Mini-trip #2: Oigawa Railway

Posted on May 9, 2025 by eli. 3402 words.

I took the prettiest train ride of my entire life.

This is the second piece in my series of blogposts about my handful of recent1OK, not really recent now, it was back in December of last year, but I’m behind here!, short, 2–3 day trips. While the month prior I had very spontaneously headed down to Kyushu, this weekend’s target was just one prefecture over, to Shizuoka, and things couldn’t be quiiite as last-minute this time. I had been wanting to ride the Oigawa Railway’s two collinear lines for a while – the Ikawa Line in particular is one of Japan’s only forest railways and the only cog railway in the country, too – and I’d figured that when the fall2OK, again, not really fall, but December is unfortunately now when stupidly-hot Japan finally cools down and has the leaves change color… leaves were changing colors would be a perfect time to do it. However, the section connecting the two lines was washed away in a storm in 2022 and hasn’t been operating since. Taking the replacement bus service operated by the local town is a bit of a hassle, takes more time, and involves a lot of looking at Japanese-style timetables to figure out exactly which train to catch and when, plus securing a place to stay somewhere along the line in order to have enough time to go down and back in the daylight. Luckily I had some time to plan the week before, and there was a place that let me make a booking just a couple days ahead of time!

At the end of two eventful days, I had the absolute most magical, wonderful time exploring and staying in the little tea-rich town of Kawane, specifically the district Nukuri, filled with a heartwarming, inspiring – and unexpected – community of artists and farmers, against backdrop of an unbelievably magnificent train station and some of the prettiest views I’ve seen in the country, across bridges and through forests while traversing the course of the Oi River.
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Mini-trip #1: Saga, Kumamoto, Hiroshima

Posted on March 26, 2025 by eli. 2516 words.

Oh my god ahhhh I’m leaving tomorrow for a two-week trip with my mom, and then a few days later it’s the opening of the World Expo (commemorative Myaku-Myaku ICOCA here I come!) and then a week after that I leave on my Golden Week trip. ALREADY. I feel like I just wrote about GW last year. It’s the second most recent post on this blog! And I want to write about my upcoming big GW trip year, of course, but have so much to write about that I’ve done in the recent past too that I’ve been putting off. I’m so behind. Ahhhhhhh.

I also received two very kind messages recently which motivated me to write this post in a very spur-of-the-moment fashion all in one go:

“haiii i stumbled across your blog while i was bored at work and i literally love reading them (especially the juzo itami one) can u please write more so i wont be bored at work. 🙏 thank you so much. you are awesome.”

“Just wanted to tell you and ive been reading your blog for the last hr and half and I’m and not only nostalgic (seishunjuhachi Kippu proud traveler) and learning (didn’t know ‘Kokeshi’ is actually Sendai Ben and I lived near the kokeshi museum in Kuroishi) but laughing my butt off […] I have a special love and respect for writers. I hope you continue.”

Thanks, guys!

OK, so for my New Year’s holiday three months back, I went to Hokkaido to bask in the snow. It was wonderful and that will be a long post at some point hopefully not too far in the future from now with lots of pictures as I make my way through all my trips chronologically. For now, this shorter post is focused on the first of a bunch of mini-trips I did before then.

It’s November 23, 2024. I had recently tried, and succeeded (I thought) in convincing some fellow-foreigner acquaintances from work to drive (the horror) to Shirakawago. They like cars and were down. We had plans in place already, but then one of them, the same morning, was afraid “there might be snow” (there wasn’t) so he pulls out. The other one suddenly “has to be back by afternoon” to “deliver some documents” and didn’t realize how far away it was despite living here since he was a teenager. OK. This is very typical, frankly. So the plan to go to Gifu is cancelled. At the exact same time, my Japanese IC card collecting friend Sunagawa-san, who lives in Kyushu, happens to be down in Kumamoto to see some plane that he’s obsessed with that looks like a dolphin, and confirms to me – I had asked prior – that the old Kumamon no IC Card design is still available in some vending machines, which I had learned about after having spotted it in a photo on Twitter few days back. And not only that, but the JR Kyushu Twitter account had posted that somehow the Sagan Tosu SUGOCA (commemorative design for the local professional soccer team who according to my undergrad friend are very mediocre) is also still available at one single station, five months after its initial release… with limited, decreasing stock. Who knows how long they’ll both still be around.

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My “Seishun 18 Juu-Pachi” Koshinetsu–Tohoku Obon adventure

Posted on November 26, 2024 by eli. 10199 words.

OK, I’m a convert. Sitting on trains for up to eight hours a day, mostly as a way to escape the up-to-40°C / 104°F temperatures outside and sit inside an air-conditioned vehicle? Getting to pay a flat rate for unlimited rides on JR local lines across the country? Finally getting to travel back up to Tohoku (north-eastern Japan) for the first time in seven years? Absolutely yes, sign me up. I was a little worried it might be too much for me going in, too much sitting, or too much traveling and transit-ing, but in reality, I can’t wait to do it again.

Every summer (actually three times throughout the year, for a fixed amount of time only) all the Japan Railways Group companies release the Seishun 18 Kippu, or the “Youth 18 Ticket”, a discount railway pass (intended for poor students, hence the name, although with no age limit or rider restrictions) which allows users to ride an unlimited number of JR trains and lines across the country for five non-consecutive days1Well… more on this at the end. for a pretty affordable price. The catch is that it only gets you access to conventional lines, which are of course slow, stopping at nearly every single station – no high-speed limited expresses or shinkansen, not even if you pay the express fare on top. But this ticket is famous in Japan, well-known and well-loved since the summer of 1982 when it first went on sale. As a public transit aficionado, it felt like a rite of passage for me to at least use it once during my time living in this country, right?

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Golden Week!

Posted on August 6, 2024 by eli. 4719 words.

At the end of April and beginning of May, I took a big Golden Week trip westward and down through Kyushu. I have multiple friends who’ve visited or who have extended family in Fukuoka – they’ve all had nothing but great things to say about it, and likewise I’ve wanted to visit Hiroshima on my own as well. I had a week off for the holidays, so with this, plus my general enjoyment of traveling and seeing new places… and motivated by the fact that Kyushu is unequivocally the best place in Japan to get tons and tons of IC cards… I made a spreadsheet to plan and figure out how to handle all of these magnetic paper tickets:

Most (not all) of my tickets. Not as complicated as it might look. I promise!

This was my first time making (heavy) use of both stopovers (途中下車 tochuu gesha) and round-trip discounts (往復割引 oufuku waribiki), as I was traveling along a single, straight route via shinkansen but wanted to stop off at various places along the way.

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The (R)ides of March

Posted on April 18, 2024 by eli. 2632 words.

It’s been a while! I frankly got a little burnt out on writing (and still am, honestly) but finally got some motivation to write about my trip last month. March 16 was a big day for public transport in Japan: the Hokuriku Shinkansen got extended from Kanazawa to Tsuruga, the Thunderbird and Shirasagi limited express trains had their routes shortened as a result, JR West gave up ownership of the local Hokuriku Main Line over this portion of the track, and timetables & fares for public and private trains across the country were revised. The third of these reasons was the impetus for my trip, though – with the new Hapi-Line Fukui third-sector railway company beginning operations, they also released a commemorative ICOCA!

My big transit-focused hobby is collecting IC cards (I have 54, as of this post, all obtained myself, and all via public transport, in my five-ish months since moving to Japan) and a trip up to the Hokuriku region was a good way to snag a lot more, explore a part of the country I hadn’t been to much, and get a fun weekend vacation out of it.

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Koki Mitani’s Odessa

Posted on February 21, 2024 by eli. 4381 words.

“Three characters. Two languages. One truth.” This is the idea behind Odessa (オデッサ), Koki Mitani’s first new play in three and a half years, set in 1999 in the American town of Odessa, Texas. A Japanese tourist is detained on suspicion of murder. The detective, while of Japanese descent, only speaks English. And so an interpreter, a Japanese student studying abroad, is brought in to translate. But as the tagline tells us, “現実 (genjitsu, ‘truth’) is stranger than TRUTH.” Confused? Hell yeah.

Kōki Mitani is pretty much the theater world’s version of Juzo Itami: a sensationally multitalented artist who writes and directs all of his own productions, frequently re-casts the same groups of actors in everything he makes, working to create intertextual comedies that are often inspired by American sensibilities… He’s even, fittingly, the recipient of last year’s Juzo Itami Award, which honored his achievement and outstanding talent in many of the same areas Itami worked. And while, also like Itami, he’s (for some cruel and baffling reason) practically unheard of in the West, writer Nobuko Tanaka starts off her 2012 article and interview in the Japan Times about his domestic popularity with a simple fact: “Koki Mitani is far and away the nation’s best-known dramatist.”

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RRR × TAKA“R”AZUKA ～√Bheem～

Posted on February 9, 2024 by eli. 2553 words.

If you pay attention to movies at all, you’ve probably heard of – and should have seen – RRR, the incredible, ridiculous, and insanely over-the-top 2022 historical action-drama epic about colonialism, friendship, and loyalty. The film was directed and co-written by S.S. Rajamouli in the most expensive Indian film production to-date. Rajamouli previously made waves on the internet for this preposterous scene in his previous film, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, and he’s probably the world’s most well-known director in Tollywood (not Bollywood, as his films are in Telugu, not Hindi). Japan loves Indian films, too – a recent ad at my local cinema taught me the word マサラ上映 masara jouei, or “masala screening”… which is apparently the Japanese term for a participatory/singalong-style showing of an Indian film where moviegoers are invited to recite dialogue (or, well, the subtitled dialogue) in real-time, dress up in costume, and emotively react to scenes. (This seems like the antithesis of most Japanese movie theater experiences I’ve had so far, so honestly I’d be interested in going…)

I think RRR really began to take off in Japan once its iconic “Naatu Naatu” scene & song won Best Original Song at the Oscars and Golden Globes last year, causing its associated dance and awards show performance to finally spread eastward on social media like wildfire. So what was this country to do with an outrageously over-the-top foreign movie that depicts one of the greatest bromances ever? Well, have the Takarazuka Revue adapt it into an even more over-the-top musical with super gay undertones, of course.

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The Itami Juzo Museum

Posted on January 19, 2024 by eli. 8862 words.

Ever since I began planning my move to Japan in mid-2023, there was one place I promised myself I’d go at the first possible opportunity: the Itami Juzo Museum (伊丹十三記念館 / Itami Juzo Kinenkan) in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. Shikoku is the smallest and least-populated of Japan’s four main islands, and I’d never been off Honshu, which added to my excitement. So with a full week off work for the New Year’s holidays, I made the trip.

Juzo Itami is my favorite film director in the world, a true visionary and master of subtle social satire and life-affirming comedy who dared to poke fun at and push back against his own rule-bound culture’s customs (“I make movies to get the Japanese to look in the mirror”, he said in 1996). He made his directorial debut at age 51 after spending decades as an actor and essayist… and editing a 1980s psychoanalytic magazine, designing commercials, illustrating print ads, translating Western cookbooks, living in London and becoming fluent in English and French… After writing and releasing ten feature films, he was murdered by the yakuza in 1997 for criticizing them and mocking their practices, remaining unafraid after a prior violent attack and continuing to investigate their ties to a religious cult. I can only dream of what the film and literary landscape today could have looked like today if he had been able to keep making movies into the 21st century.

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Tomcat’s Big Adventure

Posted on December 1, 2023 by eli. 4021 words.

I got to see a very, very rare Japanese film last night: Tomcat’s Big Adventure (ちびねこトムの大冒険 地球を救え！なかまたち / Chibineko Tom no Daibouken: Chikyuu o Sukue! Nakama-tachi)

Background

Tomcat’s Big Adventure was to be the debut feature of Ryūtarō Nakamura, best known as the director of serial experiments lain (1998) and Kino’s Journey (2003). Five years in the making, it was an anime adaptation of a children’s book by Masumi Iino and Yumiko Imai, and featured incredible talent from the likes of Toshiyuki Inoue and Hiroyuki Okiura (key animation), Manabu Ōhashi (a.k.a. Mao Lamdo, animation direction & character design), Kenji Kawai (music), Hiromasa Ogura (art direction & background art), and Shigeharu Shiba (audio direction). Despite production being temporarily halted due to a cost overrun – underscored by the burst of the Japanese economic bubble – Tomcat’s was completed in 1992. But when the movie’s production/distribution company went bankrupt, plans to release it were shelved indefinitely; its theatrical run didn’t ever happen, with its only screenings being in small, local venues plus a handful of showings on regional TV. Even animators in the industry often hadn’t heard of its existence, and it began to be called a “phantom” or “fabled” (幻 maboroshi) work – as this translator puts it, “something so fantastic, rare and mysterious that its very existence has come into question”.

Nearly 20 years later, an individual named Mitsuhiro Akashi learned of the film through a friend of his who held the copyright, having inherited the rights from her late father who had invested in the work. Akashi and the friend began promoting the film online which reinvigorated fan interest, and resulted in a screening event hosted by Manabu Ōhashi in late 2012. This (presumably) caught the attention of Tollywood – a small, independent/arthouse cinema in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo (where, incidentally, I got to see the great 1987 film Gondola back in 2017) – and they were able to bring Tomcat’s to their theatre at the end of 2014 for a one-month-only engagement (which was then extended another month due to demand).

Akashi also ran a crowdfunding campaign around this time to produce a 35 mm digital remaster of the film, but the Blu-Ray’s distribution was limited to the 225-ish supporters, and it has never appeared online (legally or illegally). The digital version has been shown briefly in a couple venues in Japan (such as at Tollywood again in 2019), once in Switzerland, and once in France, but it’s never been available to publicly purchase or watch at home.

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Yotsuba&! Exhibition of Original Manga Drawings

Posted on November 12, 2023 by eli. 2036 words.

Hi! I decided to make this blog as an old-school-internet-style way to show off some photos I took during my trip this past weekend to the Special Exhibition “YOTSUBA&! Exhibition of Original Manga Drawings” (よつばと！原画展 / Yotsuba to! Gengaten) at the Tokiwaso Manga Museum in Toshima-ku, Tokyo. I figured some other people online would want an English-language trip report, so here we go! Below are 85 pictures in full resolution. (By the way, if you use these somewhere, please do let me know, and give credit by linking back here – it’d be appreciated.)

The entrance in Tokiwaso Park

Yaaaay, made it!

Quick backstory: I moved to Nagoya, Japan last month and took the Tōkaidō Shinkansen up to Tokyo (only a 1.5 hour ride on the Nozomi train, at nearly 300 km/h!) this past weekend in order to see this exhibition of Kiyohiko Azuma’s work before it closed at the end of the month. I was (and still am) elated that I was able to move to Japan in time and go, just before it wrapped up, especially as I have commitments the following two weekends this month! I went right when it opened at 10 a.m.

The Yotsuba&! exhibition itself is housed in a museum that’s a masterful reproduction of Tokiwa-sō, an apartment building that was inhabited by numerous famous manga artists in the mid-20th century, including Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Dororo), Fujiko F. Fujio & Fujiko Fujio Ⓐ (Doraemon), Shotaro Ishinomori (Super Sentai, Kamen Rider), and Fujio Akatsuka (Osomatsu-kun). The upstairs showcases the original living quarters, and the downstairs floor hosts revolving exhibitions like this one.

Danbo is in one of the rooms! This is a faithful recreation of Tokiwa-sō in the 1950s and 60s, surely!

A big Yotsuba greets you at the end of the hallway, next to the small elevator to head downstairs. Hi!

Heading downstairs and going around the corner, you turn left and find yourself in the main room. But we’ll talk about what’s there later! For now, we’ll turn left again and walk through these sliding doors, which takes us into the exhibition space.

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