@aniklasson @TuttleBooks @evacomics

A great book for kids or adults heading to Japan for the first time, or who want to reminisce about their time in Tokyo, I read the entire thing on a less-than-two-hour flight this past weekend. The pictures are fun, the facts are accurate, and the suggestions will lead to discoveries (or enjoyable memories) for anyone and everyone.

My daughter (now 21), who lived in Tokyo for a year when she was 11 years old, read much of A Manga Lover’s Tokyo Travel Guide: My Favorite Things to See and Do In Japan when she saw it on the nightstand in our hotel room. When she finished looking at it she exclaimed, “I wish there was a book like this for Ecuador!”. She is heading to Ecuador, for the first time, for a month or so on a study abroad in a couple months.

Nice work, Evangeline Neo!

Posted on April 30th, 2019 under Japan. Tags: book review, Japanese Manga, reviews, Tokyo. Comments Off on A Manga Lover’s Tokyo Travel Guide: My Favorite Things to See and Do In Japan

SFMOMA
Super Nova
Japanese Manga
Takashi Murakami

I didn’t have my wide-angle lens with me when we went to San Francisco this past Thanksgiving so the photo above doesn’t really show just how large this painting is. The actual painting, only part of it shown here, is over 34 feet in length (and almost 10 feet tall).

Posted on February 17th, 2013 under Japan. Tags: anime, Japanese Manga, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Nikon D600, san francisco. Comments Off on Takashi Murakami’s “Super Nova” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Naruto billboard in Takadanobaba – Tokyo, Japan

At the time today’s photo was taken (November 2009), Naruto was celebrating 10 years as a weekly serial in Shonen Jump. More than three years later and Naruto is still going strong. In fact, it was just over three years ago that Naruto, the anime series, began being published in English.

Personally, I could never get into Naruto. The only manga I enjoyed in Jump was Kochi Kame.

Posted on January 22nd, 2013 under Japan. Tags: Japanese Manga. Comments Off on Naruto —ナルト—

Few things in Japan can be had for under 100 yen. These candy sticks were one of them at just 10 or 15 yen each. The contents of the fancy packages are a flaky, flavored, hallow stick of sorts. Some of these are Chocolate Flavor (チョコレート). I think うまい棒 is the brand name (or maybe the name of the treat) which means something like “delicious stick.” Corn portage (コーンポタージュ) is the flavor on the far left.

Posted on December 4th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: food, Japanese Manga. Comments Off on Japanese Candy

While walking through Inokashira Park (井の頭公園) last Saturday we stumbled upon Rikimaru Toho (東方力丸), who I recognized from a piece I saw about him on TV. I asked him if he was the guy I saw on TV, and he said he was. We spoke only in Japanese, and he said he only does his manga readings in Japanese (while offering to do one for us). As Ryan contemplated which manga he would like Mr. Toho to read to us, he did one of his dramatic readings for another couple.

Above is his collection of very faded manga which customers can choose from. If you’d like to experience 東方力丸 in person I understand he can usually be found in Inokashira Park on the weekends during the day or at Shimokitazawa Station on weekend nights. He looks like he could be homeless, and I hear he started in this line of work by selling used manga that others had thrown away, but who knows if these things are true? I will chat with him in more depth if I ever see him again.

Even if you don’t understand Japanese, this guy is entertaining. I only took one video (below), and it isn’t great, but you can get a bit of an idea of his different voices and sound effects he uses to bring the manga to life.

Posted on May 13th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: inokashira, Japanese Manga, people, video. Comments Off on Manga reading dude in Inokashira Park