The Roving Ronin Report

Tokyo Decadance that wild melting pot of subcultures hosted its monthly event this March. Normally the March event is to celebrate White Day March 14th which is the opposite of Valentines. On Valentines, girls give boys presents and on White Day the boys return the favor. This year however the day before the originally schedule event there was a massive earthquake 80 kilometers off the northeast coast of Japan which caused destructive tsunamis which wiped out whole towns and caused enormous destruction and loss of life along the northeast coast of the Tohoku region. Tokyo Decadance was postponed for two weeks and renamed White and Yellow. White for the original White Day and Yellow for support of Japan. Yellow is a positive color in Japan. A percent of the party's profit was donated to the Red Cross. There wasn't as many people out as usual events but there was still a good showing. Kaya was there singing a duet. We had great music played by DJs like Rina Nekko, we h...

March 11, 2011 a massive earthquake hit 81 miles off the northeastern coast of Japan causing tsunamis which created huge amounts of damage and as of yet untold loss of life. In Tokyo we felt the affects over 200 miles away. That was the worse quake I had ever experienced. My room shook violently and things began cascading off my bookshelf. There were hundreds of people outside not sure if the next Great Tokyo Earthquake had come. There were some sizable aftershocks minutes afterwards and we are still feeling them now. The worst though is up north where whole neighborhoods have been washed away by the tsunamis. There was even fear of a nuclear meltdown at one of the plants in Fukushima but it seems (knock on wood) that the situation is under control Ikebukuro Station packed with people who can't get home People bedded down for the night in Tokyo stations Panic Shopping in Tokyo - shoppers fill up on water and food

A sexy Yoshi with a .....? Tokyo Decadance is a semi-monthly club event in Japan and Europe with different themes sometimes reflecting the holidays and sometimes related with Japanese pop-culture. I went to one event where the theme was old video games such as from Nintendo. There were also some people dressed up as characters from video games or variations of them - a mustacheless Mario (I know - wrong! wrong! wrong!) for example. Some people were apparently dressed as characters from video games that must have come wrapped in brown paper. One DJ played remixes of old video game tunes particularly around 2:50-3:45 and Japanese Chiptune band YMCK made a brief appearance (4:30 in the vid). I could recognize one or two tunes - the mario one was pretty unmistakable but others I have no idea. I never had a Nintendo though I did have SNES and 64. Whoa! I want to play whatever game she is playing! Jesus and a mustache-less Mario

Sapporo Beer Museum Offers History and Beer Museum visitors learn about brewing history in Japan while sampling the wares The Sapporo Beer Museum Ever since man raised himself from his animal-like state of existence and achieved conscious rational awareness, he has used his thought process to devise various and illicit ways of removing this burden of consciousness and returning to his former state. One of the earliest relievers of this burden was the divine elixir known as beer. Beer brewing can be traced back over 6,000 years ago to the resourceful Sumerians. The Sumerians were so taken by this brew they dedicated hymns praising their gods for this divine drink. They even had a goddess of beer brewing. Old Beer Bottles from the turn of the century Beer came late to Japan -- about 6,000 years later. The Japanese, however, were not slack in the "altering of consciousness through liquid means" department. They had been brewing their rice wine for countless generations before be...

Hokkaido’s Drift Ice: Nature’s Masterpiece In northern Japan, one can commune with nature and hungry sea gulls Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido offers winter-loving visitors not only incredible man-made structures of ice and snow — the most notably being at Sapporo’s internationally renowned Yuki Matsuri – but along the northern coast one can see nature’s own winter masterpiece in the form of drift ice. From mid-January to mid-April, the Sea of Okhotsk is choked with ice fragments drifting their way south to oblivion in warmer climates. The Hokkaido coast is the southernmost area in the Northern Hemisphere to experience drift ice. In ages past, drift ice would be a thing to be avoided at all cost by sea-farers. Though not as dangerous as icebergs, drift ice could catch unlucky vessels in its clutches and hold them for long stretches of time, sometimes till death took the crew. Nowadays, with the aid of modern ice-breaking ships, drift ice has become a tourist attraction. In the nort...