Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami Giveaway!

I was psyched when the good folks at W.W. Norton & Co. Publishers sent me two copies of the latest English-translation novel by acclaimed Japanese author Ryu Murakami, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, to use as giveaways. An irreverent satirical take on the inter-generational battle of the sexes, this novel was first published in 1994 in a serialized version in the Japanese magazine Playboy Weekly. In 2003 it was made into the film Karaoke Terror: The Complete Showa Japanese Songbook directed by Tetsuo Shinohara. You can watch the trailer HERE.

 

Not to be confused with the other Murakami writer (Haruki), Ryu Murakami has won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and many of his books have been made into films including Audition. I remember reading his first novel, Almost Transparent Blue about drug abuse and promiscuity among disaffected Japanese youth as a beginner Japanophile in the 1980s, and it really impressed me.

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is quite funny a lot of the time, but it’s not for the faint of heart. There’s a fair amount of violence and graphic scenes, but it’s all in “good fun” as a group of young slacker guys escalate a battle against an unlikely (and hilarious) gang of obasans (middle-aged career women) who are out for revenge when one of their members is found brutally murdered. I’m not sure if the protagonist from my novel, Midori by Moonlight, (Midori Saito) would have joined these gals, but who knows? And despite it being written in the mid-1990s, I think a lot of what the book has to say about modern Japanese society and the pressures both genders face is still relevant today.

This new English translation of Popular Hits of the Showa Era will be released at the end of January 2011 as a trade paper back. But I’m giving away two advanced reader copies to two lucky winners. All you have to do to be eligible is write a comment on this blog by Sunday, November 7. Tell me about other Ryu Murakami books you’ve enjoyed or films based on his novels. Or share about your favorite contemporary Japanese authors. Then I’ll pick two winners at random on Monday, November 8 and contact them for their postal mail addresses. No geographic restrictions apply!

Foreign Wife, Japanese Husband to Become E-book

The Foreign Wife, Japanese Husband portion of the Chirashi blog is undergoing a redesign in order to become an e-book! More details will be coming soon. In the meantime, if you're the foreign wife of a Japanese husband and would like to be interviewed for this project, write me at: info (AT) WendyTokunaga DOT COM. Yoroshiku onegai shiimasu.

What Kind of Japanese Food Do You Like?

When someone tells me about their love of Japanese food, I probe a little deeper and ask, “What kind of Japanese food do you like?” Often the answer will be “sushi” and upon further discussion the favorite sushi will turn out to be a roll with an exotic name (Dragon, Caterpillar, 49er) and with even more exotic ingredients: fried prawns, sweet potatoes, mozzarella.

Now I love sushi (why else would I call my blog chirashi?) and have nothing against rolls with names like Super Crunchy and Titanic, if that’s what the market will bear. But I guess what I look for when I go out for Japanese food is something that will give me as close of a taste as possible as what I could get in Japan.

I’m fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where we have a multitude of choices of fine Japanese restaurants. But what is interesting is how the landscape has changed over the years. While you can still get some good Japanese food in San Francisco, I find that the most authentic Japanese restaurants are in the area between San Mateo and San Jose where the bulk of Japanese expatriates and temporary workers live. This makes sense because these people will demand dishes and flavors that remind them of home and restaurants that cater to these will survive. So along with real Japanese food, these places will be loaded with customers who are speaking Japanese and probably staff that speaks the language as well, which lends even more to the authenticity for me.

By now I have the choice of experiencing many types of Japanese cuisine right in my own backyard. Restaurants Kaygetsu (Menlo Park), Wakuriya (San Mateo) and Nami Nami (Mountain View) offer authentic kaiseiki and kappo cuisine that is not easy to find outside of Japan. If I’m in the mood for a bowl of ramen I have several choices: Halu (San Jose), Santouka (Mitsuwa Marketplace in San Jose), Santa (San Mateo) and Himawari (San Mateo). A new addition to the area is Curry House (Cupertino) a Japan-based chain that specializes in Japanese takes on Western foods like curry, gratin and pasta, which are ubiquitous in Japan but have been hard to find here.

So next time you have a hankering for a Caterpillar roll, you may want to try something a little different and take advantage of the wide array of taste experiences Japanese cuisine has to offer.

Love in Translation - Book Trailer

Very happy to present the book trailer for Love in Translation, which comes out on November 24.

“A delightful novel about love, identity, and what it means to be adrift in a strange land. This story of a search has an Alice in Wonderland vibe; when Celeste climbs down the rabbit hole, one can't help but follow along.” —Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog

“An amusing story of one woman's quest for her father and the improbable path of love.”—Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters

New People J-Pop Mall in San Francisco's Japantown

I visited the new New People mall in San Francisco’s Japantown a few days after its grand opening the weekend of August 16. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a sucker for Japantown’s, Little Tokyo’s, Japanese malls, stores, urants, etc. located anywhere outside of Japan. I’ve found them in Paris (in the Opera district) and Dusseldorf and in more typical places like Seattle, Los Angeles, Orange County, New York City, San Jose, San Mateo and, of course, my hometown of San Francisco.


San Francisco’s Japantown stood in for Japan for me before I ever traveled abroad and I made the best of I could of it, enjoying the only Japanese bookstore for miles around (Kinokuniya) and my first tastes of sushi and udon at Toraya, which is still in business and happens to be right next door to New People.



But I tend to get over-excited about these things and my expectations run high. And when I heard about New People I figured that finally we’d be getting something that you actually might encounter in Tokyo or Osaka. And by looking at the physical structure, it does look like it would fit right in, though any kind of center like this in Tokyo would probably have at least five more floors (I envisioned something like 109 in Shibuya, but then, as I said, I’m a dreamer). And it boasts a hip design and is all shiny and new.

There’s supposed to be a cafe and I guess you could call it that, but it’s really just the concession stand for the movie theater (albeit with bento boxes from Delica and Blue Bottle Coffee). Again, I envisioned something like the very pleasant and cool cafe at Kinokuniya in Manhattan that has its own space and actual seating.

The flagship New People store sells books, DVDs, toys, trinkets, etc. that are largely anime and manga related. It’s a nice airy space, but it struck me that the merchandise wasn’t too different from what you can buy at Kinokuniya or several of the other gift stores in the Japantown mall.

On the next floor are two clothing stores and the footwear shop Sou-Sou. This floor feels empty and maybe there will be additions in the future, but it felt unfinished. The clothing, unlike the variety you would find in La Foret in Harajuku or the aforementioned 109 in Shibuya, is of the extreme niche variety favored by some anime fans—mainly frilly Lolita Goth. This is fine, but it would be great to see all kinds of Japanese fashion represented at New People. There is also a museum in the complex, but it was “closed for repairs” the day I was there so I can’t comment on it.

And there is a movie theater, which is a welcome addition to Japantown, which long ago lost the Kokusai Theater to a Denny’s. The Kabuki Sundance theaters do host the Asian Film Festival but they don’t show first-run Japanese movies very often. It looks as though the New People cinema won’t only be showing anime and will embrace other types of Japanese film and that’s a good thing.

All in all I am glad to see that there is anything new in Japantown, but New People, at least at this point, is kind of a disappointment. Perhaps it will expand and grow in the future and I do wish it well. But it caters more toward the more narrow American anime/manga fan view of what Japanese pop culture is, which isn’t surprising since the vision is from the head of the Viz Media empire.
Ironically, a branch of the Japanese “livingware” supplier, Daiso, has recently opened in Japantown. Daiso is famous for its 100-yen shops in Japan and has nine stores in the U.S. It should tell you something that the biggest branch is in Union City and that one of the last places it opened was in Japantown. Japantown does not attract many Japanese expats because so many of them live in the South Bay and this is also why some of the best, most authentic Japanese restaurants are south of San Francisco. And this is why sometimes when I’m at Curry House in Cupertino I feel more like I’m in Japan than when I’m visiting Japantown.

Walking through the latest branch of Daiso, with 99 percent of the products made in China, but designed with the Japanese sensibility I first fell in love with in Tokyo years ago, it struck me that this is what evokes the real Japan to me much more than New People.

Tokyo Street Fashion: The Best in the World?

When I lived in Tokyo in the 1980s one of my favorite pastimes was observing the street fashion bursting all around me (and trying in my own way to emulate it). And every time I have visited Japan since (trips too numerous to count!), I still can’t get enough of it. I’m not talking about the more over-the-top stuff like Lolita Goth or those manga maids and cos-play, or the wildness you might see in the Fruits series. And I’m not talking about Gwen Stefani’s lame attempts at capturing Harajuku fashion. I’m talking about how many young people (and some not-so-young) make an effort to look “put-together” when they go out of the house. In Tokyo or Osaka or Kyoto you don’t just “throw something on” when you go out, even when you’re running errands. You take pride in your appearance and feel good about yourself.

And this isn’t all about brands and haute couture. In fact, it’s often absent from the scene. This is about how young women (and men too) take disparate pieces of clothing, shoes and accessories and come up with a creative, fashionable outfit that expresses their personality along with the latest fashion trends.

I was a big fan of the Sex and the City TV show, but even though I love fashion I was never crazy about the clothes on that program. The outfits seemed inaccessible and often the result of over-trending, which led to the four women often looking like fashion victims instead of trendsetters.

I certainly haven’t been all over the world, but I have spent quality time in Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles and Paris, and have lived most of my life in San Francisco and its environs. And I think Japan (and especially Tokyo) still rules the street fashion world. Japanese put an importance on accessible, smart style that I don’t think exists to this extent anywhere else in the world, though I have to say I do not have much experience with London (only spent two days there long ago) and I’ve yet to visit Hong Kong, Seoul, or Shanghai (which I assume probably take their cues from Tokyo).

Of course I’d love to hop a plane right now and be back in the thick of Tokyo fashion, but thanks to the Internet I can see what’s happening on Tokyo streets right now. There are many Web sites devoted to Tokyo street fashion, but one of my favorites is Tokyo Street Style. TSS offers photos of the fashionable strolling the top fashionable Tokyo districts: Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Daikanyama, and Omotesando and is updated weekly.

When I wanted the art department at my publisher to change Midori’s face on the original cover of Midori by Moonlight, I sent them three photos from the Ginza section and they did a great composite job of creating the face I had envisioned for her.

The pictures on TSS are all real people—not models—and show that everyone can have a great sense of style if they want to.

NEW PEOPLE J-POP CENTER TO OPEN IN SF J-TOWN

The Internet continues to be all abuzz about the new J-pop Center dubbed New People that is having its grand opening this Saturday in San Francisco's Japantown (1746 Post Street). This mall will boast a cafe, boutiques, an art gallery, movie theater, and more. Here's a good article from my hometown paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, that gives a lot of the details. This is sure to be quite an extravaganza.

I won't be able to make the opening but I plan to go sometime on a weekday during the following week when things will be a little quieter. And hopefully, armed with my newish Canon pink PowerShot camera I'll be able to take some pictures and post them here.