Mass Entertainment

Here’s a list I spent some time with recently: Wiki’s List of highest-grossing media franchises. Being Wiki, there’s no telling how accurate it is, but I will note that there are an enormous number of notes and references. So I’ll take it as accurate enough.

The list is interesting for a number of reasons, but mainly for information on the high-grossing franchises I’ve never heard of, which are quite a few.

Most of them are Japanese: anime, manga, even franchises whose most profitable expression is pachinko machines. As far as I could tell from my years in Japan, pachinko parlors were insanely bright, intensely noisy places to throw away money. But I was just a barbarian outsider. Apparently the machines are branded, and the branding is big business.

Take Fist of the North Star which, originating way back in 1983, would have been around when I was in Japan. I’d never heard of it until today. Though starting as manga, the franchise has enjoyed nearly $16.8 billion in pachinko machine sales, plus a few billion more in manga and other games.

Pachinko, incidentally, comes up 13 times on the list. Most of those are Japanese franchises, but not all. There have been $2.85 billion in Disney Aladdin pachinko (and arcade) machines sold. Spider-Man pachinko machines are popular to the tune of $308 million in sales, and Tomb Raider has sold $300 million.

I was curious how many of the franchises I’ve supported, either for myself or my children, so I counted: more than I would have thought, about 50. That includes mostly through ticket sales, as well as small-screen viewing (at least occasionally), but also the quarters I spent on Pac-Man and Space Invaders, and things my daughters watched that I never would, such as Sailor Moon and Dora the Explorer.

Mass-market entertainment’s pervasive. Even when your tastes tend to run to less successful shows.

Sōunkyō (層雲峡), 1993

The usual markers of fall are here. Spots of yellow and other fall colors are appearing in the trees. Sometimes we use the heater to keep temps above 68 F during the day and 65 F at night, the non-summer settings. The days are notably shorter, but at least the Summer Triangle is still up. Orion is not. Won’t be long.

We visited Hokkaido in late September, early October of 1993, including Sōunkyō, part of Daisetsuzan National Park, and which is known for its gorges. The colors were autumnal.

October 4, 1993

Rented bicycles early and rode around most of the day. Went to O-dake and Ko-dake, two narrow gorges at some distance from the resort complex. Ko-dake was the best — a bike path runs through it, while the road, a little crowded with cars, is diverted through a tunnel.

The gorge walls are reams of gray rock, bristling with all-color foliage like wild beards. Saw an assortment of waterfalls en route, including a multi-stream cascade.

Ate roasted corn on the cob and ice cream, two regional specialties, at the wayside shacks of O-dake. 

The fall colors… throughout this part of Hokkaido equal in variety and mass anything I’ve seen in autumn excursions in East Tennessee or New England.

Thursday Crumbs

Not long ago I had a pork cutlet at a Korean restaurant, done in the katsudon style I’ve encountered in Japanese restaurants and at home. This particular cutlet was remarkably large. So much so that I was inspired to take a picture.

Large, but thin, so it wasn’t overfilling. Overall, quite good.

At an Asian grocery store the other day — Asian grocery stores are endlessly interesting — I saw this on offer.

I have to say I’m intrigued. People believe outdoor markets ought to be part of any visit to non-OECD cities, for that all-important authenticity and to see the locals, but if you really want authenticity, grocery stores are the place to go in any country. Ye shall know them by their grocery stores.

More debris from the Saturday grilling and gabfest.

The caps to the bottles I posted the other day, arranged in the same order.

I had a shandy over the weekend and later, during a moment when I had much else to do, naturally decided to look up the word, the story of which I didn’t know. I know more now, after reading this.

Shandy, a shortening of shandygaff, origin obscure. Now that’s a fine word. If I were a brewer, I’d use it for my shandies. Radler is a good word to know too.

Had a curry doughnut today. I don’t eat that many of them, but when I do I enjoy them.

“In Japanese bakeries of virtually every stripe, you can buy a thing called a curry doughnut,” I wrote once upon a time. “What a discovery that was. No part of it is sweet. Browned by frying on the outside, it’s soft on the inside, and a spicy brown curry resides at its core. An enormous amount of fat, I’m sure, and heartburn later on, but boy they’re good going down.

“My favorite spot for curry doughnuts used to be the Cascade Bakery, near the main promenade of Hanshin Station, Umeda, in the heart of Osaka. Even now, I can get one in Arlington Heights, Illinois, if I’m so inclined. I know at least two Japanese bakeries in that town that sell them. But it’s been a while.”

I’ve been to only two Afghan restaurants that I remember. One was in New York City in 2005. The other was ca. 1987 in Chicago: The Helmand.

Writing in 2005, I said: “I can remember visiting an Afghan restaurant only once before, about 20 years ago, a place on the North Side of Chicago near Belmont Blvd., long gone now. Much later I learned that it was owned by relatives of Mohammed [sic] Karzai. I vaguely remember it being exotically good.”

I have a matchbook from the place even now. Can you get matchbooks at restaurants any more? My experience is you can’t. In New York in March I experienced a brief and very minor moment of excitement when I picked up what I though was a small matchbox advertising a restaurant. Matches! Turned out to contain toothpicks.

Whatever happened to Hamid Karzai? Having managed to survive the Afghan presidency, no small thing, he seems to be living in comfortable semi-retirement after his career in peculation.

I Got Great Entertainment Value From My DoDeCaHORN in Early ’90s Japan

In early 1992, a curious-minded friend asked me in a letter about the cost of living in Japan. At the time the oft-used example, probably by lazy journalists, was the $10 cup of coffee (shocking in a pre-Starbucks-everywhere context, I guess). I’m sure you would have been able to find such a brew at upscale hotels in Tokyo, but it wasn’t part of my experience.

So I wrote him the following.

March 1992

Japan is justly famous for its high cost of living. But one can adapt, especially as a single person, though you never really grow fond of the system, the basis of which is to squeeze consumers as much as possible. Luckily, I’m no more a typical consumer in Japan than I was in the United States. Remarkably, my personal cost of living is roughly the same in absolute (dollar) terms, and a little less in terms of percentage of income, than in Chicago.

That might seem strange, but there are several factors to consider. Japanese income tax is a flat 10%, sales tax on everything is 3%, so neither of those is especially onerous. I have no car, which I believe would be a useless luxury in Japan, and endlessly expensive. For instance, gasoline is about four times as expensive as in the U.S. I buy few articles of clothes here. They’re expensive, but it’s also true that it’s hard to find my size anyway. I’ve supplemented my wardrobe during travels outside Japan, especially in Hong Kong, where clothes are reasonably priced (except I couldn’t find shoes there either). A spare pair of glasses was a deal in Hong Kong, too.

I’ve been slow in acquiring household appliances. Some of them I bought new — a gas cooker, about $100; a Korean-made TV, about $200; a bottom-of-the-line VCR, also about $200; a DoDeCaHORN combination CD player/double cassette deck with AM/FM band, again about $200. I’m highly satisfied with the quality of these goods, as you might expect from Japanese (and Korean) electronics.

Other items I’ve bought recently have been from departing foreigners in sayonara sales. Recently I acquired a table, microwave oven, book shelf, a number of books and other things that way, cheap. I’ve found a few things in the street for free. My Osaka Gas Fan Heater 2200 is an example, which I found the first summer I was here, before I needed it, abandoned by its owner. Such finds are called gomi, or so-dai-gomi if the items are large.

Food is a major expense. Some things are insanely expensive, such as bread, at $1.50 for four or five measly slices, or $4 or $5 for a glob of raw hamburger American stores wouldn’t package that small, or liters of milk that cost as much as a gallon in the U.S. You might think those aren’t typical Japanese foods, but they are now. Consumption of “Western foods” is so commonplace that the distinction makes little sense in most cases. Besides, rice and fish aren’t particularly cheap, either.

Properly done, eating out is little more expensive than eating at home, due to high grocery costs. I know a lot these days about (relatively) cheap Japanese eateries, including the location of a score of places that offer meals for $5-$8, most of them filling and excellent nutritionally and gastronomically: noodle soups, chicken and pork cutlet meals, Japanese-style Chinese food, rice dishes, curries and more.

Then there’s the matter of rent. I have a modest place, one-and-a-half rooms, certainly less than I had in Chicago. For it I pay slightly less rent, in dollar terms, and somewhat less as a percentage of income. Except in winter, when gas bills are high, utilities aren’t bad.

One more thing: entertainment. Fun can be dear in this country. Luckily for me, I’m seldom inclined to visit bars, no doubt the greatest black hole for yen around. I do go to an izakaya once a week with friends, but that’s as much cheap restaurant as bar. Video tape rentals are about $4 for new movies, less for others. Movies in the theater run at least $18, but I know a couple of second-run houses for less than half that. Some of the best museums and temples in the country are only a few dollars to get in and, if I really don’t want to spend much for entertainment, I take the subway to some part of town I don’t know well and walk around. That never gets old.

Gatsby Moving Rubber

So far I haven’t bothered much with grocery store snapshots, as amusing as the labels can be. But not long ago I was in a small, mostly Japanese grocery store in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, and I saw something I’d never heard of before.

That’s a great example of a Japanese product’s English name. You think about it for a while, asking yourself, why did the makers pick that name? You think some more and ah ha! No… it made some kind of sense for a moment, and then it didn’t.

According to the product’s English-version web site, “Gatsby” is explicitly after the fictional character. Hair oil for wistfully dreaming of lost loves, I guess.

Campaign Cards Are Coming

There’s no official moment when it happens, but I think it’s happened all the same. We’ve passed into the Pit of Winter. All days in the pit are cold, as in well below freezing, but they come in varieties: cold sunny days, cold overcast days, cold snowy days. With the potential for a blizzard thrown in for grins.

We can only fondly recall High Summer days, or imagine ones to come, at the remote opposite end of the calendar. They looked like this, at least from my deck.
The first political postcard of ’18 came in the mail a few days ago, sent by a candidate for a relatively minor local office. Not particularly creative: a touch of “next to of course god america i,” a dash of tough on crime, a serving of motherhood (in this case, the candidate is a woman. For a male candidate, a serving of loving family man.)

It’s easy to be cynical about that sort of advertising, as you can see, but it’s the formula that inspires contempt. I don’t really know anything about the candidate. In any case, I expect I’ll be seeing more soon, since the primary is March 20.

YouTube ads for Illinois governor have already started appearing. But at least we won’t hear campaign trucks making noise with loudspeakers, as you do before parliamentary elections in Japan.

Hida-Takayama 1991

While my friend Steve stayed with me in Osaka in October 1991, we took a weekend trip to Takayama in Gifu Prefecture, in the Japanese Alps. (All the pictures below are dated October 26, 1991.) The small city is better known as Hida-Takayama (飛騨高山), since takayama simply means “tall mountain,” which describes a fair number of places in Japan. It used to be in Hida Province, in the pre-Meiji era way of dividing the country.

I’ve posted about the trip before. But nothing about the statues on the Kajibashi Bridge over the Miyagawa River in Takayama. Steve and I posed with different ones.

Statues on the Kajibashi Bridge over the Miyagawa River in Takayama. Statues on the Kajibashi Bridge over the Miyagawa River in Takayama. One source, clearly written in English by a Japanese writer — but not too bad a job, all sic — says: “Extremely long-arm goblin, Tenaga and long-leg goblin, Ashi-naga are displayed on the railing of Kaji-bashi bridge. Te-naga and Ashi-naga folklore is handed down in Japan, which represents the god of immortal.

“There is another folk tale about the creature. This creature was regarded as a hobgoblin, a ghostly apparition, Yokai in Japanese. The creatures with their weird long arms and long legs are said to do wrong to people.

“So, two different traditions about Te-naga and Ashi-naga. There is a shrine to dedicate the creatures in Nagano prefecture.”

We also spent some time at the Hida Folk Village (飛騨民俗村), which is an open-air museum with about 30 farmhouses from this part of Japan.

Hida Folk Village (飛騨民俗村)Hida Folk Village (飛騨民俗村)Complete with a bell to ring. Ring bells if you can.

Hida Folk Village (飛騨民俗村) bell“We saw a man and a woman fashioning hemp sandals from stacks of cord,” I wrote. Here’s the man.
Hida Folk Village (飛騨民俗村)I don’t believe this was in the Folk Village.
Cemetery, Hida-Takayama 1991Rather, it’s a good example of an urban Japanese cemetery. Since cremation is the norm in Japan, burial space isn’t necessary. Rather, the memorial stones can be fit into a tight space. In a city, even a small one like Takayama, that’s often an irregular or otherwise hard to develop plot of land.

Fish Heads, Fish Heads

The main course of this evening’s dinner, still in its packaging, before it became dinner.

Snapper Supper

We didn’t eat the fish head. I was told long ago — I think by an elementary school teacher — that fish heads were eaten in Japan. I later discovered that wasn’t universally true, just more likely than in this country.

At least one writer argues that stubborn Westerners ought to eat ’em up, yum. I’m not persuaded.

The Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden

There are a surprising number of Japanese gardens in the United States, as illustrated by this Wiki list of them, though it’s probably incomplete. It had never occurred to me that there might be one in Springfield, Mo., until I spied it on a map: the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden.

The garden is part of the larger Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center, which also includes an azelea garden, dogwood garden, iris garden, butterfly garden, hosta garden, dwarf conifer garden, and more. All that sounds nice, but on the road sometimes you have to focus. The stroll garden it was.

It had everything you’d expect, trees and shrubs and flowers and lanterns and other structures along a winding path, along with water features.

Mizumoto Japanese Stroll GardenA zigzag bridge.

Mizumoto Japanese Stroll GardenAccording to one web site anyway, the notion such bridges were designed to prevent dimwitted evil spirits from being able to cross them is baloney.

THE MYTH: Some misguided Westerners claim that evil spirits can only travel in straight lines and that Japanese gardens have zig-zag bridges to prevent evil spirits from moving through them.

THE FACT: Japanese gardens do sometimes feature zig-zag bridges, but the evil spirit story is complete nonsense. Zig-zag bridges are featured in Japanese gardens partially because they are attractive and because they are interesting to walk over. There is also a charming story that links zig-zag bridges to Japanese literature and culture. [?] The zig-zag bridge motif is a natural fit for many of the Japanese arts including gardening.

A moon bridge.
Mizumoto Japanese Stroll GardenExpanses of lawn.
Mizumoto Japanese Stroll GardenNot all the foliage is green in the spring.
Mizumoto Japanese Stroll GardenA trellis.

Mizumoto Stroll Garden 2017A zen garden. But of course.
Mizumoto Stroll Garden 2017And some droopy pines, the likes of which I once saw in Rockford.
Mizumoto Stroll Garden 2017According to Japanesegardening.org, the 7.5-acre Stroll Garden is the oldest attraction at the Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center, now a little more than 30 years old. “The plan was inspired by a Fort Worth, Texas copy of the Garden of the Abbot’s Quarters in Kyoto,” it says. Probably that means Tofukuji Temple, which is indeed stunning.

“The garden was initiated by the superintendent of park operations, Bill Payne, in the early 1980s and supported with partnerships from the Springfield Sister Cities Association, The Southwest District of Federated Garden Clubs, The Botanical Society of Southwest Missouri and the Friends of the Garden.

“The garden was given the name Mizumoto in 2004, in honor of Yuriko Mizumoto Scott. She generously acts as a bridge between her native Japan and her home in the Ozarks. As the first Japanese War bride brought back to the United States, her insight has the breadth of a bi-cultural history.” First war bride brought to the Ozarks? Not to be pedantic, but I think they mean postwar bride. Or occupation bride.

“Mrs. Mizumoto Scott spent many years as a volunteer in garden maintenance and hosting tour groups. She has also conducted hundreds of tea ceremonies and explained the customs of Japan. The gardens are maintained by the Friends of the Garden Japanese Gardening Group and Park staff. Gardens are supported by the Springfield Sister Cities Association Isesaki Committee.”

Well worth the stop in Springfield, a town I’d only ever known before as the turn off to Branson.

Thursday Trifles

My wooden back scratcher — one of earliest inventions of mankind, for sure, and still one of the best — still has its label attached. I just noticed that. A product of Daiso Japan, it was acquired in Japan early this year and brought to me as o-miyagi.

The label is in Japanese and English. The English WARNING says:

Please understand that there is a risk of having mold and bugs since this is made of natural material.
Please do not use this for any other purpose than what it should be.
Please follow the garbage segregation rules imposed by local municipality.

Here’s a picture from Lou Mitchell’s last month. “A Millennial Couple at Breakfast.”

Millennials

The flag between them is a Cubs W flag. They were all over when the Cubs were in the World Series, and you still see them sometimes. Ann asked me what it stood for. I said, Win. She said, couldn’t that be for any team anywhere? I assured her that that kind of reasoning has no place in sports fandom.

Here’s an article about Carvana. That’s a company that develops automobile vending machines. Or rather, mechanical towers that dispense cars previously acquired online. I’d never heard of it before. They’re in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, among other places, so maybe I ought to take a look at one.

A few weeks ago, there was a thing going around Facebook: List 10 musical acts, nine of which you’ve seen, one you haven’t. Others are invited to guess which is the one you haven’t seen. Pointless but harmless. I refuse to do it on Facebook, but I will here. Alphabetically.

The Bobs
Chubby Checker
Irwin Hepplewhite & the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys
Gustav Leonhardt
Bob Marley
Natalie Merchant
Bill Monroe
Taj Mahal
They Might Be Giants
Francis Xavier & the Holy Roman Empire