Beard Papa on Broadway

NEW YORK - As a line trickles out of this tiny shop onto Broadway’s sidewalk, a customer’s order is called out from the register: “Ni ko hairimasu!” Two cream puffs, “pipin’ hot,” as the Beard Papa motto reads, are then plucked out of a nearby box by a female Japanese staff member and tossed into a paper bag. The other chef-hat-wearing employees behind the counter continue their tasks of dispensing the custard and retrieving baked shells from the oven.

“The customer can watch the making and baking. That is very attractive,” says Koji Tsuda, general manager in the international division of Muginoho Co., Ltd., the Osaka-based restaurant company that created the Beard Papa brand. A feeling that the puffs are being made “just for you,” the customer, as opposed to any faceless person is the intention, he emphasizes. Read more

Shibuya scouts roll with regulation

TOKYO - The train car doors open, dispensing hundreds of passengers in the direction of the Shibuya Station ticket gates. Meanwhile, a half-dozen young men standing and chatting in nearby Hachiko Square extinguish their half-finished smokes in anticipation of the exiting horde.

Often attired in well-worn black suits and sporting wavy dyed hair, these “scouts” repeatedly scan the oncoming crowd. Tokyo’s Shibuya district is the ultimate gathering point for young, fashionable females dressed for attention in remarkably short skirts and snug tops, and it is this demographic that comprises these scouts’ prime target.

If one spots a particular look or set of measurements that meets his company’s needs, he will quickly moves up beside and smoothly inquire as to whether she wants a part-time job. Should she stop, utter a peep, or acknowledge him in the slightest (all very rare occurrences), he will get down to brass tacks: “Do you like sex?” Read more

Hentai manga to take the world

TOKYO - Toshio Maeda is doing some touch-up work on a drawing of a female athlete possessing muscular arms and perky breasts that bulge from around her tight-fitting blue bikini. He begins on her face and scrolls down his 2-in-1 computer screen and digital drawing tablet, making small additions to her already highly detailed form.

Just before he advances the drawing stylus down to work on her lower half, the bespectacled 49-year old explains that most of his fans don’t like looking at simply a muscled woman. He then grins and taps the stylus once more. The screen regenerates with a large phallic protrusion from her crotch area. “So I like doing something different,” he says. Read more

Assembly line nuptials

TOKYO - At the time, Aaron Frisell was just starting out as a wedding pastor in Japan. He stood at the head of the church, waiting to begin a ceremony when saw a problem: the pews before him were filled with gentlemen sporting punch-perms, flashy suits, hats, and sunglasses.

Coming from a Christian background and having gone through many years of Bible training in the United States, Aaron knew that there are certain acts which are simply not acceptable in, as he says, “God’s house.” Wearing sunglasses and a hat are indeed two of them, and this applies to yakuza members the same as everyone else.

A standoff ensued. Aaron announced that he wouldn’t begin until everyone was appropriately attired. After a few awkward minutes, one gentleman in the front stood, removed his offending items, and the rest of the audience slowly followed. Read more

Mahjong world championship comes to Tokyo

TOKYO - Jong Rock rides a motorcycle and plays guitar. He’s a tough guy with long sideburns and a skull-painted leather jacket. The ladies can’t resist him and he plays…mahjong.

Rock is the main character in a manga featured in Kindai Mahjong, a bi-monthly magazine whose content includes various serials and advertising all focusing on the game of ceramic tiles on felt.

As a business, mahjong doesn’t have the scope of pachinko, one of Japan’s largest industries. Neither does it have quite the sophisticated allure of horse racing. Instead, its reputation over the past decades has been as the game of choice for high-stakes wagering in smoke-filled backrooms and parlors by hard-core gamblers - including members of the yakuza, company presidents, and politicians. Read more

Tsukiji

TOKYO - Outside the tiny Yamato sushi shop within Tokyo’s bustling Tsukiji Fish Market, a long line of customers forms down a narrow alley. The reputation of this shop for delivering some of the city’s best - and freshest - sushi is legendary.

Inside, one of the chefs behind the counter takes two live shrimp into his hand and sets them on the rack above the counter to enable his patrons a clear view. A couple sitting on two of the shop’s twenty stools giggle as the shrimp flap their tail fans and squirm atop the perch. He then moves both below to his cutting board where he quickly takes two chops with his knife. The shrimp are once again set in front of the pair, this time mounted on slabs of rice with a bit a wasabi. The sushi master grins from beneath his white paper hat. “What do you want next?” he asks.

Freshness is indeed a necessity for customer satisfaction in the seafood trade, and it is a general assumption in Tokyo that the closer one is to the Tsukiji Fish Market, located on a 22-hectare plot on the banks of the Sumida River, the fresher the fish must be. Whether this geographic relationship is more myth than fact is best left to trial and error. In whatever case, early mornings at “Tokyo’s Kitchen” are typically comprised of 15,000 workers engaging in a chaotic environment of buying and selling to supply seafood that is the freshest possible. Read more

A J-pop diary

TOKYO - It was an experience like no other. Fully naked early one morning, she swam freely - and unseen - in the pool of her Los Angeles apartment complex. This young woman from Sapporo had never felt such freedom in her life, let alone in her new career as a Japanese pop singer.

Auga Yaya, the stage name of Mikako Motoyama, was a star on the rise. One year earlier she had her debut single “Close to the Night” hit the 12th spot on Japan’s Oricon singles chart. This temporary stay overseas was for further studio recording for her record label, entertainment giant Avex.

Even though her subsequent two singles hadn’t matched the roughly 150,000 copies shipped of “Close to the Night,” she still sensed she was moving up Japan’s pop ladder. At that moment in the water, Japan, and all its inherent rigors and rules, was slowly fading into the background. After all, this was a big foreign city, the City of Angels. A small-town girl of 21 was on her way, she thought. Read more

Unwinding the mystery of the gyroball

TOKYO - Daisuke Matsuzaka is 26 and sports a crown of spiky hair. He stands at 182 centimeters, weighs 85 kilograms, and throws a gyroball.

He throws a what?

Based largely on Matsuzaka’s dominant performances in the World Baseball Classic and the 2.13 ERA and 200 strikeouts he posted with the Seibu Lions last season, last month the Boston Red Sox submitted a bid for the whopping sum of 6 billion yen just for the privilege of negotiating a contract with him.

To his Japanese fans, the right-hander is known simply as “Daisuke.” When he pitches, his follow-through often ends with a high kick of his right leg. His fastball checks in at a lofty 150 kilometers per hour. Knees buckle at the sight of his curve. His change-up makes hitters look foolish. And his gyroball… Read more

Shibuya set for one final explosion

TOKYO - Glimpses of Taro Okamoto on television or in photographs often showed the avant-garde artist with his hands moving in circles in front of his face, flashing the cheeky grin and bulging eyes that became as well-known as his proclamation: “Art is an explosion!”

Such expressions and imagery usually found their way into self-reflective paintings and sculptures—colors bursting forth, swirling patterns and distorted facial features—that made Okamoto one of Japan’s most revered contemporary artists.

Yet 12 years after his death, Okamoto still has one bullet left in the chamber. Asu no Shinwa (“Myth of Tomorrow”), a large mural that the artist painted in Mexico but which disappeared for decades before being rediscovered and arduously restored, will get a new home inside a walkway of Shibuya station on November 17. Read more

Dr. Strangelove

I first met the man I came to know as Strangelove at Charleston’s in Roppongi. It was early evening on January 20, 1986, a memorable day because it was the same day I enrolled in Japanese school. But more remarkable in that from that point on I could never stop wondering if the man I’d just met was sometime going to set the world on fire.

A Japanese fellow in his early 30s, he sat at the bar hitting on a shapely blonde Askew Agency model whom I vaguely knew. I took a seat next to him. Introductions followed shortly afterwards.

In the beginning of the bubble-era of the ’80s, Charleston’s was one of Roppongi’s hardcore meat markets for Japanese men with a taste for “foreign food.” (For I know it still is, but then again I don’t get out much anymore.) Its patio and open sliding glass doors faced south towards the parking lot across from the Hard Rock Cafe building with the three-meter plastic gorilla hanging off its exterior. Read more

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