Monday, November 29, 2010

Fancy Cat: Otaku Karaoke Izakaya in Kichijoji

Name: Fancy Cat
Hours: 10:oo PM-First train
Price: ¥2,100 for the first hour with two drinks;
¥520 for extension (30 minutes)
¥580 for beers and sours
¥20,000 if you puke on the carpet, so stay at home if you can’t hold your liquor
Events: Vocaloid Day, Cosplay Day, All Music Unlocked Day
Address: 1-22-9 2F, Honmachi, Kichijoji (Behind Yodobashi Camera)
Japanese Level: Good enough to prove that you're not a fanny pinching creep.


The Otaking have found their Camelot. Located a kingdom apart from the garish, pandering consumer culture of Akihabara, Fancy Cat is the ultimate secret base, the mom’s basement that earthquake-proof architecture never afforded to socially awkward youth. Here, the currency of conversation is karaoke, and the etiquette is simple: Only anime, game, and tokusatsu songs allowed!

Photography inside the bar is strictly forbidden. Stolen shamelessly from http://www.i-love-kichijoji.com/tavern/

Though ostensibly a cosplay Izakaya, the harsh bathroom lighting, bookshelves stuffed with manga, and waitresses rocking absolute territory would have you mistake Fancy Cat for an oversized maid cafe. Thankfully, any similarities are superficial. Gone are the prerecorded chirps of “welcome home master.” The espresso machine with its heart-shaped lattes has been scrapped for a beer tap serving frosty brews. Be thankful for the two drink minimum—The sooner you get liquid courage coursing through your veins, the sooner you can throw yourself into the throng of anisong camaraderie.

More intoxicating than the alcohol is the unquestioning acceptance and celebration of all aspects of fandom. SDF Macross has the same amount of street cred as Macross F. Heisei Kamen Rider and Showa Kamen Rider stand on even footing. G-Gundam is the butt of every mecha-related joke, but that doesn’t stop the entire bar from joining in during Flying In The Sky.

Audience participation is not just encouraged, it’s demanded. This wild bunch stands by an unwritten moral code. Song genres should combo until someone breaks it with a Vocaloid track, opening the floor to the next trend. Cat calls and glow sticks are the nomenclature of criticism—Pink for like it, blue for love it. Mad libbing the chorus is preferred, with even the most seemingly spontaneous comments being carefully orchestrated by the crowd. It’s like Rocky Horror for otaku, only with the cross dressing delegated to the third Wednesday of every month.

Photography inside the bar is strictly forbidden. Stolen shamelessly from http://www.i-love-kichijoji.com/tavern/

Nurtured in this carefully regulated environment, Iyashi-Kei has evolved from passive and noncommittal to proactive and hot-blooded. Despite the perky waitresses and alcohol, Fancy Cat makes it very clear on their signage that they are not a cabaret club. The maids serve to provide an audience, not entertainment, and there is more of a frothing demand to see your fellow nerds perform the latest fad single than the idol who pioneered it.

Livelier than a night at the Izakaya, cozier than any bar, and more accommodating than the neighborhood snack, Fancy Cat is for otaku supermen craving a fortress of solitude where they can revel in their hobby for the sake of pure love, passion, and nostalgia amongst their peers. With the current generation, whose idea of social interaction is commenting on live Niko Niko streams, it’s heartening to know that face-to-face bonding and reckless abandon still have their place in an increasingly fragmented and insulated sub-culture.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Yurei: Ghost Izakaya in Kichijoji

Name: Yurei
Hours: 5:oo PM-Last train
Price: ¥2,200 course meal
Events: Special effect makeup artists and occasional stage shows.
Address: 1-8-11 B1F, Minami-Machi, Kichijoji

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji

The key to maintaining an illusion is allowing yourself to be taken in by it. Once you begin to question its logic or discover its truths, the spell fades as quickly as a half-remembered dream.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
Also used to wave down waitresses.

As a ghost-themed Izakaya, Yurei isn’t fooling anyone with its haunted house props, voodoo surf rock soundtrack, or bellowing fog machine. But it doesn’t have to—It’s your responsibility as the customer to buy into the hocus-pocus.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
We'd let you eat it, but the guy who's using it needs it back *wink wink*.

The moment you descend the winding stairs and step over the threshold into the dim underworld, your spectral hosts make it clear that yes, you are in Hell, and yes, nothing is what it seems.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
3D bathroom wallpaper provided by the DOOM II guy.

You clink glasses not with a hearty “kampai”, but a solemn “Namu Amida Butsu.” Plates of flaming ribs are engulfed in ghost fire. The bill is paid to the ferryman as fare for carrying you back over to the land of the living. All these small flourishes add up to a engrossing and comedic dining experience. Assuming you allow a gracious amount of suspension of disbelief, that is.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
Each waitress is infused with a unique fruit flavor that they spritz into mixed drinks. Ours had marimo for blood.

The staff are all in on the joke, with the punch line being that, aside from a spooky naming scheme, the food is exactly like any other Izakaya. There's plenty of subtle smirks, but the waitresses never break character as they wheel out a procession of blood and head cheese French fries, Korean hot pot with soup stock from the burning lake, and cursed meat skewers.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
LORD ENMA IS NOT AMUSED BY YOUR SNIDE REMARKS.

For those of you with a thing for dead girls, the waitresses contain enough necromantic charm to bury all of Akihabara in a moe-infused protoplasm. They mix custom cocktails, play quiz games, and dress you for your funeral portrait with all the love of a little sister who passed away from an incurable disease. Pretty much the same service you get at a maid cafe, only more tongue in rotting cheek.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
Funeral parlors are the new maid cafes.

Our recommendation hinges entirely on your appreciation for haunted house kitsch. Do you titter at the thought of seeing childrens' disgusted reactions after reaching into a bag of peeled grapes and mini sausages that you told them were eyeballs and severed fingers? If so, then Yurei is right up your harmlessly demented alley.

Yuurei Izakaya Kichijoji
Having un-ironically enjoyed a theme bar, there's only one option left for me.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The World Kaikan in Nakano

Conventional reasoning dictates that a building cannot qualify as abandoned if it still has inhabitants. After gazing up at the towering mess that is the World Kaikan, however, I’m no longer sure that such logic applies.

World Kaikan front

For over half a century, the World Kaikan has loomed over the back streets of Nakano, a five story edifice of decayed mystery whose very secrets have been eaten by the worms of time. Abandoned neon signs litter the grounds like the toppled gravestones of businesses that failed long ago. The front entrance is flanked by mounds of ripe garbage to the left and the fossilized remains of abandoned bikes to the right. Mutant cats dart through the rusted underbrush as if spying for their necromantic masters who stir within the crypt.

World Kaikan monster cat 2
Hino Hideshi's pet cat.

Even vagrants know better than to stay out of its unsettling underground. The stairs are left unguarded for those with enough gall to brave the musty basement. Down here, door frames grow organically from the wall like fungus, derelict bars remain suspiciously intact, and a phantasmal old woman purportedly stalks the bathroom. The lights illuminate the sickly checkerboard pattern on the floor, which terminates at the mouth of a hallway swallowed by the darkness.

World Kaikan B1

FUN FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD KAIKAN

1) Urban legend has it that the building was a hotel in its past life, a theory given credence by the piles of rotting furniture that line the stairs. Rusted box springs poke their heads through the debris like the first flower after a nuclear winter.

_1080427
This ancient unicycle is one of the building's more benign mysteries.

2) The remaining pubs and watering holes evolved to survive the harsh conditions surrounding the building. Darwin would be delighted by Vow, a bar run by an ordained monk (Jodo Shinshu, if you're keeping track,) where you can imbibe in a sutra-specific cocktail while ingesting the words of the Buddha.

Dio: Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure themed bar

There is also Dio, the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure themed bar. If you need an explanation as to what Dio is doing at The World Kaikan, then navigating the Stance-themed menu would be muda muda!

3) Kuroki Kaoru, 80's porn starlet famous for her au naturel underarms and no-nonsense public persona, attempted suicide in 1994 after ditching director and collaborator Toru Muranishi when the bum refused to pay out her fair share of the profits. She survived the plunge from a building that is only described as "a hotel in Nakano."


Considering that a person could survive a five-story fall, and coupled with eyewitness reports of a burnt-out Kuroki wandering the halls of Broadway like a reject from The Ring, it stands to reason that The World Kaikan could have been the very building that she threw herself from.

4) The previous building owner ran away overnight with his family back to Taiwan, their room on the top floor untouched since. Rumors would have you believe that the yakuza got to him first, and that his rotting skeleton now inhabits the broken elevator. The only legitimate residents these days are Korean exchange students living in a makeshift dorm converted from the hotel rooms on the top floor.

Bed springs, elevator

Shinjuku has Golden Street, its shanty town of old-timey bars thick with the ambiance of the good ‘ol days of post-war poverty and the national zeitgeist fueling Japan’s rise to the top. The Nakano equivalent could be called Bronze Street—Tarnished, third-rate, yet beautifully compelling in its decay. The World Kaikan stands as the frayed banner that other ramshackle buildings rally under. Around it you can find storefronts whose broken windows are mended by crumbling movie fliers and whose doorsteps echo with the footfalls of more vibrant times.

_1080439

The old hands who remain have seen Nakano's rise as the country's busiest shopping center to it's fall at the hands of subsequent stylish, youth-oriented districts. Yet the World Kaikan still maintains watchful vigilance as a reminder of a time when consumerism meshed seamlessly with the community. Broadway itself is a living museum, and it's curators call these rusted streets home, with all roads running to the World Kaikan.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Kawasaki Halloween 2010

Visit Umezu Kazuo's official homepage for more event pics and footage!

Autumn in Japan has very little of the seasonal charm you grew up with. Trick or treating never caught on, nobody celebrates Thanksgiving, and good luck finding a pumpkin to carve. Thankfully we have the good folks in Kawasaki to throw us a bone with their annual Halloween Parade! The event is a cultural mash-up, part Macy’s Day Parade, part costume contest.

This year saw over three thousand costumed participants take over the streets in a frenzied procession of Cosplay, furries, gore, and good old-fashioned Halloween ingenuity. Words would only waste your time―Check out the raw footage of the revelers:



The parade concluded with a costume contest where participants competed in your bog standard categories, such as best special effects, best character, best overall, and so on. Of course, when special guest Umezu Kazuo is presiding as judge over this carnival of souls, you can be assured that the results would be anything but ordinary.

Image lifted from Denbushi - I couldn't even see let alone take pics! Thanks!-Voidmare

Say hello to the winner of this year’s special Umezu Kazuo Choice Award, our very own Voidmare, for his home-brewed take on the titular fiend from the 1968 Umezu-inspired horror flick, The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch (Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma).



Again, thanks to Jason for the photo and Velocitron for letting me use his airbrush!

I have to hand it to Voidmare for having the most perverted outfit out of an undulating sea of weirdos, exhibitionists, and fur suits. His baleful, empty gaze and twitching claws brought authentic fear and revulsion to the unexpected as he stalked through the crowd. It takes a special type of person to get their rocks off by loosening the bowels of those around them, and I’m proud to call him my (blogging) partner.

Not to be outdone, fellow Umezu and overall horror aficionado Gokicchi showed up in his self-stitched mask of Mokume, the Frankenstein-like demon doll from the one-shot Negai. Amidst the turmoil of the crowd, his otherwise plain clothes costume hit people when they least expected it and sent kids and women screaming for cover. True to the manga, he used real nails for the teeth! Concerned parents should sure to keep their children away from the grasp of Gokicchi's gardening gloves.

It turned out that this was only a warm-up for the true showing of deviance that night.


The room gets uncomfortably hot around 1:10.

Of all the cultural flotsam that washed up onto the beaches of Japan, I never would have expected the natives to celebrate and form a cult around The Rocky Horror Picture Show. If you’re not familiar with the concept of “shadow casts”, they’re fairly straightforward—Veteran fans get up in front of the screen to act out scenes of the film, complete with the requisite costumes and props, while the audience supplements the dialogue with witty call backs, MST3K style. Except in this case they imported an authentic British transvestite, and the puns were in response to not only the audio dialogue, but also the subtitles, sometimes in Japanese, but more often in Engrish!

As someone who hasn’t seen Rocky Horror since I was old enough to understand how warped it is, I was overwhelmed by the visual whirlwind of following the screen, and shadows cast, and audience all at once, compounded by the blitzkrieg of bilingual jokes and bisexual stage antics. At least I was lucky enough to be skipped over for the Virgin Hazing. I’d hate to show up the regulars with my banana-eating technique.

The Kawasaki showing may be the beginning of another Rocky Horror revival in Japan, unseen since the height of the bubble. There’s even talk of bringing back the theater musical at some point next year. True believers, keep your eyes on Lips, the Rocky Horror fan club and masterminds behind the night’s debauchery.