Gaijin Tonic

Kawasaki City’s annual penis-celebrating fertility festival, the Kanamara Matsuri took place on Sunday and was as crazy as ever. A highlight was the appearance of Gachachin, a grotesquely mutated phallic version of the popular cuddly character, Gachapin. Gachapin usually looks like this:

…and this is Gachachin:

Truly, deeply warped. He looks like the bad-trip hallucination of Sigmund Freud watching children’s television on mescalin.
I wonder if we can expect to see more of Gachachin in the future?
I, for one, would like to see him do battle against Flesh Gordon.

The first Sunday in April is almost here, which means it’s almost time for Kawasaki’s notorious Kanamara fertility festival, at which an enormous pink penis is paraded around town by transvestites, vegetables are carved into phallic shapes, and crowds nibble on pink schlong-shaped lollipops. Before you sigh “those crazy Japanese people,” I should point out that these days the voyeuristic, giggling Western tourists outnumber the locals.
Festivities take place on Sunday April 6th, at Wakamiya Hachimangu Shrine in Kawasaki from around 10AM to 4PM. To get there, take the Daishi Line to Kawasaki Daishi station. Go out of the exit and you’ll see Wakamiya Hachimangu shrine across the street, to the right.
Tel: (044) 222-3206
You can read a story I wrote about it last year, with accompanying photos, here- which is by far the most popular blog entry I’ve ever written (it’s been seen by about 100,000 people). Below are some new pictures that I didn’t post last year.

St Patrick’s day is always a big event on the drinking calendar, and in Tokyo, the city of convenience, it will be celebrated a day early, on March 16th, so people can get smashed on a Sunday instead of a Monday. There will be a parade at lunchtime on Harajuku’s Omotesando street, which invariably seems to feature some Irish wolfhounds, a few baton twirling cheerleaders, a brass band, a giant inflatable pint of Guinness, a man inexplicably dressed as Sherlock Holmes with a dyed-green handlebar moustache, and a drunk football team in green T-shirts.
This is a great day to visit the city’s Irish pubs, which are guaranteed to be packed with cheery, red-faced revellers swigging stout, whiskey or lager with green food-colouring in.
Here are some pubs you could try:
Dubliners, which has live Irish bands, and is offering shooters of Jamesons and Baileys for 500 yen (in Shinjuku: 2F Shinjuku Lion Hall, 3-28-9 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-Ku, Tel: (03)3352-6606; or in Shibuya: 2F Dogenzaka Center Bldg, 2-29-8 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-Ku, Tel: (03) 5459-1736)
Paddy Foleys, Tokyo’s oldest Irish pub, which has Irish dancers (B1 Roi Bldg, 5-5-1 Roppongi, Minto-Ku, Tel: (03) 3423-2250).

Today is Valentine’s day. In Japan this means men are lovingly showered with gourmet chocolates and gifts, and women get absolutely nothing at all. Yes, the roles are entirely reversed, like in some weird parallel universe! At home I’d be lucky to get anything more than a card on February the 14th, but that’s not the case here. When I was working for a conversational English school, Japanese housewives and schoolgirls would indulge me with boxes of expensive chocolates and home-made cakes. While this is brilliant news for me, it’s an utterly crap day for Japanese women.

The concept has been freakishly warped en route to Japan. March the 14th is “White Day,” which is when men, in turn, are expected to buy presents for the women who gave them chocolates. By then, of course, there’s no risk involved! A guy can give a gift to a girl, safe in the knowledge that she is keen. There’s no embarrassment, rejection or hurt pride (unless, of course, you’re a Japanese girl.)
So, in a curious twist on traditional romantic roles, the men take on the timid, submissive role, while all the boldness, risk-taking and chivalry is done by the ladies. Gotta love this country!
And they wonder why so many Japanese girls run off with foreign men.

What am I doing tonight? Well, my boss has decided to have a leaving party for a co-worker, and I have to go. On Valentines day of all days! Clearly he has all the romantic instincts of a nine year old misogynist. If I had called my ex-girlfriend in England on Valentine’s Day and said “Sorry, let’s cancel dinner tonight, I’m going out drinking with the boss!” I would have arrived home to find my clothes and belongings strewn all over the front lawn, shortly before having my balls ripped off with a pair of pliers. Evidently, Japanese wives are endlessly patient. And at least, if hubby spends the most romantic day of the year out boozing with his pals, it means the wife doesn’t have to spend all day slaving in a hot kitchen, baking chocolate cakes.
Ah, Tokyo, city of romance.

It’s time for another celebratory feast of weirdos! On the weekend of November 17th and 18th, Design Festa returns. Twice a year, Tokyo Big Site in Odaiba opens it’s doors to amateur artists, designers and musicians, who use the vast venue to dazzle the world with their talents (or lack thereof.)
Design Festa website.
It’s fun to go along and marvel at the biggest gathering of eccentric arty-farties in Tokyo. For a taster, look below at some snaps I took at previous events.

Here are some snaps of last Sunday’s Halloween Parade in Kawasaki city, courtesy of my mate Frank. It’s an annual event which attracts all manner of marauding misfits and weirdos. The prosthetic make-up and costumes on some of the paraders were so impressive, they looked like they’d been given a makeover by Stan Winston. I also went to the “70s and 80s Dancing Party” in Kawasaki, which involved Darth Vader para-para dancing to Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind and Fire, which was quite a spectacle.

In Japan, Halloween seems to get bigger and more visible each year. Maybe it’s due to all those Akihabara cos-play freaks, happy for a new excuse to dress up. Or perhaps it’s thanks to the growing hordes of “Gothic Lolita” girls and Visual-Kei fans, with their celebration of all things macabre and nocturnal. I suspect the party decoration manufacturers, costume-designers and makers of plastic skeletons have something to do with it, since the shops are all festooned-with tacky Halloween-related merchandise.

Of course, it’s the sugar-coated family version of Halloween that seems to be taking the nation by storm, all smiling pumpkins and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Most of the young Japanese folks I know are too sweet-natured to enjoy horror films, and would have to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder if they were to watch a movie featuring a hideously disfigured psychopath wielding a blood-dripping chainsaw. But, then again, somebody must be renting those DVDs of Saw and Hostel that line the shelves in my local video shop.

Halloween even threatens to overtake traditional, homegrown festivals of fear, like Setsubun, (when children pelt soy beans at a member of their family wearing a devil mask), or the the Namahage festival, (which takes place in Akita prefecture and involves an adult in a terrifying monster mask visiting the houses of local families and scaring the piss out of small children until they cry.)

Yep, Halloween is definitely becoming a big deal in Japan, so here are a few ideas on how to celebrate the day in style.

To warm up, you could watch some classic Japanese horror movies. The unsettling atmospherics of Ring or Juon are suitably scary for the occasion. However, for many foreigners in Japan the frightening occurrences in these films are part of everyday life- spooky staring kids, indecipherable phone calls, and late night encounters with long-haired ladies. Guffaw, guffaw!
My favourite J-horror is Wild Zero, a super-charged, rock n’ roll zombie flick, in which the sunglasses-wearing rockabilly punk band, Guitar Wolf, have to protect Japan from rampaging zombies.

The film features UFOs, a transsexual damsel in distress, and a naked woman shooting zombies with a gun.
Enough said.

Alternatively, if you want to paint the town blood-red, you could hit one of Tokyo’s eerie eateries, such as the Vampire Cafe, a shrine to bloodsuckers, with crucifixes and coffins for decorations, or Alkatraz ER, a bizarre, prison-hospital-themed izakaya, where you can drink from test tubes, and your “cell” is periodically invaded by an escaped maniac in an ice-hockey mask. In Yokohama you can knock back novelty cocktails like “Dr Jekyll’s Potion” at the Frankenstein-themed 3 Bozu Cafe, or you could even go to a creepy bar named Halloween which celebrates the festival all year round.
On sunday afternoon, I recommend joining the cabal of costumed loonies at Kawasaki’s demented Halloween parade, which I wrote about here. The after party in Club Citta is mental- don’t miss the opportunity to witness such surreal spectacles as Pikachu dancing with Michael Myers.

This is also a fun time of year to visit an amusement park. While crowds of epic proportions flock to Tokyo Disneyland to see the Halloween parade, truly daring folk might like to try the Haunted House at Fuji Q Highland. I’ve heard it’s horrifying and lasts 40 minutes, during which you have to navigate your way through darkened passageways, while costumed actors leap out at you, screaming (although, in typical Japanese fashion, they bow and apologize afterwards. “Sumimasen, sumimasen.”) However, that sounds like a walk in the park to me, compared with Fuji Q’s trauma-inducingly fast and steep rollercoasters, which are sure to turn your shit white, and induce nightmares in even the hardiest of souls.
If you’re particularly fearless, maybe you could host your own illegal Halloween rave in this spine-chillingly scary disused fun park in Tohoku.

Finally, you might like to indulge in the innocent Japanese past-time of curling up with a creepy comic book. I recommend Uzumaki, a nightmarish and trippy horror fantasy, or Hell Baby, about a deformed, demonic, killer infant.

Personally, I think it would be fun to do all of the above, while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. That would be quite a story. On the down side, you’d subsequently be mentally unhinged and have sparks flying out of your head for the rest of your natural life.

Kawasaki, near Tokyo, is host to a number of eccentric festivals and events, including the notorious Kanamara festival in April (where folk carry a giant pink penis statue down the street.) This month sees the return of Kawasaki’s annual Halloween festival, the highlight being a wild street parade on October the 28th, featuring some of most insanely outlandish costumes you’ve ever seen. An eclectic array of costumed freaks, from Pikachu to Freddy Krueger, hit the streets of downtown Kawasaki and follow floats blasting out pounding techno tunes, much to the horror and amusement of bewildered bystanders.
Below are some photos I took of the parade over the last couple of years and here’s a review of 2005’s event.

The parade starts at 2PM on October the 28th, at Kawasaki’s Cittadella complex. Other events include a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a potentially hilarious “70s/80s Dancing Party Halloween Special” on the 27th.
Learn more at the official website.

This September in Niigata, a Japanese independent rock festival will be held, with the unfortunate name of “Death Camp.” According to the promoters it’s “The Most Brutal Camp Of All.” Below is a flyer for the event, which I’ve included purely because of the outrageous names of some of the bands that are playing.

Where else could you find bands with charming monikers like “Nice View” or “Patisserie” playing alongside bands called “Illegal Abortion” or “Sex Virgin Killer”? As well as bafflingly-titled groups like “Stubborn Father,” or the rugby-referencing “Scrum Half,” you can also see the frankly hilarious “Little Bastards” or “Enema.”
I want the T-shirts!

Here’s a link to the website: “Niigata Death Camp 2007″

As a taster for the event, here is a cool video by one of the bands who are performing, notorious noise-merchants “Melt Banana.” The video features cheesy English dubbing over the musicians’ voices, and in the tradition of the Japanese hot-dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi, they stuff themselves with lots of hamburgers. The song’s inexplicably called “Sick Zip Everywhere,” and is probably not to all tastes!

Here are some photos I took at two music festivals at Chigasaki beach in Kanagawa, a couple of years ago. Good times!