Been while since I posted. Busy life at work and had other technical issues with my website that had to resolve. But the time away has given me time to reflex on what I want my website to be about. I love art and photography and used to draw a lot when I was younger. I’ve tried to pick up drawing again, but nowhere near where I want to be, so have nothing worth posting. However, I do travel a lot for work, and that has given me the opportunity to practice my photography. I was showing my pictures to someone the other day and the comment was: “wow, you really have a good eye for this!”. So, this got me thinking about my website. I already have many pictures from my travels and an Instagram account for my pictures, so why not use my website to showcase my pictures?
I will still like to post about all the other stuff I like, and I will still obviously post pictures from my trips to my favorite city Tokyo; but I will also showcase my photography and speak about some of the places I’ve been to around the world.
Full disclosure, I don’t have a professional camera setup (for now) and all my pictures have been taken using an iPhone X, XS Max or 11. I have used Lightroom and PSExpress for iPad to edit some of my pictures; and that’s about it!
I will leave you with a picture from my beloved island of Puerto Rico, where I was born and raised and I hope to be back to soon!
So I recently started playing Ghost of Tsushima on PlayStation 4, and man I wish I’ve had a game like this when I was younger. I remember falling in love with Japan and samurai history watching a miniseries called Shogun. It’s based on a novel by James Clavell and it tells the story of an English sailor that gets stranded in Japan during feudal times. Everything about that show just captivated me, from the proud samurai Yoshi Toranaga (masterfully played by the great Toshiro Mifune) to the beautiful Mariko (Yoko Shimada) to the castles, armors and katanas. I remember my dad recording it on VHS and me rewatching every episode time and time again.
After that I started getting into Akira Kurosawa movies. Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, (other movies) … but my favorite movie of Kurosawa-San is his epic masterpiece Ran. This movie is a retelling of Shakespear’s King’s Lear but with a Japanese twist. It’s a masterful piece of art and if you’re into Samurai armors and battles, it doesn’t get any better than this. Each samurai army is given a color, and it’s a visual orgasm watching all the different armies clash with their bright blues, reds and yellows. If you haven’t seen this movie, stop what you’re doing and go watch it. You can find a blu ray copy in Amazon or you can rent or download from Amazon Prime video. It’s worth the investment if you’re into samurai cinema.
Another medium that has samurai or ninja movies is, of course, anime. The main movie worth mentioning here is Ninja Scroll by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It takes the ninja mysticism to its fullest expression. It starts Jubei Kabagami ( voiced by Koichi Yamadera) as a vagrant ninja who gets entangled in a conspiracy to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. This may be a cartoon, but it’s by no means for kids. It’s ultra-violent and has many sexual scenes. However, it is a masterpiece of animation, with battles and characters that will stay long with you after you’ve finished watching it. You should be able to see it on Hulu.
There are also some modern classics of samurai cinema and the movie that I absolutely love from recent years is 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike. All I will say about this movie is this; it’s 2 hours long and 1 hour is a samurai battle of the 13 assassins from the title against an army of samurai. It is violent, bloody and a great freaking movie.
Speaking of Miike-San, he went on a little binge of making samurai movies and his next 2 films, even though different from 13 Assassins, are both samurai dramas. The first of the 2 is titled Hara Kiri and touches on the subject of honor and what that meant to samurai from feudal times. It’s very very different from 13 Assassins and more of a slow burner.
His movie after that is one based on the manga Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura. This one was one that I was really looking forward when it was first announced, since the manga is one of my favorites ever. It tells the story of a samurai that becomes immortal and has to atone for sins of the past by killing 1,000 evil men. A girl named Rin hires him to help her avenge her parents murder at the hands of a rouge group called the Itto-Ryu. It is a good movie, but it took me a couple of view to fully appreciate it because I was so heavily invested in the manga story and at one point the movie completely deviates from the manga. I also thought that it showed some of the characters from the manga just because they were popular, but it relegated them to such a secondary status, it didn’t do them justice. It’s still a good movie with good action scenes.
Well that’s my samurai movie list/rant. It by no means encompasses all the samurai movies I like nor their whole plots, but I hope it helps you if you’re looking into some good samurai cinema.
There are many blogs out there about Tokyo, and about what to do and where to eat and how to move around the city. So I thought I would do something a little bit different. I want to write about how I fell in love with the city and why, and in the process with the country itself.
I can’t remember exactly when I became obsessed with one day flying there. Maybe it was all the anime I saw as a kid; Mazinger Z, War of the Worlds (known as Gatchaman in Japan), Robotech, etc. Or maybe it was watching Shogun on TV, a mini series about an English sailor stranded in Japan. What I’m sure of is that by the time anime was more accessible to western audiences in the mid 90s, my obsession with learning more about this culture only grew as I discovered anime like Vampire Hunter D, Akira and Bubblegum Crisis. But I can go into detail about that some other time. Let’s talk about Tokyo.
I finally got to travel there. The day arrived in late April, 1999. Me and my brother packed our bags and took the long flight. We had made some friends there online (and today they’re like family to us), and they waited for us at the airport. We had booked a hotel in Shibuya, so they took us to the hotel, and we left our bags and headed into town.
My first feeling, heading to the streets of Shibuya was excitement, but also fear. I had never been around so many people. Not only that, Shibuya is one of the centers of pop culture in Tokyo, and at that time, fashion there was… interesting. It was nighttime and young people with blue, gray and pink hair roamed the streets. Girls had boots with soles so big and tall you would think they would die if they fell and hit their head. Neon lights everywhere. It was literally like walking into a cyberpunk anime but in real life. There’s a picture book by Masahiro Nogami and Masami Takahashi called Shibuya1999 that has a picture record of Shibuya that same year, and to me it’s like traveling back in time. https://www.shashasha.co/jp/book/shibuya1999
I don’t remember a whole lot of what we did that night. We were jet lagged and tired, but excited at the same time. We just walked around and had dinner at a local place. That night I woke up at 2:00 am and was unable to sleep; so was my brother. We started roaming the TV channels and saw the original Transformers anime was playing. We walked to a 7Eleven across the street from our hotel at around 5:00 am and had breakfast there.
I won’t get into every single detail of the trip, but let’s just say that day we had dinner with a family who owned a sort of ryokan. Ryokans are traditional inns with tatami-matted rooms. They asked us to stay with them for a night, which we obliged. We got along so well that they actually asked us to cancel the rest of our hotel nights and stay with them. Not only that, they asked us to go with them to Nagano for the weekend. We drove there and spent 2 nights at this hotel in which me and my brother were the only westerners there. The day after we arrived, we took part on a tour in which we would go looking for a certain plant and bring it back to the hotel. All hotel guests took part on this. We took our findings back to the hotel, and that night the chef prepared dinner with it for all guests. It was a very unusual and interesting activity, and everyone was so welcoming to me and my brother. We had a lot of fun to say the least.
Asakusa
We went back to Tokyo and spent the next days doing all the touristy stuff. Visited Shinjuku, Asakusa, Akihabara and all the famous neighborhoods. We bought way too many souvenirs to take back to our family, some of which we still keep at the house. But I won’t go into detail, as you can find a thousand blogs out there that detail these. Here is a blog post from Girl Eat World I saw that contains great information on traveling to Tokyo and what to do. It is very extensive and contains great useful information for newbies and returning travelers that need a refresher. Make sure you take a look at it:
After a week there it was time to leave our new friends behind and take the long trip home. We were sad to leave, but happy that our dream trip had just taken place. I ended up going back many times throughout the years and for a while it became a yearly trip for me. Just last year, I was finally able to visit Tokyo again with my brother and reminisce on that trip back in 1999. We’re already planning our next trip there together and I for one can’t wait to be back again!
So I decided to start a blog. Been thinking about it for a long time, but I’ve never known exactly what I want to write about. I have many interests, and sometimes those don’t seem to go hand in hand. I’m really a nerd at heart so I like old school anime, Gundam and video games; but I like fashion, watches, cars and all things like that. I also happen to travel a lot for work. I’ve literally been around the world and have many experiences and pictures about those travels.
So what should I make my blog about? Well, how about everything! Screw it, I’ll write and post about all my interests and the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen. How does that sound? Hopefully some people might find it interesting. I just hope to have fun doing it!
Now, what should my first real blog post be about? I have an idea, a little city called Tokyo…
