An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

A thousand, each

>From: ****@aol.com
>Sent: Jun 29, 2006 8:08 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Gozdilla Pod
>
>Hi. I was listening to your podcast on vacation. I don't have anything
>since 4/15/06 have you gone out of biz? Appreciate the insights.
>John

Dear John,

Yeah, I got busy grinding out two new books in Tokyo and I forgot to pack a decent microphone. I was also dedicated to being extremely lazy in whatever few moments of non-panic that occurred. Something had to give, and it turned out to be podcasting and making people and speech programs say crazy things.

Now that I’m between massive projects and safely back in an undisclosed location, I would like to officially announce, coming very, very soon…

HOT TEARS OF SHAME - SEASON TWO: THE WAY TO VIRGIN SPACE

The theme for the new series is LOVE.

Message from the Producer

As Col. Baldwin and Counter-ESPY brought the Mysterian Dome to its knees, I often wondered if their actions were justified—should we have fought them, or attempted to parley for a more peaceful solution? And perhaps the enemy had their own reasons for attacking the earth. By the end of Season One, the Mystery Frequency helps Patrick to understand the true implications of love.

Love becomes one of the main themes for SEASON TWO - "THE WAY TO VIRGIN SPACE". And Patrick must undergo even harsher situations because of his newly found understanding of love.

Could you die for your loved ones? In the face of an enemy, could you throw down your life to protect the ones you love? This is the situation that Patrick is about to confront. There are many forms of love. The love for humanity was presented in the first series, in which young people fight for the sake of human beings and the Earth.

Continuing in "THE WAY TO VIRGIN SPACE," we again see that love means to dedicate oneself to others. A human does not live alone; he or she can live only when there are many people around them.

The message throughout HOT TEARS OF SHAME is "love," and I will be happy if the listeners see how wonderful it is to live his or her life--which comes only once--for the future, while living and cooperating with many others.

Karitori

The ghost of Kafu Nagai, pulling a rickshaw, munching on a giant sembi, wearing a rubber chomage, leads the cheer some hungover day last spring:

“Asakusa! Asakusa! Asakusa!”

Slasher and Betty. We eat okonomiyaki off an ancient griddle in what looks like someone’s un-kept house circa 1963: tiny Sony TV, yowling pussycat brushing past our ankles. First time for me to eat liquid monjayaki, which looks unnervingly like spazz chow.

A long slow walk up Roku-za, past the cabaret where Beat Takeshi got his start, sharing the same shabu spike with everyone else backstage. Nude show lures. A few battered old blondes poke out of sun-bleached photo lineup. 60 bucks. Not the nice price...

Babysteps past the underground theaters playing old Koji Tsuruta and Tora-san flicks. Smells like urinal disinfectant and stale popcorn down those battered old steps with plastic sealing cracking. In the street: the Asakusa army of dirty old men sipping Ozeki One Cup, watching horserace results on giant public TV screen. A sole tekiya sets up a grilled mochi stand, turning over blackened little bricks on greasy plate of steel.

Hanayashiki! Formally, an Edo-era flower garden become post-war family fun center turning to post-Disneyland decaying Showa-holdover. How much longer can it hold out? A gaggle of fake Sentai power rangers greet the kids on a stage. Brats on motorized panda contraptions. Attractions include: a palm sized roller coaster with tracks trailing around the tops of izakaya shacks. Random shit and rides: Mopper's Band in the Forest, Funky Duck, Bikuri House (highly reccomened), 3D Surprising Bus.

Betty crying at the scary gates of the Ghost House. Says Western style haunted houses do no damage to her, but obake Peeping robot yokai inside, including snake neck lady and the tortures of the dammed.

Rusty old Bee Tower. Taken into the sky by dental floss wires in a tin cage. Then they spin you around. Damp mineral smell and steam coming out of building tops. Exhaust ports from public baths nearby.

Nothing like a freak show. The light-activated automata do their jobs so fast there’s no time to get a pic off. Little kid with his pants going down. Severed heads popping out at you on uncoiled springs. And giant tits for the whole family.

We found Pedro Edogawa (by himself, as per usual) tripping in the cherry blossom clinc. He wouldn’t share his beer with us. Nice overpriced Takeo Kikuchi hoodie, asshole.

Nagaremono

The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift is the best movie about Japan since Godzilla Final Wars, has the best depiction of Shibuya since Gamera 3, and in all respects, is far more accurate than Lost in Translation.

Sample dialogue:

Forrest Gump: “What does that word mean…Gaijeen?”

Drift King: “It means turn around and keep walking.”

Plus, it has Sonny Chiba in it, repeatedly dressed like Al Capone and sucking on a big old cheroot, making for his best appearance in an American film since Iron Eagle 3.

Beauty Item Selection

Col. Baldwin makes like a downhill skier going up Takeshita dori heading towards the JR station, dodging the crowd for a snow flecked forest: jailbait school kids in torn fishnets, platinum London boots, and belts that say “SEXY” in proud gold letters. African voodoo kings also in baggy Alta-wear and puffy fanny packs-turned forward of po-faced tourists just in from New Kirk City.

Early evening Harajuku. All crepe scent and trance version of the Gingaman theme on rusty idol shop repeat. Baldwin there in the soup wearing Men’s Non-No disguise: Don Johnson redux. White safari shirt from Scoopman, cream cargo pants by Dior Homme (already stained with orange Pabron S Gold powder, he takes it whenever he is bored and the effect is better than booze on an empty stomach). Not his usual style of dress and hardy age appropriate, but, hey, that’s show biz.

Psy-ops wants to wet its beak on a psychosocial makeup of Tokyo2, but secret wars, long seminar weekends, and hidden cameras can only get you so far. Reaching deep into the M fund, the dark and unseen hand of Some Accountant produces just enough cabbage to send Baldwin (rarely out of Yokohama/Yokokusa) on an epic shopping spree.

He’s also been instructed to “waste as much time as possible,” which means being parked most of the day parked front row at a McDonald’s on Omotesando watching cameramen stalking skinny blond models, most of them wearing overwhelming sunglasses *and* see-through tennis visors. Taking notes, most of them mental, nursing a Pabron G laced macha milkshake.

Now. En route to Doutour to meet with Sukeren, Kanto’s largest female criminal syndicate. Past tense. Now reduced to just one member who performs all the previous functions herself including president, accountant, and advisor. No time left over for recruitment drive, which is why Sukeren is now reduced to just one single Sukeban, and not a particularly tough one either.

Boyce and Hart on the in-store radio. Baldwin remembers most of the A&M catalog from the LA crash pad. Soft pop nursery rhyme about “The Countess.”

Look in her eyes and you might think she’s still a baby (ooooh!), but everywhere else you sure can tell that she’s a lady.

Where do these women come from, Baldwin wonders as he sees Sukeren herself tucked away behind her elevated coffeehouse table. Pretending to flip through a copy of Ego system magazine, long fingers with jeweled nails pausing on an ad for Bust Up Project pills (winner of the mythic “America TV Shopping Award”). Arms resting in Koga ninja mesh top, the fabric looped around the thumbs. Eye shadow like a brush of burnt wood. Weird alignment of light and smoke makes her look like an old Telegen transmission...

Tobase

Kiddie show as consensual hallucination: here's a scene from episode one of Super Robot Mach Baron. The bad guys are dressed like football players.

Mach Baron

Matt Alt actually munches on a Moe Burger. No, really. Link here.

Taiyo-kei

Walking down sort-of wicked Kabuki-cho back street. The halfway mark to Yasukini dori and still a long way to Draft One. It's like a slow headache orange train ride, only with feet.

(For the words: It’s before the Goka Jyu-Pun Senso, but well after the Ramen Bomb, so the hidden rooms still quietly fold and transform sight unseen by anyone inside of themselves.)

8am summer drizzle sheets, sweat and gray. Tea-colored hair hosts weave in and out of Mazy dori, the way shown on their pointy white Sagbreed by ESPE shoes. One walks past Pedro Edogawa just long enough to size him up. Both spend too much time and money on clothes and hair, hence odd fascination and attraction. Still, it’s a contest of sorts. Which of them had the longer night and how much is still left over the next day? The truth found from the taste in their mouths. Pedro is all yakiniku charcoal and sour Doutour skim milk and coffee from a desperate conbini run. Host One Million is lukewarm champagne and breath mint breakfast. Neither of them has slept much; the Host from what they call “work” and Pedro because of the male voice on the phone at XO, with a single question that unnerved him so: “Kono heya wa hitori desu ka?”

Are you alone in that room?

Pedro retreats into details. Repair man from Namco briefly appears on the street, coming to applying red electrical tape to a busted up Hajime no Ippo punching game in the outdoor arcade, behind the batting cages, which are finally, briefly silent for once. Who runs these things? He eclipses a Manba Gal squatting in a doorway, breathing husky-quiet into cell phone, surrounded by papery remains of fast food breakfast. Big Brother Frank Takada’s face, his middle age moustache and glasses plastered seemingly from every possible surface, the heel behind a thousand “King of Dandy” flower bouquets, the true mayor of Higashi Shinjuku.

View from the Secret Window of Shin Okubo. The NTT building hangs in the gray, no weather ever seeming to affect it. Pedro has walked seemingly everywhere in Shinjuku but has never been to the clock tower’s foundations. Perhaps it creeps over the edge of the world then, like Godman’s distant stopwatch. Enough pain behind his eyelids to want to close them, but Pedro walks forward, just inching towards the station. Fingers pocketing the change in search of 210 yen. Too early to catch the express, but the Doubutsu-sen should already be up and running. Transfer at Chiokure. Best to get a move on to meet the Bald Winn and accept a foxtail from Sukeren.

The Government of Darkness is holding your favorite mecha designer hostage. Or maybe just captive.

Terebi no ue

the

Old-schoolers,

Is there some reason why, at the end of Megazone 23 Part 1 (1985's missing link between Yamato, Macross, the Matrix, and Mamoru Oshii), that Shogo is walking directly towards the Shibuya109 building?

What's he going to do there? Find the Mystery Frequency? Buy some tight camo cargo pants and pin heel shoes?

Wave Motion Gun

From the Comments section for the discriminating Star Blazers/Yamato fan:

"Speaking of hard things, here's a super-secret easter egg you can look for if you've got the Be Forever Yamato Final Deluxe hardcover. Flip to page 328 and take a really close look at the photo of Nish flanked by all the preteen girls from the (Yamato) fan club. It would appear Mr. N is VERY HAPPY to be in charge."

- Tim Eldred

Dekinai

How else do you think I keep slipping in and out of Japan?

Spotted at Mandarake, the 007 Passport and Memoradum, hovering around the $300 mark.

Moe Burger

Found on the 4th floor of Nakano Broadway.

"Photography Forbidden!
Taking pictures of maids or of the interior of the shop without permission is prohibited. Photography without consent IS A CRIME! If we find you taking unauthorized photos, we will contact the police!"

Thanks to Matt for pointing it out and covering me with laser-fire while I took the pic.

Steve Harrison no seikai

The Yamato auto inspection depot just behind Draft One in Kichijoji. If only they made the guys in the shop wear one of those "here's my dick" shirts like the crew of the ship had to...

Sengoku Musei

You only live twice...once when you are born and once when you experience the Hell Toilet (Jigoku Benjo) at Namjatown in Sunshine City in Ikebukuro.

Imagine three toilet stalls, each with their own spooky state-of-the-art audio adventure. Have a seat, plunk down 300 yen, and put them cans on your head (weird, that there's two sets of headphones in there since one person alone barely fits).

I got to hear the one about the old timer who was afraid of spiders only to have a bunch of them crawl up his leg while taking a dump. A hidden value blows air into your face at critical junctures in the narrative. The grand finale is a big plastic spider monster that plops down into that screen in front. A sheet of plexiglass underneith the seat prevents actual plumbing action from taking place.

“Japanese people are most scared of going to the toilet,” explained the spirit next to me, which maybe explains why I, A MEXICAN-AMERICAN, failed to lose my fudge.

But the rest of Namjatown: brilliant. Like walking through a giant diseased mind subsisting solely on gyoza and shu cream. Sounds like my last 90 days. No fresh fruit in half past forever.

Koumei

Someday, when we are all alone, I'll tell you all about my addiction to host clubs in Kabuki-cho...

Pachipuro

In 10 years, we are all going to be kicking ourselves for not playing nearly enough pachinko. It's like a Sgt. Pepper's of old-school gak in there.

Punk Market

Otaku in USA

In a parallel universe, someone was *not* paid to write this article.

(The photo, however, is priceless.)

Carl, can you please say something relevant about the C/FO and how "you've come a long way, baby"?

Ni-chome one a.m.