Issue #322: Dotonbori Wonderland
The newsletter was more or less on time last week, so you are overdue for a late one. I just couldn’t write during that last leg of the trip, too determined to wring every bit of fun out of my remaining days in Japan. Plus, my setup for writing the newsletter to the level I wanted wasn’t ideal. At least you get a pretty short turnaround from this one to the next.
I should have more writing about my trip coming up. There is also some pretty big news for the letter coming next week. Watch this space.
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Japan Travel Diary & Guide: Osaka and Fukuoka (and a little Tokyo)
The trip is over! This final leg included Osaka, Fukuoka, and a little bit of Tokyo. Reflecting on the week I already covered, I realized there was something very important I forgot to mention. Japanese Doritos are awesome.
These tacos, with a lime prominently featured in the art, were awesome. They tasted miraculously similar to a Taco Bell hard shell taco but with a strong hit of lime. I also washed them down with the “Spring Edition” Red Bull, a Japan exclusive. It is grapefruit flavor, so good.
In Osaka, we stayed in Dotonbori, a busy area with a wide range of attractions and street food. We finally made our way to a Don Quijote on this leg of the trip. There are two in Dotonbori, but the riverside one has a ferris wheel that ran only the Wednesday we arrived. I didn’t see it in action any evening afterward.
Dotonbori is full of street performers and neon signs, including the iconic Glico man. It certainly has some elements of Time’s Square, which makes staying there a little funny. But there is so much to do and see, the aforementioned food, Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura are both nearby. While I am sure there would have been plenty to explore outside of walking distance, we had more than enough to fill our time in the immediate vicinity.
We ventured to Nara and Universal Studios Japan. Nara is definitely worth doing. Yes, there are deer everywhere. There’s also the Todai-ji Daibutsuden which is an attraction more than worth standing in line for. The huge Buddha statutes are truly impressive and the temple itself is beautiful.
My trip to Nara began what I think will be a long relationship with a Japanese packaged confectionary called Boost Bites.
They are a delicious caffeinated gummy that tastes more or less like a standard Red Bull. Really, really good.
Universal Japan, on the other hand, was a miss. The weather was terrible so that certainly had an impact. But the crowds were horrendous. The park was tough to navigate because of the number of people. Universal Japan also houses a Super Nintendo World section, the main appeal for our visit. The area, however, sucks. It is more densely crowded, maybe by 4x, than the rest of the park. I expected the opposite to be true because entry is timed, but I was naive. It is an absolute frenzy in there. The rides also suck. One is a just okay virtual reality Mario Kart ride that sounds cooler than it is. The other is a short train ride intended for children. I guess that’s really the headline of the entire area. It is a small, crowded playground very appealing to children but not really for the nostalgia addled adult. The look of the place is a little impressive, but the experience is standing in a Nintendo themed square with thousands of people with little purpose outside of gawking.
I would have been curious to go if I hadn’t, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You are probably better off doing just about anything else.
The poor weather did provide some decent photo opportunities in Dotonbori, though.
As busy as an area as it is, before 6am and after 11pm, it’s basically empty. The incessant instagram photographers and tiktok recorders are gone. It was great to get some tranquil seeming time in such a ridiculous physical space.
Even more surreal was our visit to Osaka Castle. By this point in the trip, the cherry blossoms were fully bloomed and the grounds of Osaka Castle are full of them. We went twice, once during the day and then again that night.
The evening visit to the castle was staggering. In the Nishinomaru Garden, the cherry blossoms are lit up for the season. There were tons of people having evening picnics and enjoying the singular view.
I would highly recommend seeking out illuminated cherry blossoms, wherever you are, if you are in Japan during the season. Osaka Castle in particular is so striking to me as part of a skyline of high rise buildings. There are people with offices that look out all day on the castle. I could probably stare at Osaka Castle, trying to reconcile it with its contemporary surroundings, for hours.
Eventually our indiscriminate tourism gave way to days structured by a music festival, the first volume of the NWN/Hospital Fest. The two labels curated individual days of black metal and noise musicians.
It was a good time. Though the venue was a little high brow for me, I saw some great sets and ran into friends both expected and unexpected. The shows strengthened my commitment to some forbidden musical pairings. The Bloody Vengeance song “Cidade de Morte” has a very similar guitar riff to Warzone’s “Wound Up.” Listen for yourself:
Specifically, listen at about 33 seconds in. That’s the riff that sounds unmistakably like the one from “Wound Up,” the notes reordered in spots:
I’ve been sitting on the Warzone/Bloody Vengeance theory for a while, but imagine my surprise when I heard what sounded like a sped up Absolution riff in the Sabbat song “Darkness and Evil”:
This one is immediate and to my ear sounds like a faster version of the riff from the beginning of “In The Meantime,” though maybe there’s a better NYHC corollary for “Darkness and Evil” out there:
Sabbat and Bloody Vengeance were two of my favorites from the weekend. And of course, Blasphemy was amazing. Caller of the Storms is a legitimate rockstar. Every time he would step to the edge of the stage for a solo, phones came out like he was Justin Timberlake.
The next day had some great sets too, the highlights from Linekraft and Masonna. Day 2, focused on noise acts, illustrated the multi-media leanings of these performers. Nearly everyone had song specific video accompaniments. Linekraft did something I’d never seen before, throwing out papers that appeared to be the song lyrics. First he tossed them out himself, then he had someone planted in the audience to start throwing a different bunch of pamphlets into the air a little bit later into the set.
Masonna was Masonna, a barrage of sound and movement just over 3 minutes. I would be doing a disservice to the set attempting to describe it.
I also got some pretty amusing reviews of a couple of bands from Day 2 from a friend of mine whose name I won’t include but was a newcomer to some of the bands. He hated Cult of Youth’s set and called them “a mix of Death in June and Against Me!” He was also critical of Genocide Organ, who I enjoyed watching but would have accepted an abbreviated set time, calling them “a TED talk with bad reception.” I might have to assemble all of his one-line reviews in a zine, they were pretty funny.
Traveling to Fukuoka from Osaka was a fun train ride. I like riding the Shinkansen. It’s exciting. At this time of year, you can take the worst pictures of cherry blossoms you’ve ever seen. But the impetus is the singular view of their distant color popping out of mountainside greenery.
I’m sure my description of Fukuoka won’t be fair or accurate, I was only there for one day, but it seems like a city of malls. There are three within the Hakata train station, Fukuoka’s main transit hub: AMU, Deitos, and Hankyu. A few minutes walk away, we went to another mall, Canal City, that was enormous with indoor and outdoor sections. This is a greater quality of Japan that I haven’t emphasized. Though Fukuoka’s Hakata Station was the most striking, Osaka’s Namba Station is also full of underground shopping and separate, distinctly owned malls. Tokyo Station also has its share of subsurface shopping with seemingly different corporate entities controlling various sections. Even smaller stations are full of stores. In Fukuoka, I would have much rather visited Tachibanayama Castle, but the malls were closer to the train station and hotel, not to mention the weather for our one day there was miserable.
We did get over to the first show on the Shitstorm/Suppression Asia tour, at a pretty badass spot called Public Space. It was tiny, with a small bar at the back and a enormously overpowered PA so the sound was great. Along with Shitstorm and Suppression playing amazing sets, I enjoyed Secret Temple and Hydrophobia. Hydrophobia, especially. The dudes all came out with Hydrophobia t-shirt and synchronized guitar moves.
After the show wrapped up, the drummer of Secret Temple started cooking food for everyone. Enomoto, a guy who plays guitar in the 90s hardcore band AI, was also there. I saw them play in Boston in 2017, which Enomoto insisted never happened. But I still have the flyer. Maybe he got scabbed for that trip. Either way, he was on cloud nine, seeming to thoroughly enjoy the sets and the third degree he got from me.
The last Shinkansen ride, from Fukuoka all the way back to Tokyo, did lose its luster after the sunset. Once you can’t see out the window very well, that gets rid of a lot of the fun of the ride. I did see my favorite train seats on this trip, though. They were a little different from the other Nozomi trains we had ridden.
I loved the blue upholstery. They were no more or less comfortable than the other seats, but Shinkansen seats in general are pretty comfortable. I’ll be trying to cop some of these for my house.
The end of the trip comes with more general advice for traveling in Japan:
You can’t use the iPhone Suica card for arcades outside of Tokyo
Last letter, I sang the praises of the Suica card, especially the convenience of the phone version. In Osaka and Fukuoka, however, I had far less opportunity to use my Suica. Convenience stores still accept it, but they also accept credit cards. Just about every arcade in Tokyo and about 80% of the vending machines I saw there accepted Suica. In Osaka, no arcades I visited had IC card readers on any of their machines (I went to four) and in Fukuoka it was the same deal, but I only went to one arcade there. Vending machine prospects are a lot better, but still pretty far off from Tokyo
Look for posted prices on vintage clothing
If you buy something, you are going to want to see a price posted somewhere. Otherwise, you might get charged something insane. I had this experience at a really nice vintage store in Osaka called Fugs. None of their band Ts had any marked price. I love the spot and as friendly and engaging as the guy was, as eager as he was to rap with me about subcultural t-shirts and tell me he loves Slapshot and Bold, he tried to charge me 2x for a t-shirt I wanted. It seemed overpriced so I walked away. Before leaving Osaka, I checked their social media and found their webstore. Every unpriced shirt folded into a pile has a price listed online.
Anyway, I came out ahead, secured the t-shirt for less than the webstore price. But I think what happened at Fugs could happen anywhere. A lot of small Japanese stores use thebase.in for ecommerce. If you go to Fugs and want to buy a t-shirt, be sure you have their webstore pulled up:https://fugs.thebase.in/ Otherwise, I would be wary of buying anything without a price tag, especially if it seems expensive.
Go to Hands and expect to be there a while
Hands is an all encompassing department store in Japan, present in just about every city I’ve visited and worth going to at least once. The most enduring purchases I’ve ever made in Japan, between both visits, have been from Hands. It is a must hit.
Following the pattern, some of my favorite places I visited in Osaka:
Revenge Records
Run by Jacky from Framtid, a familiar face (and fluent English speaker), I don’t think anyone subculturally inclined would miss this stop. I bought a Ghoul shirt here that had been sitting for months.
Punk and Destroy Records
Another easy and widely known recommendation, the guy here admired my vintage Bold shirt. Easy way to make Always - A Friend for Life.
Cafe and Bar Zone
Speaking of… across from Punk and Destroy is this:
Enough said.
Kitashinchi Sand
The best thing I ate all trip, this to-go only tonkatsu sandwich shop is worth every penny they charge for some of their higher end sandwiches. I ate at the location in Kitashinchi first and then later at a different one on Shinsaibashi (named, descriptively, Shinsaibashi Sand). I think they have one more in Tokyo, too, in Ginza. You must go here.
Tsurumiryokuchi Expo Park
This park was used for a World’s Fair Expo type event in 1990. Now, it is a huge cherry blossom filled park of unmaintained, but still in good shape, national pavilions showcasing different kinds of architecture. It also has a windmill. The cherry blossoms are plentiful here, but the tourists are non-existent. Easily the least crowded area we visited.
Mondial Kaffee 328
I didn’t have a single iced pour over in Osaka, but I did have a really good espresso tonic from here.
A bonus for Fukuoka:
The Gundam Base Fukuoka in Canal City
The guy at the counter was working on a Gunpla between transactions. So cool.
And Tokyo again:
Yabaton
Yabaton is a tonkatsu restaurant chain that I think has an anime associated with it. Their tonkatsu sauce is miso based, unique I’m told, and very delicious. We tried pork loin and pork fillet both served on hot plates, fajita style. I couldn’t pick a favorite, but both were awesome. They have a location in Tokyo Station, in the Gransta Yaesu section
Good Coffee Farms
I didn’t mention this place last week when I was talking about iced pour over, so I need to correct that mistake. Good Coffee Farms is better than any other coffee you’d get anywhere, but slightly worse than what I had from Kielo Coffee and Samoyed Coffee Freaks… but we are talking a truly minuscule margin of quality difference that likely comes down to my preferences. I don’t know if I emphasized this last time, but the making of the iced pour over at all three spots was uniform, with the incredible quirk of them taking a sip of what they just made you out of a different cup to make sure the taste is right.
I had great interactions with the baristas at all three places too. One coffee I ordered from Kielo Coffee got the barista so excited, he made sure to tell me the beans were “very special beans” and he called me a “floral coffee maniac.” At Samoyed Coffee Freaks, very similarly, the guy went over the “very complex” notes in the variety I ordered. Finally, the second time at Good Coffee Farms, we got served a small iced cup of their normal drip coffee to impress upon us that even their worst coffee was amazing. “Drip coffee is very low quality, right? But not at our shop,” he told me.
Without a doubt, this was my favorite vacation ever. Hopefully there will be more trips to Japan in my future and I’m sure I’ll have more to write about this particular trip in the coming weeks.
Weekly Reading List
Easily my favorite Snake Q&A so far, and that’s saying a lot, there’s a host of gems here both from interviewer Sami Reiss and interviewee, Zack Wuerthner. Wuerthner is a hardcore dude and his collection is, accordingly, of vintage hardcore t-shirts. Sami writes about the connection between the main topic of his newsletter, furniture, and the subject of discussion with Zack:
In fact, I try to keep hardcore (music) out of furniture, and kept it fairly out of the first era, collected in the book, about vintage clothing. I don’t doubt it comes across I like this stuff, but I don’t want it as a filter. There is no, say, flowchart from music of a certain sound to furniture design, not to a working person anyways. I also don’t think the aesthetic connections are at all explicit. Separation is good… these are different worlds.
Sami’s sentiment here is easy to relate to. My own newsletter takes the same approach of modest separation for the same reasons he articulates. Most of what I write about has nothing to do with hardcore music and no intrinsic link to it, even though a lot of what I do in my personal life does have to do with it.
As for Zack, he expresses the single most important economic idea when it comes to the vintage hardcore t-shirt “market”:
Youth of Today 4-sided Wishingwell shirt for $600, in 2014, from a guy who was selling off his collection to buy a Porsche. I had been searching high and low for this shirt for years, and at that point $600 was the most I had ever paid for a shirt. I didn't care about the price because it's the greatest garment ever woven into existence, and I finally found one that would fit me the way I like. I think it sells now for at least double what I paid, which is cheap, considering it should really be worth over $1,000,000. By that metric, I got a great deal.
No matter what you pay for one of these things, its “value” to an enthusiast in the most abstract sense is beyond any financial measure. It’s as Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) says in Scarlet Street (1945):
I wrote about Scarlet Street way back:
But that’s not the point. The point is, you should read the interview with Zack.
This is a good video.
This is a good song, and a single from a new tofubeats record that will be out in two weeks.
The release of a hardcore LP should always, in my opinion, be accompanied by some fanfare. It is a big deal. For many bands, it will be the highest fidelity and largest format of visual art created for display. In this case, this is significant because Tom Wiklund, scene stalwart and tattoo artist, drew the cover. It’s a killer, with the central portal one of his signature illustrations.
https://www.avclub.com/criterion-channel-is-becoming-more-like-a-television-ch-1851401140 — Probably the most exciting thing I came home to is the launch of the Criterion Channel 24/7 stream. Through the Criterion Channel app, front and center, they are running movies on this stream all day every day. What is the advantage of a global stream over selecting movies from the platform for yourself?
I think there are a few. For one, everybody who tunes in to the Criterion 24/7 stream is watching the same thing. Like broadcast TV, this facilitates discussions about programming and so on. Second, the frictionless elimination of choice from a highly curated service is a huge win. So far, I’ve watched three movies, two of which I hadn’t seen before and one I haven’t seen in four years. I’m not sure they would have been my first choices to run again, but I’m really glad I’ve now seen them.
The 24/7 stream is likely going to be straining the displays of my televisions for the weeks and months to come.
Until next time.