JAXA Shop

JAXA, the Japanese version of NASA, finally opened up its museum/gallery/shop/information center in Tenmonkan. I just happened to drop by during the open house. The space is on the second floor of the building near Maruzen bookstore. It's pretty small, and the 40 visitors there made it fairly packed. One of the TVs is a 3D screen, showing satellite fly-bys. The other screen showed informational space exploration videos. The ceiling over the stairwell is painted with phosphorescent stars illuminated by a black light.



The shop has pins, patches, pictures, posters, information on Tenmonkan's origin as an Edo-era star observatory, and freeze-dried "space food". The center is free to visitors. I'm hoping that they'll start carrying information regarding upcoming rocket launches from the Tanegashima pad, which is a few hours south of Kagoshima by ferry.

Monsters U.

The cineplex in the main train station building is promoting the upcoming Monsters University movie.

Sakura no Uta Candy

Back in March, I mentioned that Family Mart was running a Sakura no Uta campaign advertising the latest Vocaloid installment. One of the products available was the above bag of flavored hard candies. Well, what happens occasionally is that the kiosk shop in the Volunteer Center building will get its hands on certain branded products and sell them for about 10-20% off. Eventually, the price gets slashed further to unload whatever wasn't already selling. At about 85 yen (85 cents USD), I figured it was worth getting a bag for the blog.

Moyashimon Takarakuji

There's a rather interesting little activity going on in the bookstore in the Daiei department store near my apartment that I haven't seen elsewhere. It's a raffle (takarakuji, in Japanese, which means "a lottery"). You buy a ticket for 500 yen ($5 USD), which you select from a box at random. You open up the ticket and you get your choice of prizes for the letter that appears on the sheet. Right now, the raffle is for Moyashimon. There's some other anime-related stuff coming from Banpresto in the next few months. I got a  "D" ticket, which gave me a choice of one of 2 packages for stationary with stickers, and a choice of 1 of 4 bookmarks. The clerk added a rolled up mini-poster (the paper is really thin, and didn't scan well).


(Mini-poster.)

I asked how long the raffle will run at that shop, and the clerk answered "until everything goes", which could be years from now. The low-level prizes are worth less that the 500 yen price, but better prizes include some very nice plastic figures of the human characters, and some large plush dolls of the yeasts. I'm tempted to watch the prizes case to see if the lesser stuff starts thinning out, which would boost my chances of winning a plushie...

Sumi-e Event

The weekend of May 10th, the International Exchange Center hosted a Sumi-e exhibit. The teacher of a Kagoshima school had his work set up in the middle of the room. Everything else was painted by his students. Some of the pieces are really good.







(This one was by the teacher of the sumi-e school.)



Keep in mind, these are all ink-wash paintings.

Kyokushin Karate Tournament

On the last Monday of Golden Week (May 6), I attended a Kyokushin-style karate tournament, which was held in an athletic center near Kamoike. At-the-door was 1500 yen, but I got my ticket in advance from FamilyMart (500 yen discount, but with a 100 yen service fee). Things got started at 9 AM, with the children's matches. The actual black belt matches kicked off at 1 PM. When I arrived right at 1, the last of the children's rounds was just wrapping up on the red mats at the right side of the above photo, The audience consisted mainly of friends and family of the participants, and a few of them were eating bento box lunches that they'd brought with.


(Trophies, and the table with some of the officials.)

According to the wiki entry, Kyokushin is an offshoot style, developed by Korean-born Masutatsu Oyama (he emigrated to Japan in 1938 and later changed to a Japanese name). He studied Okinawan karate as well as judo, and took a couple mountain-retreat self-training trips that lasted about 3 years total. In 1953, he started up his own style of school in an empty lot in Tokyo. At some point, the school reached about 12 million members. Mas died in 1994, and the school splintered as several masters bickered over who should succeed him.


(Official ceremonies, which started at 1 PM.)

I'm not sure which branch held this tournament. The wiki entry indicated that the different branches don't recognize each other, and therefore you're not going to see them competing in each other's events. This particular tournament was full contact. The children's rounds, and the first few matches of the lower-level black belts used helmets and hand padding. Attacks to the face and back were off limits. But, punches to the chest and stomach, kicks to the legs and head, and knee jabs to the thighs, stomach and sides of the chest were encouraged.



Several school leaders gave speeches encouraging the "display of fighting spirit".


(Two of the higher-level black belts, fighting without helmets.)

The style is characterized by a kind of hook punch to the chest and sides, and some occasional kicks. It looks like kick boxing, and I had a lot of trouble identifying any specific techniques. In the early rounds, a couple contestants accidentally hit their opponents in the edge of the helmet, earning them "chui's" (warnings). However, there were two spinning kicks, where the back of the heel seemed to bounce off the opponents' shoulders and into the side of their heads. In both cases, the opponents fell to the ground like bricks, and medics ran onto the mats to put neckbraces on the fallen and carry them off on stretchers. Rather than being DQ'd, the fighters were given full "ippon" - 1 point perfect wins. So, bumping someone in the face is bad, but sending them off the floor in traction is good.





After the first round eliminations, the younger groups performed kata, and the top black belt contenders went through 4 rounds of breaking boards (foot stomp, punch, elbow strike, kick). Each competitor could decide how many boards to use, and when they were done, the judges yelled out the number of boards actually broken. There was also a demonstration of weapon use by the highest-ranking school leaders, but that wasn't quite as solidly-performed as I would have expected.





No true martial arts tournament is complete without the hard-nosed, bald-headed floor judge.



The tournament seems to have been recorded for TV playback, and had its own announcers' table.



This was one of the last rounds. The heavier guy won mainly through sheer mass. Opponents pummel each other for 2-3 minutes, and if both are still standing, the 4 corner judges make their decisions. In the case of a tie, the round goes another minute. Victory goes to the one that dominates his opponent. A couple of rounds were obviously mismatched, in that the smaller guy threw the best punches, but the bigger one just pushed the smaller one around through sheer weight.



The photo doesn't do this guy true justice. His chest was one solid welt that was so bright that, without the camera, I could see the red from where I was sitting 100 feet away. It was a very brutal tournament.



There were interviews of the winners of the top rounds. This one was given near me by one of the winners going into the final round to decide the first and second place standings. I'm curious if the "no face attacks" rule is to ensure that the competitors look good on camera afterward.

White Comic Game Review

This is going to take a little bit of backstory.
Yamada Denki is a big commercial electronics chain in Japan, and there's one store about a 10-minute walk from my apartment along the Kotsuki river. The front part of the store acts like a discount konbini, and I used to visit every couple of weeks to get toilet and tissue paper more cheaply than from the nearby grocery store. In the main electronics section, there are several aisles of video games, music CDs and movie DVDs. A few weeks ago, when I was looking for more games to buy, I noticed that they actually have a used section. This kind of surprised me, in that they don't carry anything else, like cameras, used. Anyway, one of the games that caught my eye was White Comic, for 950 yen ($10 USD).



Now, in 2009, two of the oldest boy's manga magazines - Shonen Sunday and Shonen Magazine - celebrated their 50th anniversaries together. One of the events was an exhibit at the Kawasaki museum, called Sunday-Magazine DNA, which I visited. In the DNA exhibit, they had an English handout, which I'd typed up later, listing the featured manga and artists.


(Travel map section.)

Which brings me back to White Comic. This is a video game for the Gameboy DS that was released in 2009 as part of Sunday and Magazine's anniversary. You have a choice of playing one of two characters (I picked Kenta), which represent one of the two magazines. Kenta is walking home from school with a female classmate, when he sees his father being abducted by a demonic hand emerging from the ground. Immediately afterward, Edogawa Conan and Hijime Kindaichi warp in and complain that they're too late. They explain to Kenta that his father was the only one that could use the White Comic - a special item - to travel between the real world and the world of manga. Manga Oh (Manga King) has abducted him, and being his father's son, Kenta also has the ability to use it. Thus begins Kenta's adventure of visiting various towns based lightly on a mish-mash of locations from a number of the manga titles. Along the way, Kenta must collect "copies" of the characters he meets in order to have them fight for him.


(Battle mode.)

There are 374 different characters in the game, from Ranma 1/2 and Lum, to Ashita no Joe and Tensai Bakabon's Father. According to the stats, I've only collected 91%, even after having cleared the game. It's pretty fun encountering characters that I'd never heard of, and the roster section includes 3 sample panels from each manga title. I'm now interested in learning more about one particular story, of a girl with duct tape on her head, who lives in a house boat on a river. So, from a historical view point, this is a must-have game.


(Attacking character during battle mode.)

From a gaming standpoint, it's fairly frustrating. About 20 of the characters were made specifically for the game, including Kenta and all the story bosses, and that artwork is amateurish compared to the professional stuff. The maps and various buildings are very elaborate and detailed, but you keep fighting the same 4 low-level thugs (with just different colored head gear as they advance in level). The enemy has access to the same characters you do, plus some that you can't use yourself, and the battles are essentially a cross between Pokemon and Yugi-oh, where you both pick an attack, and then up to 2 supporting characters for boosting strength or recovering health. There are 6 "chapters", each with their own boss, plus Manga Oh's tower. The point is to recruit characters to be copied into the White Comic, but you also encounter RPG-style puzzles to be solved. One example is a book bag that is left lying on the ground. When you find the owner (Devilman) you go back to the bag, and this lets you recruit the owner's friends (Devilman's friends or rivals). This is a good thing gamewise because when you fight with the main character, his/her friends add bonuses to whatever you're doing (attacking, replenishing health or boosting defense). The problem comes in with all the fighting you have to do with the thugs as you explore each town. The action animations slow the combat down, and even in the best of cases can take 5 minutes per fight. You can figure 30 seconds of exploring to 5 minutes in one battle.


(Koutaro, roster shot.)

In the first run-through of the game, beating the area boss causes the thugs to disappear from that town. In the clear game, you can go straight to the boss fights, but the thugs keep showing up after the boss is gone (and they've leveled up, too). So, there's less point to keep playing the clear game, unless you're really desperate to collect every single one of the manga characters. I think I have most of the main ones, but it's hard to imagine how I could be missing 30 supporting "friends", and right now the game is feeling like a major waste of time. I may come back to it eventually, though.


(Lum, roster shot.)

I doubt that anyone outside of Japan is ever going to see White Comic, so there's no point to going into much more detail. Suffice it to say, though, that if you want an easy way to sample 50 years' of manga history from Sunday and Magazine all in one place, this game is an excellent starting point. (Especially if someone finished it for you.)