Updates and Going to Japan for the Seventh Time…

Unsurprisingly I’ve had yet another long break from this blog. Now I know I have said this numerous times before and not been true to my word, but I do want to keep writing on a regular basis and hope to publish a few new pieces throughout this year and maybe go back to my “1989: The Year in Japanese Cinema” project which I have had on hiatus for nearly four years now.

There have been some changes in my life in the last nine months. First, I decided that the workplace I was in wasn’t for me and decided to leave. It wasn’t a bad place per se, it was that I felt I did not fit in. In addition because of the bullying I was subjected to in the workplace prior to that one (by an assistant commissioner who was a textbook sociopath), I really hadn’t recovered from that and spent most of the first half of 2024 with extremely bad anxiety, so much so that when I finally collapsed (metaphorically) in May of that year and had the best part of a month off, I actually thought that I would never be able to work ever again.

It was like I had short-term PTSD. I managed to recover but several staff departures occurred in my team and my boss committed fraud and ran off (I was in a security agency which made it more comical), so I decided it was best to move on. But I am far happier in my new job some seven months into it, so it was worth it. In addition, possibly coming out of the chaos I found myself in, at the age of 51 I came to the realisation that I came under the asexual spectrum in terms of my sexuality. More accurately I possibly fit into the demisexual or gray-asexual categories. To be honest, I’m not really fussed with which box I may fit into, but coming to this realisation explained a lot of my disinterest in relationships during my life up to now, or more accurately my lack of motivation to do so. Overall I feel a lot better about myself. I don't feel like some sort of failure for not having a relationship.

In August 2024, my favourite Japanese music artist, Perfume, announced a new album as well as a Japanese tour which would begin in late December and finish in late April. Now, I had already gone overseas in June, also to see Perfume, to Hong Kong, and I wasn’t planning to go overseas again for a while, especially since I had just taken up a new job. However, I had always planned to visit Japan again, specifically to see the Sapporo Snow Festival. There was a fan club lottery for buying the Perfume concert tickets, so I looked the tour schedule, decided that the Shizuoka concert was close enough to Tokyo to make a day trip, but small enough to have a good chance to get tickets, plus it was in the same month as the Sapporo Snow Festival. I thought, why not and entered the lottery.

And of course I managed to get the ticket, so I felt obliged to go on this trip. As I had a ton of unused leave from my previous agency, my workplace was happy for me to take five weeks off to use some of it up. While I had done most of what I had always wanted to do in Japan the last time I was there in spring 2023, I had missed a few things due to the fact at that time I was still recovering from the bout of COVID I had six weeks prior. This time I managed to pretty much see everything I wanted to. I arrived at Haneda airport in the evening on Thursday 30 January and arrived back in Mascot airport in Sydney very early in the morning on Friday 28 February.

As it turned out, without hyperbole, this was the best holiday I had experienced in my life. The highlights; Sapporo Snow Festival, going to Wonder Festival yet again, of course going to see Perfume live again at Shizuoka's Ecopa Arena, then heading off the next day to see the Perfume Costume Museum exhibit at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chureito Pagoda (at Mount Fuji, can't believe this is my seventh trip to Japan and only done this now), the museums and temples in Takayama and the Ushiku Daibutsu. In addition, I went up several mountains to see temples and shrines; Mount Mitake, Mount Nokogiri and Mount Hoju (Yamadera Temple), all of which I loved.

I did a lot of spur of the moment stuff, most of which was really fun. I went to Jinbocho in Chiyoda ward in Tokyo for the first time in many years. Forgot how much I love the place and its odd book and well-hidden subculture type shops. Plus, it has some great cafes and restaurants hidden away in the back streets. Also, one day on a compete whim, I went to both museums dedicated to avant-garde artist Taro Okamoto (creator of the “Tower of the Sun” for Expo ‘70 in Osaka). The first, the Taro Okamoto Museum, is literally in a forest reserve in Kawasaki (an absolutely fantastic museum) and the second, the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, which is actually his family home in Minato, includes his preserved work space as well as various artworks.

In addition, I accidently discovered a Mutsumi Inomata exhibition (character designer for “Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko”, “Windaria”, “Brain Powered” and “Future GPX Cyber Formula”) at the Akiba Info tourist information centre when I went up to sit outside Akiba Square and have a rest after doing a bit of shopping in Akihabara early in the trip. It was the second last day of the exhibition, which was very small but really interesting. They were selling her last published illustration collection before her death, entitled 40th Anniversary Art Collection: Sanctuary, which of course I bought a copy of. I also went and saw the 40th anniversary 4K remaster of “Macross: Do You Remember Love?” at Shinjuku Toho Cinemas the day before. It was kind of bonkers I had the opportunity to see one of my favourite anime films in a cinema.

There were few lowlights. The biggest problem was very early in the trip I caught a cold sometime before I went to Sapporo and was in bed for two days after I returned to Tokyo. Still fatigued, I dragged myself around Wonder Festival the day after my bed rest, but still really enjoyed it. I also had to have another day of bed rest a few days later as I still hadn’t fully recovered. But as I said before, I still managed to do almost everything. I did find Matsumoto, Narai-juku, and Jigokudani Yaen Koen (the Snow Monkey Park) as well as Nagano itself to be totally underwhelming. Well, the monkeys were OK, but I had seen Japanese macaques previously, plus in total including travel time from Nagano it was well over a four hour return trip to see the damn things. I wasn't sure if it was worth the effort.

The only thing I wanted to do but didn't was my trip to Takasaki to see various temples and shrines. Twice while I was in Japan, cold fronts came down from China and some places in northern and western Japan had up to three metres of snow in a couple of days. Luckily, I was not caught up in it, but several of the express trains and shinkansen I took to and from Hokkaido and Takayama were delayed due to snowfall. Seeing the temples and shrines around Takasaki required a hire car. I was not interested in driving on a country road, hitting some black ice, skidding off the road and totalling the hire car or injuring myself, so I struck that part of the trip off my schedule.

And while there has been a lot of media coverage about the problems of “over tourism” in Japan, I think the complaints are somewhat overblown. Mostly that's confined to the most touristy areas of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. While I did see an overabundance of western tourists in Shibuya and Shinjuku in Tokyo, the vast majority of events and places I went to had few tourists, or on more than a few occasions, I was literally the only westerner there, including when I went to the Chureito Pagoda, which really surprised me. This was probably due to the fact there are fewer tourists in winter, however I enjoyed the snow (for the most part) and the weather. It only rained one day in Tokyo and I was off to Hokkaido that day anyway, and the times it did snow, I mostly enjoyed that as I don't usually see snow where I live. I also managed to see Mount Fuji quite clearly on 12 separate days (on the plane coming in to land, inside and outside the Tokyo area, on the shinkansen etc) when I was there.

Like usual, I bought way too many movie programs (maybe about 20), far too many movie flyers (almost 70) from various specialty movie/book shops mostly around Tokyo. I also bought about half a dozen illustration collections, four t-shirts, several pieces of Perfume related merchandise, a couple of blu-rays but only two CD albums, which is unusual for me. The last 11 days of the trip, which included the concert, was pretty much non stop. I figured out that I must have travelled about 2,500 kilometres going from Takayama, Nagano, Shizuoka, Hiroshima and back and forth to Tokyo in that time. By the end when I came back home, I was utterly fatigued for nearly a week after. However, I really, really loved it. I hope to write a bit more about my trip to see Perfume again within a week or two.