Adventures in gachapon! Can you feel that hybrid dog-bird?

Gachapon (or "gashapon") is one of my not-so-guilty pleasures here in Japan. They are coin-operated machines that randomly dispense from a selection of... anything, really. The endless variety is what keeps me addicted and checking them every time I find one.

I came across one that caught my eye the other day.

This series is called "Inutori", which means "Dogbird".

The breeds in this series include (from right to left):

The cover-boy, "Shibird".

"Terrierbird".

The masterfully named Bichon frise/pidgeon hybrid, "bigeon".

"Huskeybird".

"Retriebird".

"Pendog".

Each one comes with a nest and two small eggs. The machine will cost you 300 yen for each try.

Well, I just had to have a "pendog", so I tried several times. This was my haul in the end:

Not pictured are the two other shibirds and an extra Spuds MacKenzie, but in the end, down to my last couple 100 yen coins... I got the pendog.

4 out of 6 in the set, but I'm pretty satisfied.

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Live report! "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" NINE MILES & Kaminarigumo + Yoshiaki Manabe

On July 14th, Cody and I attended Kaminarigumo's & Yoshiaki Manabe's "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" at Koenji HIGH. This was a particularly special show, because it featured the very first live performance of Yoshiaki Manabe's (from the pillows) "NINE MILES" solo project. For this new incarnation of NINE MILES, Keiji Ueno from Kaminarigumo takes charge of the vocals. Ghoma (also Kaminarigumo) provides keyboard. To start off, I'll write about how the return of NINE MILES and the album "Into the light again" came to be. The revival of NINE MILES started in early 2023 when Yoshiaki Manabe was asked to join Kaminarigumo's summer tour as the support guitarist. Manabe thought it would be an interesting idea to play as NINE MILES as an opening act, and asked the other members if they'd like to do it. He thought it would be nice to have a tour t-shirt for the occasion, so he asked his bandmate from the pillows Sawao Yamanaka ...

10th Anniversary

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Culture shock: Lost belongings

A tree along a path that I walk every day has become a makeshift lost-and-found. These are belongings that people have dropped, picked up by others, and placed hanging in the tree for easy visibility. Similarly, when I go to parks I often see toys that children have left, but they remain until the owner comes back to retrieve them. This fluffy capybara plushie has been sitting on this concrete pilar for the past few days, waiting to be reunited with its owner. Once, my phone slipped out of my pocket while sitting on the train. A man picked it up, exited the train, and tracked me down through a swarm of people to hand it back to me. It’s a stark contrast to the “finders keepers” attitude of the western world. I munched on some chestnuts while thinking about this. 🌰

Japan Jukebox

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