Review: Films Set In Japan – Tokyo Raiders (2000)

Posted on March 20, 2013 by tokyofox

If you were to ask me who my favourite Chinese actor is then I’d probably have to say Tony Leung. Don’t read too much into that though as its only because he has appeared in nearly all of the (very small amount of) Chinese films I’ve seen such as ‘Chungking Express‘ (1994) and ‘Infernal Affairs‘ (2002) as well as this film which is famed for being the last film ever released on LaserDisc in Japan.

Anyway, its time to take a little detour from the usual western productions ‘set’ in Japan which are predominantly covered in this category. Running out of films to review? Nope, just padding the series out a bit!! The film starts, as it continues throughout, with some fun, fast paced action in Shinjuku outside the Tokyo Milano building where a fairly ridiculous action scene with Leung using his umbrella to fight off a gang uses up nearly nine minutes.

The film then flicks to Las Vegas where Macy (Kelly Chen) is jilted at the altar on her wedding day by her fiancé Ken and so she journeys to Hong Kong to find him. However, she only meets interior designer Yung (Ekin Cheng) who decorated their apartment (and who also happens to be pretty good at kung fu too!) and is wanting his payment. Together they head to Tokyo to track down the guy but they aren’t the only ones!

They soon discover that Ken had many underworld connections and that some very bad men are after him and they want to use her in order to help find him. For some reason, private investigator Lin (Leung) and a bevy of Asian beauties are on hand to help them as everything converges in Tokyo (and Yokohama) amid endless contrived fight scenes with acrobatics.

The slow motion and rotating camera work is all very much in the mould of your typical John Woo movie and I can’t say that these editing techniques are really my thing. This is all accompanied by some frenzied Spanish sounding latino music which I also wasn’t such a fan of as I didn’t feel it really suited the action on screen.

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This film features Hiroshi Abe who is a rarity for me, a Japanese actor that I actually know and recognise having seen him star ‘Thermae Romane‘; a Japanese time travelling film which I saw on a plane sometime last year. All I can say is that his acting has sure got better over the last decade! In this film his gang boss character Takeshi Ito tries to be intimidating but ends up coming over as a nervous, foolish person with a bad cold! He wasn’t the only one I didn’t take to as I felt the main man himself Tony Leung (my favourite Chinese actor remember!) came up short and was maybe not as smooth and charismatic as one would hope for such a role.

A sequel called ‘Seoul Raiders‘ followed five years later which could have paved the way for a ‘…Raiders‘ movie to be made in a load of other Asian (or even world) cities but thankfully that never happened. For the 99p I paid for it I think I got value for money!

Tokyo Fox Rating 5/10

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Tokyo Daytripper: Jougan-ji a.k.a. The ‘Lost In Translation’ Temple

Posted on March 16, 2013 by tokyofox

When I first compiled the filming locations for ‘Lost In Translation‘ (2003) four years ago (and subsequently updated them in 2011) there was already much written about the Park Hyatt Hotel, Shibuya crossing and the karaoke room which Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johanson) sang in. However, some of the other locations were pretty limited in detail such as the shabu shabu and sushi restaurants as well as the strip club scene place, the nightclub and the temple where Charlotte is seen walking around in the rain.

Jougan-ji is that very temple but as its not famous there’s still very little about it on the internet. It is actually quite a difficult place to find as its located on a highway (route 317)  just inside Nakano-ku bordering Shinjuku-ku. The temple gets a massive 38 seconds of screen time!

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The two screenshot match-ups above were taken four years apart and whilst my jacket is still the same old one there is a bit more hair on top now! As for the two match-ups below they were taken at the main hall which I’m sure you can enter but I tend not to go in such places as I don’t like to interfere with religion in any way!

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So thats the movie locations out of the way and now for the rest of the temple which is quite an interesting little place. The actual address is Honcho 2-26, Nakano-ku and the closest station is Nakano-Sakaue on the Marunouchi and Oedo lines. It’s a seven minute walk from there and once you pass a fairly big 100 yen shop you’re nearly there. It’s on the right hand-side if you’re coming from that station. The photos below show what its like from the outside coming from the other side.

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Once you’ve gone through the white arch there’s a big open area for parking and all around, the place is dotted with little statues and temple buildings. You can get a free pamphlet about the beginnings of Jougan-ji at the main temple and it even includes a whole page in perfect English featuring an interesting story from over 600 years ago.

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A cemetry can be found behind the view below which we first see in ‘Lost In Translation‘ after 11:58 minutes. Overall, its a nice place but not quite as tranquil and spiritual as in the film where the moment was further aided by the ‘Air‘ soundtrack.

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You can see the complete ‘Lost In Translation’ filming locations here.

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Tokyo Daytripper: Tama Dobutsukoen Zoo

Posted on March 13, 2013 by tokyofox

Having been on my list of places to visit for about seven years I finally made it to Tama Dobutsukoen zoo last Sunday. I have to admit that I did make it to the entrance gates back in 2010 when my mate Hugo was in town but little did we know that the place was closed on Wednesdays! This time it was an incredible 25 degrees celsius in the early afternoon and the journey there on the Keio line was pretty amazing in that on looking out the window around the Fuchu area the Tokyo skyline was a yellowy-brown colour due to a freak sandstorm.

As its on the outskirts of Tokyo there is far more space at this zoo than the one in Ueno Park and the place is perhaps most famous for its lion bus ride which takes tourists into the heart of the lion garden where they roam freely. For 350 yen extra (on top of the 600 yen admission fee) its a very short ride lasting under ten minutes but with Kenya a long way away this is about as close to going ‘on safari’ as most visitors will ever get! It was pretty cool to see them up close particularly one lion which was licking the side of the bus which I assume was because they put some kind of meat on the sides of the bus.

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After that the list of animals we saw was pretty impressive and it was good to see most of them without too much fencing in the way. Usually they were on a kind of island with some moat surrounding them. African elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, chimpanzees, zebras, asian elephants, oranguatans, snow leaopards, buffalos and many many more were seen in the zoo which is divided into three zones; African, Australian and Asian.

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I may have spent a fair bit of my time in Australia over the years but I was still keen to see its two most iconic animals. The koalas are, according to news reports, a bit of a luxury at Tama Zoo as their dietary needs cost way more than all the other animals combined. However, with the Japanese loving all things cute and as koalas definitely fall into that category I guess the owners think it is money well spent. I’m not too sure though as they are in an inside area and are inevitably asleep most of the day anyway! Far more fun was seeing the kangaroos bouncing around the steps in their pen.

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Ever since ‘Kung Fu Panda‘ (2008) came out in cinemas a few years ago I have had a fondness for the Red Panda (I don’t like the name lesser panda) as I particularly liked the Master Shifu character. This was one of the last animals we saw as time was running against us and with it gone 4pm some of them were starting to disappear from show.

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Overall, the zoo is a huge place and one has to do a lot of walking if he or she is to get round most of the place but it’s rewarding enough and is probably worth the extra effort which it takes to get there compared to Ueno Zoo.

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Sandstorm In Tokyo And A Lot Of Kafunsho (Pollen)

Posted on March 10, 2013 by tokyofox

Almost two years to the day of the big earthquake there was a sandstorm in Tokyo earlier this afternoon which I witnessed first hand from the inside of the Keio line train around the Fuchu area of west Tokyo. With temperatures at a soaring 25 degrees celsius I was on my way to Tama Zoo and checking Facebook on my phone when friends pictures started to emerge online showing the skyline. I didn’t think too much until moments later I began to notice that the outside view was not that of its usual colours. I initially thought, in my not-looking-too-closely-state, that it was just a huge sandy coloured building when it suddenly dawned on me that we were experiencing a sandstorm which left me a bit shocked as I have never seen such a thing first hand. I felt like I was in a movie scene for I did not know what was going to happen next. This was certainly no Universal Studios type-tour and it reminded me of when young Anakin Skywalker took Padmé , Jar Jar Binks and Qui-Gon Jinn back to his home (below) in ‘Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace‘ (1999) to seek refuge from the oncoming sandstorm.

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Whilst it may be a common sight on Tatooine a yellow-brown sky blurring visibility is not something you expect to see in a concrete jungle like Tokyo with no desert anywhere near. Thankfully by the time I reached my intended destination it had all erm pretty much blown over and normal life quickly resumed. Naturally the government denied that it was a sandstorm and maybe it technically wasn’t but as far as most locals are concerned it was. As I didn’t capture the moment on film myself I have nicked the photo above from my friend Misaki!

In other such wind-related news the pollen levels have been so bad this year that they actually went off the scale this weekend and were as high as all of last year which really is incredible. Although I suffered with hayfever as a child I had been fine for many years before suffering a little last year but this year has been horrible with constant sneezing and the frustration that comes with it as it seems like its never going to end.

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Fate Of Ahsoka

Posted on March 5, 2013 by tokyofox

The fifth (and final?) season of ‘Star Wars The Clone Wars‘ came to a dramatic and deeply moving conclusion last weekend when, after years and years of speculation, the fate of heroine Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) was finally known.

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Episode 20’s ‘The Wrong Jedi‘ brought about the end of a quadrilogy arc of episodes which saw Ahsoka framed for a list of murders and crimes she didn’t commit. To cut a long story short, she was Continue reading →

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Moving Out 2013

Posted on March 2, 2013 by tokyofox

After nearly 4.5 years living in north Tokyo the opportunity has come up to move onwards and indeed outwards. When I was pretty much forced to move out of my shared place in Ikebukuro in late 2008 I decided to re-locate to a spacious place in Kami Itabashi on the Tobu Tojo line and as much as I have loved living here I have decided to move a little closer to my workplaces which ironically is exactly why I moved here in the first place. Back then I was working at three schools very close to home and also had a girlfriend living close to hand but all of those things came to an end in the first half of my Kami Itabashi era.

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Above are a couple of shots taken when I first moved in, and with the place having an unbelievable amount of storage space its fair to say I have accumulated quite a lot of stuff over the years which is in stark contrast to when I came back to Japan many years ago with just a little rucksack and my faithful old backpack!

What I am looking forward to is having a bigger kitchen, a separate toilet and bathroom and some sort of balcony. A sofa to sit on and a bigger TV wouldn’t go amiss either! I’m also excited about having a new area to explore and being a little bit more in the heart of the city should bring me closer to modern architecture and international restaurants which are ongoing Facebook albums of mine and the latter in particular occasionally appears on this site too when I’m able to come up with some tenuous link to the country in question. Cycling to and from work and more frequent day trips (to be featured in the ‘Tokyo Daytripper’ series on here) are other benefits of moving out but of course it all depends on exactly where my new home will be located.

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Dining Out: IKEA (Sweden)

Posted on February 27, 2013 by tokyofox

No sooner had I dined out at this Swedish retail giant and it was in the news headlines for the very thing that I ate in its restaurant. It was reported in the British media that traces of horse meat had been found in Ikea meatballs adding further fuel to the horse-meat scandal which has been dominating the news over the last few weeks. The concerned production batch has since been withdrawn from the UK stores and as far as I know I don’t think that Japan has been affected not that they would kick up such a fuss anyway. Given that horse-meat is often eaten in Japan the locals view would probably be positive as its a more expensive meat than the usual classics like beef or pork. For the record, Ikea say that the meatballs contain no additives, and are made using a mixture of ground beef and pork from Australia.

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Sweden is a country I have an affection for having visited the country three times (see the four pictures below) between 2000 and 2005. Those trips have predominantly been to just Gothenburg which is where my mate Hugo is based but it was only on my last trip in the Winter of early 2005 that I went to IKEA for the first and only time. That was until last Sunday when my girlfriend and I went to Minami Funabashi in Chiba to buy some new furniture and whilst that was the main reason for the visit it’s not what I’m gonna focus on here in a blog series called ‘Dining Out!’

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I was actually looking most forward to sampling a few cheap Swedish dishes once I’d purchased some shelving. The restaurant on the stores 2nd floor may come across as a bit like a school canteen but the service is rapid and I was content enough as I requested the classic Swedish meatball dish (¥499) served with potatoes and lingonberry jam. We also shared some marinated salmon (¥399) which is advertised as Swedish food despite it being Norwegian salmon! With lemon, dill and mustard sauce added it really was an awesome taste.

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I added a cinnamon bun (¥80) which is the most popular pastry in Sweden with the dough being made from whole wheat flour. That wasn’t that though as I also had an elderflower cupcake (¥99) which was absolutely lovely with the cream cheese icing being particularly agreeable to my tastes.

It’s not every day you go to Ikea so with that in mind I thought, especially given the low prices, that I had better sample another Swedish dish. This time it was cheese baked saithe which is some kind of grilled white fish with cheddar cheese herb breadcrumbs served with what their website describes as “a sophisticated sauce made from Swedish artichoke”. Mashed potato topped it all off and this dish from the northeastern part of Sweden was delicious. It didn’t end there though as I also added a slice of almond cake chocolate & butterscotch (¥299) to my tray whilst I was lining up to get the white fish. This smooth, creamy milk chocolate and crispy butterscotch was smothered with butter cream and decorated with chocolate-coated marshmallow pieces which appealed to my sweet tooth very much.

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Two and a half dinners plus three cakes and a can of beer meant I left in good spirits and totally forgot about the actual shopping part which did make me a little tired.

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Tokyo Daytripper: Top 10 Saitama Sights

Posted on February 24, 2013 by tokyofox

Some Tokyo-ites like to refer to this prefecture as dasaitama (“uncool-tama”) and they’re probably right….to an extent, but thats certainly not to say that it doesn’t have its share of sights which can make for a pleasant day trip from Tokyo. As transport links to Tokyo are good the eastern side of Saitama in particular is basically just an extension of the capital cities grey looking residential area whilst the western side is a bit more countryside. Here then, in no particular order, are my top ten things to do in Saitama featuring a mix of famous sights and some hidden gems too.

1. Yoshimi Hyaku-ana caves – These little known caves (below) are about 25 minutes walk from Higashi Matsuyama station on Tobu Tojo line. The tunnels were used as storage for weapons in WWII and made bigger to protect the Japanese from the Allied bombing raids and were allegedly enlarged in 1945 through the efforts of 3,500 Korean forced labourers. More details here.

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2. Shinrin Koen Park – This vast park (below) is about an hour from Ikebukuro on the Tobu Tojo line (plus a short bus ride) and includes the likes of a wading pool, an adventure course, streams, lakes, bridges, restaurants, a dog run, cycle tracks, lookout points, flowering trees, swamp land, gardens as well as sculpture and memorial squares. More details here.

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3. Tobu Dobutsukoen – Not just a zoo but also a theme park (below) and a huge swimming pool area. Great fun for people of all ages. More details here.

4. Saitama Stadium 2002 – Four World Cup games were played here in 2002; the tournament for which it was purposely built. With its soaring triangular sails its much more aesthetically pleasing than your average identikit English stadium. You can even see Mount Fuji at sunset in the distance of the stadium corner and this state of the art stadium (above) even includes seats with armrests. The 63,700 capacity stadium is the home stadium of J-League team Urawa Reds. More details here.

5. Tokorozawa – Along the Seibu Ikebukuro line this place doesn’t have tourist attractions as such but it is home to a couple of filming locations from ‘The Ju-on – The Grudge‘. The house (below) can be found here as can the steps which featured in the sequels closing scene. More details here.

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6. Omiya Bonsai Village – The museum (below) opened in 2010 and has displays of bonsai pots, suiseki (beautifully shaped) stones, pictures, historical bonsai materials and of course the bonsai trees themselves. There are actually quite a few bonsai nurseries in Omiya making up what is known as Omiya Bonsai Village. It’s a five minute walk from the east exit of Toro Station on the JR Utsunomiya line. More details here.

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7. Kawagoe – The main attraction here is the old Kurazukuri street (a street lined with traditional warehouses keeping in with the Edo period look of the place) as well as the bell tower. This traditional Edo-style town (below) is only 40 minutes from Ikebukuro and also has a few other attractions as well as some local food specialities. Arguably, Saitama’s top daytripper destination. More details here.

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8. Chichibu – A really great place to go, particularly during Spring and Autumn. “Koyo” (Autumn foliage) season sees the coloured leaves (below) at their brightest best. The shibasakura (pink moss) fields of Hitsujiyama Park are also a spectacularly beautiful sight in Spring. More details here.

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9. Railway Museum – This huge place (below) is a historical and education museum with many knobs and buttons to play with in the learning hall. There’s a railway model diaroma (showing how everything works and how so many trains operate at the same time inter-connecting with each other), an operation simulator, a mini-shuttle train (connecting the museum with the park-zone), a collection of railway memorabilia including station signs, uniforms and photographs, and a number of historic carriages and steam engines. More details here.

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10. Nagatoro – White-water rafting up in Nagatoro on the Arakawa River (below) in Chichibu-tama National Park is a good activity for anyone seeking a bit of an adrenaline rush. More details here.

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Bonus: Nack5 Stadium – Another football one. This is a proper traditional rectangular stadium and it is home to Omiya Ardija. More details here.

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Click here to see the Top 10 Kanagawa Sights

Click here to see the Top 10 Chiba Sights 

Click here to see the Top 10 day trips beyond Kanagawa, Saitama & Chiba

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Review: Films Set In Japan – The Hunted (1995)

Posted on February 21, 2013 by tokyofox

Christopher Lambert’s character Paul Racine is a New Yorker who gets lucky with a mysterious oriental lady whilst on a business trip to Nagoya. After their night of passion he basically finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time having returned to her apartment just in time to see her decapitated for a transgression by the ninja assassin Kinjo whose face must never be seen by anyone.

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Incredibly Racine somehow survives the Continue reading →

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Cycling To Tsukuda And Back (Almost!)

Posted on February 18, 2013 by tokyofox

On a bitterly cold and extremely windy February morning it would have been so easy for me to just take the Yurakucho line directly all the way to Tsukishima station but having the bicycle gives me the freedom to roam a city which is frustratingly difficult to navigate on foot at times. As it was, I would ultimately end up having far more freedom than I wanted but more on that later! My fingers and toes were very cold as I cycled the 75 minute trail from my apartment down through Tokyo and across the Sumidagawa river to the Tsukishima area which I was only in a few months ago when I did my gourmet snack trail tour with Asif.

After crossing the Sumida River via the Tsukuda Ohashi Bridge it’s the striking red Tsukuda Bashi Bridge which is the first point of note as you arrive in the quiet old town of Tsukuda. A student told me the following day that this artificial island is reclaimed land and used to be a small fisherman’s village more than 300 years ago when 33 fishermen of Osaka moved to Edo (the former name of Tokyo) to introduce the latest fishing methods at a time when Osaka was more developed than Edo. Tsukuda got its name from the village where those fishermen were from.

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Sumiyoshi jinja was a nice little shrine just round the corner from the red bridge made that little bit better by the fact that it has a couple of foxes guarding it.

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The lighthouse on the riverfront sure was a windy place when I was there. It is not the original one but a replica of which its prime use these days is as a toilet!

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Back by the canal is the Tsukuda Namiyoke Shrine (above) which was built to pray for the safety of the fisherman. The stones around the tree supposedly have some significant meaning though I’m not sure what exactly!

About the only hive of activity in this sleepy area was a steady stream of customers visiting one of the traditional tsukudani (sea food boiled in soy sauce) shops. Tenyasu (below) has been open since 170 years ago and you can buy the stuff by measure but as it was expensive and I didn’t think it could be used so easily I declined the invitation.

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Like Shibamata (where I went a few weeks prior to this) there’s not really that much to do in Tsukuda, far less in fact, but if you’re in the vicinity then its a place with a nice, quite atmosphere to have a quick walk (or cycle) around.

I then cycled on to Higashi Ginza for lunch at a Dominican restaurant by the name of ‘The Santo Domingo’ where I had a lunch set for 1000 yen. Almost as soon as I left I got a puncture which to be fair I’m amazed has never happened on any of my other bike rides into deepest Tokyo. However, it wasn’t the first time this year as it happened on a nightmare day in Nicaragua back in early January.

There wasn’t much choice but for me to push the bike home and stop at a bicycle repair shop along the way somewhere. Google Maps told me it was a 3.5 hour walk home which I actually thought not too bad given how far I was from my place. Incredibly I didn’t come across a single one for over two hours and naturally it was when I took a slight mis-turn that I found one in Waseda where a very nice Japanese guy fixed it. He pulled a drawing pin out straight away which I hadn’t noticed! Not sure if I ran over it or whether some d*ckhead maybe put it in there as my bicycle was parked somewhere it shouldn’t have been whilst I was having lunch.

Posted in Cycling, Japan Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments