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.

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TF Film Review: Zero Dark Thirty (2013)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by tokyofox

This is the story of the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden and is director Kathryn Bigelow’s first movie since ‘The Hurt Locker‘ (2008) which was critically acclaimed. I can’t say that I ever really went along with the hype of that film but I guess its success made it much easier for the ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ story to be told.

It is not your typical Hollywood movie and doesn’t really have a plot as such but is more about tracking and killing Osama Bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda. The protagonist is CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) who is initially quite shocked at the tactics used by CIA interrogator Dan (Jason Clarke). He humiliates, beats and water boards one suspect in a fairly heavy first third of the movie yet despite this I still feel his character comes across as being more charismatic than Maya. Not such a bad thing though in my opinion and it is testament to Chastain’s acting that she is able to deliver a subdued and restrained performance. There is no attempt to draw the viewer in with any human sentiment by way of character development scenes or the often-used flashbacks which are paramount to the success of most films. I didn’t really care for that though as the story was gripping enough without needing such stuff to help move the story along.

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I went into this film with almost no knowledge of the subject matter other than that it was more about finding the worlds most dangerous man than the events of 9/11. As someone who has been fairly ignorant of such news I was armed with less information and facts than most viewers and therefore had no expectations going in to the cinema. I’m sure the real events were a bit different but as an entertaining piece of documentary-style film (without harder hitting questions of whether it was all worth it) I was more than happy with how it all came together on screen.

Even though 157 minutes is too long for a movie where we all know the outcome it’s still a very tense and breathtaking finale as you don’t really know how its gonna be portrayed. The raid on Bin Laden’s hideout (filmed on a specially constructed set in the deserts of Jordan) had me literally on the edge of my seat. The scenes of the Navy SEALs flying in to siege the place are compelling and with it shot to replicate the zero dark thirty (military code for the time 00:30) raid it brings another sense of meaning to the word dark in a film with very dark themes. Worth seeing in the total darkness of a cinema for that reason.

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Tokyo Fox Rating 8/10

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Dining Out: Meguro Tavern (British)

Posted on February 13, 2013 by tokyofox

“Where are you gonna go for British food then?” is probably the most common question I’ve been asked since I started regularly dining out at international restaurants in Tokyo. Whilst most of the many British bars in and around Tokyo serve fish and chips they don’t do too many other actual British dishes.

One such place that does though is the Meguro Tavern (below) which is just a few minutes walk from JR Meguro station. This pub has been in Tokyo since 1998 and as far as I know is the only place to offer a traditional Sunday roast including roast beef (Aus), roast lamb (NZ) and roast pork (Canada/Hokkaido), with all the trimmings (roast potatoes, carrots, peas, sprouts, sweetcorn, gravy, mint sauce etc) including Yorkshire Puddings (below).

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In the food obsessed culture of Japan it can be quite frustrating to hear constant negative comments about British food which is fair enough if they’ve been to Britain and sampled a  few dishes. However, most haven’t and are basing their assumptions on one meal (fish & chips) which is of course a greasy one and that, along with other British dishes, is a very different kind of dish to the rice and noodle staples served up here in the East.

The Meguro Tavern serve all manner of proper British dishes across the week but we were there for the roast (starting from 12:30pm) which is a meal I haven’t had since I was back in my motherland in January 2012. In fact it was actually a bit weird to have a roast dinner cooked by someone other than my mum.

As it is a help yourself buffet style service, I piled my plate up with all the delicious looking food without much thought for the ensuing pictures I would be taking of it which is why they ones below don’t look too arty. The food was absolutely fantastic and I went back for seconds and even a third round as it is not everyday that I get to sample a taste of home. My girlfriends parents Riuko and Mikio have been overly kind to me and very welcoming so I decided to treat them and both were very impressed, way more than they thought they would be beforehand.

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It costs 1950 yen for what is called ‘The Carvery’ and you can have as much as you like as long as you are still drinking. The drinks may be slightly on the expensive side at around 1000 yen per pint (£7) but all-in-all just under 4000 yen for a couple of lunchtime pints and the only roast dinner in Tokyo isn’t too bad. It certainly whetted my appetite for sampling a few more of their other meals and I sure do intend to make my return soon.

* The Meguro Tavern is at 2F, Sunwood Meguro Bldg., 1-3-28, Shimomeguro, Meguro Ku, Tokyo

UPDATE: All-you-can-eat is no more! Since resuming on 4th October 2015, ‘The Carvery’ now costs 3000 yen and includes a drink. The meat is served up by the chef but you help yourself to the veggies so best to pile them up. If you do want more meat though then you have to pay another 1000 yen for a second round. 

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Tokyo Daytripper: Tora-san Meets Me In Shibamata!

Posted on February 10, 2013 by tokyofox

I’d never heard of this place until I saw it mentioned in one of my film travel books a couple of years back. Little did I know that it was just down the road from Kanamachi on the Tokyo/Chiba border where I worked on Saturdays when I first came to Japan many many years ago. After a trip down memory lane to our old neighbourhood, fellow blogger Gideon (of Gideon Davidson Photography fame) and I decided to finish the day in Shibamata which is less than 20 minutes walk from Kanamachi station. Of course it has its own station but I didn’t want to transfer to the Keisei-kanamachi line just to go one stop whilst paying another 130 yen to do so!

If you think the 007 series of films is impressive by number then thats nothing compared to the ‘Otoko Wa Tsurai Yo‘ (It’s tough being a man) series which consists of 48 films  made between 1969 and 1995. Shibamata is the home to the main protagonist Tora-san and his family and friends which it is why its included in my book. Now I’m no expert on these movies but Tora-san is seemingly an optimistic guy who is unlucky in love as he travels back and forth between his beloved hometown and some remote place where he plans to peddle his wares to the locals. He generally meets a woman there who then by miraculous chance goes to Shibamata and bumps into the clumsily charming Tora-san. Of course its never a straight-forward romance though and chaos and hilarity often ensue with the main man invariably ending up heartbroken and walking off to his next destination.

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There’s a statue of Tora-san outside the station and just round the corner and across a road is the main shopping street lined with traditional Japanese souvenir, sweet and snack shops which all seem to have some kind of Tora-san merchandise or displays. There aren’t too many places left in and around Tokyo where you can escape the hustle and bustle of modern city life but this place, along with Kawagoe, is one such place to sample the more traditional side of Edo period Japan.

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It’s quite a short street and at the end you can see the Taishakuten temple quarters which looked quite nice covered in snow (but would have been even better a few days before) but because of that and the fact that it was late afternoon it was absolutely freezing walking around the buddhist temple gardens boardwalk which has to be done without shoes. Slippers are so often provided in Japan for so many different inside places and boy could we have done with them here!

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Behind the temple is the Tora-san museum which sadly we didn’t have time for but hopefully, like Tora-san himself, I will return to Shibamata to pay the place a visit.

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Italy Filming Locations: Angels & Demons (2009)

Posted on February 7, 2013 by tokyofox

It’s fair to say I’ve been to quite a few filming locations over the last five years and as rewarding as they have all been it aint half nice to recognise places you’ve been to when watching an unseen movie. I saw ‘Angels & Demons‘ (2009) recently and was happy to see the story centred around places I’ve already visited. To be fair though, they are pretty famous sights in southern Italy but they certainly helped me get through the film. I was perhaps a little harsh in my review of ‘The Da Vinci Code‘ back in 2006 which in desperate search of a pun I called “a code of cr*p“. Much like that film I was still able to enjoy the fast paced intensity and drama of the action scenes and chases in ‘Angels & Demons’ not that I had much idea what was actually going on! Thankfully there’s Wikipedia for that!

Following the sudden death of the Pope the Roman Catholic Church mourns his death and Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) takes temporary helm at the Vatican. The marble staircase seen in the screenshot below was obviously not the real one but that of Caserta Palace, just north of Naples, which also played the same part in ‘Mission Impossible III‘ (2006). It is probably more famous as being Queen Amidala’s Theed Palace on Naboo in ‘Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace‘ (1999).

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Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to save the day and deduces that the four men likely to be elected Pope will all be killed at locations relating to the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – but before all that the pathway leads to the Pantheon on the Pizza della Rotonda.

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This Roman Catholic church possesses the very impressive concrete dome which is the largest unreinforced one in the world.

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The ‘earth’ element takes Langdon to the Piazza del Popollo where he enters Santa Maria del Popollo and eventually finds the first cardinal with a mouthful of soil in the crypt of this church. Not quite the same place in my picture below but near enough as the place where I could erm, be found with a mouthful of pizza was just a stones throw away from that church!

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The ‘air’ element is at The Vatican City in St Peter’s Basilica. The screenshots below are from the latter part of the movie and not exactly clear as they were nighttime scenes.

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‘Fire’ is represented by the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria where the third cardinal is burned to death. Then its on to ‘water’ at the beautifully picturesque Piazza Navona for one of the most dramatic scenes where the cardinal is dumped into the Fountain of the Four Rivers.

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Having saved the cardinal with the help of some passers-by Langdon is informed by one of them that the illuminati’s lair is Castel Sant’Angelo on the Tiber’s west bank. The barge dance scene in ‘Roman Holiday‘ (1953) took place below the bridge in front of this castle.

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BONUS: Temple Church on Inner Temple Lane in London is where Langdon and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou of ‘Amelie’ fame) search for the tomb of a knight in ‘The Da Vinci Code‘ (2006) movie which came first although the book by Dan Brown was published after ‘Angels & Demons‘.

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Music Videos Filmed In Japan #3 Kaiser Chiefs – ‘Man On Mars’ (2011)

Posted on February 4, 2013 by tokyofox

Although I was very much into the Kaiser Chiefs in the mid-late 2000’s my interest in them had sadly dwindled by the time their 4th album ‘The Future Is Medieval‘ came out. That is my only excuse for not having even heard of ‘Man On Mars‘ until one of my students replied to a comment on Facebook saying that this 2011 song was also set in Tokyo. It features their drummer on lead vocals which you would think is probably a bad idea but remember that it worked for Ringo Starr on a few songs! Initially I didn’t think too much of the tune but in the course of my research for this article I have listened to it a fair few times and indeed it has grown on me a lot. It’s actually a great catchy tune.

The video consists mostly of Kaiser Chiefs’ trip to Japan including footage of fans singing karaoke and some brief clips of their performance at the Fuji Rock Festival in 2011. This is all inter dispersed with footage following Atsushi Takata (below), a Japanese fan of the band, around Tokyo and then on his way to and from the festival via bus.

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It starts with them arriving at Narita Airport Terminal 2 (0:22) which of course I have been to many, many times but I have usually got more important stuff to be doing than looking for these screenshot match-ups! Oh, ok I did have a quick look back in December but couldn’t quite find the same exit doors.

 

So after Narita Airport there are a compilation of scenes filmed primarily in the Shibuya-ku district and now what follows are some of those which I was able to recognise. The passover outside JR Shibuya stations south exit pops up in the video after 0:50 minutes

 

The giant Be@r Bricks (0:51) were on show outside the popular department store chain Parco at 15 -1 Udagawacho in Shibuya. The colourful figures are not on show any longer but by chance my friends Donald and Bing were in town (from China) around the same time (well certainly in the same year!) the video was shot in Tokyo and we grabbed the photo seen below on one night out.

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Tokyu Hands at 12-18 Udagawa-cho in Shibuya-ku is seen on 1:01 minutes as the band members exit the department store which is famed for its hobby, home improvement and lifestyle products. The entrance seen is the one round the back of the store on the hill.

  

Harajuku station on the JR Yamanote Line opened over 100 years ago and appears on 1:06 minutes and its the exit at the southern end of the station rather than the Takeshita one which is on screen.

 

Next up is the ever-popular Yoyogi Park which is adjacent to Harajuku station and Meiji Shrine in Shibuya-ku. 1:13 is when we see the ball-juggling artist doing his thing

  

Super-fan Atsushi is seen singing this very song ‘Man On Mars‘ in a karaoke room on 1:55 minutes. The place is definitely Karaoke-kan and I am hazarding a guess that its actually the same one as Bill Murray’s character sang in in ‘Lost In Translation‘ (2003) as we see that its room 601 which was used in that film. Its address is 30-8 Utagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku.

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TF Film Review: Life Of Pi (2012)

Posted on February 1, 2013 by tokyofox

When I first heard last year that this Yann Martel booker prize winning novel was being made into a film I was taken aback. Only one question came to mind “How on earth can this be done?!” Having read and really enjoyed the book about ten years ago my mind turned to how a story principally involving just a boy and a Bengal tiger on a boat could translate to the silver screen. Of course CGI was the answer for 86% of the film and credit has to go to novice Indian actor Suraj Sharma who must have spent most of the filming acting by himself in front of a blue screen.

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I’m still not a big fan of 3D but once we get through the fairly religious-based (not in a  preaching way though) beginning background segment it really gets going and you end up living the movie. This is not only down to Sharma but the 3D which is invaluable for all the thoroughly enjoyable boat scenes which were filmed in a giant wave tank built in an abandoned airport in Taiwan. It’s fair to say that “Richard Parker’s” introduction is one of the most dramatic in film history thanks in main to the 3D.

Following the events which lead to him being at sea on a boat with just a tiger for company its a tale of storytelling and survival akin to an episode of ‘Man Vs. Wild‘ which I never thought would work in film but it really doesn’t lag at all with the musical score adding great value to the production.

I may be a little slow to pick up on the meaning of things sometimes but I wasn’t too keen on the bit right at the end where the story and its symbolism is quite patronisingly spelled out as if the viewers hadn’t understood the two hours preceding it. The spiritual themes are quite simple and say more about what one wants to believe rather than any obvious connection to faith in god.

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Overall, I was very relieved to see that this Ang Lee directed adaptation played fairly faithful to the book and for me its the characters (both young and old Pi and even “Richard Parker” himself) and not the scenery and effects which make this film an absorbing 127 minutes.

Tokyo Fox Rating 8/10

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Review: Films Set In Japan – The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

Posted on January 28, 2013 by tokyofox

This ridiculously silly low budget B-movie was actually brought to my attention (though strictly not “recommended”) by fellow blogger tokyo5 who mentioned it in a comment on my ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III‘ review a couple of years ago.

Having heard that this comedy, horror film holds a rare 0% rating on the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes website (based on the percentage of approved critics giving it a positive review) I thought that I have got to see this so after forking out a few quid on the dvd I settled down to watch it in the early hours of a jet-lagged morning.

Now, of course I haven’t seen the 1984 original but that doesn’t really matter as what little storyline there is, is often explained in the narrative including the lady from the abominable Apocalypse Corporation explaining to her members the background on the Toxic Avenger and some lame connection to Tokyo which sees the Toxic Avenger come  here to find his father. The first film was a big hit in Japan and was I guess the reason they came here to make the sequel much like what happened in the equally awful ‘The Bad News Bears Go To Japan‘ (1978).

This tripe was served up by those kings of campy movies; Troma Entertainment, with the imaginatively titled Tromaville being the home town of the Toxic Avenger who, five years on from the original, is now around to protect its people from all manner of evil. Once he’s been lured to Tokyo by his shrink (working undercover for the enemy) his absence gives the Apocalypse corporation the chance to take over his beloved Tromaville where they have their sights set on first owning it and then destroying it and turning it into a toxic dump or something along those lines. Of course, its then up to the deformed superhero of superhuman size and strength to save the day.

Japan is first seen 34 minutes into the movie with locations including Tokyo Tower, the Yamanote platform, Asakusa Senso-ji, the area around Harajuku station, a pachinko parlour, Tokyo station, Tsukiji fish market and a tsukudani (small seafood, meat or seaweed simmered in soy sauce and mirin) boutique in Tsukishima.

There seems to be some debate to the edit of the film but my version was the directors cut which, at 102 minutes long, has an extra 6 minutes of gore! Lucky me! In fact the original edit was supposedly over 4 hours long so it was split into two movies so ‘The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie‘ followed 8 months later in the same year. I can kind of see why it’s supposedly a cult film among the younger generation  as the action is often fun in a “so-bad-its-good” way. It’s also got a fair amount of gratuitous nudity and foul behaviour as well as its own catchy theme song at the start to keep them attentive throughout.

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Tokyo Fox Rating 4/10

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