Sake-Drenched Postcards
Captain Japan's sometimes sober journalistic adventures in the land of the rising sun.



Vanimo: Crossing the Border At first glance, Vanimo, boasting an elevated peninsula that juts into the blue Pacific and straddling the edge of a dense rainforest, can appear to be a bucolic paradise. But it is just this pristine environment and its proximity to its neighbor that leaves this town, the administrative center of West Sepik Province and home to 10,000 people, perpetually on the brink of a crisis.


The Eccentric Dr. Nakamats In addition to the seemingly magical properties within this liquid of lust, Nakamats, whose 3,000-plus inventions include work on the floppy disk and automatic pachinko machine, adds that the 4,000-yen item also comes with a triangle-shaped template with adhesive that assists a lady in trimming any pubic hair that might otherwise poke from the edges of her panties. "Women always want to have a beautiful body and skin," he says, his thick gray eyebrows not twitching a bit as he speaks. "This product makes them feel beautiful inside and out."


View from a Hill: Scavenging at Stung Meanchey As the bed of each truck is slowly tipped upward the frenzy begins. The collectors (primarily men and women, but also many children) poke and smack at the descending bags before they even reach the ground. A bulldozer then sweeps in, narrowly missing a few members of the scavenging mob, all knee-deep in garbage, to push the pile to the side, where the whirlwind chaos continues.


Aneha Still Shaking Japan With a few strokes of his drafting pencil, architect Hidetsugu Aneha has sent the Japanese government's bean counters into overdrive. In 2005, Aneha was found to have falsified the earthquake-resistance data in the designs of multiple hotels and condominiums in an effort to reduce construction costs. As a result, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism in June modified the approval process for the procurement of a building permit, a move which has stalled the world's second biggest economy.


Kyosho Jutaku: Living Large in Small Spaces Architects like Tokyo-based Jun Ishikawa, however, are now in the process of drafting a small revolution, both literally and figuratively. Small slivers of land that in days past may have been used for an industrial or commerical purpose are now the location of unique housing structures. Ishikawa specializes in mokuzo (wood) structures. Wood affords him the opportunity to implement his signature style: narrow buildings with arched roofs that resemble a one-room schoolhouse or church.


The Wacky, Wired World of Thanko He slips inside and moves to the rear of the store, whose entry is just across from the new 22-floor Akihabara UDX building, and picks up his company's USB Necktie Cooler (2,980 yen) a tongue-in-cheek item aimed at the "Cool Biz" campaign, a government push for office workers to dress lightly in summer. Outfitted with a USB connection (a near Thanko standard) and cable, the plastic neckwear includes a rotating fan inside its knot. "Thanko is an unusual company," admits Yamamitsu, a bespectacled 42-year-old who is continually moving his hands to mimic the motions required to operate the product he is describing.


Fest Nix Yak Pix In days past, a film festival held within rough-and-tumble Kabukicho might be assumed to feature a sampling of the work from gangster-flick director Seijun Suzuki ("Tokyo Drifter," "Branded to Kill"), or perhaps "Yojimbo," the Akira Kurosawa classic where a samurai arrives in a village run by two groups of gambling mobsters. But with its smiley tag line, "Let's go to Kabukicho!" the Tokyo International CineCity Film Festival, which begins Nov. 23 at the Shinjuku Milano 1 theater, will be focusing on giving a more positive image of the district.


Kabukicho Comes Clean Recent police raids on host establishments for everything from maintaining hours past 1 a.m. to ladies being gouged with extraordinarily high bills, often in the hundreds of thousands of yen, have made the industry downright jumpy, says the always jovial Aida. Though he repeatedly insists that his establishments are clean, times are tough. "This is attacking my business," says the bespectacled Aida, wearing an impeccable blue-striped suit and multiple rings studded with shimmering gems. "As a shop owner, I find the enforcement of the 1 a.m. law hard to believe."


Asia Shops Juggle U.S. Animation Jobs For decades it has been a rewarding cycle for both sides of the Pacific: Hollywood studios have sent their animation pre-production work (the storyboards, designs and character and background layouts) to lower-wage nations in Asia for final finishing. But countries such as South Korea are not relying on lower costs as an advantage anymore, says Nikki Vanzo, prexy of Rough Draft Korea, an animation studio with 400 employees in Seoul that was founded in 1992 and has worked on such toons as "The Simpsons" and "Futurama."


Evolving Anime Films Follow New Inspirations Toons like this year's sci-fi epic "Vexille," directed by Fumihiko Sori (producer of "Appleseed," the 2004 sci-fi based on a manga by Shirow Masamune), continue to gather press for their revolutionary 3-D CGI and dynamism. Meanwhile, "Appleseed" sequel "Appleseed: Ex Machina," which came from studio Micott & Basara for an Oct. 20 release in Japan, does not disappoint with its slick action sequences, amazingly detailed imagery and high-energy pacing.