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“Why do you keep going to Japan?”

Monday, May 8th, 2023

A very common question I am asked is why I keep visiting Japan. For a while I’ve been thinking of trying to put my thoughts about this into words, and here’s my attempt.

I love travel. There’s something wonderful about leaving your home and going out and seeing the world. Travel helps me forget about work and the day-to-day mundanities of life (like cleaning or mowing the lawn or even driving). It’s even better when it’s international travel, which I believe is an important ‘reset’ in my life, and I’m immensely happy that I’m able and fortunate to be able to do it so often. The two countries I have visited the most are Australia (15 times) and Japan (9 times). Next week, I will go to both again.

I don’t need to explain why I love visiting Australia so much but failing business travelers there’s probably not many people who have visited the same country ten times. Each stay in Japan has been about two weeks, which means after this next visit I’ll have spent 5 months of my life there! Most of this time is in Tokyo (which admittedly is only a tiny part of Japan). What about it pulls me back again and again?

It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, and I thought about it a lot while we were there in January. Yes I love the shopping and the otaku culture (the games, toys, arcades etc) and this is a big part of it. But that’s just ‘things’ and hardly a reason to travel half-way around the world. Surely there’s a greater reason?

I’m well aware that Japanese society has it’s difficulties, and I’m not convinced I’d like to live in Japan. But many aspects of the society I find very appealing. It is very clean – almost unbelievably clean by US standards – and everything seems to just work. You go to the train station and you just know the train will be on time, or that food you buy will be delicious and well-presented, or that when you put money into that vending machine it’s going to work. Trash on streets is a very rare sight, and people are (on the whole) respectful and polite to everyone. While society doesn’t necessarily need all this to function well (I love NYC as well, and it’s the exact opposite!), there’s always a feeling of ‘why can’t everywhere be like this?’ whenever I’m in Japan.

As an example we had (excellent!) food delivered to us by a robot in January. I can’t see that ever happening in the USA…

Tokyo is absolutely stuffed with people. It’s easily the most populous place I’ve ever been, and being part of the crowds in somewhere like Shinjuku station during rush-hour is a humbling experience. In a way, it makes you feel a less important, and less individual. In these moments Tokyo is a giant machine and you’re just one tiny part, moving through a complex system seamlessly getting from A to B. You don’t bother anyone and they don’t bother you, and everything works as it should. Your presence – your role in this machine – is inconsequential, and you know it will work just as fine without you. In January it dawned on me that there’s something very appealing about this.

Maybe I love visiting because while I’m there any responsibilities I have in my ‘normal’ life are gone. Maybe being in Tokyo for me is liberating. I’m not running from my life, but it’s nice to take a break from it once in a while, and I’ve found no place where I can feel so totally removed as Tokyo.

Added to this is the fact that I can’t understand Japanese. The spoken language is a type of music, and the written language an art. While written English is becoming more common (especially in Tokyo), while there I am absolutely bombarded by a language I can’t understand and once again there’s something appealing about this in the sense that it enhances the escape part of the trip. It makes the city more unreal, and given how spectacular and surprising and even dazzling so much of the day-to-day Tokyo experience is, this elevates the stay to another level.

Sure that sign on the wall may be advertising car insurance, but for all I know it’s talking about androids and magic spells. Or in my mind it could be, so maybe on a personal level this heightens the fantastic side of these trips.

I’m a tiny, irrelevant part of an impossibly clean and efficient machine when I’m in Tokyo. I’m surrounded by information that I don’t understand but can interpret as I see fit, and every day there I see or experience something unexpected and astonishing. It feels like an enormous amusement park, and I’m the rider. I can forget adult worries, and just sit back and enjoy myself.

Maybe the appeal is that while in Tokyo I feel I can give up control and just led myself drift. The ultimate vacation: a return to childhood. Perhaps the appeal is that when I visit Japan I can actually (for a while) be the child that’s still inside me.

And speaking of being a child, I’ve traveled to Japan so often now (our first visit was 21 years ago) that the trips are also nostalgic these days. We both remember parts of Tokyo that no longer exist, and some that have changed (Akihabara, for starters). Certain tastes (rice!) and sounds (crows!) overflow with memories. We see things that remind us of our cats (many of which have names based on Japanese memories), or even ourselves when younger. When I first went to Japan I barely knew about Ultraman, and now it’s probably my favourite fandom, and seeing it everywhere in Tokyo always warms my heart as well. Sometimes people ask why I do/see the same things often when I go there and this is the reason: because it makes me happy! (My standard answer to people asking why I go so often is ‘It’s fun!’)

This is an imperfect explanation I know, and perhaps the reason is even I don’t truly understand what calls me back there. Kristin recently said Japan is ‘my third home’ and I think she’s right. Even I can’t perhaps put it into words, maybe the fact is that Japan just keeps calling me back, and I’m eternally grateful that I’m still able to answer the call.

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Newsagents

Thursday, April 13th, 2023

Let’s return to Charlestown Square, circa 198x. They hadn’t even started absorbing ‘Hilltop Plaza’ yet, and the ‘northeast exit’ (which no longer even exists in it’s then form) near Best & Less led out onto a sun-bleached concrete walkway around a Newsagent. That’s where I bought so many copies of Zzap64 and Commodure User and Smash Hits and even an issue or two of Warlock and Proteus. I can even remember where the magazines were in the store, and the exact path (clockwise) I’d walk around the enormous displays to choose what I wanted. This was before Lotto, and the place was dedicated to print media, was absolutely wallpapered with racks of magazines from all over the world, and had that exquisite ‘Australia newsagent smell’ that would take me right back were I to smell it now. It’s long, long gone now, living only in my memory. Has the age of the newsagent itself also passed?

These days, when I ‘go shopping’ (which is rarer than ever), I tend to visit a very specific set of shops: game shops, hobby shops, bookstores etc. There was once a time where newsagents was always included in this list. I remember as a youth, during the strolls down hunter street or the occasional day trips to Sydney, I would never walk past a newsagent without going in and (usually) buying something. As far back as I can recall there were magazines I would always buy, and even if the latest issue wasn’t available the newsagent was always a reliable place to grab a cheap drink, chocolate bar or bag of lollies.

When I came to America there was a lot of culture shock (“Why does bread taste so weird?”, “Why is everything so sweet?” are two I remember) and I can still recall being surprised by the lack of traditional newsagents. Magazines were of course sold, but the biggest racks were in grocery stores and paled in size to the average Australia newsagent. We occasionally visited a dedicated magazine shop in Rochester that had a massive selection, but it seemed wrong that the magazines I knew were still in print (mostly UK magazines) were mostly unavailable in my local shops.

Then the internet came along and changed the magazine industry forever. People stopped reading printed magazines, the number of available titles contracted, and as a result the magazine-sellers closed. Magazine racks in shops here in the USA diminished or disappeared entirely – my local grocery store for instance no longer sells any except for a small selection of gossip rags at the register. I used to still buy mags I was interested in at the bookstore Borders, but eventually it closed as well, and for a time things looked grim.

Thankfully Barnes & Noble stepped up, and (about a decade ago) our local one added an enormous magazine section that has served me well ever since. There’s endless talk of them closing and/or getting out of the magazine business (since almost all the mags they sell are imported from the UK) but so far, so good. It’s not the same as a newsagent though, and I sorely miss the type of shop I remember from my youth. Which is why I loved visiting Australia every year and going into the newsagents for a bit of nostalgia.

For about the last decade business was getting difficult for the Australian newsagent. Readership of magazines had declined, and it was becoming cost-prohibitive to import magazines from the UK and USA. Many newsagents were turning into gift shops or simply lottery vendors, and the magazine racks seemed smaller every time I visited the country. Then along came covid and it hit the humble local Australian newsagent like a juggernaut. When I was there last year I walked to three trusty newsagents only to find all of them were gone, and the few that remained barely sold any magazines. In the year since I have read about many closures, including a 100+ year old newsagent in South Australia (believed to have been the countries oldest) and a 60+ year old one in Newcastle. Apparently closures were accelerated in the last year by several Australian newspapers canceling their print versions, but the end result is that entire communities now have nowhere to buy magazines.

When newsagents are gone magazines will follow, which to this avid reader is a sad thing. But much like the vinyl renaissance I’ve read of upturns in the sale of books and even ‘dumb’ phones, and suggestions of the younger generations wishing to spend less time online. I hope that one day this leads to a magazine renaissance. Until then I suppose I’ll be content with memories of the newsagents of my youth, and my monthly B&N ‘magazine run’.

We all occasionally wonder about what we’d do if we could travel back in time, and I have said many times if I could step into 198x the first shop I’d go into would very likely be a newsagent. I’ll take this one step further and say it would be that exact newsagent I described in the opening of this entry. I wonder if they’ll have the latest issue of C+VG…?

Posted in Blog, Retro, Time | Comments Closed

Ramen 21: Let’s March Onwards Together

Sunday, April 2nd, 2023

Just when you thought this series had ended, I found three more instant chicken meals! Let’s now review the 52nd, 53rd and 54th chicken ramen in this series…

Saigon Pho Artificial Chicken (290 Calories, 9 g fat, 1570 mg sodium)

I’m stretching the definition again here, to once again include a pho soup. I’ve not liked these in the past and was apprehensive, and once I added the water and the kitchen began to smell strongly of cut grass I knew my fears had come true.

As with similar products I have tried in the past, the noodles were slimy and the broth was bitter and very oily. Absolutely not my kind of instant soup, and I suspect not yours either: 2/10

Cup Noodles Artificial Chicken (310 Calories, 11 g fat, 1360 mg sodium)

This seems to be a Japanese product although it’s labeled as being made in Hong Kong. Cup Noodles is of course the inventor of instant ramen and we visited their museum back in January, but strangely I was unable to find a chicken flavour in Japan (this one came from a local Asian grocer). I’ve reviewed the USA version already and liked it a lot, so how does this one compare?

Firstly, this was a seriously strong seal on the lid! Having opened 50+ different products this was easily the strongest seal and I almost debated cutting it open. Once I had opened it the presentation was lovely, with a lot of veggies and meat chunks on top of the noodles. Adding the water released a delightful smell and I couldn’t wait to tuck in. I ended up eating the entire thing, and my verdict is similar to the USA version: this is amongst the very best chicken ramens I have tried, and were it not for my beloved Gefen brand I daresay I’d make this my go-to product: 8/10

Sapporo Ichiban ‘Tokyo Classic’ Momosan Ramen (370 Calories, 9 g fat, 1960 mg sodium)

Amazingly I even found a new type of brick ramen, and this was an unusual kind that even came with a liquid flavour packet! I followed the instructions to the letter (which included adding water separately to the flavour and the the noodles afterwards) and once prepared it was an attractive soup with a thick broth.

Tastewise… to me this isn’t chicken. It had a strong earthy taste, like dissolved beef stock, which I imagine is supposed to be roast chicken but that I just found a bit repellant. The noodles were good though. Kristin liked it more than me and ate about half. I’ll give the average of our scores then: 5.5/10.

And there we have it. I’ve actually got a few more ‘ramen adjacent’ items I intend to show off, as well as (maybe) the next installment in my ‘universes beyond’ ramen series. But they can wait for another day 🙂

Posted in Blog, Food | Comments Closed

My Collections: PS3 and PS4

Thursday, March 30th, 2023

The Playstation 3 (PS3) was released in November 2006 and it would be 10 months before I finally bought one early in September of 2007. The system was very expensive ($500), had a slow start, and even almost a year into release there was a lack of games that caught my eye. Indeed, for the first couple of weeks I owned it, I didn’t even buy any games for it and instead used it to watch blu-rays and play PS2 games!

Looking back on the PS3 I remember it as the console that ushered in – for me – the era of downloading games. Sony introduced the PlayStation shop with the PS3 and there was a lot of interesting and inexpensive games available, and during the life of the console I probably bought a couple of dozen games online. Of course I also bought disc games – 98 in total – and my PS3 library ended up being one of my top 10 biggest game collections.

That’s the bulk of them above, and notable titles included the first of the Souls series, the immersive RPG Dragons Dogma and Diablo 3 which featured couch co-op that KLS used to play together endlessly. In fact we played the PS3 often enough that not one, but two of them died, with the laser failing on one and the disc tray on the other! We played them both to death 🙂

The PS3 era of games is unremarkable from a collector’s perspective. They’re not old enough to be retro, and not new enough to be appealing to modern gamers. Furthermore, many of the landmark titles have been rereleased or ‘remastered’ for newer consoles. There is very little value in PS3 games today, and it’s probably the least collected console. The vast majority of my games – which are of course all in pristine condition – are only ‘worth’ only a few dollars. I have a couple of ‘rare’ games (shown above) but even then they’d sell for less what I paid for them. Maybe one day PS3 games will gain value, but I don’t think that day is anytime soon.

The life of the PS3 extended all the way into 2017, but long before it was retired it had already been surpassed by its followup, the PlayStation 4 (PS4). This was released in late 2013, but I didn’t get mine until Christmas 2014 (in response to the death of our second PS3).

In some ways the PS4 is still a current-era console, in that it has yet to be officially retired and you can still buy them new in stores. For many years ours was our primary console, and both KLS and myself played it extensively. And then, about 2 years ago, it died as well, and we didn’t replace it (although not for lack of trying).

I loved the PS4. It has a great controller, a good OS and it was successful enough that the market supported lots of fantastic games (such as Monster Hunter World, Nioh and several Vanillaware games). It had easy and fast online play, and if you didn’t absolutely need them upon launch the games were reasonably priced after a few months as well.

In the 7+ years we owned one I bought 123 PS4 games. I think – since many of them were $30 or less – this was also the console with the lowest average game price of any I have ever owned. That’s not to say I didn’t over time pick up a few games that are a little more collectible (such as the limited edition of Odin Sphere) shown above, but most of my PS4 library is as unremarkable (as collectibles) as my PS3 games.

This post is because – as with the Wii and Wii U collections – I’m also selling my PS3 and PS4 games. Look closely at the above pics and you may note that there are four games that I bought for both the PS3 and PS4 and one of them – Dragon’s Crown – I also own for the Vita! I love that game to death, and it’s one of a few that will be hard to say goodbye to (especially since it’s a collectors metal case edition with an unopened pack of trading cards) but I hold out hope we may get yet another remaster for Switch sometime soon. The bulk of these games I won’t miss though: they were fun to play in their time, but I’ll never play them again and they’re just now taking up space in the house.

Between 1995 and 2021 we had (8 models of) four different PlayStation consoles in our house (not including PSP or Vita) but have yet to buy a PlayStation 5. Right now it doesn’t have many games I’m interested in, it’s very expensive, and the Switch is more than enough for our needs. With the sell off of my PS3/PS4 collections has the sun set on PlayStation in this house? Time will tell…

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, Otaku, Tech | 2 Comments »

My Collections: Wii and Wii U

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Nintendo released the Wii in November of 2006 to followup from the GameCube. It had a revolutionary motion control system and some notable software that was well-engineered to take advantage, and the Wii became a breakout success appealing to players well beyond the traditional demographic. It was a best-seller almost immediately, and would go on to become one of the most successful consoles ever made. When released I had trouble finding one, but Jim used his connections to get me (and himself) one for Christmas that year.

I liked the Wii, but I always felt it was a back step compared to the GameCube and during its lifetime I vastly preferred games for the Nintendo handheld systems. That said I’m happy for the great success of the Wii: it made Nintendo a lot of money and paved the way for the Switch which I feel is one of the best consoles ever made.

During the eight year lifetime of the Wii I bought 59 games, and here are most of them:

My favourites are the first party Mario games, Monster Hunter Tri and Hyrule Warriors (which I would rebuy for Switch years later). But the system lacks nostalgic appeal, the controls these days are clumsy and the graphics on a HD screen are fuzzy. The Wii was a system of it’s time, and I think best left there.

At the end of 2012 Nintendo released a followup console called the Wii U, and it was a disaster!

Even from the first reveal this thing confused customers: was it a new console or an add-on? What was that weird controller with a screen? Did it even connect to the TV at all? Nintendo’s marketing was poor, and the console was struggling even before release.

When it did come out things didn’t get much better. The Wii U suffered from a critical shortage of software (the strange controller made porting games difficult and development costly) and sales were poor. It would go on to be Nintendo’s worst-selling console ever, and a financial disaster.

I bought only 15 games for the Wii U, which is the least I’ve ever bought for any console. While a few of these were incredibly good (Xenoblade Chronicles X, MH Tri Ultimate, Zelda: Breath Of The Wild), many of the others struggled with weird controls or excessive load times. The Wii U may have had a (very) few great games, but it wasn’t a fun or comfortable device to use, and it was inevitable it would be replaced.

In retrospect we can see the Wii U was a stepping-stone on the path to the Switch, so for that I suppose we can excuse it. But it’s now a footnote in Nintendo history, almost forgotten only a few years after it was retired.

I’ll soon be selling my entire Wii and Wii U collections (including hardware and even original boxes). Neither the hardware nor most of the games have any great value these days, and even in good condition – as mine all are – rarely fetch a quarter of what they sold for back in the day. I do have two somewhat collectible Wii games (shown above), but the value of these is dwarfed by some of the NES/SNES games I have already sold (and Gameboy/GBA games still in my collection).

I won’t miss any of this once it is gone, and am happy for my once-loved games to pass to a new collector. I enjoyed the Wii in its time – and less so the Wii U – but as I said that time has passed, and I’m ok with just the memories from now on 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Retro, Tech | Comments Closed

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