EIGHT
GAL HUNTING in Harajuku and Shibuya

Click here to listen
(Running Time - 11:27)

Opening Crawl Written and Performed by Wes Black AKA Henshin Pimp

---
OFFICIAL SEXY ANNOUNCEMENT:

Patrick’s next US book will be JAPANESE SCHOOLGIRL INFERNO (tentative title) to be published by Chronicle Books in Spring 2007. Co-authored by Tomohiro Machiyama, designed by JaPress, expect a tome totally terrifying in it's historical and glamorous sweep from '70s Sukeban to Pow-Like-Now Neo-Gals with a whole lot of Para Para dancing in-between.

Yabai

La Migra hates me, but the kids are alright.

Yesterday, I was made a Baron Knight of the Shibuya Para2 Kingdom.

Prepare thyself for the first Para Para Podcast and the final revelation of Mystery Frequency 109.

The Yakuza Paper Towels

Japanese TV right now. Yakuza movie stalwarts Hiroki Matsukata and Tatsuo Umemiya sitting around eating steak sandwiches.

News in from Akibagahara (pre-Meiji pronunciation). Government subsidized maids now drain your vital fluids at the local blood bank and still call you master after.

Visit Japan Campaign

Waiting room annex of the Immigration Center at Narita airport. A tiny box lined with pale blue benches in pew-like formations. A love hotel for the Government of Darkness.

Florescent light reflects harshly off white walls, strikes out to the sole concessions to decoration inside: an industrial clock and a tall potted plant in need of some water. Desperate, hasty graffiti is scratched into the backs of the benches, where the walls become corners. Random words in Hangul, Tagalog, and at least one solid all-caps FUCK.

Korean middle-aged man. Filling out an epic questionnaire at prison issue metal desk while young Immigration Officer stands over him. They can’t speak to each other beyond nods, grunts. The only common ground is a shared air of annoyance.

Chinese man, in a cheap baseball jacket (Grandpa’s Clothing Co.), sits scratching at his face and five o’clock shadow, like he’s trying to peel them off. A Buddhist monk in an Orange robe wanders in. Takes a seat. Walks out escorted by stewardesses.

Enter burly white American, belly hanging over the pants, manila envelope in hand. “Look, I’m only going to be here for two hours. Then I’m going to Bangkok to deliver this package to Jupiter. Just two hours.”

“Yes, but you have no spaces left in your passport, and we can’t stamp over another countries’ stamp in your passport.”

“Just two hours, then I’m gone.” Just two minutes later, so is he. Shown the way out, he slaps the Immigration Officer on the back, to thank him. “Where are you ladies from?” he says loudly to a team of female flight attendants passing by.

“Thailand.”

“Ch'an Rak Khun” he says to them, which sets off embarrassed giggles.

An hour in all. Then it’s my turn to stand tall before the man, all compressed and fatigued after 10 hour flight. I show them the Sapio article, tell them I’ll have something in Cyzo next month. The officer flips though Anime City, puzzled look on his face. He takes notes of affiliations in perfect English. Chronicle Books, Ohta Shuppan, Captain Cosmic Reading Club.

“Thank you, please go back to the room and wait.”

Psychic vision: Forty feet away and below, my unattended baggage circles the luggage carousel like a lazy slot car. Gut instinct: none of this would be happening if I were white.

When I finally make it to the exit, camera crews and mass crowds. The Japanese team returns home from the World Baseball Classic via. Petco park in San Diego. Morning news on hotel TV. The Koreans have been caught ripping off classic Enka songs.

Podcast: Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Seven

GO RIGHT INTO IT!
THE TERROR THAT WAS GLOBAL!!

HOT TEARS OF SHAME EPISODE SEVEN
In Praise of GODZILLA FINAL WARS (2004, Dir. Ryuhei Kitamura)
(w/ special guests Kojiro Abe and David Cox)

Click here to listen
(Running Time - 16:14)

Opening Crawl (read by Joey Coco)

The Letter People: a race of living letters, consonants and vowels all accounted for, created as a contingency plan by Colonel Baldwin should Project ESPY somehow backfire.

Fresh from the Battle of Greenhaven, they have formed in battalions called “words” and surrounded the event horizon of Japanese subculture for a final assault on the Mysterian dome...

Yomigaeru Kinro

The word just in from Counter-ESPY. The Letter People Space Agency will soon be removing me from my recon mission inside the Mysterian dome (AKA San Francisco). I will be astral projected back to Tokyo in a mere seven days.

A return to the pre-Taishomei era, and Draft One, for more…well, whatever it is I actually do when I’m in Tokyo. Mostly sitting around, taking trains, and shopping.

This time, I have to finish a new book by May 1st, so that will be fun. Also, it would be nice if Tomo finished editing Otaku in USA and if it would come out before the next Gerotan invasion…but the Queen of Swords (Reversed) says I should just go with the flow. And maybe not play so much Fight Night this time around.

So goodbye to Stuffville, SF. Thanks then to the things that kept me from chewing the walls by killing the time.

Real Books
Low City, High City
The Cold Six Thousand
Word Virus
Men of Tomorrow

Comics
The Push Man and Other Stories
Tezuka's Buddha
Essential Tomb of Dracula
Essential Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Deluxe Edition)

Film & Video
Macbeth (Polanski version)
Henry V (Branagh version)
Richard III (McKellen version)
Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Midnight Cowboy
Sleeping Beauty
Fantasia
The Best of the Electric Company
JFK (over and over, fanatically)

Sounds
Mostly lectures from The Teaching Company
Assorted podcasts from Above Top Secret

Civilization and Enlightenment

It has already begun! Tomo Machiyama reviews the new documentary Otaku Unite! on his blog. Carl Horn looks like a member of the CIA, apparently...

Podcast: Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Six

THE MYSTERIOUS FIGURE WHO SPOKE THE COOL ACCENT!
HIS BRAIN GOES TO WAR AGAINST GODZILLA!!

HOT TEARS OF SHAME EPISODE SIX:
The DAVID COX Interview

Click here to listen
(Running Time - 22:43)

Currently an Assistant Professor at Cogswell Polytechnical College, David Cox is an award winning film-maker, digital media artist, writer, and cultural critic who has lived and worked in Britain, the United States and Australia. He obtained his Masters Degree in 2003 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Film and Television (with Honors) in 1990 at Melbourne's Swinburne School of Film and Television and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Technology, Queensland Centre for Cultural and Critical Studies where his thesis topic focuses on the history of techno-media activism.

Opening Crawl read by Kojiro Abe

Relevant links:
David's film OTHERZONE
David's film Puppenhead
David's blog
Susan Sontag's Notes on "Camp"
Essay on Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality
Lutz Dammbeck's The Net (Das Net)
Craig Baldwin bio and links
IMDB page for Sogo Ishii’s Angel Dust

Haji no Atsui Namida

Dark Horse Comics editor Carl Horn interviews our hero, author Kazuo Koike (Lady Snowblood, Crying Freeman) with glorious results.

Sample quote from KK:

I teach that the greatest character of all time is Jesus Christ, and the second is the Devil. The third? Buddha.

The fourth presumably, is Mad Bull 34...

Full interview here.

Podcast: Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Five

THEY DANCED WITH NO REGARD FOR TOMORROW!
BURNING YOUTH! YOUR NAME IS WILD!!

HOT TEARS OF SHAME EPISODE 5
(w/ special guest "Mimi-chan")

Click here to listen
(Running Time – 15:08)

Opening Crawl (written and read by Joey Coco, AKA Joseph Luster)

Still absorbing the absolute profundity of the Mysterian Dome, Patrick steps forward into a wide savannah separated from the cold hallways via thin walls of diamond engraved with curiously opaque Godiego logos. Upon further inspection, our curio-virtuoso sees through the illusion to find an aerial waltz of dancing light beams tuned to the groove setting. Grassy plains fade into laboratories lined with flickering florescent bulbs and shadowy figures dart between sections of tall glass tubing. Just as Patrick is about to remove his cape, a burst of icy air caresses his buttocks. Blackboards flip out from the walls and it becomes a mental exercise to decide the World's Strongest punctuated with a trademark symbol. Confusion sets in against walls of resistance lined with grotesque flesh packets meant for storage deep below the Earth's Crust, something that has somehow risen and given new life and meaning to what's preceded and what's to come. Patrick braves forward despite enough reservations to floor a ten ton beast of mammalian origins. Enter. Enter the Dome's Center and cry. Cry, cry, cry those Hot Tears of Shame.

Relevant links
Wikipedia entry for Shonentai (Japanese)
Touch fansite
Wikipedia entry for Koshien Stadium

Menu o misete kudasai

A brief break from the sexy Podcast Wars for Big News in Nerd Town.

Nothing less than the first example of Man-on-Maid crime in Japan. Happened a few months back, but never “made” it into English. The tip comes courtesy of Ken Evers, the newest blogger in the Japress rouge's gallery of villains.

10 pm in Tokyo’s Taito Ward on the 26th. The Metropolitan Police Department have arrested a homeless man for attempting to forcibly kidnap a female employee at a "Maid Cafe."

The 27-year-old victim works at a Maid Cafe in Taito Ward Ueno. Her assailant was Mitsuru Nakamura, age 28, who resisted arrest.

It was closing time at the cafe; and only female two employees were present at the scene. The staff had changed to plain clothes to clean up for the evening. Suspect Nakamura bound his victim with adhesive tape and told her "I will play with your body but if you are quiet, I will not stab you." He then attempted to lead her away.

A police patrol car happened to pass by and the woman cried for help and was soon rescued from her would-be kidnapper.

Suspect Nakamura has admitted guilt to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. He said his motive was to "to commit indecency."

You can already see the solution a mile away: more employment in Japan, but only for uglier maids.

Hot Tears of Shame - Episode Four

DRUNKEN TELEPHONE HANDSET!!
EVERYTHING THEY SAID WAS COOL!

Hot Tears of Shame Episode Four:
Gods of Japanese Rock and Roll - THE COOLS
(w/ special guest star, Urian Brown)

Click Here to Listen
(Running Time - 24:32)

Opening Crawl (excerpt)
The dome may be sinister, but it is not dark or dim. A dull kind of half light does away with most shadows and mysteries inside but one; where is the source of such energy and could it be related somehow to super-powerful radio wave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas? But such larger questions are not worth asking just now.

Patrick has been inside the Mysterian dome for days. His jeans are black and tight and he is wearing a heavy gray cape given to him by sympathetic factions of mysterian freedom fighters. His mind is fractuing from over exposure to the not quite light and an over reliance on his tarot deck for basic decision making. The neoplatonic images form a kind of mental map to the inner self, but will they lead to the discovery of the missing frequency 109?

Relevant links
Cools Fan site (Japanese)
Cools Story (Japanese)
Hiroshi Tachi mini-bio