Ninja Train, originally uploaded by [douglas japonicus].

In case anyone still had any doubts about whether pirates or ninjas were better, the little town of Iga Ueno in Mie prefecture puts forward its argument - the Ninja Festa 2008. JapaniCan describes it thus -

Wearing loaned ninja clothes, you can have an experience of learning ninja skills at ninja schools.

And you even get free travel on the Iga Tetsudo (see picture) if you’re dressed up like a ninja. Sweet.

Beat that pirates.

The Ninja Festa 2008 started on April 1st and runs until May 6th. Break out dem shurikens.

You can also see a rather mad video by going to the Iga City website here.

(WARNING: contains mind melting images of dogs dressed as ninja.)

Remember Gunkanjima? The little rock in the ocean, off the coast of Nagasaki, that once saw duty as a coal mining town? No? Well, you can review the original post from way back when here, and perhaps you might want to take a look at the wikipedia entry here. It’s a beautiful, haunting place, a testament to how we interact with our environment and what happens when we just stop.

It would look really, really good filled with zombies.

Something more grounded in reality, and a lot more moving than that suggestion can be found below - a video taken when someone who grew up on the island in its heyday goes back to see the ruins. Stunning, moving and fascinating.

via videosift.com

A team of audacious thieves, apparently disguised as a cleaning crew, made off with one of Tokyo’s most famous landmarks in the early hours of Saturday. The statue of “loyal dog Hachiko,” a popular rendezvous spot on the north side of JR Shibuya Station since 1934, was reported missing shortly after dawn, when a newspaper delivery truck driver spotted the bare pedestal and notified policemen at the nearby “koban.”

Full article here : http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070401×1.html

Other juicy parts of the article (for those who don’t like clicking):

A network technician described what clearly appears to be a well planned caper. “Five men in khaki work duds, wearing hats, safety glasses and gauze masks, moved in about 1:43 a.m., after the trains had stopped running,” said the man, who declined to give his name.

“They set up traffic cones and ‘Men Working’ signs, and then raised several blue vinyl work sheets around the statue. It took them about 10 minutes to get it off the pedestal.

“They put it on a hand truck and threw a drop cloth over it. On the video you can see them wheeling it toward the street before they disappear from view.”

Hachiko’s a major meeting place for the young and hip in Tokyo and now the dog is gone  - where are the people going to meet? I suppose you could meet at the place Hachiko used to be.  The full story of why Hachiko is such an important icon to Tokyo can be found in the original Newspaperlink above.

Anyone who’s known me for a while will probably know about my rather peculiar fascination with derelict buildings.

They might be disturbed to know that I recently found out about a whole island that’s been left to rot since 1974. Especially if I add in the grisly details of feeling my pulse quicken when I saw images like this from Saiga Yuji-

- and if I’m being totally honest, I found this totally breathtaking. More so than if Koda Kumi had come in to my apartment naked. Look closely at the picture, take in the number of empty rooms there. Rooms where things once took place, where people watched television, got drunk, read books, ate dinner, made love, conceived children, died, got sick, woke up, got dressed. All the things you or I do everyday, things that leave faint echos in the lifeless buildings around us.

The tale of Gunkanjima is not as apocalyptic as you might assume given its stricken wasteland appearance.

The actual name of the island is Hashima - gunkan is Japanese for battleship and is a moniker given the island by locals inspired by the way the island looks from a distance. Hashima is about 15 kilometres west of Nagasaki, in the south-west of Japan, and once upon a time it was a bustling mining town, tapping the coal resources under the seabed.

According to Wikipedia, it also had the dubious honour of being the most densely populated place in the world at one stage -

In 1959, its population density was 835 people per hectare for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare for the residential district, supposedly the highest population density ever recorded worldwide.

All these people lived, grew up, worked and died on the island, and they lacked few facilities - you can see this just by looking at this map at makingplaces.com, which lists the various buildings that could be found on Hashima in its heyday. There are schools, a police station, a hospital and even a cinema.

And now? It’s probably a safe bet that all those things are still there, as evidenced by Saiga Yuji’s beautiful photography; still there, but in decline. Something worth seeing - the decaying evidence of lives lived, crumbling in to dust.

I so want to go to Gunkanjima. Sadly, entry to the island is currently prohibited. Anyone able to pull any strings for me?

More info at Wikipedia.
Saiga Yuji’s site - top page
Saiga Yuji’s photos of Gunkanjima then (1974)
Saiga Yuji’s photos of Gunkanjima now

and more pictures and history at making places.

(Oh, relax, mother. I’m merely using the literal translation of my latest holiday destination to formulate a witty post title.)

Takayama - 高山　- literally means high mountain, and is nestled away in Gifu prefecture. Quite high up. We drove there, and had to pass through a worrying amount of tunnels, carved through hillsides, which seemed way too old to be left alone. (Indeed, driving back, we had to take a major diversion as the recent rain had led to a mudslide right in front of a tunnel. Phew.)

Takayama is one of Japan’s “little Kyotos.” This means that it’s oldy worldy, and erm, a bit like Kyoto. A lot of the town has been preserved, and although a great number of people complain across the internet that these are nothing more than tourist traps, souvenir shops, and overpriced restaurants, I invite them to explain how on earth I saw families sitting in these old houses, watching the TV, with a couple of bikes parked in the genkan. Oh. Of course. I wandered away from the tourist areas. Mind you, it is a bit like much of The Cotswolds in feel, so maybe you should pay less attention to the buildings and more attention to the best part of Takayama - the people.

We happened upon a bon odori festival, a dancing festival, on one street. Most other festivals I’ve been to in Japan have meant that every shop in the street stays open, hoping to draw a crowd. Takayama was having none of that: most of the shops on the street where the dancing was taking place closed, so the owners could either join in, or watch. The taiko drummer group that concluded the show were so into their act, it was hard not to enjoy it. On the way back to the hotel after the festival, it started to bucket it down, and an old woman offered us her umbrella. She was walking with a relative who also had an umbrella and so had to come to the conclusion that we might need her umbrella more than she did. Tops.

My faith in humanity is almost restored.

Link to YouTube Video of Bon Odori Festival (lots of people dancing.)
Link to YouTube Video of Taiko drumming
Link to Flickr Gallery

I saw The Last Samurai at a cinema in Hamamatsu, and enjoyed most of it - the parts where Tom Cruise wasn’t doing his snarl instead of act routine. Actually, I’d be being more honest if I said I enjoyed the parts where Tom Cruise wasn’t doing much.
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