Japanese culture | Howdy Japan

Exhibition of urban guerrilla, Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando is one of world famous Japanese architects. However do you know how he got his own style of architecture?

Tadao Ando, born in Osaka Japan in 1941, at first became a professional boxer when he was a high school student. At the same time he learnt architecture on his own. When he was at 24 years old, he traveled many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. And on one day during such a travel, he reached to an idea that a life is to fight and to stick to the value he believe in. After returning to Japan, he started his career as an architect and as an “urban guerrilla”.

Roppongi is an area of Tokyo where there is one of buildings designed by Tadao Ando. 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT (a photo below) designed by Tadao Ando was built in 2007 as a facility specialized for design.

His design is well known as exposed concrete and frequent use of geometrical patterns. In this 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT big triangle eaves well show his features.

Now in the National Art Center in Roppongi Tokyo they have an exhibition of architectures by Tadao Ando. It shows a lot of drawings, models and other resources of his architectures. But the highlight of the exhibition is that they reproduced his masterpiece, Church of the Light in a site of the museum.

Church of the Light was built in Osaka, Japan as a Christian church in 1989. Although it’s a very simple design, we cannot forget it once we see the cross expressed by its slit window at the bottom of the building. It also well features Ando’s peculiar design of exposed concrete.

Now there are architectures designed by Tadao Ando not only in Japan but also all over the world. And our second home, Texas also has one. In Fort Worth TX, there is Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as a museum with a lot of masterpieces of American modern art in the 20th century. The exposed concrete of geometric Y shape designed by Ando perfectly matches with water in inner court and create a home of these masterpieces.

Indeed there are a lot of architectures designed by Tadao Ando in Japan. When you see a building of exposed concrete, it might be another masterpiece of him.

Godzilla is attacking on Kabuki-cho

Godzilla is a series of monster movies which have been made in Japan and the US since 1954.

Now in Japan Shin-Godzilla, a new movie of Godzilla, is a big hit again. While Godzilla was made by Hollywood in 2014, this Shin-Godzilla is a Godzilla movie made in Japan for the first time in 12 years.

In a lot of recent Godzilla movies there were many ones on which Godzilla and other monsters fought and sometimes Godzilla looked like an ally of human being. But this time Shin-Godzilla is coming back to the original concept of Godzilla, fear of a gigantic and unknown monster. In this movie Godzilla is approaching to Japan, especially to Tokyo, and the Japanese were deeply terrified.

I really enjoyed this movie and I respect Mr. Hideaki Anno, a film director of Shin-Godzilla, who is also well known as a creator of the popular Japanese anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, for his challenge to return to the original of the long lasting legendary movie series.

But even before Shin-Godzilla was published, Godzilla had arrived at Tokyo. See a picture below.

This is the picture of the intersection at Kabuki-cho, an entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Maybe it was taken from too much distance. Let’s go closer to the center of the photo.

Now you can see Gozilla’s face from the top of the cinema building. He looks like gazing and roaring against something with his mouth wide open. Then let’s see there is what beyond his gaze.

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So he is gazing the board of “I love Kabuki-cho”. In fact that cinema building with Godzilla was built at the place where Shinjuku Koma theater, former cultural center of Shinzuku, was located in the past. And back then surrounding Shinjuku Koma theater, there were many bars, gentleman’s clubs and adult shops, like the chaos in Tokyo.

Tokyo’s local government has been trying to “clean” Kabuki-cho many times and now making another campaign to make it cleaner for Tokyo Olympic in 2020. However, as long as I can find, there are many such kinds of bars and shops newly opened maybe by the people who love Kabuki-cho as well as money.

Even Godzilla might not be able to destroy the desire of human being who try to earn money on night life…

How Pokemon Go works in Nippori Japan

Finally in Japan, where Pokemon was originally developed, Pokemon Go has been released on past Friday, July 22nd. And of course I have already installed it.

Our home area, Nippori Tokyo is located relatively in suburb of Tokyo. Nevertheless, I can find a lot of Poke Stops around my home. Compared to my birthplace Shizuoka, the density of Poke Stops in Nippori, where we can get items to proceed Pokemon Go, is much better.

I understand that in the world of Pokemon Go the places for Poke Stops are randomly selected. And in Nippori, typical popular shops in Yanaka Ginza street, which is a main sightseeing spot here, are selected for Poke stops. For example, this tempura shop with a cat on the roof is selected as a Poke Stop. The cat is a symbol of Yanaka Ginza street.

I think it’s useful to attract more attention from visitors on Nippori as long as such a funny place is selected as Poke Stop. However, I have a little concern on another kind of Poke Stop.

Now this is also a Poke Stop.

This is Hongyou-ji temple near our home. In Nippori there are a lot of temples and shrines. And not only temples but also sometimes specific statues of Buddha are selected as Poke Stops.

I’m not so religious, but even for me as a Japanese I have a complicated feeling when I find a Pokemon inside the temple and get monster balls from the Buddha statue. And I’m wondering how such religious places are selected as Poke Stops in the US.

Anyway Pokemon Go has just started in Japan. And I’m still motivated enough to try to find another Pokemon in the town!