Family « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

The Day Jesus, The Devil, King Arthur And The Magical Emperor Of Light, Nero Griffith, Made My Dream Come True!

Monday, June 8th, 2009

A fateful glance at a 7-11 the other day made me aware of an astounding truth – the G-Rosso theatre at the Tokyo Dome center was holding Super Sentai shows on weekends during June! Yesterday, one of my all-time Japanese dreams came true when we went and saw Samurai Sentai Shinkenger live on stage!

If you’re completely lost at this point, then think ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’. That was theAmerican localized version of just one season of the long running Japanese Super Sentai series. Shinkenger is season 33, and tells the story of the usual five protagonists battling monsters with a Japanese period theme.

The stage show was just amazing. It was about 35 minutes long, and featured amazing suits, lots of acrobatics (including some very impressive falls), great choreographed fights and some nifty special effects. Yes, yes it was cheesy. But it was also incredibly awesome. It was a show for men, and made me feel alive. Truly a highlight of this – or of any – Japanese trip.

Here’s my opinion of the show recorded right afterwards.

And then – AND THEN – I walked not fifty steps and rode the Thunder Dolphin, one of the best coasters (if not the best) I have ever ridden.

The Thunder Dolphin is the amazing coaster at the LaQua park at Tokyo Dome that is built on and around a building, and also passed directly through the Big-O spokeless ferris wheel. I rode it before in ’06 and loved it, and this time around it did not disappoint!

Here’s a video of the first drop.

Here’s a video of the entire run (recorded from on the Big-O)

And here’s my opinion of the coaster recorded immediately afterwards.

Obviously I rode Big-O as well, and while it was fun it was no Odaiba wheel… besides half-way through the ride something was starting to happen…

There is a performance stage inside the courtyard of LaQua, and they had been setting up for a show while I was on Thunder Dolphin. KLS had been waiting down there watching a crowd gather and occasionally formation-dance to a music video of a girl idol group they had been rotating on the screen. Here’s a shot of two fans she took:

< Cute fans

While I was on Big-O the show began, and what a show it was: a cute girl idol band! KLS saw the whole performance; I managed to see the second half after rushing over after riding Big-O.

The group of seven girls is called Fudan Juku (also, confusingly, Nakano Fujoshi Sisters) and their schtick is they cosplay as boys. The performance (four songs) was full of energy, great outfits, well-choreographed dances (that the girls performed very well) and very, very enthusiastic fans.

Here’s a video KLS managed to shoot on the sly.

It was a very entertaining performance, and it’s easy to see how these groups can garner such devotion in their fanbase. The music was catchy, but even more so was the energy of the girls themselves. The idol industry here in Japan truly has this stuff down to a fine art!

Now I mentioned earlier I always wanted to see a live action Sentai show? Well another dream of mine (and KLS’s, in fact a much bigger one for her) was to see an idol group perform live! Two dreams in one day! Hence the title of this entry 🙂

Of course nothing else that we did yesterday could hope to compete with such a morning, so it’s barely worth mentioning we rushed through the imperial gardens in record time due to the soul-destroying heat in Tokyo yesterday…

… or that we had truly fantastic Burgers for lunch, and KLS had a chocopan for breakfast…

…or that Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara is so mind-boggingly big and full of amazing stuff that it feels like The Pure Land. Take the toy section for instance, otherwise known as the 6th floor. It alone is bigger than most shops you’ve ever been in, and in addition to a truly mind-boggling array of Gundams, boxed toys, video games, trading cards and (every other type of toy ever made) still manages to easily accomodate over 700 gashapon machines…

AW if you entered this place your mind would stop.

At this point, with yesterday a still good memory, I’ll give a preview of today. And that would be the Magic Apple Pie I just ate. The cashier at McDonalds handed it to me using both hands, with such a genuine smile of appreciation. Japanese girls are underappreciated by the ‘herbivore men’ that don’t even look at them when they buy their fast food, so it’s no surprise I charm each and every one of them with each purchase I make. My reward, this one time, was a Magic Apple Pie. For a single, lousy, Y100 coin this blissful baked treat filled with me energy abundant and managed to help abate the cold-like symptoms I am fighting off.

The Magic Apple Pie. Yet another reason I love visiting this country 🙂

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Music, Otaku | 1 Comment »

My Names Day

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Yesterday was my names day. This is a special and sacred day, and I do so look forward to opening all the gifts that will be waiting for me upon my return home.

Now today, today was busy! Lots to tell, but of course that has to wait until tomorrow’s post, so please wait patiently until then! Yesterday was less busy, as we headed back to Shinjuku to revisit a couple of shops we wanted to go to and buy a few particular souvenirs.

< Ranking Ranqueen

The above shop, in Shibuya station, is called Ranking Ranqueen, and only sells the highest ‘ranked’ products in a large range of categories.For most products they only sell the single best of its kind, but for others they have the top 2 or 3. Some examples:

Above you can see the #1 ranked calculator, the #1 ranked home soybean growing kit (looks familiar doesn’t it?) and the #1 ranked nose-thinning device (hard to believe someone ranks such a category eh?). Of course we had a laugh looking through this absurd but handy store – I mean who ranks plastic bananas anyway?

< Holy Meat!

KLS had a ‘donut burger’ for lunch at Mos Burger. She enjoyed it quite a bit. Alas the bun didn’t have a hole in it so the hole in the meat pattie was just a gimmick 🙂

Me dressed as a rice ball and a Pichu (that’s a baby Pikachu if you are a bit rusty on your Pokemon biology).

Those are Cutie costumes – two from a wide range the company does. I like the facial expression of the attendant. Japanese costumes (sold in the party supply section of Tokyu Hands) seem to be of a much higher quality (and more expensive) than those sold in the USA. Unfortunately a lot of the accessories – particularly hats – are now bagged so I was unable to model the ludicrous full-head frog hat 🙁

And here’s a shot of how our hotel room is holding up. The lack of toys/games and other otaku purchases is a deception – we’ve just stuffed them into the suitcases already!

Today’s post was a bit short and for that I am sorry. Tomorrow will be a good one I promise, because todays events will make at least two of you quite jealous. So stay tuned!

Posted in Family, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

‘Adamski Type’ (aka. The UFO Catcher Post)

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

UFO Catcher is the japanese term for ‘claw games’. These are devices where you manipulate a claw in an attempt to pick up a prize and drop it into a hole for collection. Here’s a shot of a typical UFO Catcher:

< UFO Catcher

These things are extremely popular here in Japan. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they are the ‘hook’ that gets people into arcades. They are typically the most abundant type of machine in any arcade and are placed at the most visible positions (almost always at street level). The range of prizes available are staggering and run the absolute gamut, with a tendency toward the cute, perhaps because these machines are very popular with female players (and not just young females). Here’s a random collection of shots of various catchers and their prizes:

From top left: sausages, stuffed bears, a pillow, Haruhi figurines, Monster Hunter cats and big stuffed bear heads. (The bear mascot incidentally is called Rilakkuma and is stupid popular here these days). In parts of town popular with girls (such as Shibuya) the machines are typically more likely to have cute goods (and not always toys), whereas in places popular with dudes (ie. Akihabara) the machines have dude-ish contents such as cute girl figurines or Gundam merchandise.

However these things don’t just contain toys, as you can see here:

From left: a refridgerated machine vending ice creams; a machine (in Odaiba) with live beetle prizes, and at right a machine (in Ueno) with panties as prizes (this was in a decidedly sleazy arcade…)

If you can imagine it, I’m sure someone in Tokyo has at one time or another put it in a UFO Catcher.

The machines come in all shapes and sizes, from very small with tiny claws to large with massive claws. Here are two examples of the latter:

The one on the right is actually a slight variant because instead of a claw is has two separately controlled fingers. It looks difficult.

The machines are almost always Y100 (about $1) per go, usually with 3 tries for Y200 or 6 for Y500. If the prize is particularly good (such as an iPod or something similar) the cost per attempt can be as high as Y500. However it is more or less moot because the technology in the catchers means that they are as much about chance as they are about skill.

Consider the following case. First, look at this image:

< Rabbit Bonanza!

That was a machine we saw yesterday in Ikebukuro. I wanted to win a rabbit, and KLS (happily) recorded me trying.

Watch the video here.

Yes I won a pink one, more by luck than skill (the claw hooked between the ear and the body). But you saw in the video the first time I tried the claw easily had the strength to lift the yellow rabbit (my initial target) into the air. I had three more attempts after the end of the video (the attendant asked us to stop videoing!) and the claw was so limp it basically couldn’t grab anything. It seemed very much so that the tension of the claw decreased dramatically after my win.

If you read this entry, you can see that this is extremely likely and almost certainly what happened.

Take a look at these images as further illustration of the canny ways the arcade owners use to minimize wins on UFO Catchers:

These images show the same prize in two different machines (a Gurren Laggan sheet). Look closely at the left image – note the anti-slip material placed under the sheet? On the right you can see the sheets are placed in a manner as if to suggest they could easily be knocked down. The catch in both cases is the sheets are quite heavy, probably heavier than the claws could even lift. So they can’t be budged due to the anti-slip stuff, or lifted due to weight. It would only take one try for a player to find this out, but they’re already out their Y100…

Another clever ruse. The prize is dangling directly over the slot you have to drop it into. But the claw can only just come down to the height of the ring. But that tiny ring is supporting all the weight of the Kapibarasan stuffed animal (which is over a foot long). So even assuming your aim is dead on, the chance of actually dislodging it is minute. This setup – making a win look trivial – is quite common.

The left image shows a Rilakkuma stuffed bear that is absolutely massive – easily over 1m in height. There’s no way it’s falling through the prize slot of any machine, so the arcade has an alternate win system – you have to pick up a balloon from a dish of water and drop the balloon into the slot. I’d wager this is borderline impossible, but I had to wait to take this photo today as a couple kept trying 🙂

The thing is, even when I know victory is unlikely and these things are engineered to keep my money. Even when I know the cost of playing is almost more than the value of the prize, well I still enjoy trying these guys. For instance…

< Rilakkuma

…I spent a good 5 or more minutes analyzing the above earlier tonight. Obviously there was no chance of actually picking up the motorized walking toy, but I kept wondering maybe I can knock it to the right if I do xxxxx…

I eventually gave up and walked away, but the machine came damn close to taking some more of my cash 🙂

I’ll end with a shot of something that did not come from a UFO Catcher, but very well may have come from a UFO!

< UFO Cat

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | 2 Comments »

The Other Side Of Infinity

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Yesterday (and today) we’re a bit worn out. Plus the rain had returned, so we went for a day of shopping in Ikebukuro. This also included a trip to the planetarium on the top of the Sunshine 60 building, and during the show (in Japanese) both of us were nodding off to sleep!

(As I type this, the next morning, we’re watching a TV show about taking a female construction worker and giving her a beauty makeover. The ‘after’ is, in my opinion, much worse than the ‘before’!)

Actually that reminds me of a few asides… things I’ve been meaning to mention:
– The other day we watched a show on TV using three cute girls and a scientist to teach simple wave mechanics (interference, wavelengths, coherence etc) using cellphones and mirrors…
– One day this past week in a McDonalds we saw two schoolboys sit down and consult the menu via their cellphones before deciding what to purchase…
– Japanese cell phone cameras are up to 11 megapixel size, and include all the latest features of digital cameras in the USA (face recognition, moving focus, HD movie recording)

< Kapibarasan

Anyway back to Ikebukuro… um, we shopped! And bought some good souvenirs… especially for that one person who requested origami paper! Some things we observed in stores:

That’s Mr Bacon and Dacky the Healing Partner. (Almost) from the same marketing firm that gave us Homo Sausage?

< Sunny-chan

From a distance I assumed these sunflowers (at a stall in Ikebukuro station) were fake, but (of course) they were real!

Three products observed in a cosmetics shop. The ones on the sides are uniquely asian.. but the middle one is just weird. As KLS said, it’s for when the aliens arrive 🙂

< Kabuto-san

Yes, a pet beetle. Toys’R’Us had quite a selection, in sizes up to almost as big as your hand. Pet beetles have always been popular in Japan, but it used to be you trecked out into the woods and caught them yourselves. Now (I bet) they are farmed and sold in pet stores…

< (silence)

For the rabbit that has everything perhaps?

< Wow

If I was a rich man, I would have purchased this for my brother. It’s a super-detailed super-fine scale metal model kit of a blimp (minus the cover). Seems like you’d need the patience of a saint to assemble it, but it looks truly amazing once done.

< Look closely

The red lines under the ‘do not walk’ symbol? They are a timer, that tick down and tell you how much longer you have to wait. Such an obviously good idea, why hasn’t every country done this years ago?

As for lunch yesterday, well for a change we’ll let KLS have a turn!

Posted in Family, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

Beware Of Hawks

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Legend has it that Enoshima Island, on the coast about 80 minutes south of Tokyo, was the summer palace of a trio of female gods. Now it happily exists as a tourist destination, and if any of you ever plan on going to Japan put this place very high on your list of sights to see.

Such are the sights of the three shrines (and surroundings) on Enoshima.

Although an island, Enoshima is connected to the Shonan mainland by a landbridge (about a 5 minute walk). The island is hardly flat, and to fully explore you need to be able to navigate a great many stairs. After Takao, we were a little concerned. But we prevailed!

< No!! More stairs?!?!

About halfway up the island there is a new ‘attraction’ at one of the shrines, a large loop made of reeds, which apparently needs to be walked through in a particular pattern to ensure luck?

< Eh??!

Of course I had to do this, and the results were astounding as this video shows!

There’s also a ‘love-love’ shrine halfway up, with the requisite charms available for sale…

On one of these plaques, I found a little red tick-spider thingy:

< Tick-Spider Thingy

And, as she does, KLS made me pose like a fool in front of the demon statues:

< Unstoppable?

At the summit there is a little collection of restaurants and an arcade with ancient games. There is also an octopus-flattening shop:

She takes two complete octopi (about 10 cm in length each) and places them onto a large hot press, then closes the top and ratchets it down with a crank. After a minute or so she opens it and removes a nice crispy octopus disc like you can see in the second picture. The poor things are flattened utterly into a giant chip! (Yes, they are dead first by the way)

The path continues to the other side of the mountain/island, down some steps and onto a rocky shelf behind. This place is popular with fishermen, who cast into the rough waters behind the island. It’s also home to a most unusual form of crustacean.

They vary in size up to about 5 cm (the one in the photo was about 3.5), move quickly and – as you can see – resemble pillbugs. They seem to be land-dwelling things, and KLS was apalled by their very existence. The rocks behind enoshima are home to large colonies of them, and they scuttle away like cockroaches when someone approaches. Interesting little guys they are…

Getting back off the island required climbing the hundreds of steps we took down to the rocks, which was a torturous and near soul-destroying ordeal. But (of course) we made it (helped by a delicious ice cream) and happily, on the way off, found one of our favourite Japanese stores – the ‘tiny glass animal shop’:

< ZOMG!

Some of you reading this can look forward to a trinket from this place…

Getting to Enoshima in the first place requires riding the famous Enodan train line from Kamakura station, which we had done in the morning and did again on the way back in the afternoon.

< Enoden Line

For JBF’s benefit, a video of the Enoden line in action! (Yes, I know I mislabelled the video… I’m tired!)

We didn’t really do much in Kamakura (home of Japan’s most famous Buddha statue) except check out the souvenir shops on the walk to the Enoden station. One of them was home to a stunning selection of (fake) weaponry, including such gems as ‘Staff Of Saruman’, ‘Chaos Sword Odin’, and a highly detailed magic book (for those amongst us disinclined to wield a bladed weapon):

Two food shots…

…and a me sleeping on the train shot…

< Not fake!

…leads me to this striking image (care of KLS):

< ???

The legendary Enoshima Uzumaki spider perhaps? This web was only a centimeter or so in diameter, and hidden under a leaf as it was, extremely difficult to photograph (my camera simply wouldn’t focus on it). I poked around a bit for the owner with no luck. I wonder if it was as beautiful as it’s creation?

Oh yes, we saw a squirrel! Our first Japanese squirrel! But that can wait for another post…

Posted in Family, Miscellaneous | 3 Comments »

Robot Claw