Wicky House Happy+Sugar poster

More advertising for Wicky's August anisong night.
(Yes, I know this happened in August.  I like having a backlog of blog entries to work through.)

Oct. 5-6, 2019

Tenten's Birthday


I was kind of excited going into this weekend. I'd seen posters for Ramen Oh (the competition at Dolphin Port for who has the best ramen), Light and Sound Road (art exhibits by high school and university students lining the road in front of the Kagoshima Art Museum and in Terukuni Shrine, plus live music), Tenten's birthday, and a Food and Wine event. Tenten is the green alien mascot for Tenmonkan, and the arcade was celebrating his 10th anniversary. The signs indicated there'd be a jump room, other activities for children, and maybe a live stage.



I got out of the apartment almost an hour early for going to the English school, to give myself time to hit all of the event locations to see if there'd be anything worth visiting during my mid-day break. I suspected that Light and Sound Road might be next week, but I couldn't recall the exact date (and I hadn't taken a photo of the poster for reference). I swung by Terukini Shrine first, and there was nothing going on there. So, I headed back over to Tenmonkan.



They did have the jump room, but the main focus was on shopping housewives. The idea is that you buy stuff from the area shops, then bring the receipts back to get a shot at the lottery wheel (you turn a crank on a wheel box, and if you get a little red or gold ball popping out, you get a coupon good for up to 10,000 yen ($90 USD) redeemable at the shops). I couldn't find anything else going on related to Tenten, so I walked down to Dolphin Port. There was nothing happening there either, and I went back to Tenmonkan to look for the posters I'd seen earlier.



I could track down the one for the Light and Sound Road, which is indeed scheduled for next Saturday only. But, I couldn't find anything about Ramen Oh. There was nothing on the radio about it, and the owner of the school asked me if it was supposed to be this weekend or not, so he didn't know either. Not sure what was going on with that. On the other hand, the Great Satsumanian Festival, a big 2-day music concert was taking place on Sakurajima, near the volcano, this weekend (cost money to get in). Lots of talk about that on the radio, and most of the taxis in the city were tied up taking people from the main train station to the ferry terminal.

Fall Wine and Food Baru


Conversely, though, the space in front of Lotteria and Yamakataya did have their periodic Wine and Food event. 500 yen ($4.50) for one glass (1,000 yen for 3). While the selections look good, the servings are small for the price. No live entertainment this time.



I was here on my way to the school, at 12 PM, which was too early for drinking before a class, and the tables were closed when I got out at the end of the day. The thing is, I'm not a big wine drinker, I'd rather have craft beer or a good whiskey. So, I didn't have plans for coming back on Sunday just for this.


Mascot Parade


One unexpected thing was the foamhead mascot parade through Tenmonkan, which included Tenten himself, and what I assume is something based on Kamen Rider, or one of the similar power suit TV shows.



He waved at me as they walked by.



I don't know the name of this character. I assume she represents one of the cities in Kagoshima prefecture.



Nothing else big this weekend. The Light and Sound Road should be next Saturday, but I may not have as much of a break then. I'm really wondering if I got the Ramen Oh thing completely mixed up with something else that got canceled, or something.

Sensei and Me, Second Half comments

(Image from amazon.co.jp, used for review purposes only.)

Sensei to Watashi (Sensei and Me), Second Half, by Yousuke Takahashi, Grade A
I reviewed the first half of this series back in April. Both books came out at the same time, but they're kind of expensive ($12 USD each), and I hesitated buying both at the time. But, I did like the first one and had been considering getting the second volume for some weeks now. The kicker came in the form of Japan's really badly thought-out sales tax increase which went into effect on Oct. 1st. I figured that if I was going to get it, I'd do it when the sales tax was at 8%, rather than wait until it hiked to 10%.

As a recap, the story revolves around a young boy who has one big eye, and a horn in the middle of his forehead. He started out unnamed, and his mother wanted to get rid of him because of the eye and horn thing, so she took him to a priest that controls spirits by writing commands or drawing pictures in ink on paper. The priest, later identified as Mumyou (no name) Sensei, touched the boy on the head and two demons flew out, turning him back to normal. The boy gets named "Muten," and becomes Mumyou's student, responsible for feeding the drowned dead and demons, in the backyard gardens, and occasionally fighting off the collected energies of people's hate and anger.

The stories in the second book are still semi-comical black-humored ghost tales, but Mumyou's family becomes less of a factor, and are replaced more by unrelated individuals at the hearts of various mysteries, such as in the Tale of the Sleeping Wife, and The Hand-Eye Bar. With Sleeping Wife, a woman lives in a house surrounded by mist, with her beloved husband. They enjoy their time together, and have the occasional married-couple sex. One day, a strange man appears at the house and tries to drag the woman out. He's assisted by Muten and Mumyou, who show that her "husband" is really a monster living in her dreams. When she wakes up, she's told by her actual husband that she'd been in an accident that put her in a coma, and that something had been preventing her from recovering from it. The real husband had asked Mumyou to help rescue her. The problem is, the woman's parents had arranged her marriage to this guy, and she never actually liked him. From here on out, she occasionally takes naps during the day as "an escape."

There's a bar that exists between the worlds of humans and ghosts, called the Eye in the Hand Bar. One patron, a dirty old alcoholic, has staked out a stool at the counter, to escape his beautiful, but angry wife. The wife asks Mumyou for help in bringing her husband back to the real world so they can do that husband and wife thing together. Mumyou and Muten drag the guy out of the bar, fighting evil spirits along the way. A little later, the wife is looking for the old man, frustrated that he'd gotten away again without drinking his poison. The guy appears behind her, saying that yes, he knew she was slowly poisoning him to collect on his will. But, he'd been at the ghost bar so long, he's turned into a monster himself. The woman sees the tentacles and runs screaming from the house. Back at the Bar, the owner, Mumyou and Muten have a good laugh with the old man (the name of the bar comes from the fact that the owner, another beautiful woman, is a magic user that has a big eye in the palm of her hand).

Towards the middle of the book, we get a slightly different story, of a woman that falls in love with Mumyou and has his baby. Then, Mumyou turns into a mud monster and dies, as the woman professes her undying love for him. Turns out, the woman had gone to Mumyou for help, and he had used his reflection in the garden pond to create a copy of himself to protect her in his place. The woman fell in love with the reflection, and somehow, unexpectedly, had gotten pregnant. Later, we learn that her child is Muten. The series ends with a 70-year-old (or so) version of Muten living with his wife, and preparing to to die. He'd learned how to perform exorcisms and fight monsters from Mumyou, and continued to do that for a while. But, as he became a young adult, he decided to give all of that up and lived a normal human life. His wife (we never learn anything about her), sits by his side as he passes away. Muten's spirit finds Mumyou's home, and he becomes a small boy again. Mumyou acts surprised - he wasn't expecting Muten to return for another hundred years or so, but the boy is happy to be back where he belongs, fighting Mumyou's evil sister.

The last 2 chapters of the book are titled "Maid's Diary." Nayuko is a young woman that is forced to find work wherever she can get it. She's hired by a family of monsters that harasses her, and keeps creeping her out all the time. But, she can't quit the job because "she has to feed her mother." One night, after making a mountain of rice balls in the family's kitchen, Nayuko brings the rice balls to her room, takes off her uniform and feeds the rice balls to a hungry old woman's face that is attached to her breast. A neighboring female version of Mumyou sees this, and uses her priest powers to free the girl of the face (Nayuko's deceased mother's spirit). Nayuko starts shouting about finally being free, turns into a giant tiger demon (think - "Lum-chan") and proceeds to destroy the house. The female Mumyou puts the face (a sealing rune) back on her chest, and Nayuko becomes a normal-sized girl again, forced to work to feed her mother. The second story is equally silly.

Summary: These stories originally ran in Manga Grim Stories magazine from 2018 to 2019. (Maid's Diary ran in 2017.) Great, great artwork, interesting stories. Muten's life is a bit convoluted, but he's a sincere kid in spite of it. The books are on the pricey side, but still recommended to anyone that likes Japanese horror.

Butterfly

I rarely see butterflies anywhere outside of the area around the Kagoshima government offices down by Reimeikan, and I almost never see anything very large. And if I do, it flies away before I can get my camera out. This guy was an exception.



But, he never sat still enough to get a really good shot.



This was the best I could get with the little pocket camera.

Kagoshima Maiko, Oct. 2, 2019

I was walking through Tenmonkan on Tuesday to meet someone, and when I got close to Lotteria I discovered that some group was hosting a "Meet the Maiko-san from Kagoshima" event. Maiko are the women in training to become Geisha, and there are at least 2 Maiko that live in Kagoshima.



There were maybe 50 people in the audience. I arrived at 2:30 or so, just as one of the main performances had ended, and the two women were paraded out to go through the different parts of their costumes for the audience.





The person I was meeting wanted to grab lunch in the restaurant on the top floor of Yamakataya, so I wasn't able to stick around to get more photos. After we finished lunch, we went out to the elevator to return to the ground floor, and right next to the elevator were the two Maiko, posing for photos with anyone who wanted one. Unfortunately, I wasn't given the time to get my picture taken with them, so I lost that opportunity. They were scheduled for performances on Wednesday, too, but I had conflicting classes at those time and wasn't able to get to Tenmonkan for that. Maybe next year.

Lotteria Placemat


Funny enough, the nearby Lotteria has a new line of placemats that look like they're tied-in to the Maiko event. Actually, this is a portrayal of a really old clothing style, and the idea is to teach children the importance of oral hygiene.

Kumiko Coaster

Back a few months ago, I was reading the latest C.M.B. manga, and in it was a reference to Hida Kumiko.



Kumiko is the Japanese woodworking craft of precision cutting so that nails and glue aren't needed. Hida is a city in Gifu Prefecture, where the craftsmen perfected Kumiko.



I located the Hida Kumiko website, and decided recently to buy one of the smaller items they have there - a snowflake-style coaster for 1,050 yen (plus 200 yen for the money transfer fee). About $10 USD.



There are 4 designs, as shown on the box, and they're all the same price. The instructions are pictorial only, so you don't need to read Japanese to put this together.



Took me about 10 minutes because I wasn't sure what I was doing. Now, I can probably finish this in under 3 minutes. But, taking it apart and putting it together too much will loosen the pieces so they won't fit as tightly anymore.



The pieces are lightweight unfinished cedar. Smells great and was fun to assemble.



(The more elaborate tables and lamp frames are between $300 and $500, and are custom orders.) Pretty cool.



Makes a great coaster, or hotplate holder. Now, I really want the interlaced weaving one, but I have no place to keep it... ;-(

Wonda Lupin III Campaign

(Artwork from the Wonda campaign site)

New can coffee campaign, this time tying Wonda with Lupin III. Watery, flavorless coffee, but great Monkey Punch artwork.

I don't go to Lawson Konbini very often, so I was surprised to see that they had a line of Lupin III artwork cans for Wonda can coffee. These cans aren't found anywhere else, and they're 114 yen plus tax (8% on Sept. 30, 10% as of Oct. 1) ($1 USD for a 6 oz can). The coffee isn't worth the money, and I can't quite bring myself to buy one of each can number to get the full set (something like 8-10 cans total, I guess. The konbini I went to didn't have all of them.) The details on the can indicate that this campaign started in August, and is running to November.



There's a little sticker on the side of the can, and inside that is the URL for the Wonda website, and a participation number. At the site, you have to create an account before you can plug in the number to see how many points you get. My number is only worth 1 point. You can redeem the points - 1 for a Line account premium or something (10,000 participants only), or 25 for lithographed Monkey Punch artwork (25 winners only). This looks to be a lottery system, so even if you get enough points, there's little chance of getting anything for the money. I don't use Line (a Japanese chat system), and I don't want to buy 25 cans of this stuff just to enter the drawing for the print.



I've got my one can. I'm good.