tokyo wonderland 02 whats happening in rainy season in tokyo

we usually have rainy season from the first half of june to the mid of july in tokyo, yet this year its arrival was about two weeks earlier. i really dont like this time of the season for two reasons, firstly, of course because of bad weather, and ridiculously unpleasant humidity. whats worse, although its getting really hot already, the stupid (yet reasonable) energy saving campaign has made us hesitate to use AC, and my unpleasant-index is rocketing up.

in the end of may, on a madly rainy sunday, i went for a nice tokyo tour with chinese and dutch friends from my master program in sweden, dutch friends brother, and chinese friends husband. the rain was heavy enough to motivate me to show them somewhere indoor but it turned out that there were not many indoor exciting touristy spots around here, except nice (and costly) museums and shopping malls that my friends werent so interested in. so we just walked around shibuya-harajuku and shinjuku although the rain was bad enough to make the netherlands sunk:)

what good about rainy days in tokyo is that we are supposed to be able to see how resilient to the natural disaster tokyo is. (although the day of the earthquake totally paralyzed the city, the magnitude of the disaster was exceptionally chaotic so lets not count it.) the sewage disposal system is well-prepared and reliable enough to make traffic run smoothly and urban fabric cannot be damaged by ordinal heavy rain.

although we were totally soaked, nothing really disturbed us except rain until we came to a semi-underground path, which connects east and western part of the shinjuku station. this path is the only shortcut available between two main roads penetrating the railroads, which are like 500meters distant from each other. when people need to travel about shinjuku from east to west, thats the most useful and common choice.

after having a dinner together in western part of shinjuku, we headed east via the path. but we couldnt. apparently some trash were stuck to the drain making the sewage system numb, and it could no longer handle the amount of rainfall. and this is what happened there then.

apparently, just a heavily rainy day reveals that human creation cannot compete with mother nature, let alone earthquake and tsunami. some might say that this rain fall was also rather exceptional, but this guy who was blocking the path told us that this kinda thing happened several times a year or so, so nothing exceptional. just a heavy rain.

what ive learned is that we have to be smart to cope with nature, not compete with it.

city branding in japan, a case of nara

its been already 2 years since i wrote my thesis. at that time i often felt weird seeing differences in city branding strategies between japan and other nations mainly in the West. i dont remember clearly anymore how i define city branding actually, but if i remember correctly, it is supposed to be "monolithic consumer oriented representation" (thats what i remember for sure) to create cool images by overlapping built cities by narative cities and to attract the flux of external capitals, or something like that.

for instance, I love NY and I amsterdam are two of most famous city branding campaigns around the world. each of them has its own origins but they both have the common result; overlapping built cities by narative and attracting various capitals from all over the world.

on the other hand, the case of city branding in japan is apparently taking a totally different vector from the global trend. cities in this country are often promoting themselves by creating some weird characters which are often far from cool in my opinion. city branding in japan often doesnt have any "monolithic consumer-oriented representation" but has only names of characters, often neither its objectives, messages, or targets are clear and these aspects make me doubt if what i believe city branding in japan is actually city branding. i leave this doubt aside for now and assume what i believe city branding in japan as city branding. there are hundreds of city branding characters in japan but the most famous (or notorious) example can be seen in nara.

nara is an old city of japan which has been the capital of this country and therefore is having many valuable cultural heritages, mainly buddhism temples, such as houryuuji and toudaiji. because of its importance in japanese history, it is one of the most popular student-trip destinations. and i really dont know why but there are millions of deer around here and all tourists feed them rice crackers (yet they are said to be "wild animals"). thanks to those aspects, you can learn not only about japanese history but also trend of japanese junior-high-students, tour guides, and nature of deer around nara.

nara hosted national capital several times in ancient times and heijoukyou is the most famous one, which was capital between 710 and the end of the 8th century. in order to celebrate 1300th anniversary of heijoukyou, nara decided to promote itself by city branding campaign and started using this guy.

his name is sentokun, designed by satoshi yabuuchi, a professor at tokyo university of the art. he visualizes two major characteristics of nara successfully; deer and buddhism. i think this guy looks rather better than other branding characters. in fact, i wanted to see him when i visited nara last month. when this guy was first introduced to the media, japanese public criticized him as he was not cute enough or rather creepy. yet eventually hes become popular and successfully attracted tourists including me......

is this a happy ending or at least satisfactory outcome of the branding campaign?

im not sure about it. the data i found shows that the number of tourists is rather increasing after this dude appeared on the media. yet city's population and tax income is decreasing. from this aspect, although sentokun is famous enough to be recognized by most of japanese citizens and attract some additional tourists, hes not necessarily a successful branding figure for nara to attract the flux of external capitals to boost its status quo that what city branding is supposed to contribute to.

yet if sentokun is recognized as a successful branding character in this country, i really have to study about city branding of this country.

visiting russia in sado

my third annual trip to sado in the beginning of may started with just a short conversation with a local friend about my plan after the sado trip. whats on my mind was to visit a site of an amusement park which went bankrupt some years ago, named "Russian Village" (although i couldnt make it in the end). this conversation made him recall that there was a russian tomb in the island.

the root of russian tomb goes back to the russia-japanese war in 1904-1905. it seems there were plenty of casualties at the battle on the japan sea, and the tsushima current brought them to the island. people in sado first became confused but eventually they buried enemies' bodies. this fact was long forgotten from the history for about a century, but the embassy of russia uncovered it in 2001 and built a proper tomb for their loss during the war.   

and this is what they built

obviously, no descendants would notice it as its grave marker is written in japanese. it says "russian peoples tomb" by the way. and no descendants would even notice this tombstone is dedicated to russian casualties because of its appearance. 

whats funny about this tomb is that its not only russian descendants unfriendly to find and pray for their ancestors, but its even difficult for locals to find as it is built just behind a roadside small buddhist temple. in fact, we failed to find it in the beginning.

if any of you having russian background who have chance to visit sado island, make sure to stop by (if possible) :P