"Obey Consume Repeat!"

Dec 14, 2008
Taipei, Taiwan

We left Japan this morning and headed for Taipei. Home with my mom for the rest of the year. A much needed break and the unparalleled comfort only mom can provide.

Here are some of my overall impression of Japan:

1. Japan is one large mall/covered arcade. Every train station has a department store attached to it, all urban centers in Japan (Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto) are all centered around places to shop (i.e multiple department stores within blocks of each other).

2. You could get lost in all major train stations and or live there for days.

3. My favorite things in Japan is the Shinkansen, and the best bargain you can have in Japan is the JR Pass.

4. Sushi is incredibly fresh in Japan, even the 20% off ones that you buy at the super market after 5pm.

5. Japan has a really interesting relationship with sex, marriage prostitution, evident in the multiple red-light districts that is a part of every city or how high school girls will sleep with men for easy money to pay for things such as their cell phone bills or a new outfit.

6. The Japanese are incredibly polite but the politeness is a facade.

7. The Japanese culture is for the good of the many and not for the will of the individual, obedience is highly valued, they don't even jay-walk.

OBEY CONSUME REPEAT feels like a good summary of my glimpse into the Japanese culture.

Japan certainly has many virtues, nearly a 99% literacy rate, and nearly 100% employment rate as well. It is extremely clean and modern, certainly a city of the future in many aspects. It is unparalleled in many of technological advances, such as a cell phone that can record and play TV shows, or with direct link to your credit card for you to make purchases simply by waving your phone at a censor. Yet the combination between advanced technology, obedience / lack of individual will, "strange" relationship with sex, pornography, marriage, rampant consumerism .... the combination only makes me think of movies such as Blade Runner or Novels such as The Handmaid's Tale. None of which depicts a future that I am excited for or eager to participate in.

I think I will skirt the modernized cities of the world for a little while. I think I prefer something with a little bit of rawness, something with a bit of an edge to it for the next destination.

Tsukiji, Muder and No More Tourists

Dec 12, 2008
Tokyo, Japan

I went back to Tsukiji one more time this morning for another round of photography before we depart Japan on the 14th. I keep on wanting to write a blog here to sum up an overall impression of the world's largest fish market. Yet, still, much as I was a bit lost for words two weeks ago during my first visit, I am still unable to find the words to fully describe what Tsukiji is like. I hope that there will be an image or two that I have caught on film that does in some ways describe the feeling of Tsukiji.

Here are some preliminary thoughts, first of all, I might be one of the last foreign tourists allowed to photograph the market for the rest of 2008, or ever maybe. Tsukiji will be closed to foreign tourists from Dec 15, 2008 - Jan 17, 2009. The workers complains that tourists disrupting their work flow, tourists are not aware of their surrounding and the electric flatbed carts that workers drive at top speed to transport the fish. Which are all fair complains, when you think about it, it is a place of work after all and not some sort of static museum made for observation. On top of it, there is a plan to move Tsukiji to a new facility that they are building. Whether the move will actually happen or not is still debate able, but there is an irony in that I photographed Fulton Fish Market (New York City) before it moved to its new shiny home up in the Bronx.

There is a contrast in the worker at the market, the older generation verse the young. The older generation moves at a slower speed, time is different for them. They walk around their stall with their hands folded behind their back, gently inspecting their goods, quietly awaits. While the younger generation drives the flatbed carts at top speed through the market delivering the fish to its next point of processing. The young pushes the froze tuna through the band saw, cutting it into smaller pieces while the older seasoned fisherman takes the meter long Oroshi hocho and meticulous decapitate the tuna into 4 large sections.

I was amazed to watch over half of a warehouse full of tuna be auction off and moved to their next location in less than 25 minutes. Or the careful silence the bidder takes in inspecting each tuna's belly with a flash light or how they cut off a bit of flesh from the tail section and rub it between their fingers to determine the fat content of that tuna. All of my thoughts are still a little scattered and some what random, but it will be intelligible soon, I hope.

We later meet up with a friend, a film editor who is currently working in Tokyo, on a film called "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" which is about an employee of a fish market who also doubles as a contract killer....

I feel all things are starting to converge together....